Ukraine's Orange Blues

What, if anything, will President Obama’s policy toward Ukraine be?

His October 22nd foreign policy debate with Governor Mitt Romney may hold some clues. Naturally, you wouldn’t expect either debater to focus on Ukraine, but it’s still striking just how little attention was paid to Ukraine’s neighborhood—Europe and Russia.

Neither Obama nor Romney mentioned Europe or the European Union, even once. Ditto for Germany. France, the United Kingdom, and Poland got one mention apiece, but only in passing, while Greece got two, but only as a metaphor for a fate that needs to be avoided. Russia was mentioned ten times, mostly in the below exchange:

OBAMA: Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that al-Qaeda is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaeda; you said Russia, and the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.

What does the ultranationalist “Svoboda” Freedom Party’s 10.5 percent share of the party-list vote in Ukraine’s October 28th parliamentary elections mean? Is it the end of the world? Have Ukrainians embraced fascism and anti-Semitism? Or might there be somewhat less alarmist explanations for Svoboda’s showing?

There are three good explanations—and one shockingly bad one—for Svoboda’s rise from a minor regional party to a very minor national force. After all, let’s not forget that Svoboda received the fewest votes of the five parties that made it into the Parliament.

First, most Ukrainians certainly didn’t vote for Svoboda because they read its program. If they had, they would have noticed that Svoboda’s socioeconomic vision of Ukraine resembles that of the Republican Party for the United States and that its approach to ethnic relations is strikingly similar to official policy in the Baltic states. Nor did Ukrainians vote for Svoboda because they were familiar with its record of governance, which, according to one Lviv-based businessman’s private communication, has been abysmal:

The parliamentary elections are over and—surprise!—the Regionnaires won, as they and everybody else in Ukraine knew they would, despite the fact that they are deeply unpopular and would, in a fully fair and free election, have suffered an embarrassing defeat. But if you have the money, you can buy as many votes as you need, which the Regionnaires did with wild abandon. If you control the electoral committees, you can make sure the vote count is just right. And because half of the deputies were now elected in first-past-the-post majoritarian districts, the Regionnaires will be able to do what they do best: buy them and their votes at several million dollars a pop, which of course is pocket change for Viktor Yanukovych’s corrupt party. With an estimated 188 deputies, the Regionnaires will have ten fewer deputies than they had before, but still hold a plurality of the total (450).

What will Viktor Yanukovych do after he falls from power?

That’s a question that should concern Ukraine’s current president, especially as Ukrainians are preparing to go to the polls on October 28th. After all, just about everyone in Ukraine hates him: from the regular folk to the intellectuals to the elites to his supposed supporters. It didn’t have to be that way. Even a half-hearted commitment to reform and good government would have won him accolades. Since it’s too late to save his ruined presidency, there’s nothing left to do but wait for it to end.

If you think you know what Raphael Lemkin, the originator of the term genocide, thought about genocide, think again. A dissertation-in-progress on Lemkin and the history of the United Nations Genocide Convention by Douglas Irvin-Erickson, a doctoral student in global affairs at Rutgers University-Newark, is likely to change how we think and talk about genocide.

As Irvin-Erickson writes in an article (“The Romantic Signature of Raphael Lemkin”) scheduled to appear in the Journal of Genocide Research:

If you’ve seen Joseph von Sternberg’s 1930 classic film The Blue Angel, you’ll know that it features the young Marlene Dietrich as the sexy chanteuse Lola-Lola who belts out a song that made her a star: “Kinder, heute abend, da such ich mir was aus.” Lola starts by saying she’s “in love with a man, but doesn’t know which one,” and then proceeds with the refrain:

Hey, kids, tonight I’m gonna find me
A man, a real man!
Hey, kids, I’m fed up with the boys,
A man, a real man!
A man whose heart still burns
A man whose eyes glow with fire
In short: a man who wants to kiss and can
A man, a real man!

Well, I’ve got good news for Marlene. If she were living in Ukraine today, she’d have no trouble finding a real man—or, for that matter, a real woman. 

If you’re in New York, go see the Ukrainian Institute of America’s “Ukrainian Socialist Realism” exhibit, which opened on September 14th. The Soviet-era paintings from the Collection of Jurii Maniichuk and Rose Brady will force you to consider some tough questions.

Socialist realism is an intrinsically controversial art form, having been adopted and imposed by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s and surviving in one form or other until the mid-1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev abandoned most official strictures on the arts. Although socialist realism resembles traditional 19th-century realism and has roots in both Ukrainian and Russian artistic traditions, it also resembles the art of other totalitarian states, such as Nazi Germany, Communist China, North Korea, and the socialist satellites of East Central Europe. Happy, healthy, and exceptionally well-groomed peasants and workers abound, almost invariably in heroic poses. Leaders usually have visionary expressions, pointing to the future and smiling at the adoring masses.

The image war between President Viktor Yanukovych and imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko continues.

Ukraine’s hapless leader suffered another knock-down punch on September 29th, when the online press published two sets of contrasting images: a video of the imprisoned Tymoshenko enjoining Ukrainians not to submit to dictatorship and a series of photos of Yanukovych’s lavish digs. Tymoshenko comes across as impassioned, brave, and principled. Yanukovych comes across as a spoiled brat with megalomaniacal fantasies of ruling over Never-Never Land.

She calls Ukraine “a criminal country built by Yanukovych.” As far as human rights are concerned, “the Yanukovych mafia has no regard for the law. They care only about self-enrichment and corruption.” Who could disagree?

Conversation between two women in a mini-bus:

The driver has turned on the radio, which is playing Russian pop music loudly.

First woman: (to driver) Would you please turn that down a bit? I’m trying to read.

Second woman: (to first) Actually, he should turn it off completely. It’s our right.

First woman: (laughs) Rights? We have no rights in this country! Only obligations.

Second woman: (nods silently)

Conversation between two men:

First man: So tell me. Have things gotten better or worse in the two years that Yanukovych has been president?

Second man: Better!

First man: Better? How can that be, what with all the restrictions on business, the corruption, the— How could things have gotten better?

Second man: They haven’t gotten worse.

First man: Yes, but have they gotten better?

Second man: Of course they’ve gotten better! They’ve gotten better because they haven’t gotten worse!

Conversation between a Communist and a non-Communist:

First man: You understand, of course, that I’m on the left.

Word’s out in Ukraine that there is “no difference” between the Regionnaires and the opposition. The implication is obvious: it doesn’t matter whom you vote for in the October 28th parliamentary elections and it doesn’t even matter whether you vote. After all, whoever wins, whether Regionnaires or the opposition, there’s “no difference.”

This is nonsense.

Let’s consider a few dimensions along which one might measure difference.

The perpetually alert Yanukovych regime has recently mounted an assault on cats and other animals. For instance, a preposterously worded draft law, “On Reforming and Improving the System of Free Time in the Sphere of Defending the Surrounding Natural Environment, the Rational and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources and Ecological Security, on Reducing Regulatory Pressure on Subjects of Economic Activity,” appears to give the authorities the right to hunt down stray cats and dogs. As you may recall, the local Regionnaire authorities rid the streets of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Donetsk of strays in anticipation of the Euro 2102 soccer championship earlier this summer. Legalizing such behavior makes perfect sense. After all, since the regime treats people as animals, why should it treat animals as animals?

But there’s more to the Yanukovych regime’s campaign against cats. The following Top Secret memorandum, graciously translated by Ukraine’s Minister of Education, Youth, and Sports Dmitri Tabachnik, recently came into my possession. I reprint it here without any changes.

Just around the time I was writing a recent blog post on my mother’s hometown of Peremyshlyany, I came upon a fascinating diary by Samuel Golfard, a victim of the Holocaust in that very place. (The full bibliographic reference is: Wendy Lower, ed., The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia; AltaMira Press, 2011.)

Ukraine’s last two presidents have clearly gone bonkers.

Viktor Yanukovych has built himself a Spanish galleon. Viktor Yushchenko is still suffering from his Yulia Tymoshenko obsession. The two Viktors used to stand for different visions of Ukraine. Now they stand for identical psychological maladies.

Journalist Tetyana Chornovil sneaked into Yanukovych’s palatial compound north of Kyiv on August 24th, Independence Day in Ukraine. “This was,” she later told the press, “an exclusively political action. After Yanukovych signed the law on languages, I fully understood that he is an enemy of Ukraine. I wanted to alert people to the fact that we are sliding toward dictatorship for the next 20 years. And my action was supposed to demonstrate that fences mean nothing. No fence can protect the enemies of Ukraine from the anger of people, from their peaceful actions, if many of them show up. If one person can do this, then nothing can stop a sea of humanity.”

Talk to Ukrainians and the view you’ll hear from almost everyone is that “they”—Ukrainians—are passive, apathetic, and inert. I’ve heard this line in Lviv, Kyiv, and Donetsk as well as in Western Europe and North America. I’ve even heard it at, of all places, demonstrations in Ukraine.

The question that invariably follows is: “Why don’t they rise up and finally do something?”

The fact is that Ukrainians are doing something almost every day. Walk down most main streets in most cities and towns and you’ll usually encounter some protesters handing out leaflets or some groups raising a ruckus. Maybe not every day, but often enough to persuade you that at least some Ukrainians aren’t passive.

Naturally, most Ukrainians aren’t impressed by that kind of protest action. It’s too run-of-the-mill, too easy, too small, too quiet, too unimpressive. In a word, it’s no Orange Revolution, when millions rose up throughout the country to demand their rights in the face of the Kuchma-Yanukovych camarilla that had falsified the presidential elections of 2004.

Regionnaire-ruled Ukraine moved a few notches closer to becoming a Surrealistic country this summer. Judge for yourselves.

On June 22nd, the Dzerkalo tyzhnya weekly reported on a really swell strategic defense initiative developed by Ukraine’s minister of defense, the tough-guy brawler and pogromchik Dmitri Salamatin. The minister’s got his thinking cap on, and he’s come up with 78 new forms of “economic activities” for Ukraine’s underfunded, undernourished, and undertrained armed forces. If Dmitri has his way, Ukraine’s soldiers will soon be raising cattle, horses, birds, pigs, sheep, and goats and growing berries, nuts, and fruits. Hey, who needs NATO, when you’ve got swine in your backyard? So remember, next time you have a steak in Ukraine, you’re really helping Dmitri of the Big Fists transform Ukraine’s soldiers into a world-class fighting force.

Peanuts, anyone?