Politics of “Small Architectural Structures”

The Kyiv authorities were quick to derail a court ruling declaring illegal the protest tents on Kyiv’s central boulevard, Khreshchatyk, calling the tents in a remarkable twist of Ukrainian officialese “small architectural structures.” Faced with the threats from the state to be prosecuted under Land Code provisions, the protesters responded by publicly dismantling one of the tents, that is, a small architectural structure. At the same time, the campaigners put up notices on their tents confirming that the latter are property of such people’s deputies as Serhiy Holovaty, Mykola Omelchenko, etc. along with Yuliya Tymoshenko, a move which apparently caught the court bailiffs off balance. Clearly, neither fencing off the protest camp nor getting the court to ban pitching up “small architectural structures” helped the city fathers of Ukraine’s capital to clear Khreshchatyk. On the contrary, such steps only inspired the campaigners to come up with new bright ideas.

Meanwhile, the Rukh (Udovenko) members who are staging a separate protest turned their attention to a fence encircling a construction project on the Independence Square and facing the tent camp. New Rukh image-makers have used the party’s well-worn campaign slogan of prisons for criminals. This is obviously viewed by the image-makers as the peak in the art of propaganda, but for the last three years just about everyone else in Ukraine has regarded it with irony, to say the least. Next to these nostalgic flyers which covered almost the whole fence, Rukh put up new ones demanding the dismissal of five law enforcement ministers. Their print quality was superb, but for a small mistake — SBU chief Leonid Derkach had been fired before the Rukh protest was able to pick up enough momentum. Commenting on the charges that Rukh has apparently called the law enforcement ministers bandits and offered to privatize prisons (following the slogan’s style — Ed.), one of the Rukh (Udovenko) leaders explained that Rukh’s message has been misunderstood. The law enforcement ministers should resign because they failed to imprison all the bandits, he said. Still, it is highly unlikely that Rukh will post the smart image-maker who came up with such a remarkable propaganda twist near the fence — to explain the flyer’s rather hazy message to passersby. Because there are so many other small and larger architectural structures in Kyiv, which the inventive protesters are unlikely to ignore.