The virus of wanting to get something for nothing

I remember very well that Luhansk drunkard who walked down a street during a pitch dark night recently, loudly shouting obscenities and singing a local criminal song about “good boy Valera.” The song’s protagonist was Valerii Dobroslavsky, better known as Dobroslav, a 1990s Luhansk crime boss who died violently in 1997. For more than 15 years after his death, Dobroslav’s time seemed to be a long streak of bad luck for the country. It was not Dobroslav himself who was to blame for it, but the entire era, with its destruction of stereotypes, unrealistic expectations, and a fundamental transformation of the social system. People were thrown out of their usual stations in life. What had been valuable was devalued, once shameful became common, and sometimes even respected. Even now, people have not understood what happened then, and are still debating that hugely important turning point, and that time is still speculated and lied about. Many people think that the Soviet Union died, but they are wrong. The state died, but its essence lives on. The body died, but its blood still contains the Soviet virus, and we have been feeding on that virus to this very day.

The desire to get something for nothing is a basic element of the Soviet psychology. It was during the Soviet era that the principle of affordable or even free goods was cultivated. Free bread in eateries, cheap gasoline and a host of other goods were allegedly granted by the state as something quite natural and understandable. In fact, nothing in our lives comes for free. Everyone remembers the parable of the free lunch, but when getting something for nothing becomes part of the mentality of entire people, entire nation, professing such a principle is not just harmful: it dooms that people to permanent poverty, it destroys the basis for development opportunities.

“Have you noticed that the Luhansk residents often say ‘take’ instead of ‘buy’?” Khrystyna Ochkur, a former resident of that city, said. “People say: ‘I will go and take some bread,’ ‘I will go to the stall and take some sausage’ – ‘take,’ not ‘buy’! Soviet posters commonly used ‘dayosh!’ literally meaning ‘give it!’ instead of ‘let us make it.’” Indeed, “dayosh!” is the one-word quintessence of all Soviet philosophy of life, if I may say so. The Soviet man has now picked up the assault rifle and surfaced, like silt in water, in our country, including Luhansk. The muddy water of the Donbas has drowned all: the region’s economy, its future, thousands and thousands of lives. “He, who was nothing, has become all.” For example, so-called “minister of interior” of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) had traded in stolen metal cable before all these events and his recent promotion in the quasi-republic. Neighbors are well aware of his past “job.” Well, he will now steal more than just cable, of course. The trouble is that even under such terrible conditions, when the Luhansk residents have been actually deprived of basic rights and living conditions, many of them continue to be happy and even proud of getting something for nothing, for example, when they get free water trucked to their neighborhoods. Even though water trucking provides only irregular supply, some residents of Luhansk somehow enjoy standing in line to get it, seeing free water as a sign of justice coming at last to their lives! Selling out for three rubles (now in actual Russian cash), walking with the kids in the yard during a mortar attack, being robbed, cheated and used thrice, but blaming anyone other than themselves – these are new, but not the only features of a latter-day Soviet person. Shopping malls of Luhansk feature announcements stating that these buildings have been “nationalized” and owners of warehouses should contact the LNR representatives in order to prove their right to their own goods. Interestingly, these shopping centers’ sites were once brazenly stolen from the state. Manipulations with state property, land and other assets were the commonly recognized norm for 20 years. The time has come at last when the slogan “Loot the looters!” has once again been implemented, nearly a century after the last such case.

The gangsters have robbed not only homes, businesses, shops. They have robbed people’s souls. “I want to go home. I want to sleep in my own bed, hug my cats and eat my own grapes. I want it all back,” another former Luhansk resident Inessa wrote me. She moved in with her friends in Russia and lives there illegally. Before that, she buried his father and, still grieving, was forced to leave the city. To get it all back... The worst thing out there is that nothing will ever come back, even if the war stops, for weeds have supplanted edible fruits, and no one has been able to uproot these weeds so far. Moreover, the great danger is threatening the rest of Ukraine as well. Regular bomb hoaxes in the Kyiv subway are intended to get people relaxed about that danger. Having got used to false alarms, people react to such phone sabotage calmly, even indifferently. Eventually the time will come when such relaxation will play a cruel joke on the Kyivites. We must remember that the Russian security services were clearly behind the terror attacks in the Moscow subway a decade ago, which helped to justify the establishment of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship in Russia. Cynical bloody provocations of the same security services which exterminate civilians and Ukrainian military columns in safe corridors are intended not only to create a TV picture to discredit the Ukrainian military, but also to justify the gangster tyranny they have established in the anti-terrorist operation area. It is naive to think that Russia’s KGBists do not ply their trade in Kyiv. They will do anything to demoralize the capital at some point. Surrender of the disheveled, frightened, helpless, economically and politically weakened Ukraine is Putin’s goal. He wants Ukraine to disappear from the international system as an actor, as an independent player. He sees future Ukraine paralyzed and helpless, and we have to prepare for a large-scale war. With Putin, even truces exist only to further the Kremlin’s aggression which is acting like an awl bringing into our country’s system an infection which Ukraine has already started to get rid of. Our nation, our society have already begun to evolve away, to slowly recover from the Soviet disease, and it was this fact that became a fundamental threat to the existence of the entire rusty totalitarian regime. It is not a secret anymore that Viktor Yanukovych’s regime was just a branch of the Putin regime.

Vigilance, attention, awareness that Ukraine is waging a war, not a local military operation, are the things that the government should focus on  in its outreach work. Fellow Ukrainians, our peaceful sky has long ceased to be peaceful! Even pleasant sounds of folk songs in Khreshchatyk Street on Sunday should not calm you down, but rather hint that great efforts are needed to keep it this way. Look at today’s politicians, look at the state system. Has anything changed in the last year? Nothing. You have changed, or rather begun to change, not them. Hence, they will keep trying to make fools of you by throwing you shiny toys, trinkets, and whistles painted in national colors and inscribed with patriotic slogans. Meanwhile, they will repeatedly buy and sell you just as the enemy will devour our country and introduce divisive debates to rekindle the internal conflict. This is not the original Soviet mentality, it has been modernized while retaining its core features of apathy, weakness, one-sidedness, naivety and, truth be told, outright venality. These are the shortcomings that need to be squeezed out of the nation lest it become a lonely drunkard, lost in a deserted city, that sings nostalgic songs by night about forgotten times and fictional heroes.