Ukraine's Orange Blues

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?

Permit me to share a few comments I received from an Eastern European diplomat (who asked to remain anonymous) about Western stereotyping of Eastern Europe in general and of Ukraine in particular. The diplomat’s remarks were prompted by my two-part blog post on “Germany, East Central Europe, and Morality.”

Ukraine’s only fully independent television station, TVi, has come under renewed attack by the Regionnaire regime of President Viktor Yanukovych. The move is obviously intended to deprive the public of alternative information in the run-up to the October 2012 parliamentary elections. Since all polls show the Regionnaires cannot win a fair and free contest, the crackdown on TVi is also a practice run of the kind of mass falsification they will employ to claim victory.

The Euro 2012 soccer games are over and the heady euphoria of being part of the civilized world has dissipated. Ukraine is back to normal: a brutalized country subjected to the daily predations of a gang of thugs who call themselves a government. Unsurprisingly, those democratically attuned Ukrainians who desire to live like the Europeans who visited Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, and Donetsk in July are depressed.

Most young people seek to emigrate—for good. A 30-something student I’ve known for several years has for the first time spoken of leaving a place that appears to offer his generation nothing but continued hopelessness. Advertisements for English-language courses are everywhere. Older Ukrainians, with family, property, and professions, opt for what one friend called “internal exile.” As the ruling Party of Regions squeezes the nascent middle class for all its worth, 50-plus Ukrainians focus on their families and apartments, build dachas, and effectively “drop out.” Unfortunately, although the choice to withdraw is perfectly understandable, it only strengthens Regionnaire power by depriving Ukraine of its most ambitious young people and older patriots.

My current visit to Ukraine brings to mind the philosopher George Santayana’s famous aphorism, that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” and its commonplace misrepresentation, that “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”

Let’s start with the fact that these two statements are completely different. Santayana is talking about a capacity or facility. That is, if we lack the capacity or facility to remember—i.e., if we cannot remember—we will suffer certain consequences. In contrast, the misrepresentation asserts that, unless we remember—i.e., if we forget—we will suffer certain consequences. To possess the capacity to remember does not mean that we must always exercise it, that we dare never forget. It means only that we are able to remember the past if and when we want to and, by logical extension, that we are able not to remember the past if and when we want to. According to the misrepresentation, we have no such choice. We must remember, we may not forget—ever—without suffering the consequences.