Now a few words about feudalism, its specifics, and why it should be protected from the state.
The most convincing analogy for understanding the arrangement of the country that emerged after ‘91 is feudalism. Our feudalism has two main sources. The first is the rural origins of the Ukrainian “elite” and their corresponding habits of cronyism, regionalism, and the like. The second is the specific Soviet organization of “social production processes.” First and foremost, this is the “departmental approach,” where each department is a kind of mini-state with its own budget, its own medicine, education, and even security. And, of course, there is the “production” approach, stemming from the Marxist understanding of happiness as the satisfaction of material needs. Both of these approaches resulted in production being considered the basic social value, and the enterprise being the basic unit of production (by the way, let us note in the margins how enduring this notion is!). As long as totalitarianism was strong, such a system did not create contradictions. When it disappeared, it turned out that, despite the fact that “the system as a whole” collapsed, the structures it gave rise to proved quite viable, or at least they actively joined the struggle for survival and became elements of Ukrainian feudalism.
Let us note that in Ukraine, circumstances coincided rather favorably for feudalism. Here, ready-made feudal units (departments and enterprises) fell into the hands of people with feudal thinking. In Russia, where the situation was initially exactly the same, feudalism did not take root, and, traditionally, Russians returned to slavery, which is more familiar to them. The main reason, I think, is the “great-power” mentality of Russians, for whom “fragmentation,” though a source of income, is perceived as a tragedy.
Ukrainian feudalism differs from classical feudalism in two main respects. The first is the priority of status. The role of status in classical feudalism, where it is enormous and where a poor nobleman is still a nobleman, is incomparable with Ukrainian reality. The main resource of our feudal lords is influence—the ability to “solve issues.” Of course, this resource is acquired in the political sphere, hence, so to speak, the non-traditional origin of our oligarchs, whom it is difficult to even call oligarchs. “Real” oligarchs owe their position to their own wealth; with us, the situation is directly the opposite—position gives birth to wealth. The second difference lies in the more intricate relationships of loyalty, when it is quite difficult to figure out who is whose sovereign, vassal, and crony, and what exactly this means at a given point in time. Ukrainian feudal relations are very mobile and changeable.
Here, it should also be noted that, of course, in our country there exist not only feudal relations; moreover, there is also a super-centralized “state” of the industrial era, with the main source of feudal status being one’s place in this state hierarchy. The paradoxical cocktail of interdependencies, in which the increase in centralized state power leads only to the strengthening of feudal chaos, still requires detailed study. For now, it can be said that Ukrainian feudalism parasitizes the state, uses it for its own purposes, and, frankly, it is quite difficult to find a socially significant situation in which the state would act as a social institution in its pure form, rather than as a tool of feudal interests.
Well, and finally, the last element of our analogy: who plays the role of the feudal peasant? It is hardly possible to consider ordinary citizens as such. Rather, one should speak here of larger forms. For our feudalism, the enterprise is the basic subject of relations. To be more precise, the enterprise is not the peasant himself, but the peasant with land. Enterprises are our main taxpayers; in fact, they (and not some individual citizens, as in the West) act as subjects in relations with the state. The struggle for control over enterprises, the destruction of “enemy” enterprises is the main plot of Ukrainian feudalism, just as the capture of the enemy’s land is in classical feudalism. Note that political control and political repressions are much more often applied to enterprises in our country, rather than to individual figures. It is precisely their existence in the form of enterprises, rather than territories, as in the classical version, that makes our feudalism so confusing, because enterprises (unlike territories) can be created, they can be arbitrarily combined, entering into alliances, and they can simply be destroyed. It is not surprising, therefore, that enterprises—from the corner kiosk to “Kryvorizhstal”—have turned into almost independent political subjects. They make accusations and statements, present demands and set conditions.
Returning to the topic of the Constitution, let us note that in a feudal system, it is not only unnecessary but contradicts its essence—the changeable and confusing system of relations with countless organizational and legal mini-hierarchies. Feudalism exists at the expense of rent, and in our case, the main rent is collected for “solving issues.” If there are uniform rules accessible to all (which is what the Constitution presupposes), there will be no more feudalism. Moreover, the Constitution, by its nature, establishes and formalizes relations between citizens and the state, not between enterprises and the state. Our system provides for the priority of enterprises; the citizen for it is merely a resource requiring renewal—feeding and fertilizing. Note that for a citizen to seriously conduct business with the state, he needs to undergo a certain initiation, which, like any initiation, involves a trial. The trial consists in the citizen becoming an enterprise—in the simplest case, registering as an individual entrepreneur. The priority of this understanding of reality exists everywhere; for example, I have encountered banks providing online payment tracking services to clients, but not to everyone. For this service, the client must be an enterprise, although your humble servant, for instance, makes many more such payments than some enterprises.
And last. The higher subjectivity of enterprises compared to private individuals solves the tasks of management and control. There are significantly fewer enterprises than citizens, and they are much easier to manage. Moreover, they are always in debt to the state (king), because they do not pay taxes, since they are specially created in such a way that they cannot be paid. But this is forgiven in exchange for tribute, which they pay to the feudal lord (it would be more correct to speak not of tribute, that is, a regular payment, but of the need to pay “when asked”).