Duping the pussycats

The result was largely predictable since the promotion of Russian
language – at the cost of Ukrainian, as many critics opine – was a
cornerstone of Yanukovych’s 2004 and 2010 presidential campaigns as well
as of his Sovietophile Party of Regions. The propagandistic materials
leaked from the party headquarters before the bill was even approved
reveal a key role assigned to the language law by the party spin-doctors
in the pending parliamentary elections campaign. And the brutal,
extremely unscrupulous, and illegitimate way the bill was pushed through
the parliament proves that the stakes are too high for the Party of
Regions and, apparently, for the president.

Therefore, it was rather naïve to expect that the president would
destroy what his team had been building so ruthlessly, breaching various
laws and dismissing procedural subtleties. The calculation looks
simple: whatever the president and his party do, they will not garner
support from the democratic, Ukrainophile, and pro-European part of
society. So, the main task is to mobilize the traditional, Sovietophile
part of the electorate, which would probably never vote for the
“democrats” perceived as “nationalists” and “Western hacks,” but may
also reject the “Regionals” because of dissatisfaction with their
disastrous social and economic policies. Some protest votes would
probably benefit the Regionals’ satellites: the Communists on the
virtual left and Natalia Korolevska’s “Avanti Ukraine!” in the
quasi-liberal “center.” Still, the problem of mobilizing the Regionals’
core electorate remains topical since many of those people may simply
ignore the elections, facilitating thereby the chances of the
opposition.

The estimated size of the Sovietophile electorate in Ukraine is about
40%. This does not comprise a majority but the Party of Regions has
good reason to believe that the half of the parliament elected from the
territorial districts (not from the party lists) will bring them the
much-needed majority thanks to the so-called independents. Most of them
ultimately appear very dependent on the incentives or intimidation or
both from the authorities and usually end-up in the pro-government camp.

The plot of the “Language Bill” was essentially clear but some
dramatic devices were invoked to create an effective atmosphere of
suspense and intrigue. First, there was last year’s precedent when the
law on official use of the Soviet red flags was passed and even signed
by the president but cancelled eventually by the hyper-loyalist
constitutional court. (This actually may happen again but probably only
after the parliamentary elections. The abandoned law would not bring
Yanukovych much love and gratitude from Ukrainophiles anyway but would
certainly give him an additional trump-card for some manipulative games
in the future – something that his predecessor Leonid Kuchma understood
perfectly).

Secondly, the head of the parliament Volodymyr Lytvyn refused to sign the bill citing multiple violations of the procedure http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/07/4/6967984.
But his resignation was not accepted by the parliament and he was
ultimately forced to comply, possibly blackmailed by the “Regionals”
because of his alleged involvement in the Gongadze affair http://news.liga.net/ua/news/politics/707846-litvin_p_dpisav_skandalniy_zakon_pro_movi.htm.

Thirdly, the professional “doves” in Yanukovych’s team strained every
sinew to convey to the public the president’s deep concern with the le
controversies and his sincere desire to find a reasonable compromise
that would not harm the Ukrainian language. Maryna Stavniychuk, his
adviser, went so far as to recognize unequivocally that “the law was
passed with flagrant violations of the articles 47, 116-122 and 130 of
procedural statute (регламент) of the parliament, and many of its
provisions contradicted the respective paragraphs of the Ukrainian
Constitution and international documents ratified by Ukraine, including
the European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages”http://obozrevatel.com/politics/16482-umovna-movna-krapka.htm.
Moreover, Viktor Yanukovych himself recognized the controversial
character of the law, referring to it as a crude document “splitting
society” and therefore requiring “some improvements.”

And finally, on the very eve of the signing of the bill, President
Yanukovych summoned a number of what still is called in Soviet newspeak
“representatives of intelligentsia” to his summer residence in the
Crimea to get their first-hand opinion on the hot issue. Next day the
bill was signed into law to the great shock of the “representatives,”
who justifiably considered themselves “tricked like kittens.” (The
phrase became a popular description of the Party of Regions’ behavior
after its informal parliamentary “director” Mykhaylo Chchetov used it
boastfully to explain how they had cheated the opposition when pushing
through the bill against all procedural requirements: “Мы их развели,
как котят.” Remarkably, the Russian word “razvesti” – to sucker somebody
– comes from the criminal jargon openly favored by the dominant Donetsk
clan) http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/07/3/6967926.

To sweeten the pill, the president ordered the government to create
an ad hoc working group that would elaborate proper changes to the law,
with a stated goal to “ensure the full-fledged functioning of the
Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life over the entire
territory of the country.” This belongs next to the initial intention of
the document to “guarantee the free development and use of other mother
tongues of Ukrainian citizens” http://www.president.gov.ua/documents/14941.html. 
Raisa Bohatyriova, the deputy prime minister in charge of humanitarian
issues, was assigned to head the group, while the president’s guests,
a.k.a. “representatives of intelligentsia,” were invited to participate
in the deliberations. Ironically, the same offer was made also to the
bill’s sponsors, Messrs. Kivalov and Kolesnichenko – a decision that
some Ukrainian journalists declared was rather like asking Himmler and
Goebbels to work on a law of de-Nazification.

The excessive demonization of two petty swindlers and opportunists is
hardly appropriate but the metaphor is actually not about ideological
similarity. It refers primarily to the intolerant, aggressive, and
arrogant approach of these two persons and their use of political force
to resolve any issue that requires a dialogue and consensus building.
Serhiy Kivalov was the cynical head of the Central Election Commission
that falsified notoriously the 2004 presidential elections and provoked
the popular uprising known as the “Orange Revolution.” Today, he
reportedly owns the TV channel “Academia,” a source of pro-Russian and
anti-Ukrainian propaganda, with a flagship program “Background” full of
unrestrained innuendos and overt propaganda of hatred http://rutube.ru/tracks/5357980.html.

Vadym Kolesnichenko, the other self-professed promoter of European
charters and values in Ukraine, has a similar reputation as a
professional crusader against “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism.” Since
Soviet times, the term has been used exactly like “Zionism,”i.e. to
denigrate all things Ukrainian and to criminalize any vestiges of
national identity beyond ethnography. Kolesnichenko’s fame in the
parliament is based primarily on his pugilism, parading with Russian
state symbols, and making disparaging remarks about Ukrainian language
and culture. A dense cloud of scandals accompanies his activity. Within
the few past months, he managed to steal Timothy Snyder’s article from
the New York Review of Books for his own “antinationalistic” collection http://news.liga.net/news/politics/669428-professor_yelskogo_universiteta_vozmushchen_postupkom_kolesnichenko.htm,
to organize “mass approval” for his draft bill by forging “letters of
support” from various academic and minority institutions http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/05/23/6965117, and to falsify quotations and references in the explanatory notes to the document he submitted with Mr. Kivalov http://www.pravda.com.ua/columns/2012/07/30/6969744.

Perhaps the best characterization of this provocateur-at-large comes
from his 2009 speech in the parliament where he lobbied for another
“antinationalistic” bill: “On banning the rehabilitation and heroizing
of fascist collaborators of 1933-1945.” To make his propagandistic
speech more appealing to the fellow-MPs and especially for the general
public, he embellished dry bureaucratic formulas with some personal
details. At one point he referred not only to the UN documents and
Nuremberg court decisions but also, as stated in the official stenogram,
to the “bright memory of millions of Ukrainians who perished in their
fight against fascism and bright memory of my father who burnt in a tank
in Belarus defending the Soviet Motherland from the German-fascist
occupants”” http://www.pravda.com.ua/columns/2012/07/30/6969744.

The only problem with the credibility of this speech (and Mr.
Kolesnichenko in general) is that the speaker was born in 1958, roughly
15 years after his father reportedly perished in Belarus. (One may
recollect here a reputed similar statement by Aleksander Lukashenko who
was also impassioned so much by his own rhetoric that forgot he was born
seven years after the war and, moreover, had actually never heard
anything about his father).

Now one may guess how the “kittens”, a.k.a. “representatives of the
Ukrainian intelligentsia,” would cooperate with the two very peculiar
personages on the expected improvements to the law that has been
absolutely lawless – illegal and illegitimate – in its spirit and
letter, causes and effects, inception and delivery. My bet is that the
crusaders might tone down their Ukrainophobic zeal on the boss’s orders;
the “representatives” would receive from the president soothing
promises of further support for Ukrainian language and culture; the law
would be amended to meet (more or less) provisions of the constitution;
so that little will change in today’s ambiguous situation, which is
determined primarily not by laws but by the authorities’ goodwill and
political expedience. All this will happen, however, after the
elections, when logic suggests Yanukovych will backtrack a little bit in
order to have more space for the eventual political bargaining and
maneuvering.

Today expediency means appeasing supporters and undermining
opponents. Kivalov, Kolesnichenko, and Chechetov accomplished the first
part of the project, while the “representatives of intelligentsia”
helped to complete the other part. First, they ran, at the president’s
whim, to his dacha and, second, they got virtually nothing. To enhance
the humiliation, the information was leaked that all of these affluent
citizens flew at the cost of Bohdan Havrylyshyn, a Swiss-Ukrainian
businessman, fully in line with the Regionals’ propaganda that the
Ukrainian language issue is merely a Diaspora hobbyhorse http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/08/7/6970338.

Even though most of the “representatives” are not directly connected
to the political opposition (actually most of them have successfully
cooperated with both Soviet and post-Soviet authorities), all of them
represent, in the popular mind, the “Ukrainian party,” i.e., the
opposition as it is broadly understood. To discredit the opposition on
the eve of elections is definitely a favored policy, but probably even
more important for the regime is to involve as many public figures as
possible in its illegal activity. This helps to normalize things
abnormal and legitimize the illegitimate. The cheaters become the
partners; the swindlers assume the role of respectable statesmen. The
story may resemble the classical parable about Faust and Mephistopheles.
The only problem is that the Ukrainian Mephistos are merely petty
crooks, and the Ukrainian Fausts are merely dull and insipid
collaborators.

This originally appeared in Current Politics of Ukraine here.