Oleh POKALCHUK: “The Western world, with all its negatives, is mentally closer to Ukrainians, and this innate Europeanness is slowly making itself felt”

The Ukrainians recently celebrated the 22nd anniversary of an independent state. Shortly before sovereign Ukraine’s birthday, many sociological groups and foundations conducted a series of public opinion polls that surveyed, among other things, the Ukrainians’ value-related attitudes. Some of them were of outright surprise, others aroused reflections on who the citizen of today’s Ukraine thinks he or she is. It was about the necessity of forming at least a concept of the national idea, an attempt to remember not only the negative, but also the positive tendencies of the current national development, the optimal choice of the political ideal of an independence-time ruler, etc. The Day has interviewed social psychologist Oleh POKALCHUK about the sources of the Ukrainians’ political and ideological attitudes and the menaces of Russian influence.

“IT IS ONLY WORTHWHILE TO SPEAK ABOUT THE NECESSITY OF A NATIONAL IDEA WITH THE GENERATION THAT HAS GROWN UP AND MATURED IN THE YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE”

Mr. Pokalchuk, we often hear it said that in the years of political independence we have failed to form the paradigm of a Ukrainian national idea which would be a pivot for rallying the country together. Do you think the Ukrainians have a national idea?

“I can see no idea that could unite all Ukrainians without an exception. The very talk about a national idea resembles the talk about God – everybody talks of Him, but He is different for all, and nobody has seen Him. Moreover, it is not very wise to speak of the necessity of this very concept, for it would be a pre-independence nationalist discourse. Our political culture is closely linked with this rhetoric of the Ukrainian people’s statelessness. This is odd but explainable. In a situation of unrealized ambitions, emotions are stronger than reason, and this kind of exaltedness embellishes the world and oneself in it, too. On the whole, the past 22 years have shown the unwillingness of Ukrainians to switch to a pragmatic discourse: they do not want to drop the euphoric and poetical centuries-long outlook which is now part of national identity.

“Moreover, the generations that have grown up in this condition will never, in all probability, eradicate it, for they in fact consider it the national idea. Therefore, it is only worthwhile to speak about the necessity of a new, constructive, national idea with the generation that has grown up and matured in the years of independence. I also include the late Soviet Union into this period because the people who were born in the 1980s are in fact not mentally burdened with Soviet ways and attitudes. Debates with others on this matter will only boil down to extolling what has been extolled before.”

Do you think it is right that the very concept of national idea is being viewed from the politico-ideological, rather than cultural and social, angle?

“The very way this question is being put shows not only a politico-ideological, but also a revolutionary-nationalistic approach. So we can only speak about putting the question either in a mythological, imaginary, or a realistic, pragmatic, context. There are two conditions in a human being or in any other living system: heterostasis and homeostasis. In the former case, a human being or another living system gravitates towards dynamics and development, in the latter, it wants to remain intact, feed off, conserve, and cherish the past, etc. Logically, these things cannot are unjoinable.

“In general, the questions politicians raise never and nowhere have anything to do with reality. As a rule, it is mendacious demagogy no matter who is in power. This practice has languished, incidentally, since universal suffrage was introduced, the vote of an ignoramus became equal to that of an educated person, and even decent politicians (sounds like an oxymoron) had to speak in a language of ignoramuses because the latter always form a vast majority. This status quo is still intact in the so-called democratic world. Therefore, the national idea questions, as put by politicians, have nothing to do with either a nation or an idea.

As for the situation in Ukraine, gain is the main factor – first of all, political gain for the people who speak about something. As a rule, eloquent speakers do not even understand, let alone deal with, the topics they articulate. Three fourths of Ukrainian politicians are undereducated people, so it is technically impossible to discuss with them such thing as ‘nation’ which has about 200 definitions and parameters.”

“IT IS TYPICAL OF POST-SOVIET PEOPLE TO COMPLAIN. THIS BEHAVIOR VEILS THE ACTUAL LEVEL OF THEIR HARDSHIPS”

And what kind of a national idea should or at least could unite the Ukrainians on both banks of the Dnipro?

“I will perhaps say a seditious thing, but I do not support Ukraine’s unification. Moreover, I, for example, don’t want to unite with the people I don’t like. Even in everyday life, we do not mingle with the people only because they are upright, mammals, bipeds, and even speak a language much related to ours. We unite with the people we like, who are close to us in spirit. The idea of uniting Ukraine suffers from megalomania and gigantism. Besides, this idea too much resembles the Soviet one from which we were so eager to run away. So I do not think that Ukraine should be forced into a straitjacket of sorts to prevent it from spreading off limits, so to speak. Moreover, when a certain nook in Ukraine comes up with a successful foreign political or, say, socioeconomic project, everybody will follow this example, and this will in fact be the center that will unite the Ukrainians on both banks of the Dnipro.

“Uniting by means of an idea is, at best, a social hypnosis and, at worst, totalitarianism – no matter what you call it. This is bound to lead to Bolshevism in its worst 21st-century version. Today, it is changing its guise quite swiftly – it can even look national.

“Each component of Ukraine’s uniting idea must have every opportunity to display its talents as well as its stupidity. The latter is even more important from the viewpoint of learning. After all, mistakes are made to learn from and not to repeat. But if people are officially robbed of an opportunity to learn things the hard way, they will have a pretext to say that some stupid step of theirs would have been successful if they had been allowed to develop.”

The latest polls show that 61 percent of Russians cannot recall even one achievement of their country in the past 15 years. Do you think Ukrainians remember any achievements of our state in the years of independence?

“I think we are in a similar situation, for we once crawled out of the same den called the USSR, and it would be wrong to speak about differences between us and Russians in this case. It is the first point. Secondly, it is typical of post-Soviet and, in general, East European people to speak very much about their real and imaginary troubles, complain, and grieve. This behavior raises one’s self-appraisal because most of the people who lament know only too well that there are a lot of those who are in a still worse plight – so things are in fact not so bad. But complaining of cruel fate is a trait of our national character.

“Yet we should separate what people say publicly, for example, in an interview or a poll, from what they think in reality. Besides, there is also such thing as ‘leading question’: it is worded so as to suggest the desired answer. People often say one thing in public and another at home, and think in altogether different terms. In other words, we have four similar verbal and mental structures which hardly cross one another. So I consider opinion polls quite a manipulative exercise. Only general trends should be taken into account.

“As for the positives, I think it is, undoubtedly, the very fact of independence in the past 22 years. The concept of a free Ukraine was a viable national idea that rallied together a huge number of people. Naturally, everybody could interpret political independence from a different angle, but all were equally aware of the importance of this event. People will remember this fact as real and definite because it is, among other things, history. And what followed this was typical of Ukraine: two Ukrainians, three hetmans, and five viewpoints.”

But surveys show that many Ukrainians do not even consider Independence Day a holiday – for them, it is just a day off, a day in the calendar when they can relax, but not an occasion for taking pride… Would you comment?

“This form of answer is a hidden protest. People are very well aware that August 24 is an extremely important date. People are dissatisfied with the conditions in which they have to mark this date, so they say out of spite that it is just a day off, not a holiday.

“Besides, in my view, this moment illustrates a normal attitude of people to the political situation in this country. Take, for example, our absolutely Soviet wish to whip up a political psychosis, bringing political hysteria to 101 percent. As a psychologist, I consider this quite a morbid condition. Look at political activity in, say, Western Europe. If the election turnout there is 15 percent, it is considered rather a high degree of political activity.

“As Confucius once said, the best ruler is the one about who people only know that he exists. In other words, he does not hinder people from doing their own business. If our government did not hinder people from doing their own business, things would be not so bad indeed and they would treat August 24 as a day off – the way people view public holidays in civilized countries.”

“THE RUSSIANS ARE WELL AWARE OF HAVING MENTALLY LOST UKRAINE LONG AGO BUT CANNOT ADMIT THIS OUT LOUD”

According to a four-year-old poll, the Ukrainians considered Leonid Kuchma the best president of Ukraine, much to the detriment of the seemingly much more democratic Leonid Kravchuk and Viktor Yushchenko. Likewise, the Russians named Leonid Brezhnev, the stagnation-era leader, the best ruler in the 20th century, with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin being the worst. What do the results of the Ukrainian poll mean and would they be different now?

“I don’t think the results would have changed because there is a principle that works quite well in the Ukrainian political realities: the more human features the ruler displays, the lesser chances he or she has to be effective. For example, Yushchenko was undoubtedly a good and decent person, but he failed to succeed as president. Humaneness and democratic ways are good for an opposition politician, but president is a function, not just an individual, and this function must be performed very toughly, without too much rhetoric. As we can see it now, Saakashvili made the same mistake. Kuchma, a man of few and thickly-pronounced words, was quite a tough ‘Red manager.’ He replaced Kravchuk who had really done very much for Ukraine, quite effectively pursuing a ‘walk-on-eggs’ policy. The period of Kuchma’s rule can also be called ‘stagnation.’ Ordinary people regard such periods as a time of stability. These conditions are particularly comfortable for middle- and older-age people. They do not live in a system of heterostasis or development. For them, it is a period free of external challenges. At the same time, young people want entirely different things: they need drive and social uplifts, a thing that is not so easy now to come by.”

Judging by the recent pompous celebration of the 1,025th anniversary of the Baptism of Kyivan Rus’ with the participation of Patriarch Kirill and Vladimir Putin, Russia still nurses a hope to reverse the course of Ukrainian history, also by actively imposing the concept of the so-called Russian World. Are the Ukrainian political elite and ordinary Ukrainians prepared to resist this influence?

“Let us begin with the very fact of celebrations. In general, I am very doubtful about the date and the process itself, so I’m taking a very ironic view of this. I have written the book Trembling Elites, on the basis of the Norman theory of Rus’ origin, about political developments in that era and the reasons for their merciless mythologization. As for the Kremlin’s attempts to manipulate this, what they could recently see in Kyiv was a pitiable spectacle. It was as pompous and high-flown as before, but I think the erstwhile enthusiasm is on the wane. The Russians are clever people and nice manipulators, and they are very well aware of having mentally lost Ukraine long ago but cannot admit this out loud.

“There are no more people on whom one could impose – as recently as 10 years ago – all these church- and Kremlin-devised schemes that could work in some way inside this country. The Russian World idea has fizzled out, and the organizations that still lobby it are ‘grant-eaters,’ much the same as our pro-Western foundations. But all this no longer works. A new generation has grown up, which considers this as nothing but buffoonery. Old people are reacting in a way, but I think there is more common sense in the Russian World than in the Russian monarchic idea. Of course, it will work as a colorful picture and a certain system of metaphysical imaginations, but I can see no prospects for it to function as a political instrument.

“For example, trade war is a real and serious thing – it is pragmatism. But all these Kirill-inspired superstructures and the chimera of active ideological work do not function any more – they resemble a requiem for the Russian World rather than serious politico-religious pressure.

“Besides, the Western world, with all its negatives, is mentally closer to Ukrainians. This innate Europeanness is slowly making itself felt, and we are trying to march in step with European processes, even though we are in fact hobbling – at least in the right direction. For example, the church, especially such an archaic and uncivilized one as in Russia, is losing its grip in modern secular world. Therefore, it is clear that these processes are gradually becoming customary for us, too.”