When Tabachnyk can be right

Dmytro Tabachnyk is a unique person. No one else from his party is able to look so sincerely in the faces of millions of Ukrainians from television screens, or a few chosen interlocutors in a cozy room, and talk such nonsense that even Baron Munchausen would feel ashamed. For example, in the interview recently published on the website Zaxid.net he mildly, almost like a stern but caring father, reproved Galicians for sending a “special mission” to Odesa to protest against the erection of a monument to the “Founders of Odesa” (the official name), saying that no one came to you from the Donbas when you put up monuments to those who you thought were worthy. It is difficult to believe that a doctor of historical sciences and the minister of education and science does not know that Catherine II of Russia didn’t found Odesa, and her sacramental rescript deals with the re-equipment of the already existing (and seized by Russian troops) harbor and fortress. It’s difficult to believe that Tabachnyk doesn’t know the history of the monument to the “founders” of the city, which existed for over 400 years before Catherine II’s edict; that he doesn’t know that, in fact, this is a monument to the fumes of chauvinism, which from time to time seized the Russian/Soviet Empire and took on extremely phantasmagoric forms: from the story about Ivan Susanin embodied in the corresponding opera to tales about torpedoing the German battleship “Tirpitz” by the Soviet submarine (depicted in a contemporary movie). However, we are not talking about the content of the interview (otherwise the article would be endless), but about a separate but very significant fragment.

The journalist reminded the minister about his statement that works by modern Ukrainian writers should not be taught in educational establishments. Wasn’t it a response to the criticism of such writers as Serhii Zhadan, Yurii Andrukhovych, and Oksana Zabuzhko? Tabachnyk parried: “I referred to the European experience.”

Indeed, not so long ago the minister said, during the “direct line of Komsomolskaya Pravda,” that “there is a European, French tradition: in their schools modern writers are not studied, since the aesthetic categories are not yet established.” I do not know, perhaps in France works by Sartre, Camus, Mauriac or Sagan really were not studied during their lives (because, you see, “aesthetic categories were not yet established”), but in neighboring Poland, which fulfills the main criteria of a European state (and is a member of the EU and NATO), that is not the case. Let us visit the website of one lyceum of secondary education in Gdansk and look at the list of topics in literature for the 2011 final exam. It starts with Mother of God in the context of medieval poetry and finishes with our living and active contemporaries: not only Wislawa Szymborska (however, someone can say: with a Nobel Prize laureate, all criteria are “established” in this case), but also Slawomir Mrozek, Stanislaw Baranczak, Hanna Krall and other prominent writers. So there it is. Perhaps Dmytro Tabachnyk has in his briefcase some other data, different from real Europe?

Tabachnyk continues: “Literature textbooks for senior grades are already extremely overloaded to additionally include every willing Ukrainian writer in the curriculum.” Yurii Andrukhovych, one should think, is one of those “every willing” writers. And “every willing” Ukrainian writer has the prestigious Herder Prize (by the way, Szymborska got it a year before the Nobel Prize). And works by “every writer” like Oksana Zabuzhko are translated into dozens of languages.

However, after all, the minister of education and science can be ignorant of the recognition of Ukrainian writers in Europe and even in Russia itself, considering them ordinary. Well, even worse things happen to our ministers. However, one cannot imagine a situation when the minster of education of Ireland said that no Irish writer of the past or present could be mentioned together with some famous English writers. Conversely, Dmytro Tabachnyk directly recognized all Ukrainian literature as being inferior compared with, of course, not the French or Polish ones, but with Russian literature, or, to be more precise, with its two representatives:

“Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky were moral authorities for the society of the last quarter of the 19th and early 20th centuries. They remain moral authorities still. Moreover, today their authority gained such considerable global importance that no Ukrainian writer of the past or present can be even compared with them. However, during their lives they were not studied in the gymnasium course, but it didn’t prevent society from ‘getting acquainted with these moral authorities,’ or the authorities themselves from gaining global significance.”

We will dwell on “impossible to compare” further. First let us talk about the real reason why, say, Leo Tolstoy wasn’t taught in the gymnasium course. Here is an interesting observation on the subject:

“In the early 20th century Tolstoy was anathematized by the church (actually, he was excommunicated, which is also serious, and the excommunication is not lifted until now. – Author). Today few people understand what that meant. But the consequences of the church anathema in social life were very serious. The anathematized persons were social outcasts. People who read his works or even simply treated him with a due respect could have serious problems. I will illustrate it by a case from the life of my grandmother, which happened to her when she was a gymnasium student in Kherson. During the scripture lessons the priest called Tolstoy ‘Levka Tolsty.’ A gymnasium student, who later became my grandmother, stood up and corrected him: not Levka Tolsty but Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Today this seems trifle, but at that time it was a deed of great social courage, which provoked a real storm. In response to the remark of my grandmother the priest demanded that she should, in public, before the whole class, deny her words. But she didn’t deny them. Then he demanded that she be expelled from the gymnasium and be blacklisted ‘for blasphemy and sacrilege.’ He then told the director that until she was not expelled, he would not set foot in the gymnasium. ‘Everything was mixed up in the house of the Oblonskis.’ The gymnasium went wild. Everyone debated, argued, hurried to express their opinion. Some peers came up to my grandmother to shake her hand, others poked their fingers at her behind her back with gloating giggling, the third ones – reproached her in public but secretly came up to her to express their condolences. The opinions of teachers were divided: some supported the requirement of the priest and some defended my grandmother. The gymnasium submitted the necessary documents to expel her. But the priest overestimated his strength a little — my grandmother’s father was an administrator of all gymnasiums in the Kherson province, a leader of the nobility, and generally one of the most respected citizen in the city. Some time later the scripture lessons were taught by another priest, who was more careful with his expressions. Do you feel the scope of this?! No doubt, the priest knew who my grandmother’s father was, but nevertheless opted for conflict — and at this he was confident he would win, otherwise he would not initiate it. Imagine the situation if my grandmother’s father was some low-level official — they would ‘crush the bastard’ (that is my grandmother) without even noticing it. And if a boy or a girl were caught reading ‘Tolstoy’s heresy,’ they would get into real trouble,” writes Natalia Kuzmenko in Vremia chtit i vremia chitat (Time to Honor and Time to Read) for the Internet journal Propaganda.

In other words, the creative activity of Leo Tolstoy wasn’t studied in gymnasiums of the Russian Empire for the same reason which today makes the Minister Tabachnyk denigrate Andrukhovych, Zabuzhko and Zhadan, though not for some conceptual-theoretical reasons. Well, the minister, having ostracized Ukrainian writers in Ukraine, definitely considers himself a Black-Hundredist [in reference to a counter-revolutionary movement in early 20th century Russia, which supported the tsarist regime and was noted for its extreme nationalism, xenophobia, and anti-semitism – Ed.].

Now about the “world moral authority” of Dostoyevsky. No doubt he is brilliant as a writer, but regarding his morals… They were very specific, to put it mildly. Adolf Hitler and his propagandists were among the admirers of this moral.

One of the descriptions of this is that of the Russian professor Boris Sokolov, a philologist and historian: “As it is known, Fyodor Dostoyevsky considered Jews and Poles, which were also recognized as the main enemies of the German Reich in the race doctrine of national-socialism, to be the main enemies of the Russian people. The article by Dostoyevsky Yevreyskii vopros (The Jewish Question) was extremely popular and was repeatedly republished in Russian-language periodicals during the years of occupation.” Sokolov also singles out that it is quite possible that Dostoyevsky’s invectives concerning Jews “could be used as a instruction for Russian fighters of Sonderkommandos. Generally, Dostoyevsky turned out to be the favorite Russian writer of the German occupational authorities” (here and further quoted from the book Okkupatsiya. Pravda i mify (Occupation. Truth and Myths), the chapter Okonchatelnoye resheniye yevreyskovo voprosa (The Final Resolving of the Jewish Question). Moscow, 2002.)

For example, the Nazis published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in mass circulation, and in anonymous commentaries to them there was a story about Bolshevism as a Jewish political movement. At this, the real horrifying crimes of Bolsheviks were directly connected with the presence of a considerable number of Jews among them. And in the same place there is a quote from the article The Jewish Question by Dostoyevsky published in Dnevnik pisatelia 1877 goda (The Writer’s Diary of 1877). It was clearly read as a substantiation of “the final solution of the Jewish question”: “What if there were not three million Jews in Russia, but Russians, and there were 160 million Jews (in Dostoyevsky’s original there are 80 million, but the number of the population was increased twofold to make the quote topical. – Author), what would they turn the Russians into if they treated them like this? Would they be given an opportunity for equal rights? Would they allow them to pray freely among them? Wouldn’t they make slaves of them? Moreover: wouldn’t they strip their skin off, wouldn’t they beat them to death, to the final extermination, as they did with foreign peoples in old times?” (Cited from the book by Boris Sokolov).

This article was republished not in fragments but entirely, for example, in the Riga Novyi Put, where it was followed by such a commentary: “The brilliant prophet and reader of human heart Fyodor Dostoyevsky seventy years ago predicted: ‘The Jewish revolution will start in Russia, because we don’t have an appropriate resistance against it either within government or the society. The international ordered that the Jewish revolution should begin in Russia. For 25 years the same international has been destroying the Russian people, and now exposes the blossom of the Russian people to the sure death for the sake of the Jewish supremacy.” (Cited from the book by Boris Sokolov.)

Indeed, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was persistent in his dislike for Poles (number three on the Nazi list of annihilation). That is what he wrote in one of his articles (the manner is too delicate as for him):

“The European civilization, being the product of Europe and, in essence, in its right place in Europe, in Poland (perhaps because Poles are Slavs) developed an anti-human, anti-social, and anti-Christian spirit. Poles were ruined by their civilization. Despite their pride of this civilization, it ruined them to the extent that they will no more revive, even if they become politically independent” in Otvet redaktsiyi Vremeni na napadeniye Moskovskikh vedomostey. (The Response of the Vremia’s Editorial Board to the Attack of the Moskovskiye vedomosti) // Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The collection of works in 15 volumes. Vol. 11.)

The depth of the “prophecy” is impressive. As is the “morality.” But this is not all:

“For example, I don’t find anything Poles can be famed for — but the tragedy lies in the Poles’ implicit faith in this poisonous civilization. They believe in it as in their greatest fame. Ours borrowed from Europe civilization does not fit the Russian people in those points, where it does not coincide with the Russian broad spirit. Russian land will speak its new words, and these new words will be perhaps a new word of the universal civilization and will express the civilization of the entire Slavic world.” (Ibid.)

Replace the “Slavic world” by “Aryan” and what will you get? This is the first opportune remark, and the second — don’t these invectives, directed against Poland and Poles, remind you of the equally venomous invectives in the same direction in the articles of the people’s deputy of Ukraine Dmytro Tabachnyk in the past years?

And now again about the same thing: about Jews, Russia and Europe. Here are the eloquent fragments from the article The Jewish Question which Adolf Hitler and his successors liked and valued so much.

“Wherever Jews settle, more people were humiliated and corrupted there, people were more suppressed, the level of education dropped even further, the hopeless and inhuman poverty, and together with it despair, were spread even worse. Ask the indigenous population in our outlying districts what drives the Jews, what has been driving them for so many centuries? You’ll get one response: cruelty; ‘for all these centuries only cruelty has been guiding them, and only the thirst for our sweat and blood.’ Indeed, all activity of Jews in our outlying districts lied in making the indigenous population hopelessly dependent on them as much as possible, taking advantage of local laws. What happened to the Russian population after decades and centuries in the places where Jews settled — the history of our Russian outlying districts tells it. So what? Show any other tribe of foreigners in Russia who could be equal with Jews in their horrible influence? You won’t find any…” (The Jewish Question. // Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The collection of works in 15 volumes. Vol. 2.)

By the way, notice that besides the verbal escapades addressing Jews, Dostoyevsky incidentally denies the very existence of Ukrainians. For him Ukraine and Belarus are “our Russian outlying districts.” Nothing more. The abovementioned article about Poland is even more eloquent in this sense: the opponent of Dostoyevsky uses the word “Ukraine,” while Dostoyevsky calls residents of Ukraine not even “little Russians” but “Russians.” So the Valuev Circular and the Ems Ukaz had a strong support in the person of Dostoyevsky.

I apologize before readers for such long quotes, but it is essential to fully understand the depth of this subject. Moreover, as professor Sokolov writes: “The overwhelming majority of admirers of Dostoyevsky prefer to abstract away from Dostoyevsky’s dislike for ‘small peoples.’ Neither Russian nor foreign researchers of the creative activity of the famous writer like to quote the statements of Fyodor Dostoyevsky grasped by Nazis and their accomplices. They don’t like analyzing them either. They are too far from the traditional image of a sympathizer of the people and the fate of the mankind. Somehow, we didn’t get used to the fact that a great writer, scientist, actor or musician can be a morally despicable person outside his or her profession. Well, Fyodor Dostoyevsky brilliantly showed by his life and creative activity that brilliance and fomentation of racial discord are quite compatible.”

Fortunately, Dmytro Tabachnyk is really right in this case, saying that “no Ukrainian writer of the past or present can even be compared” with the “moral authority” of Dostoyevsky.