Put in a word for the poor elite
“That was a time when the best intellects were thinking but kept silent because their mouths were stifled and the worst ones were speaking, although, incidentally, they might as well have kept silent”
A phrase from the film
Put In a Word for the Poor Hussar
It is difficult today to find a non-expletive word in social networking sites about the folks perched on the closely intertwined branches of the Ukrainian authorities. The latter are responding in kind, furnishing the people the life they deserve. For it is they who elected them!
For members of parliament, the burning earth beneath their feet does not heat up the seats of their chairs. In all probability, the insulation barrier is thick and sensations have gone blunt. They are so far more afraid of “his highness,” who left his office room to appear in parliament, than of the host of people on the streets. For it is only on election-campaign placards that these party list numbers protect electoral fields. But, in reality, they tremble over their own industrial and farming possessions. Such is the nature of this world which was radically changed in 1917 and has gradually come back onto the old path, where landlords with their manors, landladies with grisettes, and other class differences have raised some to lordship and sunk others into the original dunghill.
Alas, unlike their distant French counterparts, Ukrainian nouveau riches have not become the new elite. The former rose from the rabble, fully aware of the simple rules of coexistence with the upper classes – if you want the palaces to stay in peace, do not declare war on the shacks. Ours did not understand or accept the paradigms of peaceful coexistence between the rich and the poor. On the contrary, they irritate the masses daily, as if it were personal hygiene. The impression is that the entire Ukrainian beau monde, lined up in order of rank by Katia Osadcha [popular TV interviewer. – Ed.], only exists to recheck copybook maxims. A kind of Jean Jacque Rousseau’s theory of social contract… He used to say: if you deprive any social group of rights, you will receive a burst of discontent. But what is the name of Rousseau for our guys? Just an association with a waning Hollywood star... So the Ukrainian nobles do not take theories of the past seriously, even if these theories have turned into practice and are knocking loudly on the door, disturbing the neighbors.
Everything began with a few symptoms. A landlord shot a servant who darted trample on his wheat. A noble’s reckless son ran over a sluggish woman on the street or beat up a girl in the pub. There were a lot of such cases, but the upper stories used to call just plain hooliganism. Then the upper stories began not only to traditionally shit on the lower ones, but also cut off oxygen to them. Prices, taxes, fees, and other intricate means of a “fair withdrawal” of money from people became widespread – and not only among the living. If someone dies, it is a boon to the government – relatives will pay for the autopsy and some fees for undertaker’s office and cemetery services. Naturally, the main burden is shouldered by those who have not yet departed this life. Small- and medium-scale businesses are being trampled down by numerous inspectors from myriads of offices and bulldozed by big business. Civil liberties have been thrown at the mercy of local administrations. The Constitution was turned into an electronic document with a current autosave function. In a word, is this a social contract? Is this a call to share things? Come on!
Now that everybody in this country and many abroad know the horror of the situation, our elite does not still admit its authorship of the disaster’s scenario. All those who used to affix official seals to important papers that paved the way to hell are either high up in the clouds of developed feudalism or in a deep stupor. The latter term may be applied to the sluggish parliamentary bustle. The building, where nothing has been decided for a long time, has proved to be as attractive to persistent big-capital session shirkers as has the building, where everything was decided until recently. But backstage conversations of a personal, factional, party-related, and financial nature are not resulting in a public dialog, no matter how hard you try. These interlocutors are unable to make constructive decisions because they are out of reality and fail to understand what is going on.
Judging by its press statements, the elite (let us call so the ruling cluster) views the current deadlock as differences between the advocates and the opponents of integration into Europe. This naive idea makes some people believe the Kremlin-concocted scare stories about Western Ukrainian detachments that are walking on Austrian-made skis across the Black Sea ice into the rear of a placid Crimea. Let us recall what a well-known Customs Union advocate, who, incidentally, chose to immigrate to the European Union, used to say: “The working class of Eastern Ukraine supports us.” If the premier, who has abandoned the Hrushevsky St. building, and his ministers, who are still there, could take off their ideologically-tinted glasses, they would see a totally different picture. The unfolded battle flags in front of the Cabinet windows could have triggered different thoughts. Why are there so many free reproductive-age men and women in this country? What did they leave in their native land and went to stand on the barricades or bustle around in Mariinsky Park for money?
They left nothing. Throughout this country, people are enslaved by the authorities but free from work and property. The sleepy district centers, where only administrative bodies and the businesses of these bodies’ chiefs are working, are full of young and strong guys who wander about without a penny in the pocket. They must work, keep up families, and raise children, but the elite cannot provide this opportunity, for it has switched off all the social uplifts. This is paradoxical. Those who come from the poor, uneducated, and criminal strata of society turned out to be utter egoists. Having made their way up through the corridors of the 1990s liberalism, they bricked them up for all the rest. Those who are looking at the revolutionary Kyiv from the windows of three big governmental buildings are perhaps unaware that, had it not been for those corridors of freedom, they – rulers and makers of destiny – would be now among the protesting “radicals and thugs.” For this reason, the current Presidential Administration chief is planning, as if contrary to his will, to pacify the coalminer Andrii Kliuiev who is tired of living off starvation wages and can see no light at the end of the tunnel. That’s the thing with our time machine.
This winter Ukraine is undergoing a severe test for courage, staunchness, common sense, and strength. It is, first of all, the upper strata of society that are being tested for the right to represent this society. Who are our elite? Poor people deprived of their rights, who have accidentally made their way up? Or a club of free citizens who care for their country, are highly experienced in management, and have big property? Let us not be categorical in answers. Every social group has the bests and the worst representatives. And only time decides who are needed the most. It seems to me personally that the era of those who buy scientific degrees and build their own universities and stadiums at the state’s expense is sinking into the past. You cannot possibly be rich, wise, and influential at the expense of those who stand in front of the main entrance – it is time to show what you can do yourself. Moreover, the majority of our elite are carbonari, i.e. coalminers by spirit and origin, whom despotism does not suit. So let us put in a word for them in order to keep the palaces intact and have the shacks thoroughly renovated.
