Kyiv, Moscow, European time: is harmonization possible?

To speak with Viktor Mironenko, Candidate of Sciences (History), head of the Ukrainian Studies Center at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Europe, editor-in-chief of the journal Sovremennaya Yevropa, advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, and, after all, former First Secretary of the Young Communist League Central Committee (in the years of perestroika), is a real treat. Firstly, this person is doing an extremely necessary thing: he propagates among the Russian academic community the idea of Ukraine as an organically and historically European state with, naturally, a European future. Secondly, Mr. Mironenko is not just a true friend of Ukraine – his roots are in our soil (he comes from the Chernihiv region). Yet our interviewee confesses, naturally enough, that Russia is his second fatherland and he loves that country.

Thirdly, it is his very rich experience in life, politics, and research. Suffice it to say that he has been regularly in touch with Mikhail Gorbachev for many years – he is quite close, in human terms and by persuasions, to the first (and the last) president of the USSR. It was, naturally, interesting for The Day to hear Mr. Mironenko’s account of the person who had an essential impact on the course of world history.

And, finally, Mr. Mironenko has a gift for attracting people: he knows how to listen attentively to the interlocutor and form his thoughts clearly and logically, without unnecessary abstractions and idle talk. Besides, he is an incurable optimist, which is also an asset in our not-so-easy times.

Do the Russian elites and grassroots perceive Ukraine as a self-sufficient European state? Why do even the Moscow academic circles know astonishingly little about Ukraine? What is “Russian impact on Ukraine” and is there an opposite impact – of Ukraine on Russia? Why was perestroika not a personal whim of Gorbachev but an absolute historical necessity? In what sense can Russia (and what kind of Russia) be a mirror reflection of Ukraine?

These are only some of the issues discussed with Viktor Mironenko at The Day’s editorial office. Also participating in the debate were his Ukrainian academic colleagues Yaroslav Pylypynsky, director of the Kennan Institute’s Kyiv office, and Volodymyr Boiko, regular contributor to The Day, director of the Chernihiv Center for Retraining the Staff of Central and Local Government Offices, State-Run Enterprises, Institutions and Organizations. The roundtable was moderated by the Den/The Day editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna.

UKRAINE IN THE RUSSIAN MINDSET: FROM TERRA INCOGNITA TO A FULL-FLEDGED STATE

Larysa IVSHYNA: “We can discuss the topics you broached in your Chernihiv speech during the launching of your book Russian Impact on Ukraine in 1991-2011 and perhaps try to expand the limits of our debate. For there still are a lot of blank spots (not only in Ukrainian-Russian relations and, surely, not in the format of ‘black-and-white thinking’), and we are still to analyze a lot of the opportunities that existed in the past and which we, much to our regret, have missed. And, incidentally, these opportunities (which we discussed with Volodymyr Boiko) resemble to some extent the months between the February and the October Revolutions in Russia in 1917, when we failed to walk on that thin intellectual ‘ice’ – we either lacked the willpower or were unable to understand the ‘human factor,’ but it is a different point of discussion.

“I think debating on the history which Viktor Mironenko analyzes – the history of the collapse of the USSR and radical transformations on this enormous territory – requires sound-minded participants and, obligatorily, honest reflections. For if we do not preserve and read this evidence, history will surely remain weakened. So I would like Mr. Mironenko to tell us about the intellectual impulse that prompted him to state, when he studied the events of 1991 and the next years, that there was an enormous chance of a true democratic choice at the time, which was lost later, even though many believe that there was no other way. It is only natural that the USSR broke up, for it had been ‘conceived in sin.’ You are welcome, Mr. Mironenko.”

Viktor MIRONENKO: “It is really a great honor for me to visit Den’s editorial office. As a regular and attentive reader of your newspaper, I can say sincerely that you are doing an extremely necessary thing. I do not know if there is a more important thing for Ukraine now. You know, incidentally, that Ms. Ivshyna and I have just spoken about this: somebody once decided that an individual needs nothing but wellbeing (food, drinks, heating). It turned out that this is wrong – in addition to the abovementioned, one needs so many other things. Just one example is the life in the Chernihiv region, which I watch closely. In reality, this large and Ukraine’s most densely populated oblast with a great potential has colossal problems and is considered depressive to some extent. What changes are taking place there? The changes seem to be very simple: a monument to Prince Ihor Sviatoslavych was erected, excavations are going on near Our Savior’s Cathedral, and people were reminded of the paramount importance of Chernihiv’s historical places. And I can see that something has changed, not yet radically, in the people: they begin to take a different attitude to their life. I think your newspaper’s projects – the book series and Ukraine Incognita – should be considered as ones that will show their importance in the future. These are the things that ‘allow for growth.’ Although I not always agree with some of Den’s publications, I very highly appreciate, on the whole, your work aimed at forming a new historical awareness of the people. But sometimes I want to enter into a debate.”

L.I.: “Please, enter and write to us, we will only welcome this!”

V.M.: “Thank you. You know, whenever I look back on my past, I recall one of the brightest moments: the respected and ‘wise’ members of the CPSU Central Committee advised me, the Komsomol leader at the moment: ‘Viktor, you’d better not take the floor at CC plenums, you just keep silent and will pass for a clever one.’ But I spoke at almost every plenum, while, incidentally, there was a tradition that the Komsomol No.1 could take the floor as seldom as once in 10 years or so. The result is that since then I’ve been trying to listen attentively rather than speak publicly.

“I will make one more excursus into history. When the ‘Social Democratic’ project came unstuck in Russia and I myself quit this project and literally ‘pulled’ Mikhail Gorbachev out of it (he had led this project, and you just can’t imagine how much mud was slung at Gorbachev and, to some extent, at me), I swore off taking part in things like that. I came to the conclusion that Russia would not benefit from political homeopathy (at least at the moment). As for Ukraine, I will refrain from categorical conclusions. Besides, I said to myself: I have already accomplished my political mission – in 1985-90 and later. So I began to look for some other job. I came to the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Europe directed by Nikolai Shmelev, a famous economist and political writer, full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, for I liked what the institute was doing.”

L.I.: “An interesting institute, indeed, unlike the Zatulin-run CIS Institute…”

V.M.: “Zatulin’s institute is a political project, not an institute as such.”

L.I.: “Yes, a virus-breeding project, in fact a ‘bacteriological project.’”

V.M.: “It is no longer being funded, so its future…”

L.I.: “This means that bacteria will perhaps move to other spheres.”

EYEBALL TO EYEBALL WITH GORBACHEV

V.M.: “I plan to write a special book on Mikhail Gorbachev. In the years of perestroika we would meet quite often – both at CC plenums and informally – and then (in 1990) I quit the Young Communist League (Komsomol) on principle after having a tough talk with Gorbachev and other Politburo members (I said I was leaving the office of Komsomol First Secretary because I could not understand where we were going to, after all). We broke off relations until 1996, when Gorbachev unexpectedly phoned and invited me to his place. We had a very interesting conversation. Gorbachev said he had been nominated as candidate for the Russian presidency and suddenly suggested that I lead his election campaign (‘Holy cow,’ I thought). I asked him to honestly answer three or four questions, and he agreed. The first question was: ‘Are you aware, Mr. Gorbachev, of having an absolutely zero chance in the elections?’ He didn’t like the question but, after some thought, he replied: ‘Yes, I am aware of that.’”

L.I.: “Straightforward advisors are a special phenomenon.”

V.M.: “Then I asked the second question: ‘I know you are a ‘thick-skinned’ and staunch person and you have seen a lot in you lifetime. But can you imagine how much mud will be slung at you in the nearest six months and are you able to withstand this? For all the media without an exception are now in the hands of your enemies. Will your women – wife, daughter, and granddaughter – endure this?’ He answered: ‘I have spoken to them, and they are ready to support me.’ OK, I asked the third question: ‘Why do you, a person who has done what you have done, need all this at all?’ In reply, he delivered an almost 40-minutes-long soliloquy… He said he wanted to resist the Great Lie which caused the country to radically change its course in 1991, the lie that alleges that Gorbachev is an irresolute, weak, and unprincipled politician. He wanted to use the elections as a podium to speak from. For the situation was as follows: ‘resolute pragmatics’ in power are organizing some ‘elite’ (political and social), concentrating all the available resources in the hands of this ‘elite,’ and the ‘elite’ is drawing the whole society after itself. And they really drew the populace, not the society, in a wrong direction. He, Gorbachev, wanted to bring his views across to the people because he was stifled and not heard.

“After this answer I was obliged to accept Gorbachev’s proposal, for otherwise I would have looked a coward or a weakling. But I asked him a fourth, also important, question: ‘Do you have funds for the election campaign?’ Gorbachev put a finger to his lips – ‘Silence!’ He took me to a corner and whispered, as if it were a great secret: ‘I was given 200,000 dollars.’ I can say for sure, as the campaign manager, that we conducted the campaign on these 200,000 dollars… As a result, he polled 13 percent of the votes all over Russia, but, to tell the truth, they quietly turned into 1.3 percent just overnight! Since then I have been constantly in touch with Gorbachev.

“I am grateful to fate for this contact because this let me see a person who had once wielded fantastic power, but, having lost it, reconsidered many things in politics and his own life. A 700-page book of his reminiscences (the last one, as he thinks) will soon be published. It comprises very many interesting episodes of which he has never told anybody. For example, it turns out that the would-be USSR president was born at a creche because when his mother Maria Hopkalo (an ethnic Ukrainian) was about to have a baby, she was milking a cow and there was nobody around but for some woman who helped Gorbachev’s mother walk to the nearby creche, where childbirth occurred.”

L.I.: “Your book will be really interesting (and Gorbachev’s book will also make very serious reading). We should all deeply reconsider the event of recent history. But I’d like to tell you an interesting fact. When a monument to Boris Yeltsin was recently erected in Lithuania, Den asked its readers which foreign politicians they think the Ukrainians should put up a monument to. And Levko Lukianenko, a longtime political prisoner, a fighter for Ukraine’s independence, who spent a year on death row, answered: first of all, to Reagan and Gorbachev. These words mean very much if they are pronounced by a person like this, for he managed to touch Shakespearian heights in his lifetime. We also think that the Chernihiv region should remember the Tytarenko family line and write a story for Ukraine’s family album about the origin of the parents of Raisa Gorbacheva who undoubtedly played a major part in Mikhail Gorbachev’s life.”

V.M.: “I agree with you. I was born in Ukraine but have lived for 26 years in Russia which is a second fatherland for me. I highly esteem its culture and always emphasize that Russia is not only Moscow, the Kremlin, and Petersburg – it is much larger. There are certain, geographical rather than ethnic, types of the Russians: the southerners who are very close to the Ukrainians ethnically, culturally and mentally, the northerners associated with the Finnish group, and the Siberians, a type which is very difficult to categorize. We can say, on the basis of the two main groups, that Yeltsin is a typical representative of the Uralian, Siberian, northern type, while Gorbachev represents the south.”

L.I.: “One more touch to this story. I know some ethnic northern Russians who are my close friends. They went to a school, where they were taught by former political prisoners. In general, Russia exists where de-Stalinization was carried out or where Sovietizaton failed to hit deeper roots of society. These living, wholesome, fragments of Russia are naturally close to us. But very few people conduct a dialogue at this level. This kind of Russia has not a very clear vision of itself. A lot of interesting things could have been done. I know there is a Russia de-Stalinization project which was sent to the then president Medvedev. I use it whenever I address the audiences of Ukrainian universities. It was shelved in Russia, but it should be also carried out in Ukraine, even by means of civic institutions. It is the example of a joint effort that can rally many together.”

V.M.: “I agree with you, Ms. Larysa. But there are two nuances here. Firstly, when I say about the northern and southern types, I do not single out either of them as a better one: they just exist as such. Besides, in comparison with Russia, Ukrainian society is more homogeneous, although there are some divisions and differences here, too. Russia is very heterogeneous. As Gorbachev once said rightly, it is a world of the worlds.

“Sometimes Ukraine looks at Russia as if it were a mirror. In a sense, Russia is the continuation of Ukraine. The current Russian leaders do not understand one thing. Russia is suffering from ‘demographic insufficiency,’ it is full of vast depopulated expanses. Not more than ten million people reside on the territory from the Urals to the Pacific Ocean. Ukraine, Belarus, and the southern lands, now part of Russia, were once a powerful demographic generator which used to continuously ‘throw out’ onto the neighboring areas a huge number of people who found it easy to adapt. Once Ambassador Mykola Biloblotsky came to Moscow, invited us, and asked: ‘Why do the Azerbaijanis gather twice a month, invite and treat the ambassador, and ours never do so?’ ‘The fact is that the Azeri diaspora in Moscow consists 90 percent of the people who live off retail trade. And do you really think that the current Ukrainian diaspora – the minister, the deputy minister, and entrepreneurs – will be rushing to see you?’ I answered. ‘No. Firstly, they have absolutely adapted themselves; secondly, if they come running, they will expose themselves to risks; and, thirdly, they do not need this. You should call and speak to them.’ It is clearly a fact that those people would have done nothing against Russia, for they had to be loyal under any conditions. But, at the same time, they would have done nothing against Ukraine, either.”

IS UKRAINE A HOPE FOR RUSSIA?

V.M.: “Ukraine is now a hope for the democratically-minded Russians who want Russia to go the way it began to go as long ago as in the 1980s. For in Belarus things remain the same. Unfortunately, there are no other examples in the post-Soviet space. Georgia, with a four-million population, cannot be considered a role model: it is an incomparable thing. Any success of Ukraine is a hope for democratic Russia.”

Yaroslav PYLYPYNSKY: “Any government here, beginning with Postyshev and Rakovsky, sooner or later stood up against Moscow because it resisted imperial centralization. This is the paradox of this government.”

V.M.: “There is another important – geopolitical – point. Professor Serhii Lepiavko reproved me in Chernihiv. When did Russia begin to become a global power? Three times. The first time was the period of Kyivan Rus’, the second was when the Muscovite Tsardom turned into an empire in 1654, and the third was 1922, when the Soviet Union was formed. It is an absolute axiom for me that unification – voluntary or coercive – of the Russians and the Ukrainians allowed them to wield absolute and undeniable clout in Eastern Europe and be an influential factor in international politics. Any disunity of our countries (it is just a statement without any value judgments) created a situation when a third force or an inner process brought about degradation and decline. Rejecting this viewpoint, Lepiavko cited the Polish factor. But Poland has never associated itself with Eastern Europe. They have the traditions of Catholic and Western European culture.

“Russia is to make a very difficult choice. If it is to become a geopolitical power, it must establish civilized relations with Ukraine. It is not about merging into one state. They should maintain the relations that would allow both of them to develop in a civilized way.”

Volodymyr BOIKO: “I have a remark in this connection. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was Europe’s most powerful state in a certain period. But it began to lose its might when it failed to see a third component, in addition to Poland and Lithuania proper, – the Ukrainian factor. This is why it eventually fell. The same applies to Russia which stubbornly ignored Ukraine as a self-sufficient entity with its own interests.”

V.M.: “I agree, but I am speaking, above all, about Eastern Europe. I analyze this matter from one side only. This does not reject your complement. In Eastern Europe (in geographical terms), two ethnoses – Russian and Ukrainian – had always played the key role.”

L.I.: “We are calling upon everybody to understand the importance of the Ukrainian question. I wrote in the foreword to the first compromise book Dvi Rusi: ‘What can Ukraine do to help Russia?’ It was well before the 2004 Orange Revolution. The question has usually been put in the opposite way, as if Ukraine had always been a victim that asks for help. We are outing the question the other way round: what can we do? I am absolutely convinced that we will continue to project our European image, carry out reforms, and devise an attractive pattern of cohabitation for Ukraine and Russia. No matter what somebody may do to stop the course of time, he will fail to do so. It is now in the minds of the younger generation. If we stick to our erstwhile attitudes, we will be the greatest conservatives in their eyes. The younger generation is insisting that Ukraine is an integral part of Europe and must be European.”

Ya.P.: “Yes, Ukraine has already helped Russia more than once, for example, when church reform was carried out. It is a unique instance in history, when a state essentially changed its church after annexing a different territory. The Nikon Reform was carried out because the Muscovite Tsardom needed to subdue the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”

L.I.: “What can we do now to help Russia?”

Ya.P.: “To look into history. We should remind Russian historians about the role the Ukrainian figures – Feofan Prokopovych and 22 out of the 24 bishops who reformed the church – played. One should not forget the role of the Ukrainian factor in Russian history.”

V.M.: “George Kennan expressed an interesting opinion in 1944, which both the Russians and the Ukrainians ought to heed. He said: ‘The jealous eye of the Kremlin can distinguish, in the end, only vassals and enemies; and the neighbors of Russia, if they do not wish to be one, must reconcile themselves to being the other.’ Ukraine should help Russia with its example of reforms. I can see how difficult it is, especially when official Russia offers bitter resistance. Naturally, Ukraine must not be the Kremlin’s vassal, but it must not be its enemy, either.

“When the USSR disintegrated and two separate states emerged, many did not understand for some reason that this brought about rivalry. There will always be rivalry – economic, cultural, and political – between our countries in Eastern Europe.”

L.I.: “We are holding a very necessary discussion. We often need to know more and better about the Russian situation. We take part in bilateral events from time to time. This year I participated in the World Media Congress held in Moscow. But, mingling with my colleagues, I had to conclude sadly that my Russian counterparts, barring a few, were in the thrall of stereotypes and had not reconsidered reality. We want our colleagues to know the subtleties of the Ukrainian question. We are trying to build non-confrontational patterns which would call for interesting communication. The Ukrainians themselves insufficiently know their history. It is not so easy to bridge a yawning gap in history for a short time. Things are beginning to change. For example, Mr. Mironenko delivers a history of Ukraine course in Moscow today…”

V.M.: “For me, it is, first of all, a good impulse to reread again the history of Ukraine. Every week, as I get myself ready for the lecture, I study a new theme in detail. I personally and the Ukrainian Studies Center need support from contacts with interesting people. We are seeking mutual understanding, not disputes. And I think cooperation with Den is very valuable in this context.”

Vadym LUBCHAK: “Mr. Mironenko, are you an optimist in forecasting the further development of Ukrainian and Russian societies?”

V.M.: “I am an absolute optimist. My optimism is based on the objective components of development. I am one of the people who kick-started in 1985 all this ‘disgrace’ which some are trying to stop now. Why do you think we began this? In spite of all the maladies and domestic conflicts, it was a superpower. The elite felt quite good. Some did not like the USSR, but they either respected or were afraid of it. But we brought these processes into motion because it was clear that the objective development of the world required changes. Mikhail Gorbachev and I often meet. We discuss whether we were right or wrong in doing some things, whether we made some mistakes. There is one thing where he agreed with me – when I said that we did know exactly the goal of the reforms we launched, which is the main thing. The goal was not to push the state a little forward but to create conditions for the development of society, so that society itself could adequately respond to global challenges and situations. Unfortunately, these reforms have now been discontinued in Russia. But the current situation is changing very fast, as are the flows of information. It is impossible to rule a huge country from the Kremlin. We perhaps did not understand this at the time, but we wanted to make our society free. We walked down the path of errors and discoveries. It is important to find out today whether our societies will continue to go this way or will marginalize and play no role whatsoever in the world. I am sure of the former. A barrel of oil costs over 100 dollars today, whereas it cost 8 when Gorbachev was in power. He once said to me: ‘Viktor, if it had been not even 100 but at least 30 dollars, we would have completed the reforms and our perestroika.’”

TWO MISTAKES OF GORBACHEV

Ihor SIUNDIUKOV: “You recalled quite to the point the well-known ‘demarche’ of Yeltsin. You said that everybody expected Gorbachev to send Yeltsin to Ghana as ambassador. But he did not do so. I read that he had this opportunity and he was even advised to do this. Why didn’t he do so? It was a turning point, and everything might have gone differently.”

V.M.: “Because it is Gorbachev.

“Maybe, Providence chooses the right person at the right moment. I have been asking myself thousands of times in the past 20 years: was it right or wrong? Gorbachev believes it was his mistake. He thinks he made two major mistakes. The first was that he did not send Yeltsin to Ghana and the second that he was elected president at a congress rather than by nationwide vote. The result would have been entirely different, but he would not have been Gorbachev. He was just unable to do so.”

L.I.: “I know one more person who was always told what to do, but he would surely not have been Marchuk.”

V.M.: “A very good comparison indeed.”

“Gorbachev is often accused of failing to suppress those who opposed him. To suppress whom? The abovementioned nomenklatura which was bursting to see changes? How? With what instrument?

“He once asked me: ‘Viktor, why have you been with me for 20 years? To be with me for 20 years in Russia means to be isolated. Absolutely all the doors are shut. In official Russia, a person close to Gorbachev is a 100 percent persona non grata.’ I answered: ‘You are very interesting to me as a personality who, after passing through the stinking corridors of the nomenklatura and staying at the very peak of power which de Gaulle called ‘airless space,’ where an individual is lonely, still preserved the simple human qualities. A person who can sing five stanzas of the song ‘Here Is a High Mountain,’ drink a small one, speak about life and ask how my wife feels…’ This surprises and thrills me in this person. The common perception is that a leader is a leader. But here we have a human being. He has only one drawback. Mr. Gorbachev is an open and simple person in a personal conversation, but he begins to behave absolutely differently in public. I don’t know why. Incidentally, he no longer behaves so. I like the Gorbachev I’ve known, been in touch with and respected since 1996 a hundred times more than the Gorbachev who was Secretary General. And we should not deny the fact that he managed to do many things. I was very glad when he confessed in a private chat a year ago that he was happy. He said he was a country boy who did not finish secondary school because the Germans came. Then, thanks to working as harvester driver, he was admitted to the best Soviet university. He received an education and found a love that lasted all his lifetime. He has a wonderful daughter, two granddaughters, and a great-granddaughter. Then he even confessed that he knew how everybody could live better and more freely. And he managed to implement many of his plans. Then he said that he could have done even more than Stalin in his time because he had a broader horizon. He said he had managed to do some things and failed to do others. The people who understand that he managed to do things respect him. I am going to write a book on him, titled I Am a Happy Man. I am aware of the ensuing wave of criticism, but I can’t help writing it.”

L.I.: “You might as well entitle your book Because He Is Gorbachev. This will emphasize political acuteness, the dispute about the ways that could have been chosen – the book would be very topical now. Time has passed, and passions have abated. A new generation has come. It is important to see the chances we had and not to simplify the pictures of the world.”

V.B.: “It is an inoculation of sorts against totalitarianism which, unfortunately, has the habit of regenerating.”