On February 11, 2014, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies of the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA) devoted its semester fellows meeting to Ukraine, with Prof. Yury Avvakumov (Department of Theology) as the main speaker, and responses from Prof. Semion Lyandres (Department of History), and Prof. James McAdams (Political Science; Nanovic Institute Director). The purpose of the meeting was to engage Notre Dame’s professors in an informed discussion of the situation in Ukraine that is momentous for the future of the European continent. Nanovic fellows are members of the Notre Dame faculty who conduct research and advise students in different areas of European Studies. The Ukrainian Catholic University is one of the Nanovic Institute’s partner institutions.
Dear colleagues, dear friends,
Let me begin on a personal note. Besides doing research on Slavic religious history, I have a very immediate connection with Ukraine. Before coming to Notre Dame, I spent seven years teaching in the city of Lviv at the Ukrainian Catholic University , the only Catholic university in the entire post-Soviet region, a Ukrainian academic institution with an international reputation attracting many academics from Europe and North America, co-founded and guided by an American-born Ukrainian. I served there, first as a visiting professor, coming to Ukraine every semester for a month or two from Germany, where my family lives, and then as a full-time professor, having my permanent residency in Ukraine for three academic years. Thus it happened that I, a Russian from St. Petersburg by birth, lived and worked closely together with Ukrainians, in Western Ukraine, in Galicia, which has a reputation of being one of the most anti-Russian places in the world. During this time, I had a joyful opportunity to realize how gravely misleading the myth about the anti-Russian phobia of Ukrainians is. I was happy and privileged to gain a large number of superb colleagues, bright students and great friends among academics and those outside of the academic world in Ukraine. I still have close ties with very many of them. In these critical and dramatic days for Ukraine, they share with me information, news, pictures, videos, and personal stories. This is why my brief talk today will have less the character of an analytic report than of a personal testimony and reflection. I deliberately intend to become, as much as I can, the voice of the people in Ukraine whom I know, love, and respect.
I will have to introduce new words to you, Ukrainian words that have become international in these days. First, “Maidan.”. Maidan is the Ukrainian word for “square”.
The central plaza of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, Independence Square, has been the focus of the mass protests that are on-going and unabated since November, attracting on some days, according to different estimates, from 700,000 to 1 mln people.
The square and a couple of public buildings surrounding it have been occupied by the protesters; there is a permanent, daily presence of protesters on the Maidan.
Another word, “Euromaidan”. The people are demonstrating both under the national Ukrainian flag and under the flag of the European Union.
Mass protests began after Mr. Yanukovich, Ukraine’s President since 2011, abruptly rejected, after years of negotiations, a landmark association agreement with European Union, only one week before the anticipated signing of the agreement at the EU summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, at the end of November. This rejection occurred after Russia exerted unprecedented pressure on Ukraine in order to prevent it from starting the process of integration into the EU and to force Ukraine to join, first, the trade agreement with Russia and, in future perspective, the Eurasian Union – a geopolitical project developed by Kremlin strategists who seek to create a substitute for the Soviet Union as a territory under Moscow’s direct or indirect control. It seems that President Yanukovich has been placed by President Putin before a tough zero-sum alternative substantiated by threats of economic and political blockade: either you are with EU, or with Russia, we shall not permit you to be with both.
However, Euromaidan demonstrates not only, and even not primarily, for the signing of this largely technical trade agreement with the EU. Ukrainians are protesting, in fact, against growing corruption, bribes, cronyism, nepotism, criminal ties, suppression of independent media, corrupt legal system, public lies and cynicism, disrespect for human dignity and the authoritarian style of President Yanukovich and the ruling party, the “Party of Regions”. In the eyes of millions of Ukrainians, Russia, in its present condition, embodies these vices of the political system. By contrast potential membership in the European Union can, in their view, help fight the new authoritarianism and promote transparency, the rule of law, independent media, and respect for human dignity, such as happened, say, in the Czech Republic, Poland, and the Baltic States that were formerly Soviet Republics or Eastern bloc countries. Likewise, revanchist plans, cherished in Moscow, for the restoration of the grand Eurasian geopolitical space dominated by Russia, will hardly win Ukrainians’ sympathies for Russian leaders and Russian policy.
What was the government’s reaction to the Maidan? They first staunchly ignored the protesters, and then made several attempts to suppress Euromaidan by force using special police units named “Berkut” (one more word that’s become international: “Golden Eagle” – the word “Berkut” Ukraine has become synonymous with the bloody suppression of civil protest).
In addition, the government began a propaganda war against the protesters. Repeating what the Russian official propaganda was saying, the Ukrainian state TV channels declared that the protesters are extremists and fascists, and, simultaneously, that Maidan is organized from abroad by the West (EU and America) and that the people on the Maidan are paid by foreign Western funds and agencies for their participation in the protest. At the same time, the ruling group unleashed a hot war of physically intimidating the Euromaidan activists, with the help of para-military or semi-criminal pro-Russian gangs (“Titushki”, yet another word) which have been brought to Kiev for this purpose, mostly from the Eastern regions of Ukraine, bordering on Russia, where Russian influence and interference is especially high.
These gangs began kidnapping, beating and torturing Maidan’s activists and independent journalists who were covering Maidan in a way different from the state-controlled media. Despite of all this, the rallies remained overwhelmingly peaceful for almost two months (from the beginning on November 22 to January 16, 2014). President Yanukovich did not make a single step towards the people on the Maidan during this time.
A dramatic turn came on January 16th, after the Parliament (in which the ruling party controls majority) passed in one day, without discussion, a package of laws immediately called by the independent media “dictatorship laws.” The deputies themselves admitted that they had not even read the texts of the laws; they were passed without discussion, violating parliamentary regulations, by voting manually (with a show of hands). These laws to a great extent copied the notorious recent Russian anti-demonstrator and anti-“foreign agent” laws, attempting to introduce serious restrictions on civil rights and freedoms. The government, apparently intending to intimidate the protesters, instead received a new spiral of confrontation. The people’s indignation and rage reached its climax; the protest turned violent.
Demonstrators threw stones at the police and the “Berkut”; the police used water cannons (at 20 degrees below zero!), tear gas, and snipers shooting at protesters. During one week after passing the dictatorship laws, four protesters were killed and more than hundred injured. People began throwing Molotov cocktails at the police. The confrontation has become a matter of life and death. Some analysts are expecting that after the successful end to the Sochi Olympic Games Russia will launch a scenario in Ukraine modelled after the Russian-Georgian war of 2008.
The story is complex and there are many more important details that should have been reported. Unfortunately, my time is limited. I would like finally to devote a few minutes to a question that, I think, is the most important, in view of the allegations of the state Russian and pro-government Ukrainian propaganda: Who are the people on the Maidan?
One of the leading Ukraine’s intellectuals, historian Yaroslav Hrytsak, opined that the protest is, in fact, a middle class and a would-be middle class revolution. This view seems to be quite compelling. The Maidan protests feature students, academics, intellectuals, artists, and representatives of small and middle-size businesses. These are people who perceive that the political system forcibly takes away from them their freedom and their professional and personal future. These are people for whom Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are indispensable every-day tools. These are intelligent people with a clear sense of human dignity and civil courage. Here is one of the early pictures of the Maidan portraying, perhaps, its most noticeable constituency – the students. Students and young people were, actually, the first to come to Maidan and to appeal to others to join them. I invite you to dwell on this picture for a minute and to take a look at these faces separately, one by one. Perhaps this might help you to understand better what kind of Ukrainians initiated the Maidan movement. And what has also impressed me from the very beginning is the presence and active participation of young women.
Here is a picture of a Maidan female activist. This picture has a special value for me, because she was my student at the Ukrainian Catholic University – one of the brightest; she graduated from the master’s program in history with a thesis on the attitudes towards Jews in 12-th century Latin theology and canon law, and is presently applying for a PhD program in Vienna.
The cream of the Ukrainian intellectual elite has been represented on the Maidan. From its stage numerous intellectuals, writers, philosophers, and artists addressed the protesters in support of their demands.
Among others, Patriarch-emeritus of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church, Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, spoke to the protesters, and many priests from different churches – Catholic, Greco-Catholic and Orthodox – are constantly present on the Maidan.
Artists are especially committed, transforming different facets of its daily life into an artistic happening: perhaps one of the most popular personalities is the World Music Award and Eurovision 2004 winner, rock- and folksinger Ruslana.
Euromaidan today is a self-sustaining community, with its own food supplies, tents and housing, medical services, and civil defense detachments. Everything is volunteered and transparent; there is a unique sense of solidarity among the people. One Ukrainian journalist compared Maidan in the center of Kyiv to the Vatican State in Rome. The comparison is, perhaps, somewhat far-fetched, but there is something in it. However, let us not forget that this comparison has one gross flaw: In contrast to the relative stability and prosperity in Rome, the people in this very fragile domain of civil courage and human dignity are now in terrible, permanent, deadly danger. They need our support and help.
To conclude, let me offer two questions, intentionally provocative. Is it not finally time in Western Europe and North America to realize that the Soviet “evil empire” of which President Reagan spoke in 1983, is not dead? Yes, it lay in a coma for a decade or so. But it never disappeared. The new rulers of the post-Soviet space today are the successors to the Soviet elite. Yes, they renounced communist ideology – not because they were so humane, but because they no longer needed the communist morality of redistribution (however faked and compromised this morality was), for they wanted great, “capitalist” wealth for themselves and their families. Yes, they became polished and at first glance civilized. But they are still dreaming of the empire. Now they are on the search of a new ideology, and it seems they have found it in the new Eurasianist Orthodox imperialism. The collapse of the Soviet Union is a humiliation, a Versaille for them, and they dream of revenge. For sure, we may not, or perhaps should not, resort to the “evil empire” language in diplomatic relations, but we must clearly see the realities. The one who does not or will not see this deludes himself.
And the second question: Is it not time to realize that the future and the credibility of Western civilization (and let me add, of its Churches and Christians) as a civilization of freedom and respect for God-given human dignity is put to test in Ukraine and in EU now? In this sense, what is happening now in Ukraine will determine the future not only of Europe, but of the whole world.
Prof. Yury Avvakumov (Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame)