The most amazing thing that happened over these last six months of the Ukrainian revolution and then war with Russia is this: finally, the world has a chance to actually see (if it wants or chooses to) what the reality is. During the Holodomor (1932-3) the West chose to believe Stalin, not Ukraine - that there was no famine, and if there was, it was our own fault and not the state politics aimed at genocide; during and after WWII the West also chose to believe Stalin, not Ukraine - that Ukrainians were fascists collaborating with Hitler (and that is while more Russian troops switched sides than any Ukrainians ever did! - General Vlasovs division was but a fraction of the whole picture); during perestroika and after the West still took a very passive stand towards Ukraine - from academic gatherings to political meetings, the idea that Russia was some sort of a maternal matrix for the Slavic world still lingered. I remember how difficult it was to even speak about Ukraine within the (academic!) postcolonial framework. I remember how snail mail letters in the 1990s arrived at my Ukrainian home from my friends in the States - the address was Russia, Ukraine. I remember trying to explain to all who would listen that we are not THE Ukraine, but simply Ukraine. I remember, in 1994 in Kansas, where I was an exchange student once, arguing with the girls from Moscow Linguistic Institute - they claimed that Ukraine has no business being independent because we are brothers. When I brought up a few historical facts on account of that brotherly (in reality - predatory) behavior from the Russian side, they got very angry. I could not explain anything! It seems like there was no language to talk about all this. To enumerate all the historical facts. To claim that Holodomor was a genocide against the NATION, and not just a random case of poor harvest. To trace the role of KGB in forming (deliberately and with gusto) the stereotypes about Ukrainian fascists, and so on. To explain that the Crimea is not ethnically Russian territory, but home of the Tatars. To show, openly, to the whole world that Russia creates conflicts and occupies territories of other countries (like it did in Abkhasia, trying to tear apart Georgia in the 1990s)6 according to a scenario of force, domination and constant lying. To expose Russia, finally, not as a cultural alternative to the greedy West, but as a belligerent country with national inferiority complex and no democracy. After all, Piotr Vail, a writer, said long time ago that their spirituality of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is but fantom pain of an amputated limb. And now, I think, the language for expressing all this was finally born.
Posted on: Thu, 22 May 2014 15:01:23 +0000
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