Self-respect vs. hospitality

Ukrainian society is still open to pro-Russian agitation and propaganda. It was clearly shown by the recent visit of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a Russian politician of highly questionable reputation. The Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms’ MP Iryna Herashchenko commented on this event on her Facebook page as follows: “Looking at the people he met with and media coverage he received, it felt like Zhirinovsky’s visit to Kyiv was almost a state occasion. It lacked only a tete-a-tete meeting with the president to be a full-fledged state visit, while the speaker did meet with him and national TV channels provided ample coverage of the day’s main newsmaker.” The MP added that no Russophobe Ukrainian would get such treatment in the Russian capital or such coverage of their visit in Russia’s Kremlin-controlled national media. It should be noted that Zhirinovsky was a guest of the political talk show Freedom of Speech on the ICTV. “No Russian media would allow its guests to insult the nation, while our media see no problem with it,” Herashchenko concluded.

Despite the criticism coming from an opposition MP, the Russian legislator saw an overt manifestation of disagreement with his views in person just once, when a woman threw stewed cabbage at him during his press briefing, expressing in that way her protest at Zhirinovsky’s earlier statements on Ukraine.

Let us recall that the chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Zhirinovsky visited Kyiv on Monday, January 28. He told the media that the purpose of his trip was to strengthen relations between Ukraine and Russia and warn the Ukrainians to refrain from “flirting with the West.” He also urged Ukraine to abandon hopes of a lower gas price and advised it to switch to Moscow time as well as recognize Russian as the second state language.

Later on, the Acting Director of the Information Policy Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Yevhen Perebyinis said at a press briefing that Zhirinovsky’s Kyiv statements were not conducive to the development of friendly relations between the two nations, UKRINFORM reports.

COMMENTARY

Oleksii TOLKACHOV, President of the European Association of Ukrainians and Chairman of the Public Committee for National Security of Ukraine:

“Suffering from a considerable pressure from Moscow, aimed to force Ukraine to join the Customs Union, the Ukrainian government is trying to appease our Eastern neighbor in every way. However, the wolf recognizes no appeasement, seeing any concession as an appetizer. Even so, we will not survive for long without defending our comfort zone and limits set by our honor and dignity.

“The Ukrainians’ behavior is in many respects a vivid manifestation of dislike and disrespect for ourselves. Of course, we must be tolerant and hospitable, but kissing a person who openly despises us and spits in our faces is a humiliation. Such behavior persists due to the deep-rooted mental problems which have been prevalent among the Ukrainians for centuries and have included self-contempt and self-dislike as well as readiness to sacrifice our own interests. These problems must be combated at the level of the collective unconscious in our mentality.

“Freeing ourselves from the inferiority complex and readiness to sacrifice our own interests may become a panacea for the Ukrainians, leading to the promotion of self-knowledge, self-awareness and, above all, conscious self-love (not to be confused with selfishness) which results in conscious love of one’s neighbor. We, the Ukrainians as a nation, must first of all learn to love ourselves, to understand who we are, what our history is, where its roots are and what is the direction of our historical path, and to formulate our national dream. Should we succeed in that, events like what we are discussing now will become impossible.

“Thinking about it, I have recalled Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s response to the question about how his country managed to implement reforms so quickly and achieve some success. He said that the Georgians, being a tiny but proud nation, had felt that having an inefficient and disgraceful government was below their dignity. This feeling was a manifestation of love, while we, besides allowing ourselves to have such a government, tolerate humiliations, too.

“This situation has caused our country to have media with no civic consciousness at heart as well as politicians and public figures cut from the same cloth who have neither values nor ideological orientation. Journalists have ceased to be media sharks and become lowly jackals, ready to pounce on any carrion to produce a sensation. Our common mental problems manifest themselves in every population stratum and every profession. After seeing the hype around Zhirinovsky, a lot of people will want to be filmed with him. No matter how humiliating it will be for the nation and these people in particular, they will see it just as a chance to get on the screen. The civically unconscious person cannot think globally, they think about mundane things only and look for instant benefits.

“I dreamed once that we would be able to simply deny entry to odious figures, such as Zhirinovsky. However, I realized then that any legislative restrictions or television censorship would not change anything if most people would still be vulnerable to such problems. When our society will reach a developmental level allowing it to reject, consciously and autonomously, all rubbish that appears in the information and political spaces, then qualitative change will become possible. No entry ban or note of protest can do its job while the public consciousness stays as it is now.”