May 8, 2015

Ebb and flow of resistance

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When Taras Shevchenko was a little boy in the early 1820s, his grandfather Ivan told him about the Haidamak Rebellion, which he had experienced when he himself had been a youth half a century before. There was no “military-revolutionary command,” no “political arm,” no press releases. Illiterate Ukrainians fed up with serfdom and national/ religious oppression seized whatever sharp object they had and, following leaders who felt they had nothing to lose, went on a rampage. And like many previous and subsequent uprisings in a centuries-long struggle, the Haidamak movement descended into political intrigue and widespread violence. A joint Russian-Polish military force put down the rebellion with horrendous cruelty – slashing, hanging and impaling captured rebels. The leader, Ivan Gonta, was skinned alive then tethered to horses that were stampeded in different directions, tearing him apart while he still breathed. Rendered pieces were nailed to gallows in 14 different towns.

The spectacle was staged in public with witnesses forced to watch the man’s agony – not something anyone was likely to forget, nor was anyone expected to. It was a warning that was heeded for decades, even as the Haidamaks became folk heroes, remembered in songs and legends and, generations hence, inspiring another angry wave against the vested interests whose power, comfort and privilege rested on a foundation of injustice and oppression. Shevchenko wrote an epic poem in 1841 about the Haidamaky.

Two hundred years later, in the 1970s and ‘80s, there was another wave of resistance, this one a global human rights movement during the Cold War to defend a handful of dissidents in a dozen countries, including Soviet Ukraine, who sacrificed their freedom to confront a new ruling class whose power, comfort and privilege also rested on a foundation of injustice and oppression. Worldwide, the weight of millions of letters, petitions, demonstrations, parliamentary actions, radio broadcasts and individual acts of courage eventually toppled another empire founded on and perpetuated by evil. In Kyiv, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Lviv, the gulag in Siberia, at hearings on Capitol Hill, in public squares on four different continents, Ukrainians were at the center of this movement that defined a generation no less than previous ones. Indeed, the pattern in Ukrainian history of resistance goes back at least to the time of Otaman Severin Nalyvaiko (1560-1597), who was tortured to death 200 years before Gonta. He’s still remembered after 450 years. The government of Ukraine struck a silver commemorative coin in his honor and you can get a bottle of vodka with his image on the label.

Other heroes abound: Ustym Karmeliuk, born a serf in tsarist-controlled territory, led a 15-year rebellion before being killed in 1835. In World War I, Ukrainians in the Austrian Empire, inspired by Shevchenko’s admonition to “rise up and rend your chains,” organized the Sich Riflemen who fought for independence. In Russian-ruled portions of Ukraine, Symon Petliura, Nestor Makhno, Otaman Chornyi and others fought foreign occupiers and, tragically, each other. More 20th century resistance movements followed – the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the dissident movement, Rukh. Finally, independence came in 1991 – the culmination of Ukrainians’ struggle, but clearly not the end. There’s the Orange Revolution, the Euro-Maidan Revolution of Dignity and now armed conflict.

Playing malevolent counterpoint to Ukrainians’ centuries-long struggle for freedom and national self-determination is Russia’s equally long effort to deny them this right. Defining their self-esteem by a mythical “great power status,” Russia’s leaders feel compelled to dominate other peoples, forcing them to abandon their languages and culture and assimilate into Moscow’s. As a result, 20th century Ukraine endured Kremlin-imposed atrocities no less cruel than those imposed by Catherine: in the 1930s, mass murder of Ukrainian writers, musicians, scholars and political leaders and the Holodomor; the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939 and the devastating war that followed; deportations to the gulag; arrests of dissidents in the 1970s and ‘80s; Chornobyl, etc.

After Ukraine’s re-established independence, Russia maintained undue influence in its media, business and, through its agents of influence and spies, in the government and military. The Yanukovych administration, backed by Russia, instituted an appalling level of criminality, creating a public environment of disgust, bitterness and rebellion, not unlike that which inspired the Haidamaky – the difference is Ukraine’s population today is literate and peaceful, with a large sector of educated, multilingual, well-connected young people who see their future with Europe, not Russia. Russia’s ruling class, as criminal or more so as Mr. Yanukovych and his “Family,” sees this as a mortal threat. That’s why there’s war. Lifestyles and privilege are at stake for Russia’s ruling class, no less than they were when the Haidamaky rose up.

Today, Ukrainian identity – thanks in large part to the Maidan – is no longer based on blood, religious or linguistic orientation. Ethnic Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Tatars, Armenians and Poles identify themselves as Ukrainian patriots. There is a visceral hostility to Russia for reasons that are now obvious, despite Russian denials and propaganda. Ukraine is no longer isolated from the world, and its rebels are no longer an angry mob. They’re disciplined and organized. Today Ukraine has the support of the United States, the European Union, Canada, Australia, the United Nations and others. Can the country hold on? Of course, regardless of how bad short-term developments might be, this nation that has prevailed for a thousand years and will do so in the generations to come.

Taras Shevchenko was inspired not only by the stories he heard from his grandfather and the wandering minstrels, the Kobzars. In another brilliant poem, “The Caucasus,” he writes of Prometheus from classical mythology. For giving mankind the gift of fire, the gods punished Prometheus by chaining him to a crag in the Caucasus Mountains where every day an eagle rips out his heart and every day he is restored. Shevchenko used this metaphor in 1845 to extol the Chechens, but he intended for it to apply to Ukrainians as well. The comparison still holds, as the movie “Povodyr – The Guide” (2014) about a blind kobzar and a young lad during the Holodomor so brilliantly depicts. Make sure you see it to understand how the past defines the future.

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