[lg policy] An attempt to analyze the new Ukrainian government ’s social policy

[Harold Schiffman]

What kind of political system are they building?
An attempt to analyze the new Ukrainian government’s social policy
By Maksym STRIKHA
		
	

MAKSYM STRIKHA, Ph.D. (Physics and Mathematics), writer
	

Ukraine’s official social policy has always been personified. Be that
as it may, Ukraine’s social policy proves to have shown a degree of
continuity during the presidencies of Kravchuk, Kuchma, and Yushchenko
— perhaps best described as continuity for the sake of compromises
reached in terms of European prospects. Considering personal traits,
convictions, and mistakes, all the abovementioned ranking bureaucrats
have supported the concept of the Holodomor as an act of genocide
against the Ukrainian people (in fact, Dmytro Tabachnyk defended his
doctorate in 1995, focusing on Stalin’s purges, and in 2003, as deputy
prime minister, convincingly reiterated his assumption). They kept
guiding Ukraine in the direction of EU and NATO, subsequently to be
formally reaffirmed by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine. It
was for this purpose that the whole national memory, education and
culture concept was worked out, aimed at transforming the Ukrainian
SSR, with its largely Russified population, into a European
nation-state that would be aware of its culture and history dating
back a thousand years.

Needless to say, all these efforts were made with an eye to Ukraine’s
contemporary realities and mentality — in other words, this process
was slow and nonconfrontational. Both the left- and right-wing
extremists were not content with this rate of progress, but this
national policy yielded fruits, no matter what nay-sayers claim, just
as it is obvious that this policy found its most fecund ground during
Leonid Kuchma’s second presidential term.

But then there emerged yet another Superman-like player on the
international arena, after Boris Yeltsin stepped down to let his
almost democratic albeit amorphous Russia, fraught with countless
domestic problems, be taken over by Vladimir Putin’s well-organized
team resolved to reinstate Russia as a superpower. Ukraine then
suffered the Melnychenko tapes scandal, whereupon its EU and NATO
membership chances started looking slim. This reminds one of the good
old Latin adage, Cui prodest — Who will benefit from all this? One can
have an intelligent guess about the puppeteers in the Gongadze tragic
market show. Prior to the 2004 election campaign, the ruling elite,
scared by the possibility of failure, decided to discard [what Kuchma
had formulated as] a “multivectoral policy” of compromise and clearly
set their course on Russia’s post-Soviet waters, even at the risk of
splitting Ukraine in two.

But then a miracle occurred, the totally unexpected Maidan phenomenon,
with the masses bringing to power those whom they hoped would bring a
lawful and decent way of life. Many believed that Ukraine would
finally become a European democracy in early 2005. While the
­ca­pitals in the West couldn’t conceal their happiness, the Kremlin
was foaming at the mouth with frustration.

It is not my task to analyze the plot of the tragicomedy of
Yushchenko’s presidency. One point, however: the national policy in
the social field was actually no different from that waged under
presidents Kravchuk and Kuchma, being implemented against the
controversial background set up by Moscow spin doctors in the spring
of 2004, so that things taken in one’s stride previously were now
sources of confrontation. Soviet [WW II] veterans, who had reacted
calmly to the 1994 UPA exhibit at the Museum of the Great Patriotic
War in Kyiv flatly turned down any contacts with all those “Banderite
collaborators” in 2005.

Likewise, members of the Donetsk City Council, who under the Education
Minister Vasyl Kremen had kept opening grade schools with Ukrainian as
the language of instruction, with their parents’ knowledge and
consent, started shouting about “forceful Ukrainization” (topics
previously raised by the Communist and the Progressive Socialist
Parties of Ukraine).

With Yushchenko’s presidency ending in February-March 2010, many
heaved a sigh of relief, expecting to return to the relatively calm
Kuchma period, yet life quickly dispersed their enthusiastic
expectations.

The legally questionable Kharkiv fuel supply accords, climaxing in
Ukraine ending in the Kremlin’s tight embrace, the Moscow Patriarch’s
visit, the newly appointed Minister of Education and Science, Dmytro
Tabachnyk, the reinstatement of the 1996 Constitution of Ukraine, and
the establishing of a presidential republic, boil down to the building
of a new country in place of today’s Ukraine.
	

Photo by Ruslan KANIUKA, The Day
	
		
	

THE SLOGAN READS: “UKRAINIAN NATION IS A TARGET IN THE WAR OF LANGUAGES”
	

After the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed a vote of no-confidence for
Volodymyr Semynozhenko, Ukraine, for the first time in independent
history, is still without a deputy prime minister in charge of the
social sphere, lea­ving Education [and Science] Minister Dmytro
Tabachnyk and Minister of Culture Mykhailo Kulyniak to hold the court.
Whereas the cultural policy mode remains mostly inert, changes in the
education domain offer much food for thought for those discussing a
catastrophe in the social sphere and the current Ukrainian
government’s occupation regime aimed against the remaining
Ukrainian-speaking/thinking residents of this country.

On Bankova St., Hanna Herman is one of few current political figures
who consistently declares her Ukrainian background and mentality by
speaking Ukrainian on a daily basis, by making every statement in this
language. There is the Civic Council on Social Policy, under President
Yanuko­vych’s direct command.

Among its members are noted Ukrainian public fi-gures and
intellectuals: Borys Oliinyk, Ivan Drach, Dmytro Stus, and Bohdan
Stupka, yet this membership abounds in the names of people who have
always supported anti-West, pro-Russia positions, including the
academic Petro Tolochko (he marched out of the audience in a sign of
protest against President Yanu­kovych’s edict on festivities
commemorating St. Sophia’s 1,000th anniversary in 2011, what with the
Russian-minded celebrated historians protesting new wall-painting
discoveries at St. Sophia’s, because they insist on the traditional
assumption that St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Novgorod is older than the
one in Kyiv).

Reports have it that this council mostly deals with public television
and radio channels, and that this body hasn’t made any noticeable
moves in the education realm, just as it hasn’t responded to the
language bill submitted to the Verkhovna Rada by Yefremov,
Hryne­vetsky, and Symonenko — which bill has caused such concern in
the Ukrainian-speaking public quarters.

Anatolii Tolstoukhov, one of the current Cabinet members, is known to
have a number of important Ukrainian cultural and scholarly projects,
particularly in the book-publishing sphere, while never stepping an
inch outside his party’s line. Given the current absence of the deputy
to the Minister of Culture in the social sphere, this Cabinet member
might look as a good ad hoc coordinator.

There are also lots of dark horses prancing round the social field,
among them non-residents, including Moscow’s distribution companies
determined to put to an end the Ukrainian dubbing of films at all
costs, mostly for business rather than political reasons, along with
analysts from all kinds of foundations, among them Russkiy mir
[Russian world], who keep telling those in power in Ukraine, on and
off the record, how best to incorporate this country into the Russian
world.

I will try to briefly analyze the situation in Ukraine’s social
sphere, leaving aside health care and social protection, considering
that both rate a separate story.

National memory is by no means a kind of policy invented during
Yushchenko’s presidency; this is standard practice in each country
whose government is determined to cultivate patriotism, encouraging
the younger genera­tion to remember past heroes. Russia is a case
study in such aggressive memory policy, with its Presidential
Commission to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of
Russia’s Interests — actually tasked with suppressing the
free-thinking and truth-seeking historians attempting to cross the
Kremlin line.

In his sincere attempt to instill in Ukrainians a sense of modern
European-like national identity, Yushchenko could be reproached for
relying, for reasons best known to himself, on the apparent myth of
Trypillia, rather than historical figures like Prince Yaroslav the
Wise, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, even Ivan Mazepa and
Symon Petliura (let alone noted men of letters, creative figures,
scholars, among them many alleged to have originated from Russia,
according to Russian historians).

Yushchenko belatedly awarded Stepan Bandera and Crimean Tatar human
rights champion Petro Hryhorenko the prestigious title “Hero of
Ukraine.” This only led to another split in Ukrainian society and
dealt a heavy blow to Ukraine-Poland relations, the consequences of
which remain to be analyzed (considering Poland’s late President Lech
Kaczynski’s sharp-worded public response, despite his being
Yushchenko’s friend and independent Ukraine’s trusted ally). Contrary
to well-substantiated expectations, the formal placement of millions
of 1932-33 Holodomor victims’ names in the National Memory Center
didn’t affect the national conso­lidation process, due to the
differing views on the Holodomor concept: as an act of genocide
against the Ukrainian people or just another atrocity on the part of
the Soviet communist regime.

The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory was established using
Poland’s example, the Instytut Pamieci Narodowej (Institute of
National Remembrance), that specializes in detecting and investigating
crimes committed against Polish nationals by 20th-century totalitarian
regimes. Then [Ukraine’s former] KGB [currently under SBU control]
archives were declassified and declared accessible to researchers,
journalists, and general public. However, no bill on the UINM status
was submitted to the Verkhovna Rada, so UINM was never handed over SBU
archives. Today, with Ihor Yukhnovsky replaced by Valerii Soldatenko,
a historian specializing in (and brainwashed by) the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union, UINM, cleansed of all “nationalistic” influence,
doesn’t exist as a research center.

The 65th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in the “Great
Patriotic War of 1941-45” became a major event for the new Ukrainian
administration. May 9 was marked by military parades and with special
pomp in Moscow, Kyiv, and Minsk. Ukraine and Russia’s education
ministries formed a task force to draft a history textbook that would
be acceptable to all parties concerned — at this stage meant only for
schoolteachers, formally intended to give them the “guidelines,”
offering a “coordinated” approach to the disputed period in each
country’s national history.

In fact, it is not the currently passive UINM but Ukraine’s Ministry
of Education and Science, headed by Tabachnyk, which is responsible
for a number of initiatives meant to inculcate in younger Ukrainians’
minds a view on their national history which more or less tallies with
that being cultivated in each such school in Russia. To this end, all
“confrontational” issues are deleted from such textbooks, even ones
dealing with eyewitness accounts of tsarist Russia’s colonial rule in
Ukraine. The World War II, which actually started for Ukrainians on
September 1, 1939, is once again referred to as the “Great Patriotic
War [of the Soviet People against the Fascist Aggressor, 1941-45 –
Ed.],” with the Foreign Litera­ture Course replaced by “World
Literature” (considering that Russians are fellow citizens rather than
foreign nationals for Tabachnyk). To emphasize this deja-vu
experience, the Ukrainian school students are in for the good old
Soviet paramilitary game Zarnitsa. The Petro Jacyk Ukrainian Language
Competition was allowed to be held in Kyiv as a last-minute decision.

­­Moscow’s imperial-minded ideologues are upgrading their
hit-in-the-head propaganda that, not so long ago, refused to recognize
Ukrainians as nationals of their country. Now there is the concept of
the peoples of Old Rus’, formulated as the “Russian World” [or the
“World of Rus’” — depending on how one translates the word
combination, considering the Slavic semantic complexities — Ed.], as a
supranational Slavic community, made up of Russians, Ukrainians, and
Belarusians, bound by common history, culture, and Orthodoxy. Moscow
Patriarch Kirill appears to be an outspoken supporter of this concept
of late.

The Russian-People-model reads that the Ukrainians and Belarusians
must have their own language, culture, and history. The point is that
Ukrainian national history is part and parcel of universal history,
whereas this joint history textbook is supposed to make it part of
Great Russia’s history, including the Soviet Union’s Victory in the
Great Patriotic War, doing away with Nazi Germany and its accomplices
(i.e., the Ukrainian Insurgent Army); also, preferably, without a word
about General Vlasov and his army, who fought the Soviets. The
Ukrainian language is perfectly OK for kitchen discussions about
politics over food and drink, as lyrics for love songs, but Ukrainians
must read Russian versions of Sir William Shakespeare, the Holy Bible,
and Alexander Pushkin, considering that Russian is “more advanced”
than Ukrainian. Whereas Ukrainian culture can be proud of its rich
folk heritage, Reshytylivka vyshyvanka needlework, Opishnia pottery,
Petrykivka ornaments, the “big-time” culture is alleged to keep being
created on a common Orthodox basis, in the Russian language.

What about Halychyna? Some of the Russian World ideologues are
prepared to let these “ungrateful lackeys of the West” go, with their
three oblasts of Ukraine. Others propose to reinstate the status of
St. George Hill in Lviv as a “bulwark of Orthodoxy” and return the
“stray sheep” to the flock being led in the “right direction.”

None of those currently in power in Ukraine has formally accepted this
concept. In fact, the final bill on the fundamentals of Ukraine’s
domestic and foreign policies, adopted on Yanukovych’s initiative
(without the NATO membership clause) contains a number of obsolete
provisos dating back to the times when the Ukrainian was described as
playing the consolidating role in the formation of the modern European
nation-state. Today’s Minister of Education and Scince Dmytro
Tabachnyk and his sycophants fit just nicely into the Russian World
scenario.

Bereft of an official status, Ukrainian served the national identity
cause, considering that, under the Soviets, Ukrainian was mostly used
on a daily, family basis, with Russian serving as the official
language.

After Ukraine proclaimed its independence, the language policy was
mainly based on an unwritten compromise whereby Ukrainian was
recognized as the official language, having being established in
certain social spheres, primarily in state administration and
education, also in certain business spheres (paperwork relating to
production, sports, public life, etc.) that had remained
Russian-dominated.

This compromising attitude proved effective. During the Kuchma
presidency, Russian-language grade schools practically ceased to exist
in the western and central regions of Ukraine that, back in 1987, had
boasted the highest enrollment rate in these areas, barring Halychyna.
Remarkably, this took place without a single complaint from a single
Russian-speaking resident, simply because they all thought it only
natural for the Ukrainian government to provide for their children a
se­condary and post-secondary education with Ukrainian as the language
of instruction. Even though they kept speaking Russian at home, they
thought it normal for their children to use Ukrainian when doing
homework and when attending their classes.

President Yushchenko failed to take a resolute stand in expanding the
usage of Ukrainian in his country. I would personally describe his
decision to dub/subtitle all Western movies in Ukrainian (no Russian
productions!) as perhaps the only step he took in the right direction,
to make Ukraine Ukrainian.

All attempts to break this compromise have until now been purely
circumstantial, election campaign stunts. Kuchma came to power in
1994, under the motto of Russian being given an official status in
Ukraine, but he changed his attitude once he became the president of
Ukraine. Yanukovych’s presidential campaign had a clause about Russian
becoming the second official language in Ukraine, but in March 2010,
President Yanukovych declared on Chernecha Hill, launching a
re­novated Taras Shevchenko Museum in Kaniv, that it was necessary to
protect Ukrainian as the sole official language.

Those currently “upstairs” in Ukraine entertain varying
interpretations of Ukrainian being the sole official language.
Ukrainian MPs Yefremov, Hrynevetsky, and Symonenko submitted a bill to
the Verkhovna Rada this September. This document largely repeats the
one by Yevhen Kushnariov, prepared by Russia’s spin doctors, whereby
the Russian language will obtain all the underpinning social functions
as an official language, formally retaining a “regional” status. This
Ukrainian-Russian bilingual situation is described as a positive
achievement on the part of Ukraine.

Pressured by protesting factions, the Speaker of Parliament Volodymyr
Lytvyn had to forward this and other language bills to the National
Academy of Sciences for expert examination. The findings he received,
signed by NAS President Borys Paton, read that the
Yefremov-Hrynevetsky-Symonenko bill (also signed by six other MPs)
apparently ran contrary to the Constitution of Ukraine, as well as
international law.

In other words, the new Ukrainian administration keeps the language
policy in suspense. One of Yushchenko’s final edicts enacted the
Concept of the Official Language Policy. Even this document hasn’t
been proclaimed null and void; it is still on the Ukrainian
pre­sidential website.

A consistent de-Ukrainization campaign is being held by Tabachnyk and
his Ministry of Education and Science. Tabachnyk has declared the
expediency and valid reasons behind the revival of Russian-language
schools on the central and western regions of Ukraine. The number of
Ukrainian-language schools in the eastern and southern regions will be
substantially lowered during the academic years of 2010-11. The
Ministry of Culture of Ukraine has been tactfully trying to exempt
movies from Ukrainian dubbing, mostly for business rather than
cultural reasons — and I mean movies provided by Russian distributors.

All things considered, it is hard to tell what will happen next in
terms of official language policy. On the one hand, there are
Russian-minded members of the Ukrai­nian parliament, like
Kolesnichenko (leader of the “Russian-Speaking Ukraine Movement,”
member of the Party of Regions), who insist that the
Yefremov-Hry­nevetsky-Symonenko bill be passed, thus lowering the
status of the Ukrainian language to that of ghetto patois. On the
other hand, there are no signals from Bankova St. [Presidential
Administration’s address in Kyiv – Ed.] saying that Viktor Yanukovych
(who took a crash course in Ukrainian as head of the Donetsk regional
state admi­nistration) approves of this scenario. One thing is clear:
this bill would have long been passed, given the proverbial whistle
from Bankova St., even before the local election campaign, when such
signals were really important for the Party of Regions’ nominees in
the east and south of Ukraine. At present, such items are far down on
Ukraine’s political agenda.

http://www.day.kiev.ua/318002

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