Stereoscope Ukraine: What to expect from Europe?

Colta.ru continues a joint project that was conceived and implemented by colleagues from the N-SST (Union of Journalists covering events in Eastern Europe) with the support of Frankfurter Allgemeine and the Polish weeklyTygodnik Paowszechny . The English version of materials can be read on sites www.stpol.de and Transitions Online . We are glad to be a Russian platform for publishing these texts.

What do they think in Ukraine about what is happening with the country today? Once a week, five Ukrainian authors answer questions from the artist and journalist Evgenia Belarusian.

Stereoscope Ukraine - Ukraine. Five votes

Evgenia Belarusian

The division of the world into “West” and “East” does not exist for me. It is unclear where these imaginary worlds begin and end.

Nevertheless, events in Ukraine created a wave of publications dedicated to “Europe”, “West” and renunciation of “Western values”. We heard conflicting theses: “Ukraine is Europe”, “Ukrainians on the Maidan were ready to die for the European idea”, “Europe did not appreciate the heroism of the Maidan”, finally “Russia is Europe” and “Russia is fighting with Europe in Ukraine”.

Now the war is going on daily, trying to force Ukraine and many other countries to recognize reality, where the world can be divided into spheres of influence, as a city quarter, for which small mafia groups fight.

Ukraine is forced to take all the burden of responsibility for this war. Russia does not bear any responsibility to residents destroyed by the Russian army.

What place in this confrontation is intended for most of the prosperous countries of Europe? What actions do we expect from those who involuntarily became a participant in this war, to whom Russia imposed a conflict, from which no country participating in it wins?

Question fourth. What to expect from Europe?

Boris Kherson

As for me, then the slightest embarrassment of the word "West" and "Europe" did not cause me. With the discussion between Slavophiles and Westerners, I am familiar with the school bench: “The Writer’s Diary” of Dostoevsky, his “Idiot”, where Myshkin proves that Catholic is worse than the atheist, Pushkin’s “slanderers of Russia” and Tyutchev “patriotic” verses.

Not to mention the Soviet propaganda that stuffed the soreness.

For all the difference between the Russian Empire and the USSR, the idea of ​​the radical distinction of Russian civilization from the dead stones of Europe remained the size of constant. And two hundred, and a hundred years ago, and fifty was in the head in our heads: we-children of Russian civilization, Soviet Lee, Orthodox-Vizantine-everything is one.

Following Chaadaev's face, my face of the anti -Soviet was turned west. Despite the fact that I at one time accepted Orthodoxy, and Russian culture was closer to me Polish or German.

Soon after Ukraine gaining independence, it became clear that Ukraine turned out to be between two power fields. The traditional, connecting it with Russia, and the “ideal” direction - to the West, to Europe.

It was always clear to me that Russia would not be delighted with the reorientation of Ukraine. But I thought, of course, that the case would be limited to gas wars, attempts to return Ukraine using powerful economic levers. Like many of my colleagues, I made a mistake.

Today, Ukraine was drawn into a real war, which was not ready for. It seems that we should fight on two fronts - against the so -called militias, who have recently decided on explosions and terrorist attacks in peaceful Ukrainian cities, and against their own problems like corruption and inept foreign policy. Without help, we lose this war - there would be no need to get involved. We have no special chances.

The ideology of merging with Europe is very, very tempting. But how ready is Europe ready to accept us, bent under the load of difficult problems? Together with the hostility of Russia, which is waving a nuclear baton and sends long -term strategic aviation to “patrol” the territories of its European neighbors?

What would I want from our European allies? Support for our army with defensive weapons. Even more stringent statements about the inadmissibility of further escalation of aggression against Ukraine. Support for our collapsing economy. But you never know what I would like!

Olena Stepov

For me, as for any resident of Donbass, “Europe” and “West” were something frightening and forbidden. We are probably the only region of Ukraine that remained in the post -Soviet space.

Donbass was very far from Europe and is so close to Russia that residents who never leave the regions could judge the “West” and “Europe” only indirectly.

I do not want to talk about what Europe is for me, which I know only thanks to the Internet, artists, museums, writers, inventions and films. I will tell you what Donbass is: enterprises operating on outdated equipment; corruption in all authorities; education built on humiliation of the student and the “purchase” of assessments; growth of tuberculosis and drug addiction; high level of alcoholism; The catastrophic state of ecology, black dust, burning landfills, low quality of water and living standards.

So that people do not compare their lives with the European one, “West” and “Europe” seem to be much more terrible than life in Russia. Yes, yes, the story of “rotting capitalism” is still alive in the post-Soviet space. “Do you want to live even worse? You will, if the West defeats ” - this is what the residents of Donbass have heard for the past 10 years.

With fear of hunger, devastation, rallies and war, the political technologists of Russia of generations that grew up in the USSR control. In 2009, in our border city of Sverdlovsk, we decided to hold a rap festival. Rap?! What is terrible in this? But we were forbidden! The city culture department issued a verdict that it was "a western, alien to us culture."

We held this festival, despite the ban. Then I realized that the Donbass is very far from Europe. Then I realized why a significant part of the Donbass was against the Orange Maidan and the European Course of Ukraine. Donbass wanted to live like Russia, as it was the only example of life for him.

Feudal Russia does not want to release the feudal Donbass, since after the modernization and Europeanization of the Donbass, Russians will be able to see an undesirable example of development for them. And the perennial, created by the Russian media, the picture of “rotting Europe” will be a crooked mirror.

Therefore, now, using the enslavement of Donbass developed by the years, Russia is waging a war - primarily for maintaining its imaginary power.

Should Europe help us? I think yes. If only because it risks being poisoned by the poison of Russian chauvinism. How? To contribute to the speedy reform in Ukraine and the tough international isolation of the occupier. The light of the lighthouse for Donbass destroyed by the Russian world should be a prosperous, prosperous, developed, modernized Ukraine.

Oleksandra butler

If we decided to discuss the post -Soviet past, then I would confidently say that for my region - Crimea - it was always real. And in connection with the occupation, it seems, will remain a long future.

Olena Stepova talks about the Donbass as the only Ukrainian region remaining in the post -Soviet space - I will say that no, he is far from the only one. In this sense, Crimea was a reserve with the most numerous May Day demonstrations in Ukraine, which, like in Soviet times, took place without any emancipative or social requirements.

Everyone considered him “their own” - Belarusians, Russians, Ukrainians - and it was believed that Crimea belongs to everyone, as in the days of the USSR: “international health resort”, or, with the words of Pablo Neruda, “Order on Planet Earth”.

For me, Crimea has always been a kind of Soviet house, and the "West" was not frightening and stranger. I visited Moscow later than in Vilnius and Warsaw, and the longest journey in my life was in the United States, where I saw and relaxed San Francisco and dilapidated Detroit. In my favorite book by Vasily Aksenov, the Island of Crimea describes the possibilities of my “European Crimea”: this is how I would like the Yalta Embankment and the road to Koktebel. I wanted to engage in social activities for this.

The worst thing is that only when the occupation began, I realized that Crimea has something to lose. Europe for me has always been associated with certain rules of the game, the basis for which human rights became. These international rules still acted in Crimea, and suddenly, during the occupation, they were completely canceled.

Today is exactly a year since I left Crimea. On this day, Russian invaders captured two of my friends. They spent two weeks in captivity. They also searched for me, bypassing the apartments of university friends.

Then, in March 2014, I really expected the reaction from Europe. She was not followed. It seemed to us that she should be screaming. Now, for the sake of preserving the lives of people and the country, we are waiting for financial support and weapons from Europe.

Ivan Yakovina

Europe, which many Ukrainians dream about and are afraid of, is, of course, the concept is not geographical, but civilizational. The ambivalence of the attitude towards her of post -Soviet people is not difficult to explain. On the one hand, many are attracted to European freedoms and quality of life. On the other hand, the same people are afraid of civil liability, without which there can be no good medicine and high -quality roads.

Like a teenager seeking freedom, but not ready to switch to full self -sufficiency, society rushes between Western liberalism and Soviet paternalism. In the Ukrainian case, the situation is also complicated by the uneven socio-political growing up of citizens. If it is difficult to distinguish the way of thought of the inhabitants of the Western regions of the country from the Middle European, then in central and especially eastern Ukraine the state is still perceived as a “parent”, whose direct duty is to feed and dress their “children”.

Moreover, in conditions of obvious weakness and poverty of their own state, Ukrainians look for others for the role of the “parent”. In the center of the country, people almost demand the participation of the West in their fate. They are firmly convinced that Europe and the United States are simply obliged to help them, force them to “go to school” and “do lessons”, hinting that otherwise they can “contact a bad company”. Many oriental Ukrainians have long been hoping for Russia, expecting that it will allow them to remain in the political "childhood" forever.

Perhaps the best strategy of the West in this situation would help Ukrainians who are ready to take responsibility for their own lives. Much more than weapons and loans, Ukraine needs student exchange programs, internships for young specialists and European experience in the development of local self -government. Ukraine is not needed by the large -scale assistance of the West, if it itself becomes part of it, and European values ​​are firmly rooted in the heads of its citizens.

Roman Dubasevich

As a return replica, I will tell you about one episode that seemed important to me for our discussion.

A couple of days ago, after breakfast, my acquaintance and I decided to take a short walk. The weather was beautiful: the second day of the real spring, the sun, the full twitter of birds and the first, a little intoxicated from winter hibernation, bumblebees. In a small forest in the Hamburg region, Volksdorf stood a stupefying smell of a new cheering moisture mixed with a bonfire from last year’s branches - exactly the same as in our dachas and gardens. But the more beautiful the spring and the awakening of the winter world became, the more difficult it was to believe what happened in Ukraine, where people died massively and continue to die.

From my thoughts, I came out when, after a few minutes, Mari-Louise and I stumbled upon a blocked road-with a high plastic fence equipped with signal lights, exactly the same as during repair work. "Look, have you ever seen a" frog bargain "?" She asked me, smiling. I stared at the sign with a drawn frog. “It is done once a year so that they can calmly move to spawning from one lake to another. And although there are very few of them, for a whole week he will crawl three or four, the Civil Committee decided that they should be protected from ubiquitous cyclists. Although the head of the committee, probably, does not mind the disappearance of cars from his street, ”my conductor smiled.

Continuing to listen to how difficult it is to obtain permission to demolish even sick trees in this forest that was declared the “environmental zone”, I involuntarily felt envy and pain because, as it seemed to me, the life of frogs and trees in Germany is more human life in Ukraine and Russia. At the same time, I felt a great gratitude for this walk, which distracted me from heavy thoughts about Ukraine, and for this story.

The financial and economic assistance of Europe is very important to us. But for me, the plot with frogs turned out to be no less important. We need such stories. As many such plots as possible. After all, they show how Germany from the brutal and exhausted war, and with it Europe turned into a civilized world, where even the life of a frog turned out to be a subject of social care.