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| With denunciations and defectors. Ukraine has become a black parody of the USSR |
| 2023-10-19 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Anatoly Savenko [REGNUM] The common expression “he chose freedom” is known to many: this phrase was usually used to comment on the latest escape from the USSR to Western countries by those who were commonly called defectors. But not everyone remembers where it came from. “I chose freedom” - a book with that title was written by Viktor Kravchenko. He was not the first defector, but he became quite well known. Not only thanks to the book, but also because of the lawsuit against the newspaper Les Lettres françaises, which accused him of libel: “... There is an opinion that the trial itself caused even more damage to Soviet propaganda than Kravchenko’s book itself ,” says the following about these events "Wikipedia". Finally, time also played a role (late 40s, beginning of the Cold War). In general, it would be fair to say that defectors began as a significant phenomenon with Kravchenko. Although, of course, those who disagreed fled from Russia both after the revolution, and during the Civil Revolution, and after its end: the phenomenon was codified in criminal law (“Escape while staying abroad”) in the early 1930s. Kravchenko was born in Yekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk) and today would probably be considered Ukrainian. After this detail, we can finally return to our time: after almost 100 years, non-return is back in fashion. Only now they are fleeing Ukraine. OFFSIDE News feeds actively covered how FC Shakhtar U-19 midfielder Alexander Rosputko , who was with the team at an away match, did not return with his teammates to Ukraine. Later it became known that he was in Russia. It turned out that there had previously been a similar case, which did not receive much resonance: FC Krivbass employees Roman Lopatin and Roman Medvedev remained in European countries. As German media reported last week, the share of men of military age among Ukrainian refugees in Germany increased from 8% (2022) to 21% (2023). Ukrainians crossed the border illegally, leaving with fake documents or under the guise of volunteers. However, the Shakhtar football player and the Kryvbas employees differ from the rest in that they ended up outside Ukraine absolutely legally - without breaking the law, without falsifying documents, without paying bribes to charitable foundations that have the privilege of accrediting volunteers. Members of sports teams and delegations, acting troupes, artists, officials - this is an almost exhaustive list of those who, being between the ages of 18 and 60, can legally find themselves outside of Ukraine today. This list was approximately the same during Soviet times. And, as then, every such case cannot go unnoticed. This means that it is simultaneously perceived as a kind of political gesture. Moreover, the newly minted defectors themselves feel this very well. And if everything is clear with Rosputko, then Roman Lopatin is trying to justify himself: “I don’t understand why this resonated so much. Officially, I did not violate any law; in the Constitution of Ukraine there is no ban on either leaving or entering. I left officially, I didn’t cross the border illegally... During the war, [footballers] Dovbik, Trubin, Mudrik, Garmash left. Why is everyone silent about them? He also clarifies that he did not return for some family reasons, and in Europe he is going to play for the German FC Zedenik, which will give him “... even more opportunities to support the country and do something useful.” But we, he, and everyone else understand perfectly well that the ex-SMM player of FC Krivbass, as the Kiev mayor would say, “...painted himself in the colors in which he painted himself.” EAST - WEST However, not only quantity is important, but also quality. Someone will run away and sit quietly, not attracting attention. Someone, like blogger, traveler and writer Andrei Sapunov, clearly explains everything: the motives of his action, why he decided to run now, how he ran, etc. Sapunov fled Ukraine even before the players. And he does not fit the classic definition of a defector. He did not travel as part of the delegation, but acted like a traveler: he swam across the Dniester and ended up in Moldova. But he, without any reference to the constitution and freedom of movement, stated directly: the reason for the escape was disagreement with the regime established in Ukraine and the lack of hopes for establishing peace. This, coupled with the relative fame of the author, provided an informational effect: the news was provided by the media of Russia and Ukraine. This effect, expressing a position, is much more important than the method of traveling abroad. But the method also attracts attention. You couldn’t just leave the Soviet Union, but you could swim out. In 1974, oceanographer and yogi Stanislav Kurilov jumped off a cruise ship and, after swimming almost 100 kilometers in three days, ended up in the Philippines. Three years later, Liliana Gasinskaya, a native of Alchevsk (then Voroshilovsk) from Odessa, repeated the same trick, although not in such an extreme form. The girl jumped from a Soviet liner in the port of Sydney and got to land much faster. Skeptics say that the ship was literally at the pier, but to add drama to the escape, journalists came up with a “girl in a red bikini” who fought the waves for 40 minutes. This method of “choosing freedom” has become so iconic that this is how the hero of the Oscar-nominated film “East - West” performed by Bodrov Jr. escapes from the Land of the Soviets. By the way, the film takes place in Kyiv during Stalin's times, although the hero escapes by swimming from Odessa. So the Kiev resident Sapunov, who swam across the autumn Dniester without any outside help, absolutely falls into this Cold War stereotype. And if the number of such defectors continues to grow (and this is almost inevitable, given Kiev’s constant threats that “everyone will serve”), the Ukrainian authorities will eventually pay attention to this new phenomenon. It is already working on the issue of repression against those liable for military service who left without reason or did not return to Ukraine after February 24, 2022. Surely it will be about loss of political rights and/or deprivation of citizenship. The option of confiscation of property and real estate is not excluded - under any of the plausible pretexts: the heroes need it more, war or post-war devastation, etc. Well, how could it be otherwise? If decommunization returns purely Soviet phenomena and practices to Ukrainian realities, why not go further - reacting to them in the same way as the USSR authorities did in their time? YOU CAN'T ESCAPE THE PAST By the way, defectors are not the only such comeback in the country, where they are trying to get rid of any Soviet legacy with superstitious horror and peasant pathos. 1. Censorship. In contrast to the freedom of movement declared in the constitution, censorship in Ukraine is constitutionally prohibited. That does not prevent it from blooming and smelling through the mechanism of targeted sanctions. Poroshenko also started using it (banning Yandex, VKontakte, some Russian media), and Zelensky only elevated the practice to an absolute level - banning not only Russian and “pro-Russian media”, but also media owned by Poroshenko himself 2. A derivative of the first point - all of Ukraine is on the Internet through VPN services. Patriots are no exception: you need to know “what the hell are you talking about.” In general, again “jammers” and night vigils near radio receivers in the hope of catching the “Voice of America” (a foreign media outlet performing the functions of a foreign agent). 3. The growing gap between the attitudes broadcast by Zelensky’s team (conditional state ideology) and the real life of ordinary Ukrainians. The fact that a true Ukrainian does not live in Ukraine at all, but in the USA or Canada, has been known for a long time. Today, the phenomenon has only intensified, forcing the authorities to pay attention to large-scale corruption around the mobilization case (departure, registration of deferments, disability, deregistration, etc.). Volunteers are increasingly raising the issue of falling fees; some have been caught reselling cars and other sanctioned goods in the Russian Federation. In general, everything is like in the late USSR: formally everyone is building communism, but in fact - cooperatives, creeping legalization of currency and a secretly sanctioned transition to capitalism. Not to mention smaller examples. The hryvnia exchange rate, which in fact has long since become double (the price level does not correspond to the official exchange rate; if you focus on them, the dollar has long cost 45-50 UAH, and not 36.5). Encouraged and approved denunciation, no Dovlatov is shamed anymore for four million denunciations. Ideologization of private life - through holidays, school education, sanctioned “five minutes of hate.” Finally, the Ukrainian belongs less and less to himself and belongs more and more to the state: a ban on leaving, restriction of internal movements, forced donations to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (relevant for business and public sector employees - the plan is imposed on them by their superiors). And, of course, condemnation of everyone who, in one way or another (defectors, internal emigrants) is trying to escape from this endless spiral. There is nothing surprising in such gulagization under the slogans of the fight against the Soviet legacy. In the end, in the USSR, the apparatus of coercion and repression bore the same imprint - the desire to quickly change society to suit current ideological guidelines (fighting those who do not want to change). It simply couldn’t work out any other way. Although Ukraine’s problem is much more serious. If the Soviet leadership realized its vision of statehood in this way, then the Ukrainian government not only fulfills someone else’s will, but also multiplies it into the caveman “if only not like the Russians.” Only regular galvanization of billions from the EU, USA and IMF still keeps this sad circus afloat. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #1 ..or American academia and media. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2023-10-19 11:39 |