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JOHN MARONE, KYIV
REMEMBERING GOGOL BETWEEN INDEPENDENCE AND ELECTIONS
Ukraine recently marked 16 years of independence, on August 24th. In less than a month, on September 30th, Ukrainians will vote for a new parliament in early elections.
One might be tempted to think that a sense of national purpose is foremost in the minds of many Ukrainians and their leaders, but that would mean taking the country too seriously.
Enter Nikolay Gogol, the 19th century writer claimed by Ukraine and Russia alike. Gogol was only all too familiar with the foibles of his fellow Ukrainians. Perhaps that’s why one of his most famous literary techniques was evoking laughter through tears. In other words, Gogol would deal with serious issues such as official incompetence, corruption and undue deference to authority in a comical setting.
Literary critics have traditionally attributed this technique to the writer’s need to get around Czarist Russia’s strict censorship. But, Moscow cannot be blamed for everything bad that happens in Ukraine. A brief look at Ukraine’s current political environment shows that laughter through tears is the natural state of affairs in the country.
After 16 years of independence, Ukraine is still deeply divided between east and west, both in the domestic and geopolitical sense. Instead of resolving the issue, it has conveniently – comically – managed to end up with two heads of state: President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Gogol would have appreciated the irony of both these national leaders being called “Victors.” The September 30 snap elections are sort of supposed to decide who’s actually in charge of the country, but that wouldn’t be any fun, would it? Instead, we are all being treated to the usual exchange of public accusations and personal intrigues, where procedure, law and public duty serve as mere backdrops to the main comical performance. To anyone unfamiliar with Ukrainian politics, this depiction might seem cynical, or at best an exaggeration meant to highlight a more subtle point. Aren’t politicians everywhere farcical? Anyone who has lived in Ukraine, however, could not help but to notice how some of the absurdities of Gogol’s plots are amazingly true to detail even over a hundred years later. Policemen do drag people off to jail for no reason, and local officials do trip over themselves publicly in order to impress their superiors in the capital.
More importantly, the comic element of all this serves a very real purpose in real life. Not being taken serious is not the worst thing for an official in Ukraine. Most laugh all the way to the bank, with the real gut buster coming when the courts get involved. Did you ever hear the one about the corrupt official who was finally convicted, but got the first couple years of his sentence suspended? As for the public, having a good laugh is sometimes the only relief they get. If you’re poor and have a run in with the law in Ukraine, you could rot for months and even years in a remand center without ever seeing a judge. And heaven help you if you fit the bill of a crime they want to hang on someone. So having a sense of humor isn’t the worst thing to have in Ukraine.
Nevertheless, the tears eventually shine through. No one should deny Ukrainians’ suffering during the famine of the 1930s or the fright of Chornobyl. More recently, the country has been plagued by military and transportation disasters, the reasons for which have yet to be eradicated. Corruption and nepotism, after all, eat away at personal and public responsibility, on the one hand, and infrastructure and public safety on the other. The resulting disasters are hard to make into a joke.
But the ongoing parliamentary election campaign has directed our attention at more popular matters. All sides – the parties of Yushchenko and Yanukovych, plus perennial opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko – are promising to cancel immunity from prosecution for officials, in addition to the usual pledges to stamp out corruption. Well, they have to come up with something to promise, don’t they? And don’t forget the inevitable pre-election rise in pensions and other social payments. What will unfortunately remain the same are the faces that make up the country’s legislature, although many have already switched teams for the umpteenth time. All of this has caused little grief among Ukraine’s citizens, who have learned throughout history to tend to their own gardens. The country’s Orange Revolution, for many but not all, was more pageant than putsch. The fact that it didn’t turn violent was not indicative of public restraint but rather telling of how little stake the people had in its planning or outcome. The September 30 elections are in many ways a continuation of the Orange Revolution, making a chance of an upset highly unlikely.
This situation doesn’t seem to have upset the business world either. GDP keeps growing and investment continues to pour in. Gogol’s Ukraine was agrarian, lacking the steel mills, chemical plants and machine-building enterprises of today. Moreover, Ukraine is almost in Europe, isn’t it?
Indeed, the modern Ukrainian state looks more serious than ever. Just take a look at all the Mercedes rolling around the capital, or parked in front of Kyiv’s many chic designer boutiques. Unfortunately, an economy built on consumption is just as precarious as one dependent on imported fuel. Some of Gogol’s greatest works have an element of impending disaster looming overhead. Then as now, this threat comes from up north. Russian gas giant Gazprom is slowly but surely tightening its control over the blood stream of Ukraine’s economy, continuing to raise gas prices, while gaining greater control over distribution, storage and transportation to European markets. To what extent Ukrainian officials are selling out their country or simply too helpless to prevent it is a moot point. It also doesn’t matter whether one sees Russia as aggressive or Europe as exclusive. What is important is that Ukraine has serious issues to resolve, such as uniting its Russian speaking eastern regions with the rest of the country, guaranteeing strategic investment and maintaining its position as a crucial energy corridor. If it doesn’t do this, there will be plenty of tears to come, and all the buffoonery of its politicians won’t be enough to keep the public laughing.
John Marone, Kyiv Post Staff Journalist, Ukraine
August 27, 2007
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