I was appalled and distressed when I read that a
person of your stature had decided he would make a film about Ukraine’s ousted dictator Victor Yanuovych.
What
unsettled me was not your idea about
interviewing a dictator on film. Documentaries about surviving ousted dictators
are important and useful. What I found appalling was not only that you seem to share his interpretation of his fate,
but that you seem to attach particular
significance to that interpretation. You seem actually to believe Yanukovych who, understandably, like any
overthrown dictator, attributes his fate to “outside forces” rather than to
himself, his policies and supporters, domestic and foreign. Just like Yanukovych and Russsian President Vladimir Putin, you seem to think that the new government that
emerged from the Maidan events 2013-14 is the product of CIA machinations, that CIA involvement was something
exceptionally noteworthy, and, implicitly, that because this government is
supposedly a CIA product, it has no
merit or credibility.
Do you really believe that in any of the great events in world history during the past
centuries the intelligence services and spies of the great powers of the time
were not involved? Simply noting this fact in isolation from all other events
leads either to apologetics or conspiracy theories. Allow me to illustrate my
point.
In so far as French secret agents were involved with the leaders of the American
rebellion of 1776, some of whom were Masons, does that fact override the influence
of enlightenment ideals and the interests and grievances of those who fought King
George’s army? Did the presence of French spies and Masons in Philadelphia New
York and Boston mean George Washington was part of a foreign plot? Does the
British government’s support for Greek nationalists in the 1820s mean their
anti-Turkish revolt was merely a British plot? In so far as Spanish, French and
German agents supported Irish leaders in
their wars against the English government, does that mean that those who fought
British troops in the name of Irish independence were dupes in foreign plots?
Was the 1916 Easter Rising really a failed German plot? In so far as German
intelligence supported and financed the Bolsheviks in 1917-1918, does that mean
the Russian revolution was simply a German plot and that those opposed to the
tsar had no legitimate interests or grievances? Did covert Russian and Chinese
support for Vietnam mean a sizeable
proportion of the Vietnamese people had no legitimate grievances against French or American rule and that their
decades long war against those governments was merely a KGB plot?
I put it to you that anyone who produces a film focusing only on the participation of one
particular secret service in a given event merely creates cheap propaganda – in
this instance of the kind that will benefit Mr. Putin and his dictatorship. At
this point, I should perhaps add that, like many others, I have a critical view
of the US government and US corporations. I am well aware of the work of
analysts like Chalmers Johnson, Richard Barnet, William Greider, Naomi Klein,
Gregg Palast, Will Hutton, Michael Hudson, Thomas Frank and Arianna Huffington.
But I am among those who do not allow their critical view of the US and corporate power to
blind them to the reality of Stalinist or Putinist Russia.
In so far as I am
familiar with your films they do not suggest any knowledge of or previous work
on eastern Europe or Russia, let alone Ukraine on your part. This is not
surprising as for many Americans, even today, Ukraine still remains a “part of
Russia”, a place “far away of which we know little.” But once one decides to
undertake a project related to that part of the world such intellectual
indifference is no longer acceptable. Allow me therefore take the liberty to
suggest that you not limit any research you might undertake to Mr. Ianukovich,
his cronies and Russian advisors. Might
I suggest you at least peruse Karen Dawisha’s recent book Putin’s
Kleptocracy (2013) and some of Andrew Wilson’s and Timothy Snyder’s books
on Ukraine.
I hope that, at this
early stage, your first thoughts about your possible film on Yanukovych and his
rule have been misinterpreted or misunderstood and that my remarks prove unnecessary and irrelevant. But, in as
much as you do seem interested at this
point in a documentary film about one of
the great events of post war Europe, I
hope that you will record not only the activities of the CIA in that
event. I trust you will also record the role of Putin’s FSB in bringing Yanukovych to power in 2010, in controlling his government thereafter, and in
the events of 2013-14. Since Putin’s
government has obviously given you a visa and permission to visit Yanukovych in Russia, dare one imagine your hosts might also oblige you with
access to FSB files about FSB activities?
In any case, I trust that any film you might make on Ukraine will pay due attention to the interests and
grievances of Ukrainians, who, like their eastern European counterparts demonstrated
in 1989, do not want to be ruled by pro-Kremlin elites and are now again, as in
1917-22, fighting a Russian invasion to prove it. I would also hope that if a director of your repute did make a documentary
film about Ukraine it would not simply parrot the ideas of a reviled ousted
dictator who built fortified fairy-land palaces with gold toilets in a country
foul with corruption private wealth and public squalor. I would hope such a film explain that Ukrainians
want no more to be controlled by Russia or Russian controlled dictators, than
Latin American and Asian peoples want to be controlled by America or American
controlled dictators.
Respectfully yours,
Stephen Velychenko
Stephen Velychenko is a research fellow and chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto in Canada.
