WHEN NO WORDS ARE LEFT
By March 9 the authorities and opposition had already aired all the arguments they had. But the much- repeated accusations and appeals failed to bring the expected result. Ukrainians were stubbornly loath to “stand up and fight the regime,” preferring instead to concentrate on the locally traditional March 8 International Women’s Day festivities, something which indicates that the Communists are likely to have a fine chance in future elections. Most Ukrainian citizens watched street scuffles in Kyiv on television, sitting at the tables they had not entirely emptied in the day before.
By March 9 the authorities and opposition had already aired all the arguments they had. But the much- repeated accusations and appeals failed to bring the expected result. Ukrainians were stubbornly loath to “stand up and fight the regime,” preferring instead to concentrate on the locally traditional March 8 International Women’s Day festivities, something which indicates that the Communists are likely to have a fine chance in future elections. Most Ukrainian citizens watched street scuffles in Kyiv on television, sitting at the tables they had not entirely emptied in the day before.
When I heard the appeal not to let Leonid Kuchma lay flowers at the monument to Shevchenko, it dawned on me that something of the kind had happened before when the delegates of Rukh’s second convention blocked Volodymyrivska Street in the fall of 1990, giving a fright to the little old ladies going to buy their Sunday morning milk.
At that time hundreds of patriotically-minded Ukrainians took to the streets to bar Moscow Patriarch Aleksiy and his Kyiv Vicegerent Filaret from entering the St. Sofia Cathedral, to which the emerging Ukrainian Orthodox Church had laid claim. The church leaders did get into the cathedral that time and soon the same protesters who had blocked the street began kissing the hand of Filaret (who later became the leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church). That fall they managed to avoid fisticuffs. But violence erupted almost of the same time during the burial of the Patriarch Volodymyr of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate). It is still a mystery who was behind the provocation to bury the prelate in a sidewalk. Many still refer to these sad events, interpreting them in a way beneficial to themselves.
Now, it seems, history repeats itself, but on a somewhat larger scale, with the world’s leading information agencies savoring a twenty second segment showing scuffles on Kyiv streets. As in a number of earlier cases with similar scenarios, there is a need to find out who was fighting whom.
The term opposition, used by the mass media due to its universality and convenience, does not seem to make much sense in our case, for opposition is not an abstract notion. It must be based on some force. Can anyone dare to define what is now termed as the opposition? Is there a party or political force uniting these people by offering them common and clear goals? There is not. There are numerous unregistered forums and committees, which exist merely in the imagination of their activists. As soon as the zeal or something on which such zeal rests is gone, such things inevitably dissolve in the political space like counterfeit Nescafe, leaving neither fragrance nor taste. Is there a leader who can guide this opposition to a common and clear goal? No. Those political zealots that head the columns of protesters and readily grab microphones are just trying to get into the public eye so that people will not forget about them.
The absence of leaders among the street mob does not mean there are no such leaders. They are here but they are loath to identify themselves. Those having seats in parliament or without them, when addressing press conferences, are definitely eager to become the leaders but they are not trusted with anything other than loudspeakers or tourist tents. They are only being used.
In the language of political interaction there is such a notion of taking personal responsibility. That is, in case of any political crisis happening in a country, a certain political force has to assume responsibility for it and to explain why it has allowed such a crisis to erupt. In the case of the March 9 events we are dealing essentially with a provocation, with none of those who orchestrated them assuming responsibility for inciting street disorders in the capital. When faced with a threat of being prosecuted under a specific provision of the Criminal Code, the courage of those fearless fighters of the regime disappeared. In the rush of events, the riot squad (this time unusually discreet) netted large numbers of innocent people, following which the provocateurs, on recovering from their initial embarrassment, were quick in accusing the regime of reverting to what they called repression.
Who, indeed, could have been behind the brutal altercation in downtown Kyiv, unprecedented in Ukraine’s modern history? The radical UNA-UNSO organization, named on the heels of the riots as its likely prime mover, cannot be taken seriously. In all probability, UNA-UNSO has merely won in a tender to service the Ukraine Without Kuchma campaign action, competing against Shield of the Homeland headed by former UNA-UNSO leader Dmytro Korchynsky. UNA-UNSO thus is merely a front, giving the protests its loud name, for neither the great unwashed hanging around the protest tent town and wearing UNA-UNSO insignia, nor the trained thugs who smashed police barriers near the Presidential Administration, can qualify to be called Ukrainian nationalists. The Socialists headed by zealot Yuri Lutsenko cannot have masterminded the riots, as their members have never had anything weightier than hen’s eggs in their hands. The remainder of the political mishmash marching under controversial slogans in the ranks of the so-called opposition can be better identified by the chefs who prepared this bizarre smorgasbord. Even Taras Chornovil, recently much given to political statements and barrier crushing, could not call the reckless and stone throwing mob the indignant masses. Then who indeed has engineered and staged all this?
The “uncontrolled mob” theories put forward by think-tank pundits with access to the mass media do not hold water. Since the times of long lines in stores to buy vodka there have been no uncontrolled mobs in Ukraine. There is a tried and true technology used by political provocateurs and in the past clashes of various confessions for church buildings. According to it, the first line of attackers should include deputies, the elderly, and children, if need be. After breaking through of the enemy line of defense, young people well-tutored in hand-to- hand combat emerge from behind their backs, do their job, short and quick, and disappear instantly into the mob. Such possible results of attacks, like injuries, mutilations, loss of property, etc. are pinned by the organizers on the uncontrolled mob, which obviously cannot be brought to justice. Even when the police manages to detain the real perpetrators of violence, the latter would typically claim that they happened to be among the mob by pure accident and were pushed by the crowd into the attacking line. More than once I have read such statements by persons whose active involvement in the riots was beyond doubt.
Obviously, the March 9 provocation, whose masterminds are well known not only to journalists, was staged according to this scenario. Who these people were remains to be learned. The answer can be found in the declarations by the leaders of the opposition who, on recovering from their shock, put the blame on the authorities that had supposedly placed provocateurs among the protesters and who then started such a highly organized fight. Let us dwell on this version and accept the story that several hundreds of provocateurs could imperceptibly penetrate the protesters and then lead them. If this is the case, all those who were in the front lines and shouted inciting slogans can be suspected of being provocateurs. Moreover, the organizers of rallies, committees and forums can well turn out to be the perpetrators themselves. They have imbedded the word opposition with so much negative content that people will soon feel aversion to the word. The concept that provocateurs are to be found among our self-proclaimed national saviors is not at all impossible, for the closer we view our saviors’ faces the more we are convinced that the concept is true, especially if their past deeds are to be recalled.
How could the March 9 events have ended? Those who decided to bar Kuchma and Yushchenko from laying flowers at the monument to Shevchenko were hardly unaware that the officials would get to the monument unimpeded. The opposition needed a confrontation, a fight, preferably with blood spilled. When they failed to attain their goal near Shevchenko University, the protesters began to roam Kyiv’s streets, similar to the way a tavern tough does, looking for adventure until he gets kicked in the teeth. When the media finished shooting the stuff they needed for a televised scoop, the enthusiasm of protesters began to wane and the crowd disappeared as quickly as it had gathered.
Let us imagine a scenario such that one of the bricks flying over the demonstrators and the police hit the unprotected head, for example, of one of the hundreds of journalists present. Had any one been killed, the repercussions would have been much wider and the worldwide outcry much louder. It would have been enough to get a video segment of the March 1 press conference when the heads of the Ukraine Without Kuchma Committee threatened to give an appropriate response to the authorities. Had there been any dead body, it would have been much easier to accuse the opposition of murder than prove Kuchma’s complicity in contracting a journalist’s killing on the evidence of the Melnychenko tapes.
These are hindsight arguments that inevitably come after the fact. The March 9 violence will continue to pose more and more questions with each passing day, with the answers supposedly providing the politicians with new guidelines. It is unclear to me, for instance, whether the protesters intended to let Viktor Yushchenko (who was actually Kuchma’s shadow at the ceremony) get to the monument. For Yushchenko, judging by Yuliya Tymoshenko’s interview given from jail, continues to wear a white hat amidst the corrupt and criminal power and even heads this power. No matter how hard I try to separate “good” Yushchenko from “bad” Kuchma, I fail because there is no way to do so.
And how can one interpret the stand of the Kyiv Orthodox Patriarch Filaret? The Church lord who claims supremacy over all Ukraine’s Orthodox had first given his hour-long blessing to Kuchma and Yushchenko, then to those who badmouthed the country’s strongmen. Or, take Yuri Kostenko, a so-called new generation politician, who spent his morning with the incumbent, only to meet with the storm troopers in the afternoon. Could it be that such duality is Ukraine’s major problem? Cases of this strange duality among our politicians are still widespread. Such an attitude is most convenient when a public confrontation is growing into a fight. One can lie low for a moment and side with the strongest later. Or offer one’s services to the “corrupt state” instead of the “incompetent and corrupt.” If only part of these offers were accepted, one wonders what the lineup of our saviors would look like.
PS
On March 12 at the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine National Defense and Security Council Secretary Yevhen Marchuk met with representatives of the diplomatic corps and those of the OSCE, NATO, UN, European Council, and other international organizations accredited in Ukraine.
Mr. Marchuk informed the participants about the March 9 events in Kyiv and answered diplomats’ questions. The NDSC Secretary noted that during the flower laying ceremony at the Shevchenko monument in Kyiv attended by the state leadership a “combination of official, opposition, and illegal actions” took place, which require “proper political, legal and political science evaluation.” According to Mr. Marchuk, the March 9 events have seriously impaired the process of reviving a dialogue between the authorities and the opposition. The disorders organized near the Presidential Administration, where groups of attackers resorted to violence against law enforcement officers, resulted in the Security Service initiating criminal proceedings under Article 71 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The investigation is in progress.
