Soaring over Solaris
Two public personalities have left Kyiv for the sake of science, their own career, and for other considerations which are usually not flashed around but form a motivation for relocation. Both had something to do with many current problems of Ukrainian politics and often wrote and spoke on the radio and TV about the language, culture, history, and future of their Fatherland. Both held firm beliefs and drew support from the people who shared their views. Both tried to change this country in the context of their own philosophy and rejected somebody else’s ideas. Both were candid in their judgments and often caused controversies. One left for the US and the other for an unknown destination in order to focus on historical and philosophical research into the subjects they prefer. After settling down at the new places of residence, the two pronounced words of encouragement to their friends, admirers, and like-minded people who are still staying in Ukraine. Actually, they excited me with their emotional parallels. The two Ukrainian historians and journalists, who harbor different political views, said very similar words.
One: “Ukrainian history will be revised without our participation. This is usually done in Moscow and other geographical centers that the political map of the world is thickly studded with. We, I personally, need to know the truth. I do not want to live in lies, and, for this reason, what I am doing is smashing the myths that are called national but, in reality, are absolutely destructive, for they turn our people into a herd. If a herd wants to remain a herd, let it do so, but I am a free individual and want to live in a free country.”
The other: “Kyiv has never been my city! Its philistine nature (to be more exact, the nature of rural narrow-mindedness), which has received a powerful shot in the arm from Lviv hicks in the past few years, its language that has swiftly regained the ‘canons’ of Holokhvastov, its stubborn intention to repudiate it own history, – all this is ineradicable! Urban culture in contraindicative to this city, it will always remain on the fringe, and only people of Chernovetsky and Yavorivsky type will hold sway here. Only Kyiv and Kievites can reject their mother tongue so aggressively and even proudly, without learning any other in lieu. No, no matter how many years I may live here, this city will never be mine.”
The former quotation is from an interview with a clearly pro-Ukrainian political journalist, Danylo Yanevsky (http://wz.lviv.ua/interview 121073), and the latter from a Livejournal page of a clearly pro-Russian figure of the same guild, Vladimir Kornilov (http://t-34-111. livejournal.com/tag).
I am not going to attach ethical and semantic judgments to my colleagues’ different and, at the same time, similar opinions. We all have the right to live where we wish, speak out and defend our persuasions, love and hate our habitats. What matters here is discontent with the country and its people expressed by such different characters. Mr. Kornilov does not like it that we do not march to the sounds of Slavic Woman’s Farewell but prefer quiet philistine pleasures to “struggle for the people’s cause.” Mr. Yanevsky loathes modern-day Ukrainian traditionalism stuffed with Soviet myths. In both cases the image of real Ukraine does not exactly coincide with the two journalists’ philosophy, and, nursing a grudge against the country that disappointed them, the ideological antagonists from Donetsk and Chernivtsi abandoned their hearth and home.
Their private choice turned out to be a trend. To nurse a grudge against the country in general or some of its feature in particular is typical of many residents and citizens of Ukraine. Ordinary people berate the government, parliament, and topmost leadership for leaking roofs, bad roads, etc. Non-ordinary people, who hold offices in the hierarchy of power, are disgruntled with the propensity of the benighted rabble to lynch police rapists and take to the streets, thus upsetting the normal life of cities. The opposition is dissatisfied with the masses’ apolitical mood, journalists with the quality of t he opposition, actors with audiences, sellers with buyers, and writers with readers. They all seem to be soaring high above a down-to-earth country and examining, from the heights of their outlook, Solaris-Ukraine through the portholes. Like in Solaris, a superb novel by Stanislaw Lem, we are in search of our own, idealized, images and worlds with a more perfect civilization. As for our own world, we only accept the pictures of a primitive past, without ideas or fantasies about the future. The paradox of the novel and the present-day reality lies in the absolute identity of people and the phantoms created by the Solaris ocean. It is not clear who judges who and who explores who – a big planet with an inherent universe-scale intellect or self-confident astronauts who dared look into spheres unfathomable for a human being.
Ukrainealso defies the scholastic techniques of being studied from the outside, and it reacts to its citizens’ emotional vibrations. If we get disappointed, she shows indifference in reply; if we love her, she drowns us in affection; if we breathe out hatred, she becomes full of malice. But how can we change the pole of feelings, which is independent of the intellect and emerges under the influence of many unfair and unpleasant things?
Christian morality regards despondency, disappointment, and bitterness as a sin that results from the common malady – loss if faith. In its secular interpretation, this postulate works like a parable about the frogs that got into a jug. One resigned itself to its fate and died, but the other whipped milk into butter and made its way out, feeling a firm ground under its feet. We always hear psychologists and many authoritative people say: do not give up, resist the troubles of life, and they will retreat. But when it comes to politics and the economy, we do not follow rational advice and, unless we fall into despondency, we distance ourselves safely from the problems of our country, as if it were an unknown planet.
“We came here as we truly are, and when the other side shows us that truth – the part of it we pass over in silence, – we’re unable to come to terms with it,” says a character of Lem’s novel. A good reminder for the loving and hating creatures that are soaring over this country, isn’t it?
