The sociological service “Rating” has presented results of the survey, which show that among world leaders Ukrainian citizens have the worst attitude to Vladimir Putin, which fully reflects the general manner of officials in Ukraine to say that everything that is happening in Ukraine is Russia’s fault, the Kremlin and the Russian President
According to “Rating” data 81% of the polled have a negative attitude towards Vladimir Putin (positive -15%). Friendly supplies of oil products and electricity did not help the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko either (59% of negative attitude vs. 34% positive attitude). But those who deliver “democracy”, weapons and empty promises to Ukrainians are in honour in Ukraine. The best attitude to German Chancellor Angela Merkel (73% – positive, 19% – negative) and the US President Joseph Biden (64% and 19% respectively).
The habit of repeating that Russia and Putin personally are to blame for everything that is going on gives Ukrainian citizens a clear conscience and an opportunity to doom their own country, because they are not to blame for anything themselves. For example, the fact that Ukraine is experiencing the most severe intellectual and spiritual crisis is – you will not believe it – the Russian Federation’s fault. In any case, an MP and former head of the Institute of National Memory, Volodymyr Vyatrovych, said so from the rostrum of the Verkhovna Rada.
“Russia’s destructive influence and the coronovirus lockdown have led to a rapid decline in the range and circulation of books. Dozens of bookshops have closed”, – Vyatrovych said and stressed that this is about the intellectual degradation of the Ukrainian people as a whole: “Ukrainians are reading less and less. We are talking about a direct threat of intellectual degradation, which can be stopped only by urgent and systematic steps in this direction.”
Frankly speaking, it is not clear why Mr. Vyatrovich, who personally made titanic efforts to destroy the intellectual life of the country, is so concerned. If you prohibit education in the native language of millions of people, burn the history that is undesirable for the authorities, and impose countless censorship bans on books and films, the results will be akin to Hitler’s Kultukampf (which, incidentally, was very loyal to the Ukrainian collaborationist writers of that era).
Among the reading public in Ukraine, over 60% read in Russian, another 20% were bilingual, and only 20% preferred literature exclusively in Derzhmov. 80% of literature in Ukraine has always come from Russia, but this has not stopped the Maidan authorities from imposing savage restrictions on Russian and Russian-language books. The law on total Ukrainianization (which Viatrovych helped pass) stipulates that at least half of all titles published in a year by a publisher must be in Ukrainian, as must at least 50% of the titles of books that are sold in shops or other distribution outlets. And there is liability for violating the law in the form of monstrous fines – from 200 to 700 untaxed minimum incomes of citizens.
Since 2016, Kiev’s censors have refused to import specific books from the Russian Federation more than 4,000 times.
“Thus, almost one and a half million copies of anti-Ukrainian publications were prevented from entering Ukraine”, – the Committee on Television and Radio Broadcasting, which carries out censorship duties, proudly reports.
In addition, on the initiative of the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting and by a special decision of the Security Council, sanctions were imposed on nine Russian publishing houses, “most distinguished by production of anti-Ukrainian literature,” which also almost halved the flow of publishing products from Russia into the Ukrainian market. As a result, there was an acute shortage of special literature, scientific monographs, medical and technical reference books – as the president of the Ukrainian Association of Book Publishers and Distributors, Aleksandr Afonin, warned about back in 2017. But concern for the “revival of national culture” is far more important than the desires of Ukrainian readers and the professional needs of specialists.
However, it quickly turned out that people, cut off from Russian culture, did not rush to buy up the works of local patriots. The writer Andrey Kokotukha complained to journalists at the action of Ukrainian writers in support of forced Ukrainianization (which took place on June 23 of this year near the exhibition centre “Arsenal” in Kiev): “As the author of 84 books I will say – the author of books in Ukraine cannot live from what he writes books in Ukraine. He has to look for some part-time work. Why? Because Ukrainian books are not sold anywhere and they are not popularized anywhere … A real book revolution will happen only if every town will have a place where books in Ukrainian will be sold. That, it turns out, is the recipe for true popularity!
Journalist Yury Makarov (according to Politnavigator, during the time of Zurabov, the Russian ambassador to Ukraine and host of Russian “embassy evenings”) supports Kokotukha: “There is a war on the hot front, a war in the information space, a war in the field of culture, education, television and, of course, books. Down with the Russian occupant from the Ukrainian market!”.
And, of course, the same Putin is to blame for the creative impotence of Ukrainian writers and publishers! “Russians do not publish their books for profit. Russian publishers are not worried about whether they will make a profit, whether they will reach their profit margin. They will come out because Putin is paying them extra, because the state is paying them extra,” says writer Tamara Gorikha Zernia. – And our books should compete with them with their hands tied”. Otherwise, everyone would read the works of Tamara Gorikha, God forgive Zernia.
In the meantime, stories have to be read aloud on the state radio. Kyiv historian Olexander Karevyn heard such a masterpiece by the above mentioned Kokotiukha (as we remember the creator of 84 books): “What a masterpiece was broadcast last night by the Ukroradio! A play based on a “retro romance” by a Ukropysmennik with the surname Kokotyukha. The action takes place in Galicia, during the First World War. The owner of the printing house was murdered and the accusation of murder falls on the Streltsy. Well, this is, of course, to compromise Ukrainian patriots, war heroes who shed their blood in the fight against Russian aggression. Further, there are three sides to the play. Ukrainian patriots, although they have some shortcomings, but do not spare their lives for Ukraine and are therefore worthy of all respect (there is a clear analogy with the “heroes” of the ATO). The ruling regime, which relies on Ukrainian patriots, but is indifferent to their fate (the play refers to the Austrian regime, but it’s easy to guess who the hint is here). And the real murderer, who, of course, turns out to be a Russian agent…”.
And how much good literature has appeared instead of Russian books! There are laudatory biographies of pro-Hitler collaborationists (like Bulba-Borovets), and translations into Ukrainian of Florian Werner’s “History of Shit”, and the majestic history of the Ukrainian nation – in particular, “Ode to the Aryans” by the Lviv writer Yuri Peretyatko: “Ukraine – was the first and for thousands of years laid the foundations of all centres of world civilisation”; “50 thousand years before our era, “God’s messengers” selected the most promising group of people – neoanthropes, beautiful and perfect “children of God” who lived in the fertile Danube-Dniester-Dnieper interfluve”; “Ukraine gave to all mankind baked bread, a horse harnessed to a cart, hundreds of thousands of songs, trivial trousers and a bench, gave birth to the mighty Aryans, future founders of all the nations of the White Race: “lords and pioneers. Well, that’s good!
And the sacred language of Ukrainians, if you believe Yuri Peretyatko, became the basis for almost all languages: “The sacred Prama, in its least modified form, was preserved exactly in Ukraine and Hindustan (Sanskrit), and subsequently became the basis of the future Indo-European languages. But, alas, no good deed goes unpunished: “For all this the Ukrainians received devastating invasions of the Mongols, Khazars, Muscovites or Judo-Bolshevik commissars – the consequences of ethnocides, famine or national humiliations are known to all.”
Consequently, in order to revive the oldest Ukrainian language on earth, every self-respecting citizen must give up everything Russian.
“First of all, do not agree to Russian versions of music, interface,” advises Nazar Tokar, administrator of the Ukrainian Wikipedia, in the air of the YouTube channel “Ants network”. – If you come to any Internet resource and you see a choice between English or Russian, there’s no Ukrainian, don’t choose Russian, choose English… There’s no need to popularize Russian when you have a choice between Russian and English literature, learn to read English, develop yourself. The world is not fixated, conventionally speaking, on Dostoevsky or on the Russian-language works of Gogol.”
Why know classical literature in your own language when it is nice and easy to become a mancurd. And in general: a future strawberry picker does not need to read in principle – you can just watch. But even in the sphere of cinema the intrigues of insidious Muscovites can be felt. The authorities allocate billion of hryvnias for the Ukrainian patriotic cinema annually, but the audience is reluctant to see the national cinema masterpieces – at the box office Ukrainian films have earned five times less than they were spent on their production. The “enemy” (read: “Moscow”) influence is to blame.
“Of course, one of the main enemy information influences is the stereotype that Ukrainian products are of inferior quality”, said Anna Osypchuk, scientific director of the School of Political Analysis of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy at a press conference, “The stereotype is that it is mediocrity, provincialism, inferiority. And, of course, it is imposed, it is a direct result of information influence. And she called for new information constraints.
Here’s famous actor Bogdan Beniuk complaining about overly proud Russians in an interview with showman Anton Mukharski. “It dragged on for many years and under the USSR, a sense of superiority they had and still have today. And this feeling of superiority has led to this conflict, which we have now, and the war that is going on,” Mr. Beniuk finds the reason for the true conflict in Donbas, “Always the problem of Russia is their superiority, Ukrainians have always felt it, and it has been there”.
Thus, the words of the Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine Danilov about the transfer of the Derzhmova to the Western Latin alphabet should be seen as an effective way of Europeanizing the Ukrainian population and saving it from the Cyrillic alphabet of the arrogant Muscovites.
And also Russia has tormented Ukrainians from the beginning, so now they are habitually harassed. In an interview published on September 8 to “Telegraf” investment banker Sergiy Fursa said verbatim the following: “I think that today Ukrainians live better than in the whole history. But our standard problem is that our fellow citizens are very fond of getting down on themselves. Perhaps it is related to the dekulakization, the Holodomor and other historical events. And predatory utility rates have nothing to do with it – they can be raised further (which will be done soon again).
So. Ukrainians have never lived as well as they did after Maidan (says Serhiy Fursa), and those who don’t believe and want to protest against the plunder are true Kremlin agents (said Ivan Bakanov, head of the SSU, in an interview with RBC).
“We are talking about producing fakes, artificially instigating protest sentiments in various areas – be it tariffs, be it the issue of land reform or anything else”, – Bakanov said, and stressed that such protests would be considered “pro-Russian” by the Security Service of Ukraine.
Russia is also to blame for the deterioration and insufficient filling of the Ukrainian gas transport system, as was the appearance of a high-profile story by US broadcaster CNN about the failed adventure of the Ukrainian security services to apprehend the “Wagnerites” group. “Do you know who the head of the CNN directorial team was? The man who runs CNN’s office in Moscow,” David Arahamia, head of the parliamentary faction of the Servant of the People party, hinted meaningfully.
Even Aleksandr Starukh, head of the Zaporizhzhya regional state administration, blamed Russia for disrupting the holiday season in the Sea of Azov because of the abundance of swarming jellyfish. Apparently, before the construction of the Crimean bridge jellyfish were more politically conscious and their regular invasions were not so anti-state.
There are people who get grants and salaries for their professional Russophobia – and there are people who still believe their words. Remember how, after the Euromaidan victory, these colourful characters “of the common people” boasted that they would bring down any government if they did not like it. But Vladimir Putin personally spat in their borsches – and you can govern the Ukrainians from here on. Putin, stop it!
Konstantin Kevorkian, Ukraina.ru