Ukrainians in the 21st century: A modern-day statelessness?

These policies are implemented even when the mass media formally belong to a Ukrainian proprietor. Suffice it to remember Savik Shuster’s show “Shuster LIVE” on Channel Ukraina, where the audience is being constantly suggested that Ukraine as an integral state is a mere figment of the imagination. They are divided into “the west” and “the east” right there in the studio, conveying the idea that Ukrainians cannot have a consolidated, common opinion by definition: there only can be the isolated position of the east, and the isolated position of the west.

Today we have to form, tactfully and cautiously, and yet consistently and steadily, a Ukrainian linguistic environment, investing massively and spreading it over all of Ukraine’s territory. Special concern should be given to child care centers, schools, colleges, universities, as well as the media and cultural institutions. No “alliances” between oligarchs can substitute for this in-depth, long-term, and fundamental work.

Nor should we give up the idea of a flexible, yet methodical, ousting of the aggressive Russian show business and TV culture, which propagate values alien to the ideals of the integral Ukrainian nation and contrary to the idea of unity of the Ukrainian nation.

If the political leaders and parties of today truly wanted to unify Ukraine, they should begin immediately with the formation of a single information space for both the west and the east (in the east you can find a lot of cities and towns at whose newsstands you will not find a Kyiv newspaper, even one published in Russian; likewise, you cannot listen to Kyiv radio there, let alone buy periodicals from Lviv). They might also initiate the formation of a single educational space, so that at the schools of Lviv, Sevastopol, Donetsk, and Lutsk have a history curriculum that shows that they are part of the same country.

They might as well start work on the formation of a united Patriotic platform, which would carry the principles of modern Ukrainian patriotism – principles indispensable for anyone who would call themselves a Ukrainian patriot. Such a Patriotic platform could really bring the west and the east together: according to numerous polls held in the east and in the south, the respondents declare that they love Ukraine and are prepared for armed defense of its territory.

Finally, one cannot speak of the unification of Ukraine without addressing the problem of purging corruption from Ukraine: a totally corrupt country is highly unlikely to be ever able to unite, as the alignments of “corruptionists” will always want to create a cozy “reserve” where the central authorities will not bother them – and as to the local ones, they can always “reach an agreement.”

Ukraine’s political history has never lacked brilliant patriotic orators, capable of moving and reducing even their enemies to tears, let alone their supporters. They are plentiful today as well. Moreover, one can get a feeling that nowadays their number has topped all of the previous standards.

So, as far as the political prattlers go, we have a lifetime supply. Yet, as usual, there is an outrageous shortage of conscientious and efficient professionals in the national sphere. Of course, it is much easier to issue a call “Think Ukrainian!” than win back the Ukrainian information space from the Russian mass media, revive the Ukrainian film industry, or promote the prosperity of the Ukrainian book printing via reasonable taxation policies.

It is certainly easier to yell, “Speak Ukrainian!” than organize the publishing of Ukrainian dictionaries, textbooks, make Ukrainian films and music, or find computer software for Ukraine, than promote the creation of Ukrainian-speaking newspapers, radio stations, and TV channels.

The tragic gap between the actions and words has been weighing down on Ukraine for more than 150 years. Sadly, the words written by the poet Volodymyr Samiilenko never became dated:

Each Ukrainian stove is a genuine stronghold,
Where the vigilant patriots lie snug.

The top state administration of Ukraine particularly abounds in all sorts of such “patriots,” remarkable for their beautiful words, gestures, and poses. There are many a man with beautiful Ukrainian souls, like that of Gogol’s Manilov, who likewise was nothing loath of reflecting, after a square dinner, upon the good and great things he could do – and was quite satisfied with those daydreams alone, without descending from the empyrean poetry to the grim prose of life.

Gogol’s character was convinced that thinking about the beautiful was enough for it to be implemented. Neither modern Ukrainian Manilovs nor their supporters suspect (and they will not do it as a matter of principle!) that the beautiful, romantic, and dreamy Ukrainian soul is best matched by a sensible, sober Ukrainian head and a hard, strong, and resolute Ukrainian hand. The soul alone will do no good.

The advocates of the self-sufficient Ukrainian soul remark, quite justly, that over the last five years a great many symbolic and significant steps have been made in the context of national rebirth: from acknowledging Holodomor, the terror famine, as an act of genocide, to attempts at the creation of an authentic Ukrainian vision of Ukraine’s history, to the restoration of cultural and historical sites (such as Baturyn, Khortytsia, etc.).

However, a question suggests itself: What has been done to make all of these positive processes irreversible, to underpin them with a strong, permanent foundation, which calls for numerous organizational and legal steps, large-scale information campaigns, adequate appointments, and so on? Otherwise, all of these wonderful things will remain nothing more than a whim of the state’s top executives, which are doomed to disappear soon after they leave office. Therefore, they require the state’s objective benevolence, conditioned by the specific nature of its institutions, which would be able to resist any attempts at reversing the situation.

Moreover, the useful and wise steps were often accompanied by ones that were primitive, parochial, provincially ridiculous, and absurd. They are similar to those typical official events where verbal patriots get together, deliver passionate speeches and then, after a substantial meal and drink, much singing and dancing to their heart’s content, and feeling relieved after fulfilling their patriotic duty, they would come back home.

Once again, history has shown that the unfounded, purely verbal patriotism, unsupported by large-scale institutional work, is the best way to discredit the Ukrainian idea and everything Ukrainian. Most of all, this is true of the discrediting of the Ukrainian culture, captured in the ethnographic kolkhoz ghetto. This type of “promotion” of all that is Ukrainian boosts the Russification of Ukraine, by marginalizing everything authentically Ukrainian.

It might seem that over these five years some gratifying changes and improvements ought to have been made. However, the renowned translator Petro Tarashchuk writes: “All that is Ukrainian, from the language to the outstanding people, becomes an object of ridicule, an anomaly the audience wants to stay away from. Our tribesmen only aggravate the pathetic estrangement and make the official hypocrisy even more dramatic: in the Russian-speaking environment, which has been so efficiently created over the years of the ‘independence,’ the slogans about loving the Ukrainian language can be nothing more than a fake, a means of even greater alienation from one’s mother tongue and culture.

“A state which, either with its actions or through active inertia, plunders its own country, destroys its culture, prepares a springboard for an alien cultural and, eventually, territorial conquest – where does its raison d’etre lie? Who does it serve, its own citizens, or insatiable Russian nationalism?”

Thus, today there are no reasons to claim that the stateless period of Ukrainian history is over. This places our nation before the necessity to switch from formal pseudo-statehood to true national statehood, through the removal of Ukraine’s anti-elite from the power which it has usurped.