PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

Destruction in Afghanistan; turmoil in Ukraine

Like many others, I've been preoccupied by the political turmoil in Ukraine sparked by the murder of journalist Heorhii Gongadze, but I've also been following another story: the Taliban's destruction of two immense Buddha statues carved into a cliff in Afghanistan. One of them was 175 feet tall and believed to be the tallest in the world. The other, at 120 feet, was almost as imposing. Carved more than 1,500 years ago, these two monuments were considered among the world's greatest religious and cultural treasures. The Taliban, though, viewed them as "un-Islamic idols" and ordered their demolition. People throughout the world, including many Muslims, were outraged. "These are not idols," one Muslim intellectual said, "but statues from the third century." Despite appeals from all corners of the world, the Taliban went ahead and with dynamite, tanks, rockets and picks, smashed the two statues.

This isn't the first time, of course, that fanatics of one kind or another destroyed an irreplaceable cultural monument. Spanish Conquistadors tore down Aztec and Mayan temples and used the stones to build churches. Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-Tung sanctioned the destruction of more than 6,000 Tibetan monasteries and, as recently as 1991, Serbian gunboats shelled Dubrovnik, a lovely Croatian city on the Adriatic known mainly for its libraries, monasteries and oceanside cafes.

Learning of the destruction of the Buddhist statues, I couldn't help but think of similar vandalism in Ukraine. An utterly heartbreaking book, "The Lost Architecture of Kiev" by Titus D. Hewryk, lists nearly 50 churches, monasteries, fountains and cemeteries that were demolished during Stalin's rule in the 1930s. Tragically, this was a common practice in Soviet Union. Churches in nearly every community were destroyed. So were libraries: in 1964 under Khrushchev, a Communist Party activist burned down the Ukrainian Section of the State Library of the Academy of Sciences, including the archives of the Ukrainian Central Rada from 1918.

The damage this kind of barbarism causes is incalculable. A 1989 poster from Kyiv depicts a stone wall: each stone is inscribed with the image of one of Ukraine's historic churches, but the wall has several gaps. Each is labeled with the name of a church the Soviets destroyed. A caption reads, "Losing the Past, you lose the Future." Take away enough stones, the poster implies, and the wall collapses.

The Soviets attacked Ukrainian history and culture as "bourgeois nationalist." Hence the wholesale destruction of visible images that linked people with their past. Stalin was motivated by Taliban-like fanaticism; his successors by the inertia of evil and the compulsion to stay in power. In many ways, the struggle of the dissidents in the 1960s and 1970s involved the right to maintain Memory, to speak the Truth - both capitalized. One of the principal rallying points for the struggle was Oles Honchar's 1968 novel "The Cathedral," where a student in a gritty steel town leads a successful fight against Communist bureaucrats to save an ancient church. The book was banned and its author denounced, but the message resounded. Honchar's cathedral symbolized something valuable that transcended the arbitrary power of the party and the state.

Today, thousands of people in Ukraine - a high proportion of them youth - are demonstrating against Leonid Kuchma. President Kuchma, to be sure, is no Stalin or Khrushchev. He's not even a Boris Yeltsin or Vladimir Putin. He never ordered tanks to fire on his parliamentary enemies like Boris Yeltsin did in 1994 and he hasn't obliterated a provincial capital like Vladimir Putin did in Chechnya. Still, people are in the streets. Why?

For three generations the Soviet state owned all the property and controlled every aspect of society. It had the power to destroy whatever it wanted, even thousand-year-old churches. Truth was whatever the Communist Party said it was. Anyone who thought otherwise was punished, even killed. Not surprisingly, many Ukrainians lost their moral compass and any sense of initiative. And, having lost a good part of their past, they lost the sense of where they were going as a nation.

Nothing lasts forever, though, including evil, and if they didn't know where they were going in 1991, Ukrainians at least knew where they didn't want to be - and that was in the Soviet Union. Offered the choice, more than 90 percent of Ukrainians voted for independence. The elite that assumed power, however, consisted almost entirely of Communists who had shed their party label but continued to conduct business as if nothing much had changed. Instead of taking the nation in a new direction, they kept the old bureaucratic structures. Far too often, they solicited privileges and bribes, and helped themselves to the country's resources. Voices demanding government reform, openness and honesty were routinely ignored. And, ultimately, those who exposed corruption and wrongdoing were killed. At least that's what happened to Mr. Gongadze.

His murder last year was the event that broke the dam. Now, 10 years after independence, anger is boiling over. President Kuchma's opponents have been playing audiotapes that appear to implicate him in the crime. Mr. Kuchma claims the tapes are phony, part of a conspiracy to destabilize the country. For many, though, that no longer matters. Mr. Kuchma was in charge, and, instead of seeing a leader who lined up with those who long for progress and change, they see someone who protected special interests that look to maintain the past.

The destruction of the Buddha statues in Afghanistan is a reminder of where Ukraine was just a couple of generations ago. That era, when the government could destroy religious monuments and people's lives with impunity, left a trauma that is taking Ukrainians decades to overcome. Its vestiges still poison Ukrainian society.

The present turmoil is distressing, but ultimately it will turn out to be but a symptom of a more profound historical process. Government force will not resolve the issues. Instead, far deeper forces than the power of vested things will be decisive. With the all the pain and effort we associate with birth, a new political mentality is emerging, one that holds a few things sacred: 1,000 year-old churches, a journalist's right to report the truth, the people's right to assemble, a politician's oath of office.

Weep for Afghanistan's loss. Have faith in Ukraine's recovery.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 25, 2001, No. 12, Vol. LXIX

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