“‘The Trap’ and I, an Eyewitness are about real Ukraine”

Den’s trilogy about the contemporary history of Ukraine (“The Trap,” or A Case without a Statute of Limitations; I, an Eyewitness. Notes from the Occupied Luhansk; Catastrophe and Triumph. The Stories of Ukrainian Heroes) has been a huge success. The editors continue to receive responses to the new books published in Den’s Library from our readers. As a reminder, the newspaper’s bestsellers have been launched not only in many Ukrainian cities, but abroad as well, in particular, at the Warsaw book fair. The second edition of the books has already been released. Moreover, an English translation of the first collection from the triptych, “The Trap” has been published as well. So, we are presenting for the attention of the readers some reviews of our connoisseurs, in particular, the reviews of the books “The Trap,” or A Case without a Statute of Limitations and I, an Eyewitness. Notes from the Occupied Luhansk.

“‘THE TRAP’ IS A BOOK ABOUT A SYMBIOSIS OF SOVIET GOVERNANCE AND OLIGARCHIC CAPITAL”

Volodymyr BOIKO, historian, Chernihiv:

“‘The Trap’ is not about Illovaisk, although this may be the first association that arises when we see the book. It is about the case without a statute of limitations: in a narrow sense, it is about the murder of Georgy Gongadze and similar crimes, their perpetrators, the high-ranking officials, and in a broader sense – it is about how we have come up to the present day.

“‘The Trap’ is not research; rather it is a collection of publicist works which does not claim to give exhaustive answers. It should be perceived as a whole, only reading the last material and keeping in mind the content of all the previous ones. I mean that it is based on the principle of impressionism, when every separate component will tell little to the reader. And for understanding what you are dealing with you have to step back and only from a certain distance you will be able to see the picture and assess it.

“The mosaic structure of the collection allows us to say what the official Ukraine keeps silent about and what is rarely mentioned in public, something we don’t dare to admit to ourselves – this is fearsome and uncomfortable. And why do so? The priorities have been changed. But this is the system of state governance in Ukraine. Former deputy minister of economy of Poland Piotr Kulpa considers that it is the basis for wealth and poverty of nations. The latest relates directly to ourselves.

“‘The Trap’ is a book about the symbiosis of the Soviet model of governance and oligarchic capital, which was formed in the time of Leonid Kuchma’s presidency. It envisages the priority of illegal ways of governance and total informal dependence of all the components on the top link. This is vertical ‘claw’ governance, which perceives the basic and horizontal initiatives extremely badly. It is hard to imagine a worse mixture for the people and the state and the possibilities of their development. As a result, we have a stripped clean country like the Latin American ones, where a narrow circle is controlling everything, and the majority must content with the charity of the rich – especially during the elections, when the politicians need to literally buy the likes of the electorate. And a considerable part of the voters (even well-known journalists) agrees to do this. They make another necessary component of such kind of governance. It is mentioned in one of the materials of the collection that such an attitude of the majority of citizens has made it possible to establish an authoritarian regime in Ukraine, with all its flaws, like political killings and intimidation of the dissidents.

“Therefore ‘The Trap’ is also a martyrology of Ukrainian politicians who were killed before our eyes. And the country still feels the lack of some of them. To the rest the society had numerous questions and apparently would like to bring them to responsibility. But under any other circumstances, why physical destruction and other kind of violence have become a lever of politics in Ukraine? If such things are allowed to be done to well-known, public people, what can a common Ukrainian hope for? Where, at what state institutions is s/he supposed to look for the truth and basically hope if his or her interests are crossed with those who have power and money?

“The latter do not need any real changes (the power and the opposition alike), because the present system has allowed them to concentrate the financial and property resources n their hands. That is why they are defending it as much as possible (whether consciously or not), even now, in spite of all the previous shakes and bloodshed. In a sense, they are protecting their sources of enrichment. Of course, if we put the question in such a way, the ways of governance will remain unchanged, many times verified in practice – non-transparent, corrupt, and realized by force. The only thing they have to do now is to repeat the Maidan rhetoric and vows of allegiance to the European way of development, as a mantra. But when they are opportunistic and have no firm inner beliefs, this is merely an appearance, an imitation.

“This stability is based on the lack of responsibility for the previous crimes. If they could do so before, why can’t they do the same thing now? Meanwhile serious changes have taken place in the minds of a considerable part of our compatriots: they are so deep that we can assert: at the moment our citizens are better than those who are trying to govern on their behalf. To ignore their opinions and assessments means exposing the country to a danger of new social shakings which the state might not endure. Besides, we have no reserve of resources for this – the heritage has been exhausted.

“The book offers a different path. Ukraine must change in a quality way, get rid of the dependences of the previous period. For this the collection makes the reader come back to things which s/he would rather forget. Moreover, the recent years have given us grounds to want such an escape most of all. Human perception is based on substituting older memories with more recent ones that are emotionally richer, creating an effect of a memory loss. After all, this is one of the fundamental grounds that allow the involved people and groups to control and direct the collective mind. As a result, the reality is substituted, and people escape the reality, like in a matrix. We need to have a considerable will power, ability to analyze separate facts, and courage to come back to reality, in spite of the temptations. This is personal responsibility, but it needs a unity of people with similar ideas, and the publication relates to this too, to implement a civil pressure.

“The book also reminds a concerned citizen who, how, and based on what built the system of state governance in Ukraine that we want to get rid of, and what was the cost the country and every one of us personally had to suffer, and for what values, including the historical ones, the country stood up. After all, there is no truth without freedom.”

“THE BOOK I, AN EYEWITNESS IS A DOCUMENT WHICH SHOULD BE USED IN COURT AGAINST PUTIN”

Tetiana RODINA, actress, New York:

“Those who lost their homes, who lost the entire world of their childhood, youth, and life, will hardly understand what means a break of thinking – before and after the war. It is even more complicated to make a thorough analysis of what has happened, especially when you have to stay in the middle of the events, the depth of feelings and painful analysis. It is really hard to contemplate on the tragedy which took place in the Donbas. Not only because no one would ever believe or dream in the worst of nightmares that such a thing would happen. Over all the years prior to occupation, the Donbas had remained in an information vacuum, in the hammerlock of Russian propaganda, all this notwithstanding the fact that the Ukrainian power was present there. I think Valentyn Torba in his book I, an Eyewitness. Notes from the Occupied Luhansk managed to do this.

“I have been living in New York for several years, and I am an ethnic Russian. But I will say openly that when the RF occupied Crimea and the war in the Donbas broke out, I didn’t want to be a Russian, and demonstratively uploaded on a social network my birthday certificate with the word Russian crossed out in the nationality information field and a new inscription, which I wrote myself – Ukrainian. That was not just an emotional move. I felt ashamed to belong to those who cynically broke into my home and turned it into hell. Valentyn Torba in his book I, an Eyewitness in a quite thorough way describes the provocations implemented by the special services of the RF in Luhansk, when they claimed that their own mortar shelling in the city were the work of the Ukrainian army. It means that I, an Eyewitness is not just a book. It is a document, it is evidence. And the fact that Valentyn finishes his book with direct accusations of the Kremlin means that this document must be used in the future for condemnation of the criminal Putin’s regime. The regime that brought the world on the brink of the third world war.

“The RF must reply. But not only its leaders. Everyone who allowed this aggression against Ukraine, either with their active actions or passive apathy, must be published. Otherwise the Russians will think that this crime is just another ‘historical episode.’ Right now, they don’t think that the deportation of Chechens and the Crimean Tatars were crimes. They unveil monuments to mass murderers and worship them, in such a way Russians will continue to reincarnate the Evil Valentyn Torba writes about. Germany has lived through its repentance. The Russian Federation must do the same. Like Nazism became a synonym of a large-scale crime for the entire world, Putinism must be associated with the world evil as well.”

P.S. It will be reminded that all the books from Den’s Library are available for purchase at our Internet store on our website day.kyiv.ua/uk/library.