PERSPECTIVES: How many ways can you spell slave? (01/17/99)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

How many ways can you spell slave?

Until quite recently, one of the constant social factors in Ukrainian life has been slavery. It's rarely discussed, but there it is: for most of their thousand-year history, large numbers of Ukrainians have been slaves, starting with Kyivan Rus', which had a regular slave market and a complex legal code to define the institution. After Rus' disappeared in the 13th century, generation after generation of Ukrainians was harnessed into serfdom, first under the Poles, later the Russians and Austrians.

The people called it "panschyna," from "pan," the Polish word for master. Serfdom, of course, was common throughout Europe. It's a form of slavery where people are bound - "prykripleni" - to the land hence another word for serfdom: "kripatstvo." The poet, Taras Shevchenko, for example, was a "kripak" - a serf. He belonged to the land. The land, with everything and every living creature on it, belonged to the master. The serfs worked for him. He told them what to do. He could punish and reward. He was the master. They were the slaves.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, many Ukrainians laboring on the vast estates of Polish masters fled east to the wide open steppes, where land was plentiful and people could be free. Here, though, another danger lurked. Tatars - descendants of the Mongols who had destroyed Kyiv in 1240 - raided Ukrainian settlements and took captives to Kaffa to be sold at a huge slave market for the labor-hungry imperial economy of the Ottoman Turks.

One famous captive was Roksolana, the daughter of a Galician priest. She became the concubine and later the exclusive wife of the greatest of sultans, Suleiman the Magnificent. She was the exception.

Most captives ended up as laborers, gallery slaves or janissaries ("yanychary") - children taken captive and raised to be soldiers in an elite unit of the sultan's army. To fight the Tatars, Ukrainians organized themselves into a potent self-defense force: the Zaporozhian Kozaks, the freewheeling, bawdy, robust warriors of legend who continue to epitomize the Ukrainian self-image much more so than slavery. Some of Shevchenko's most stirring poems, especially "Hamaliia," recount the Kozaks' daring, sea-borne raids to Istanbul to free their brethren.

Alongside slavery, the other recurring factor in Ukrainian history is anarchy. Brutal, often deliberately cruel treatment, coupled with callous disdain for Ukrainian religious beliefs, stoked the serfs' resentment, which periodically exploded into violent uprisings.

The most famous was in 1648 when Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, an aging officer of the officially sanctioned "registered Kozaks," sustained a grave injustice and raised the Kozaks in rebellion against the ruling Poles. Like Wat Tyler's 14th century peasant revolt in England, the French Revolution in 1789 or Nat Turner's 1831 Rebellion in Virginia, Ukrainian peasants seized the opportunity of Khmelnytskyi's rebellion to get immediate, bloody revenge on their tormentors - in this case the Polish "pany" and their overseers.

Everyone, including Khmelnytskyi, was astonished when revenge turned into national revolution: "Up to now," he said, "I have fought because of the wrongs done to me personally ... but by the will of God I have become the independent ruler of Rus.'"

It was not to last and within a century imperial Russia smothered the Kozak movement and Ukrainian autonomy entirely. A deeper, more onerous and cruel version of serfdom was imposed, combined with a ban on Ukrainian cultural expression. Not surprisingly, the peasants rose up again and again, grabbing whatever sharp tools they could to cut down the master, plunder his property and burn down the manor. For nearly two centuries, that was the extent of Ukraine's political program.

Serfdom was abolished in the Austrian Empire in 1848 and in the Russian Empire in 1861, but Ukrainian peasants living in these imperial territories were never given adequate land to survive. In western Ukraine people responded with mass emigration. In tsarist-ruled Ukraine, it led to revolution in 1917. There, half a dozen armies struggled for the next three years, once again spawning bloody anarchy. When the dust settled, Moscow was back in control.

In 1932, Stalin brought back serfdom in the form of collective farms. In the Siberian labor camps, he instituted outright slavery. In 1941, the Nazis invaded Ukraine and forced 2 million Ukrainian men and women to work in Germany's factories and farms. Credit the 20th century with crafting three new words for slave: "kolhospnyk," "katorzhnyk" and "Ostarbeiter."

Today, Ukraine is independent and free. The vast majority of its citizens are descended from slaves. Many former collective farm workers or labor camp inmates had first-hand experience with slavery. What impact does all that have on Ukraine? The result, I'm afraid, is anarchy yet again, a situation where lawlessness prevails, where the goal is to plunder whatever you can while you can.

Just consider: high government officials siphon funds into Swiss bank accounts. Middle-level bureaucrats solicit bribes every time a permit or license needs a rubber stamp. A shadowy "mafia" demands protection money.

The Verkhovna Rada resists meaningful reform, while changing the rules for business any time a majority sees a chance for short-term advantage.

People, caught up in the turmoil, avoid the normal political process and keep their heads down for fear they'll be cut off. No wonder so many seek visas through honest channels or corrupt to emigrate to America or Canada.

Is all, then, lost? Is Ukraine destined to repeat the historic pattern of slavery, followed by anarchy, then followed by slavery once again? I think not. To be sure, there is anarchy of a sort, but nothing remotely like the catastrophes that history records, and there are many positive factors to which one can point.

For the first time in centuries, Ukraine as a nation is ruling itself and, despite its problems, continues to follow some fundamental rules set by the International Monetary Fund, something Ukraine's neighbor, Russia, is unable to do thus far. In contrast to the collapsed Russian ruble, therefore, the Ukrainian hryvnia is holding its value. Another enormously important sign is the level of tolerance Ukraine's many ethnic groups show toward each other. The xenophobia and anti-Semitism again so prominent in Russia are absent in Ukraine. Religion, banned for three generations, is also playing an important role, offering a set of values to offset the spiritual emptiness that is one of the sorry legacies of the Soviet system.

Looking at the wreckage left by the Communists, it's easy to get frustrated, but if we remember that we're dealing with a society with a long legacy of slavery, perhaps we can better understand why people act as they do. Ivan Franko, author of the prophetic "Moisei" (1905) - one of his many works of genius - would have understood. In this epic poem his hero, Moses, has been leading his people through the desert searching for the Promised Land. Those who experienced slavery are despairing and argue for going back to Egypt. Moses fights their defeatism and takes heart from the children who play at building walls and city structures out of dirt and sand.

I bet Franko would smile and see today's Ukrainians as latter-day Israelites, wandering through the desert. Give it time, he would say. It's been only seven years. Normally, it takes 40. As long as there is peace and freedom in Ukraine, change will come. The present, he would point out, is better than the past, and the future will be better still.

Happy New Year, everybody.

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