Ukraine needs dialog

DONETSK— One of Ukraine’s top priorities is the development of a civil society. The Day has written about interesting public initiatives, referring to experts on politics, sociology, and history who live in various regions of Ukraine. The following is an interview with Oleksii PANYCH, of Donetsk, a historian and translator who is versed in philosophy and cultural studies. Among other things, he shares his views on the role of the Internet and what the world, including Ukraine, will look like in 10-20 years.

There is widespread public debate about whether Ukraine is a civil society, and if so, how this society is faring. Donetsk researcher and public figure Ihor Todorov told The Day in March that certain positive changes were taking place. What do you think?

“On such occasions I’m reminded of a lecturer from South Africa with whom we worked at a US university. That time I spoke about the situation with education in Ukraine and he explained the South African education system. I asked him in front of the students whether a South African nation existed. His reply was excellently to the point: ‘We are working on it.’ In other words, there is a nation and a civil society in principle. These notions cannot be regarded as constant ones that either exist or not. That’s a process in which one must constantly participate. This process can be on a smaller or larger scale. Is there a civil society in Ukraine? We are working on it. To some extent this society is weak, yet it would be wrong to say that this society doesn’t exist. The same is true of the Ukrainian nation. This is a continuous process and we are constantly involved in it; this is a common trend in our development.”

Are people aware of being constantly involved in this creative process?

“As a matter of fact, people have varying, sometimes incompatible, ideas about the nation. There is a big difference between being aware of oneself as part of a community and part of a nation. A couple of days ago I visited a clothing bazaar in Donetsk and heard a vendor tell his colleagues about the events in Kyiv on May 18 [opposition and Party of Regions rallies. – Author]. He said that Svoboda and the ‘Banderites’ wanted Ukraine only for Ukrainians, no one else. Now the question is: How is a nation to be understood in this context? Those with the Soviet mentality see the Ukrainian nation as all those who speak Ukrainian and respect Stepan Bandera. Ukraine, meanwhile, is a multiethnic country. In other words, here is a model of post-Soviet Ukraine with a ‘multiethnic Ukrainian people’ that includes the ‘Ukrainian nation,’ the ‘Russian nation’ and many other ‘nations.’ Needless to say, this model is incompatible with Western European ethnic and political one that represents a single nation-state. They say there are ethnic and political nations, but in actuality there are two poles of a single social process. There are ethnic and political factors that combine and mix in different ways within each formation known as a nation-state.”

Is it possible to avoid thorny issues today to build a single nation?

“Why avoid thorny issues, considering that life itself raises them? Trying to avoid them would do us no good. The manner in which to handle them is another thing. One of such thorny issues today is the manner in which political nations formed in the past.

“Remember the way the Polish political nation came to be? If you will pardon my being cynical, blood shedding events before, during and immediately after the Second World War helped them create a sufficiently united, ethnically homogenous state. That nation’s road to unity was through heinous violence.

“What about us [in Ukraine]? We must come to terms, but we can do so only when we have common ground. We must find it because the post-Soviet model wants no dialog with the other models. It is self-sufficient. The Western European model is more flexible, but they must also come to terms and have common ground. Where is one to find this common ground on the boundary line of two civilizations? In Ukraine this ground is not common but divided by boundary lines. One must seek a frontier state model where the domestic policy would rely on bridges spanning different mentalities, individuals who adhere to different civilizational principles. Umberto Eco said the language of Europe is dialog. In Europe this language must be intergovernmental, a dialog between nation-states, whereas each such state must have a language of its own, its own relative unity. A breakthrough may become possible in Ukraine, but only if the domestic policy is kept in the format of an intercultural dialog. Regrettably, those currently in power have something altogether different in mind. They are acting on the divide-and-rule principle, so this [kind of dialog] remains wishful thinking. This could also be achieved by acting from below, by a civil society that wouldn’t have the nerve to resort to surgery in its self-treatment. There is, however, the slow healing effect of self-treatment for a civil society that can help in the end, even if later than we would want it.”

FACEBOOK: SOVIET KITCHEN INTRIGUE WITH A TOTALLY DIFFERENT MODE OF PUBLICIZING PERSONAL OPINION

Many are of the opinion that various social groups in Ukraine are being consolidated primarily owing to the Internet. Is this really so? Doesn’t this mean that the Internet and social networking are a replacement of the Soviet kitchen intrigue?

“That’s a possibility, although on an essentially different scale. That Soviet intrigue was also a factor of social homeopathy, self-treatment, a factor of social progress. There is no way to ignore the fact. That kitchen intrigue gave birth to all those who would walk out onto Red Square in 1968 to protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Where else but in the kitchen could they have made their plans? But those were small groups of five to ten individuals. Today the Ukrainian segment of the Internet can unite five to seven thousand users. Not much, but a lot compared to that kitchen intrigue, considering its totally different mode of publicizing personal opinion. There is no way to guarantee that these people will come to terms with those with essentially different world views. One could describe the whole thing as a laboratory of Ukrainian civil society. Even if in miniature, this resource will come in handy.”

What trends are being formed by social networking in Ukraine? Can they turn the “post-colonial” mentality of Ukrainians into a national one?

“They can, to an extent, unless one expects good results overnight. Remember the three technological inventions that destroyed the Iron Curtain? Personal tape recorders, shortwave radios, and portable typewriters. They had spread across the world so the Soviet Union couldn’t help but start manufacturing them. Hard as the authorities tried to monitor their usage, changes started taking place. The technological revolution actually destroyed the whole political system of the Iron Curtain. Likewise, the Internet is destroying something while building something else, because it is an unprecedented breakthrough in interpersonal communication. The Internet can build lots of things, including the daily practice of understanding between people with different views. You can receive angry Facebook replies to your message and thus determine the difference between your views and those of other users. If you care about their opinions and if there is no reply, then something must be wrong with your message and that maybe you should rewrite or reconsider it. In other words, there is always a feedback that helps build contact between various communities.”

What role does this kind of communication play in the life of the man in the street?

“This role is getting increasingly important. We are now in a different dimension where we can find the right number of persons to communicate with. Before the telephone was invented, one could communicate with people living next door. The telephone allowed one to communicate with people hundreds of miles away. With the radio one could hear people on other continents. With television one could hear and watch them. The Internet allows one to choose the number of users one wants to hear and see, whose messages one wants to receive. One can choose the mode of communication and change the number of interlocutors on a daily basis. This was not possible before social networking.”

ORDERING INDIVIDUAL TURNKEY PACKAGES

What social trends can you see these days?

“That’s an open question for me. Transition from one cultural epoch to the next is actually marked not so much by changing a set of answers as by changing basic questions. Humankind is moving from one set of problems to the next. After one or two hundred years, a set of problems is thought over by philosophers, reflected by poets, immortalized by works of art. Then on to another set. Does this mean that those problems were solved? No, some of them disappeared, others faded in the background or were replaced by new ones, to be coped with by the new generation. There are always cultural gravity poles, even if varying in various cultural environments. One can imagine the kind of problems humankind will face next, including problems that stem from transport and communications, as distances seem to disappear and are perceived in a totally different way compared to what was the case one or two hundred years back. Today one travels without actually feeling the distance, by spending a couple of hours on board of a train or aircraft. The same is true of the mobile phone when you call someone on another continent. Accordingly, you have a bigger choice of who you want to communicate with and what information to receive. You can order an individual turnkey package. As a result, man has considerably expanded his environment but lost the sense of distance. What has man gained and lost? How will communities exist in such conditions? Will they be stable or quick-passing? What will become of the nation-state, considering that man will not even have a limited national information space? In Europe, nation-states formed based on precisely the national information product. In this sense, each European nation was an information project in the first place. Today, most of this is in the past. What will happen to these nations and nation-states?

“I can’t say that the state will disappear, but I feel sure that notions such as ‘nation’ and ‘state’ will be further reinterpreted. With the mobile phone being used on an increasing scale, with the growing of social mobility, there will emerge such a mix of human beings that it will become necessary to reinterpret the concept of frontiers and decide if man needs them at all. This will mean a radical revision of many principles of the existence of society. I can only predict questions but not the answers to them, except that there will be many competing answers.

“For me, a flashmob-type community is a prototype of the future society. This will be a quick-passing phenomenon, with people getting together, being perfect strangers to each other, doing something, making some decisions, then scattering. Once I was walking down the Donetsk thoroughfare when I spotted some thirty people sitting on the asphalt, knocking on it, calling out to someone (maybe to the coalminers). I realized I was seeing a flashmob. I sat with them, did some knocking, then rose and continued on my way. I enjoyed being part of that momentary community. Perhaps sometime in the future people will drift from one such community to the next and the whole of society will be a continuous fermentation of such communities. There may appear certain dynamics under the laws of large numbers that will enable society to keep its dynamic balance.”