A View from The Rada (2022 Feb. 22nd)

Maurice returned the next day, well rested.

“You enjoyed yourself quite a bit yesterday!”

Maurice had rampaged four second hand book stores. Benedict didn’t get any books for himself; he had to carry Maurice’s bags of books through half the town. But at least he fell asleep exhausted that day.

“I’m going to store all of them in the shed. This is our library on politics, international relations, economy, everything necessary for a proper analysis.”

They moved a second hand shelf in place and organised all the books.

Reading them all would take forever. Benedict of course had read a lot of Marxist texts, but Maurice was a different species. He was old school with education. He believed in good old values of diligence, learning, discipline.

Maurice beheld the fruits of their endeavour for almost a whole two minutes. Then he turned away and open Benedict’s laptop, ready for work. Benedict knew he would leave the shelf like a wounded prey until a moment he saw fit. Then he would descend on it like a hawk.

“Today is about the 22nd of February 2022 in the Rada. Nothing else”, said Maurice.

“The day of the reaction to the Duma’s recognition of LPR and DPR and to Putin’s speech the 21st.”

Heavenly Hundred Day

— and day of the ultimatum

“It is close to the 20th February — the Heavenly Hundred Day — where Ukraine commemorates Petro Poroshenko’s Heroes of Ukraine, the protesters killed in the Maidan protests.”

“Not a nice move of the Russians. We now have seen their discussions leading up to the moment. They expressed nothing but Russian solidarity with their kin in Donetsk and Lugansk. The coincidence with the dates doesn’t shine through in their internal discussions at all.”

“I’m less convinced. Putin could have waited a couple of weeks. He did react very fast with the recognition and special military operation.”

“OSCE shows increased intensity in the ceasefire violations.”

“The graph was fuzzy and a matter of interpretation at best. Both Rada and Duma agrees about the increase, but claims as to guilt are of course dubious. Pick your side.”

“For once I agree with you, Maurice. If the intention was to pressure Ukraine to get back to Minsk, Putin should have distanced the events from this very sensitive day in the national self-conscience.”

Maurice leaned back. Had he been smoking, he would have huffed and puffed his pipe for a long time now. He was reading, but kept going back to the same statements. Then he set the course as always. In the end Benedict could only influence. Maurice was the man at the rudder.

“We need to approach this business on a different scale. This isn’t football and we need to stop siding with one or the other. We don’t properly understand cultural psychology and identity. I mean, we understand it, but not its ramifications or the scope at which it operates. Culture wars. Was this in essence a culture war that erupted into a real war?”

“An identity crisis on an international scale?”

“Identity, yes. But not a crisis. Identity happens to be everything in the political world.”

“But it is much more than just the political world. IDENTITY reaches from you and me into everything. Our body integrity encompasses who were are, and the past events that defines us.”

“All down to the point where military action can entail plundering of cultural assets. Ukrainian and Russian politicians and intellectuals are fiercely contesting the past and have done so for many, many years.”

“That’s right. When Russia withdrew from Kherson, they took monuments of famous Russians. Perhaps they were afraid that anti-Russian sentiments would escalate to the point where the statues were in risk of being destroyed.”

Now it was Benedict that started to pace around the floor.

“I’m an old-school Marxist, as you know. Or at least I perceive myself to be. That means, I try to focus on the material foundation. Dispossessed people are and will be dispossessed. Culture wars… I have always relegated those to the sphere of the ideas. Bourgeois ideology that infest the lower classes and confuses their allegiances. But when we study Russia and Ukraine closely, I feel my certainty is shaken. Is identity really everything.”

Maurice sat and thought.

“Frankly I have had to reposition myself as well. I will always uphold liberal ideals. But the way Ukrainian politicians talk about freedom and liberty, conveys a clear impression of the cultural myth of liberalism rather than liberalism itself. And there is an itself. But it takes reading and steadfastness.”

“We face similar problems. You and I both have a poor man’s ideological basic understanding. But we are novices when it comes to cultural analysis. To political analysis. I assume that is why you wanted all these books.”

“Precisely. But all in due time. Let’s summarise the day.”

“Can we try to at least work on two things at once? The factual and the mythological. This is what irks me: The speed with which some factual or historical observation take on its own life almost immediately after having been expressed.”

“All down to the point where, if I write an article summing up the salient points of a historical event, and the facts happen to support a specific view, proponents of that view with seize on the article immediately and wave it in the air in all contexts where the viewpoint is mentioned. But the use of the article is what now drives a myth. It will take minutes before much more is read into it than what was originally concluded.”

“On the other hand, we cannot really strip away that layer just because it is emotionally fraught, can we?”

“Is the essence of justice not that it is blind to such emotions?”

“One, foreign policy is not justice. Rules are culture bound, and international politics operate above and beyond culture. Two, we ignore the fact that justice is exactly criticised today for constitutionalising the hegemony’s needs.”

Maurice gave him a furrow-browed look.

“Besides, it’s been nagging me lately. Are we any better? Just because you and I examine the behaviour of millions of people, we ought to remind ourselves how uncontrollable our own emotions can be over something as simple as a fight with a neighbour.”

Maurice laughed scornfully of him.

“Well, Benedict, you never cease to surprise me. You? A petty neighbour dispute? I find that laughable. Well, I can tell you, there are many people I dislike, but I have always been fortunate enough that I can simple distance myself from them. The advantage of being a loner.”

“But what if you couldn’t? My point is that once feelings take control, can we really stop them? We engage in all the usual rubbish: We demand satisfaction, the last word, we want our version represented. Or, if it is bad enough, blind with rage we cannot for the life of it attribute any other motive to the counterpart than cruelty.”

Maurice sat with his fingers tangled and gazed at Benedict who was thinking.

“Fire takes fuel. Isn’t your own misfortune part of that emotion? Remove the fuel and the fire extinguishes fast.”

“Perhaps. My worst moments go back to a time where I had lost complete control over my own life. The communist claim that strife in the lower classes is rooted in economic hardship has a shadow side: Built into it is the recognition that we are basically not nice under adverse conditions.”

“I don’t want to teach you about Marxism, but I thought that the point was that without educating the masses that was exactly the conclusion. Hence the need to educate the masses.”

Benedict lit up in a smile for a change.

Maurice went to the library.

“I’m thinking about Samuel P. Huntington’s idea that cultural divides have become the prevailing driving force on the world scene. It ties into our discussion about the essence of identity. He compares with Mearsheimer who focuses on individual states as a homogeneous group.”

SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON, CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS.

A statist paradigm, for instance, leads John Mearsheimer to predict that “the situation between Ukraine and Russia is ripe for the outbreak of security competition between them. […] Russia and Ukraine might overcome this dynamic and learn to live together in harmony, but it would be unusual if they do.”

[…]

A civilizational approach […] focuses instead on the civilizational fault line that divides Orthodox eastern Ukraine from Uniate western Ukraine

“His book is from 1997. I can see his cultural perspective. The difference in perception is stark, but asymmetrical. How many times have not we seen the Duma members hope for a unification of a ‘fraternal’ people, while the Rada deputies harbour nothing but disgust towards the Russian people?”

“I would call the cultural differences between East and West Ukraine minor compared with the bigger differences between Atlanticist mentality and Russian. However, I when it comes to the war, I prefer Mearsheimer’s power-struggle image. But in a resurrected Cold War version. The Russo-Ukraine war transcends a cultural difference. Without NATO it would never have reached the scale it did.”

22.02.2022

https://www.rada.gov.ua//meeting/stenogr/show/7964.html

“Each party starts off with an official statement. No surprises they are the polar opposite of the corresponding official statements by the parties in the Duma.”

“Of course they reiterate the points we all know, but with renewed vigour.”

Benedict started the usual routine.

OLEG IVANOVYCH KULINICH (TRUST)

This decision is aimed at violating the territorial integrity of Ukraine and its sovereignty, in fact, it is an attack on Ukraine as a subject of international politics.

[…]

We are not only talking about the physical invasion of our territories, which has been going on for 8 years, but also about the significant intensification of the information war and the constant siege of Ukraine, and the actual point of this siege is the center of Europe.

[…]

Shelling has intensified in Donetsk and Luhansk regions and, unfortunately, there are victims again. In addition, there have been constant provocations on the contact line over the past week,

“So again, the Western media started off completely off guard. Both the Duma and the Rada have expressed nothing but the obvious, that they have been at war for eight years. It took the West years before leaving their ‘Russia disrupted the peace out of the blue’ version of reality. Probably when Wikipedia started to have that fact in place, the cataract of pathetic journalists felt it was safe to agree.”

— Minsk? —

VIKTOR VASYLOVICH BONDAR (FOR THE FUTURE)

For 8 years, we have been trying to adhere to the agreements that were signed within the framework of the Minsk negotiations.

“THAT is a contended statement.”

“He’s not done:”

For 8 years, we have been talking about how we are looking for an option to do everything so that the territory of the so-called self-proclaimed republics returns to Ukraine and begins to develop normally, receives funds, receives all the opportunities for Ukraine to revive this territory.

Unfortunately, all these years, everything has been done to incite a military conflict, everything has been done to support these self-proclaimed leaders, and, unfortunately, we have seen that Russia has pursued a policy of, in fact, occupying this territory.

“Later that day, Opposition Platform - For Life raises doubts about this statement. Since they are known to be pro-Russian (although people fail to mention what that implicates… that they lie?), they probably find it safest to start out with the usual assurances”

MYKOLA LEONIDOVICH SKORYK (OPPOSITION PLATFORM - FOR LIFE)

I am sure there is no person who would question the territorial integrity of our state. Donetsk is Ukraine, Luhansk is Ukraine, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is Ukraine.

[…]

We must understand that […] have largely lost our subjectivity.

“He refers to failure to support citizens on the Russian-speaking side properly and how the parliament largely failed to recognise that Russian speaking citizens are Ukrainian too. Minsk required Donbas to be reintegrated economically with Ukraine again.”

Today, people on both sides of the contact line are our citizens, citizens of Ukraine, who are suffering, who have been without electricity, without water, and under shelling for the eighth year. And, unfortunately, colleagues, we have to admit with you that practically nothing has been done to correct this situation. No patriotic or other statements will fundamentally change this situation.

“The view about actually providing help to people in the Donbas area is also represented by the Serhiy Shakhov of Trust party.

SERHIY SHAKHOV (TRUST)

Are we not responsible for the people of Donbas with you? We should not throw people into the fire today, we should take care of the Ukrainian people and Donbas – this is Ukraine. Immediately today…

“Koltunovich repeats the stance on territorial integrity and then repeats concrete aspects of where Ukraine has failed to implement Minsk.”

KOLTUNOVICH (OPPOSITION PLATFORM - FOR LIFE)

If we continue to insist, the President will be persuaded to implement the Minsk agreements, then he should come out and clearly say that there is point 4, there is point 5, there are points 8 and 9, there is point 11, which the Verkhovna Rada must adopt.

It must lift the economic blockade, it must pass a resolution or law on elections, amnesty, special status.

“From the (typical) Ukrainian perspective, they felt that Minsk was a Putin-ploy to hinder road to NATO.”

NIKITA RUSLANOVICH POTURAEV (SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE)

When they received a “no” answer from the Western world about our non-admission to NATO, they began to put pressure on us through the Normandy format, through the Minsk agreements, wanting, through the implementation of the Minsk agreements, as they see it, to destabilize the country from within, to take away our sovereignty and independence from within. And they also received a “no.”

“This conflict ties everything and anything into one giant knot!”

“Minsk is a political contact line. Though an instrument for peace, it also is the place where differences meet. If you look at its history on Wikipedia, you can see the sparks flying constantly. The mistrust is simply running unchecked. The history is fraught with mutual accusations of violating the agreement.

But as I said, numerous modern themes directly come to life in this situation too. Colonialism, the modern state concept, political identity and everything imaginable.”

“Then I propose that we at a later point studies and scrutinises Minsk. There is a lot of psychology we can learn from it.”

Maurice nodded. Clearly he was getting tired of listening to politicians.

— Powerful emotions —

“As the day progresses, the emotions run the gamut from sensible condemnation to shrill battlecries.”

“Something in the Ukraine camp is certainly mismatched with something in the Russia camp. We have seen the discussions in the Duma. Their level of lack of realism amounts to an obsolete idea that Ukrainians are their fraternal people, their brothers, who - once rid from Western influence - will embrace friendship with their lost Asian brothers.”

“It is certainly another major, huge theme, that any serious student of the conflict needs to delve into.”

Benedict banged his finger on the table.

“These emotions are simple to understand, of course. I know people who feel provoked by anything I say. The harder I try to be friendly and gentle, the worse it becomes. If I am unfriendly, it confirms their theories about me. If I am friendly, my falseness confirms even more theories.”

“So can your friends then point to a moment in time when you had colonised them and subjected them to policing and famine?”

“Probably. For sure they react to something and I may be to blame. I absolutely recognise that historical debt can run deep and permeate the present in a way that cannot be vanquished. The price for colonialism will not be payed for many generations to come. US have similar problems these days.”

“Is that where Ukraine is? It may be where the Rada is, but I have read Ukrainian historians which are way more nuanced than that.”

“The impending war squeezes out a lot of these emotions. Let’s look at them.”

SOLOMIYA BOBROVSKA (VOICE)

Peace in Europe lasted barely 70 years, and in this new world it is firmly stated that war is peace and freedom is slavery. This is, in fact, what the clique, the KGB, is talking about and dreaming about – the revival of the Soviet Union

To begin, in fact, and complete the fight against the “fifth column” is finally to ban pro-Russian political forces.

“Again, the ghost of Soviet times. Almost any reaction from the Russians will be interpreted in that spirit and lead to instant comparison with KGB and Stalin.”

“Historical karma. The question is whether it is unfair. In USA they talk about how the white population of today must bear the responsibility of the actions of several generations earlier white ancestors. Pay reparations, participate in all sorts of anti-colonial soul searching. Why are the descendants of the Soviet era any different?”

“Yes… it is in my view a difficult question! No matter what you think, you set a president which may seem attractive in the current situation, but decades later, the same principle can come back and hit you.”

KUBIV STEPAN IVANOVICH (EUROPEAN SOLIDARITY)

We, as the Ukrainian parliament, cannot continue the life we had before: gambling, advertising of electronic cigarettes, force-feeding of convicts, statistical changes, and a bunch of other senseless laws. That’s what the inadequate government offered us - the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine - just yesterday.

The people see that these are inadequate positions that urgently need to be changed. The people see that the monomajority has been fooled by “big theft”, and I propose to now engage in “Great Construction” - great construction of the state and great construction of the army.

“Of course to European Solidarity this is something between a wakeup call and a moment to shine in greatness. Now they can really kick the other parties with a told-you-so attitude. And it completely eludes them, that it is exactly their constant belligerence that has deadlocked a diplomatic solution which now is erupting into war.”

OLENA SHULYAK (SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE)

The Kremlin probably thought that this decision would cause us to despair, but they were wrong

[…]

This means: to have calm confidence and a cool head, not to succumb to the aggressor’s provocations and not to aggravate the situation with your emotional populist exclamations and actions.

“Kicking in both directions and taking a swing at European Solidarity who exploited the situation to take a swing at them.”

“The shrillest voices come at the end of the day.”

IRYNA VOLODYMYRIVNA GERASHCHENKO (EUROPEAN SOLIDARITY)

I want to say that this state, which is our neighbor, has degraded over these 20 years to such a degree that today not only Putin and his gang are responsible for the blood and tears of Ukrainians, but every Russian who voted for Putin, who voted for this State Duma, who elected these senators and who did not come out to protest against the war today. You are not our brothers.

[…]

You are trying to take away the future of an absolutely democratic, peace-loving, civilized country. And burn in hell!

[…]

And we, as “European Solidarity”, gave you these proposals four months ago. If we do not lend a helping hand to our national idea today, the strengthening of the Ukrainian army, there will be no Ukraine. Is this really incomprehensible!

“God, she is furious at the entire Rada of peace loving weaklings. And what clearer expression of hate towards an entire nation can you imagine?. Then there is this Taras person.”

TARAS IVANOVICH BATENKO (FOR THE FUTURE)

We emphasize the terrorist nature of the so-called LPR and DPR, and that they cannot be otherwise by their very nature.

“However, he calls for not breaking ties with the Trilateral Contact Group.”

We support the convening, immediate convening of the UN Security Council, immediate renewal of the OSCE to monitor the situation on the contact line.

“He also mentions the passing away of Ivan Dzyuba this very day. He was an author that advocating development of Ukrainian culture since the Soviet era. In fact, I think we should read his »Internationalism or Russification?« at some point.”

“How about: "

UNKNOWN SPEAKER

[…] when Kyiv was founded in the 5th century, we made a mistake: after 800 years, we sent the grandson of the Kyiv prince, who came to these swamps and founded this Muscovy, this Moscow and then this invasion, which for many years has not allowed our independent Ukraine to develop, let’s not forget about it. (Applause)

“Again, the fight over cultural relics. Ukrainians are Kievan Rus’ rightful heirs in this version of history. The Russians hail from the swamps.”

Maurice leaned back. Then he stood up and said “let’s go for a walk in the woods.”

Benedict loved the way he didn’t have to lock the doors or anything. Maurice simple went into the forest.

While catching up to him, Benedict was thinking about our shared concerns and how ridiculously far from the phenomena in our personal life they often were. “Yes the nation matters, but I think I have been abducted by an alien. If I participate in your nation building project, will you help me return to the spaceship where I was subjected to inhuman treatment?”

And as a clear deviation from most of Benedict’s life, he felt envy towards the renowned peasants of old Russia and Ukraine, which were next to impossible to awaken into political self-consciousness. None of all that meant anything to them. Daily hardship did.

/PARADOX