I don’t know about readers, but the author never attached any particular hopes to the ‘victory of the Maidan.’ That is, there was never a time when I thought ‘well, let’s oust Yanukovych and we’ll live well!’ No. I perfectly understand that little changes depending on who seizes power, since the problem lies in ‘power’ itself.
Honestly speaking, my main hope was an inevitable pause—a year, or even two—while, on the one hand, the ‘revolutionary’ government busies itself settling scores with its predecessors and dividing grandma’s china set, and on the other, while the public still remembers what brought it to the Maidan and remains ready, at minimum, to flip the bird in response to the revolutionaries’ attempts to pick its pockets. Such a pause happened in 2005, and the public happily slept through it, shifting the burden of self-care onto Comrade Yushchenko. This time, I thought, the people have grown wiser, the price of victory is high, and during the Maidan itself people actively practiced those methods that, it seems to me, constitute our future.
However, no pause occurred; what followed was Putin, Crimea, and a constant threat of war. This situation is dangerous in two respects. First, all public attention is riveted on Putin and his war. No one knows what will happen tomorrow, and therefore activities calculated for the long term—especially those aimed at change—will not be in demand in such circumstances. Second, the state, of course, is using the moment to the fullest extent in its own interests, doing things that, under peaceful conditions, would have been beyond its reach for a long time to come. After the Maidan, we have already lost considerable freedom; yesterday’s amendments to laws on how to properly love the Motherland alone are worth a great deal.
It may seem that our affairs are quite bad. However, this is not entirely so. If I were a religious person, I would say that the Lord does not send us nastiness for nothing, and since this is so, one must try to see what benefit lies in what’s happening. Here, of course, I make no claims to omniscience; I examine what’s happening exclusively from my own vantage point, and from this vantage point only processes related to the activities of states are visible. And from this point of view, interesting things are indeed observed.
It so happened that Ukrainians, against their will, periodically find themselves at the vanguard of an anti-bureaucratic, and more broadly, anti-political revolution that is gaining ever greater momentum. This revolution is still barely recognized by its own participants; most importantly, it still does not have its own language—it tries to speak in the existing political language, and the result is both very funny and frightening. One could explain at great length why these processes differ from preceding revolutions; I merely ask you to note their obvious anti-political orientation (‘we don’t believe any politicians!’) and the actual dissolution of the political coordinate system (right-left, etc.) when trying to describe them. In principle, these two points alone would be enough to speak of evident novelty, but there are, of course, more of them.
So, as Comrade Karaganov said recently, ‘in Ukraine over 20 years, state-forming elites still haven’t emerged.’ This is a very important observation, even though the majority of readers of this column would warmly agree with it. At the same time, we have quite excellent entrepreneurs, doctors, scientists, and even system administrators, but it didn’t work out with the ‘state-forming’ elite. The benefit of Putin with his war lies precisely here. Because until now, in agreement with Karaganov, our progressive public immediately ran to create ‘state-forming elites.’ Of course, nothing came of it, and they suffered greatly from this. Putin, however, makes it clear that the political agenda is closed. Simply put, next to Ukraine there is Mordor, whose leadership will never agree to Ukraine being in the EU or in NATO. Moreover, Mordor wishes, under the guise of federalization, to divide Ukraine in such a way that eastern ‘pro-Russian’ regions could block the desires of progressive public. Or war.
However events develop further, the option ‘we were accepted where we needed to be and things were made good for us’ is excluded in the foreseeable future. Intermediate options are also excluded, like ‘a young team of reformers came to power and such a thing began.’ If you think about it, what remains on the political agenda is only gloom and despair.
In general, it’s high time to understand that if state-forming elites haven’t emerged until now, then apparently it’s not for nothing. Something in the air, probably. And if you think about what these elites, in places where they do exist and flourish, have long had nothing to offer, it becomes even more interesting. And finally, recalling that Ukrainians already have two Maidans to their credit, the second of which (and the first one, in general, as well) was clearly anti-political, one can come to the conclusion that ‘state-forming elites’ are absent in our country not by accident. Moreover, in this circumstance lies the enormous advantage of Ukrainians over peoples who have them and in whom they are deeply entrenched—this circumstance is our hope.
Therefore, let’s already stop with the political agenda. It has died, as Comrade Putin has reported to us. Let’s already move on to the agenda that will determine the face of the future world: the agenda of voluntary interactions and voluntary associations, an agenda that does not recognize any intervention in these interactions, no matter what sauce it is served with.