“Against all,” Ukrainian disease
Everything new is well-forgotten old. And the wind returneth again to its circuits. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce… These and other aphorisms reflect a phenomenon common to all nations endowed with a rich history: constant repetitions of pivotal situations, with the problems behind them remaining unsolved.
Ukraine is no exception to that rule. Moreover, as Ukraine has not yet become a fully historical nation-state, it is not surprising that it may be caught in “closed time circuits” or, at best, in the habit of making the same blunder with every new generation, if not more frequently. Among those blunders is the aspiration to affirm one’s own position at any cost. In the political dimension, this means the following: if nobody accepts our leader, the attitude of our political party, and our ideology, then we must confront them all. Naturally, such a consistent and principled position is usually quite well grounded – it is usually not derived from vanity. For example, in early 1918 the Central Rada and its government, which had enjoyed a high level of trust, managed to almost fully lose their popularity, thus proving their administrative inefficiency. As a result, the Red Army units of Muravyov, Antonov-Ovsienko, and Kotsiubynsky the Son descended upon Kyiv.
The force included tens of thousands of soldiers sent from Russia (out of which only about 10,000 were really battleworthy), who were joined by several thousand local Red Guardsmen, a couple thousand Bolshevik-agitated soldiers and sailors, and several dozens of thousands of almost unorganized but well-armed anarchists and Bolsheviks. A total of almost 100,000 followers of the Bolsheviks, Left Socialist Revolutionaries, and anarchists with rifles, machine-guns, pistols, and revolvers. It is negligible for a country with a population of over 30 million, out of which about one tenth endorsed the aforementioned ideas.
In Kyiv itself, with a population of about 500,000, there were 100,000 strong men who could shoot very well (veterans of World War I) and had enough weapons (in arsenals and at home). The Central Rada had, in theory, a much stronger military force than the Bolsheviks. But the vast majority of this force was reluctant to fight – partly because they considered Russians as “brothers,” partly because they were “corrupted” by the demagogic Bolshevik propaganda, and partly because they felt hurt with the way the Central Rada treated them. As a result, in early 1918, both in the capital and across the country, the absolute majority of Ukrainians (as well as local Russians, Jews, Poles, Tatars, and others) did not “vote” for the Bolsheviks (“triumphal procession of the Soviets” is a concoction of later propaganda) but against all.
The first consequence of this, in Kyiv, was the disappearance of foodstuffs. The second was the disappearance of thousands of Kyivian men and women aged from 12 to 80. A month after the Bolsheviks had gone, it turned out that the gallant Baltic sailors and Podillia Red Guardsmen had done away with them. Conversely, if even a half of them had joined those who defended the city, this would have given a chance to repel Red forays and, hence, a chance to improve – without hysteria or massacre – the quality of administrative bodies by reforming the Central Rada. If not it could have been replaced by the All-Ukrainian Constitutive Assembly, or some other acceptable political formula. Yet this required dropping the “against all” position and – given the ideal course of events – dealing with a bad, but not an occupational or despotic, government.
This did not happen.
The year 1918 ended in Ukraine in the same way as it began. But other people took the “against all” position – those to whom society had at first denied trust but then had to depend on, when Hetman Pavlo Skotopadsky’s regime began to falter (and the hetman together with it, for he did not exactly know in what direction to lead the country – but this is a different topic). UNR Directory chairman Volodymyr Vynnychenko and his followers adhered to the principle “Either Ukraine will be socialist, or there will be no Ukraine at all.” Thus, instead of establishing cooperation with various social groups and parties, the Directory denied the right to vote to “non-working exploitative classes which exist and bathe in luxury at the expense of hard-working classes.” They even considered doctors as “exploiters,” only leaving “doctor’s assistants” eligible to vote.
Little wonder that, after all this, Ukraine became socialist by name only. After the “shot Renaissance” had really been shot dead, it became clear that Ukraine was nothing compared to what she might (and should) have been if the “against-all men” had not done their job.
…The elder brother of my old friend’s grandfather was killed near Kruty. Two other brothers (underage school students) were shot by Muravyov’s gunmen – so that there would be no more “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists.” The father of these brothers and their grandfather (incidentally, quite a gallant retired colonel) were executed by firing squad. These strong men also seemed to be “against all,” for they offered no resistance against the attackers (although they were good marksmen and possessed weapons). But this is not the point. The point is in the fact that my comrade (incidentally, an Orange Revolution militant, a free-thinking student in the late Brezhnev era, and a participant in the first Rukh rallies) is determined to vote against all in the presidential runoff election.
