They Will Not Hunt Deer,
And People Will Die of Themselves
The past week was densely strewn with red-letter days: March 23 was birthday
of Lviv Oblast Governor Stepan Senchuk, March 25 that of oblast Tax Administration
Chief Serhiy Medvedchuk, and seventh anniversary of the Security Service
of Ukraine (SBU). It was a coincidence that the Lviv Oblast Administration
and the Railroad Administration were picketed precisely on these festive
days. Fortunately, the Tax Administration and local SBU were ignored. The
protests did not look festive from outside. The funniest thing on Tuesday
was that some city council deputies wished to discuss their ill-considered
budget with the governor. Naive people. A man is being loaded down with
flowers in honor of his forty-fourth birthday, and the deputies wanted
to discuss the budget deficit with him.
The Oblast State Administration made an attempt to support the student's
deprived of their privileges by the weekend, but still there were pickets
of the nation's future elite under its walls.
The past week saw what Ukraine (at least her western part) does not
seem to have seen before. The Lviv Oblast State Administration Chief, in
spite of his own birthday chores, signed a three-year moratorium on shooting
deer and roe in the oblast. How very ecological! And on Monday the whole
civilized world celebrated the Day of Water and Meteorologists. Out of
1,500 hectares flooded in the Lviv region on the eve of spring, only 200
are still under water. There are no residential buildings left under water.
In Sokal and Horodyshche districts, cows enter barns and stand on the piles
full of optimism about tomorrow. The Galician's optimism is invincible.
On Wednesday morning, manure was heaped on a nameless grave next to
the Lviv cemetery of Polish eaglets, with a Polish flag stuck in and reading
Death to Poles. A shame. But, curiously, the first to see this provocation
was Mr. Cydik, chairman of the Polish war graves upkeep association. A
provocation? But one of the local historians assumed that this nameless
grave might contain the bones of Ukrainians. Death does not always bring
peace.
Death. Vyacheslav Chornovil perished in a car crash near Boryspil. I
do not know why I recalled a wise parable: "A man is always better than
he is talked about in his lifetime and worse than he is written about in
an obituary." Death again. NATO kills Serbs and is not much preoccupied
with the problems of Christian morals. Russia is writhing in her great-power
labor. Our national multi-vectored policy has taken Ukraine out of Asia
but not brought it into Europe. Now we are somewhere in the hapless middle,
both geographically and politically. We have not condemned NATO, but have
expressed sympathies with the Serbs, i.e., we are again dodging raindrops,
as they say here. When Parliament began to speak about possible renunciation
of Ukraine's nuclear-free status, I felt ill at ease: it is sad when your
country has a chance to become a laughing-stock.
By Yuri TYMCHUK, The Day






