The current elections are the first in which the author of these lines did not participate. However, I took part in all previous elections, and I can say that Ukrainian elections have one very specific feature: every election here is the last and decisive battle. A battle against the forces of evil, a battle into which one should invest all one’s strength, setting aside all “utopianism” and “sentimental dreaming” for the sake of victory here and now.
The slogan “Ukraine is dying!” appeared almost on the second day of independence, and since then, if we are to believe our politicians and media, it has not lost relevance for a single second. Ukraine has been “dying” for twenty years, and apparently this arrangement suits it quite well, since it has no intention of stopping. Moreover, I remember well that the intensity of catastrophic rhetoric in the nineties was even higher than now—journalists were literally competing with each other to discuss the inevitable “social explosion” and its consequences.
Let me briefly remind you what all our elections have been about. The 1994 presidential and parliamentary elections were early elections. Kravchuk was considered an empty-headed babbler, and the “group of 239” in the Rada was a brake on progress. I remember well Kuchma’s campaign poster (by that time he had already served twice as prime minister). On the poster were the words “word” and “deed.” Under “word” was Kravchuk, under “deed” was Kuchma. In general, this was a fairly common view—Director Kuchma knew how to save the country. That was when the words “pragmatist” and “economist” first appeared, too.
By 1998, the director had directed so much that he had already gotten on everyone’s nerves. The 1998 parliamentary elections were a reaction to the “reforms” and an attempt to “save Ukraine” now from Kuchma. The communists tried to take their revenge. Let me remind you that in these elections, held under a mixed system, they received the highest percentage of votes.
In 1999, there were presidential elections in which the question of getting rid of Kuchma arose with unusual urgency. I remember the feeling well: if Kuchma wins—that’s it, the end of the country. He won.
In 2000, there was the cassette scandal, and in 2002—parliamentary elections, in which, once again, with the help of the rising star Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko, people of good will hoped to defeat the evil Kuchma. Characteristically, they formally defeated him and could have formed a majority, but they got scared of victory and pretended that nothing had happened, because the main event was coming—the 2004 presidential elections, where they hoped to win completely and definitively.
The elections that came in 2004, Viktor Andriyovych, generally speaking, he botched, and only thanks to the efforts of Kiev residents did the well-known subsequent events happen.
However, contrary to expectations—and to the great surprise of Viktor Andriyovych himself—he never became the savior of the nation. “Disappointment in the Maidan” seized the foolish electorate. The “Donetsk people” and Tymoshenko took advantage of this, who in the 2006 elections took their revenge and fought against the “inactivity of the authorities” respectively. The early elections of 2007 were simply a repetition of the 2006 elections, when the same people came to the same places.
Well, and finally, the epic battle of the beaver and the goat in 2009 ended in victory of you-know-who. Since then, passions have not subsided but only intensified, and now many again think that the elections are “our last chance,” etc., etc.
The author by no means wants to say that everything here is fine and there is nothing to worry about. I only want to say that “galactic danger” is the normal state of Ukraine in a world in which such a thing as elections exists—to say this to those who do not know this fact due to their tender age, and to remind those who have forgotten this fact or do not want to notice it. Actually, the pathos of this column consists in the thought that all these years the politically active residents of Ukraine (including the author, of course) were engaged in nonsense. In every election they needed to urgently save the Fatherland. Therefore, they never paid attention to ideas whose implementation took more than one year—where could they, when they need to save the Motherland here, and you with your utopian ideas! It is understandable that the political machine is built this way; it works for self-reproduction, and therefore it will always generate conflicts and fears that will gradually come into reality (as the horror of the nineties is coming true now—the “split of Ukraine”). But one must understand that there is no other way to stop this flywheel except by ceasing to participate in its rotation. Perhaps then, finally, there will be time to engage in “utopianism.”