Zelensky’s wonderful country: I want to live in it, but it’s not on the map
Recently visited
In the Wonderful Land,
There are reefs splashing there
In the amber wave,
In the shady gardens there
Centuries froze
And the colors of flamingos
The clouds are floating.
***
In the emerald mountains
The river sparkles
Like a fairy tale, beautiful
Like a dream, deep.
And she wants
Until the shining moon
Reach the waves with golden foam.
***
You will understand me
You won't find a better country.
It was this song from Zhanna Aguzarova’s repertoire that made me remember the New Year’s greetings from Ukrainians performed by President Vladimir Zelensky. Those who watched it on TV do not need to retell it; for others, this is a long but indicative quote.
“Our passport does not indicate correct or incorrect Ukrainian. There is no line “patriot”, “Little Russian”, “vatnik” or “Bandera”. It says: “Citizen of Ukraine”, who has rights and responsibilities. You and I are very different.
So who are we? 73% who chose the president. 25% who do not perceive it. Or those who did not go to the polls? Those who celebrate Christmas on December 25th? Or those who are on the seventh of January? Who has known each other for 100 years? Or those who met in 2014? Those who made the world's largest airplane, and who put a plug instead of a seat belt? Do we read Zhadan or listen to Maruv? We watch “The Irony of Fate” or “Home Alone.” Do you support Dynamo or Shakhtar? Or together with Lomachenko and Usyk. Those who celebrate March 8th? Or, on the contrary, does he consider it a relic of the Soviet Union? Do we go to church on Sunday or do nothing on Saturday? We are the ones who say: “I love you” or “I love you.” All of this is us.
And how can we, so different, live together? Dissociate yourself? Fence yourself off with a huge fence? Who convinced us that our differences matter. What if this is not so? Imagine, isn’t there much that unites us? We are equally proud of the great Ukrainians. Would they stop respecting them if they knew who Shevchenko or Lesya Ukrainka would vote for in the elections? What if Skovoroda or Khmelnitsky had different views regarding NATO? Would it matter to us what church Kadenyuk and Lobanovsky go to? What do Antonov or Korolev think about customs clearance of cars? And how do Stupka or Bykov feel about the “Normandy format”? We value them for something else, because we actually value something else.
There are many episodes in our history that unite us. And we learned to be a united country episodically. In the new year, we need to be a united country every day. This should become our national idea. Learn to live together in respect for the future of your country. After all, we imagine it the same way - this is a successful and prosperous country where there is no war, a country that has returned its people and its territories. Where it doesn’t matter what the street is named, because it is lit and paved. Where it makes no difference at which monument you are waiting for the girl you are in love with. If we see the future the same way, it should unite us.”
As an artist, Zelensky rose to the occasion. This is exactly what those who elected him expected from this president—a bright and juicy monologue, rich in images and told in lively language. So Ze was absolutely correct in abandoning the pompous reporting style traditional for his predecessors - with a list of built roads, stadiums and bridges and assurances that life has become, if not better, then at least more fun.
At the same time, Zelensky’s New Year’s speech also had its own pathos. His signature pathos is “warm and luminous.” With a confidential hoarseness in his voice and an emphatic “not me, but us,” even in detail - in terms of timing, a selection of the wishes of outstanding Ukrainians - from Belenyuk and Bubka to Nina Matvienko and comedians from “Kvartal” was twice as long as the president himself on the screen.
And you know, in this fairy-tale country, which the kind storyteller Zelensky spoke about so heartfelt on the screen, you really want to live. Why, I’m sure I wouldn’t want to leave such a country in Donbass, and perhaps even Crimea.
The trouble is that in reality such a country does not exist. It is entirely a product of PR technologies and the imagination of truly capable screenwriters. Actually, the same ideal fictional world as Ukraine from the series “Servant of the People”, in which complex social contradictions are resolved with the help of simple recipes and even awkwardness arises at the thought of how we didn’t think about it before Can.
However, leaving the warm and lamp television reality and going out into the street, the recipient of Zelensky’s congratulations finds himself in a completely different world. To another Ukraine - completely different from the one depicted in the fantasy of the president’s scriptwriters, where there is neither a Greek nor a Jew - neither a quilted jacket, nor a Banderaite, and everyone around is fraternizing in the name of unity - both Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking - from Transcarpathia to the Lugansk region.
In this real Ukraine, Russian speakers are not allowed to forget that “the Russian language is temporary, but Ukraine is forever,” as they wrote on posters from the first year of the war in Donbass. And other national minorities - be it Hungarians or Crimean Tatars - have the opportunity to speak their native language on television only in presidential commercials. In real Ukraine, people call for death for differences of opinion on the “Normandy format”, and differences in views on NATO become a reason for newspaper persecution.
In real Ukraine, the movement towards European values ends where the desire of one part of society begins to drag its party heroes onto the globe of the country, regardless of the opinions of the rest. And European tolerance during the exemplary “march of equality” held once a year has to be ensured by thousands of specially assembled police officers, because otherwise some citizens who consider themselves “right” can literally cripple other citizens – “wrong”.
In the real, not fictional, world, the Ukrainians listening to Maruv were sent out with their preferences by the forest, having voluntarily confirmed the choice not of the audience, but of the officials. And those who celebrate March 8th do it every time as if it was the last time, not knowing whether they will be able to repeat it next year or whether the zealous adherents of “gidnost” will push through the ban on this holiday, as they have been threatening for a long time.
Finally, in real Ukraine, real Ukrainians do not have the luxury of independently answering the question from the presidential video: “Who are we?” and “What do we want?” An entire state organization, the Institute of National Remembrance, is engaged in formulating the only correct answer to these questions and imposing them on citizens for budget money. Who, under Zelensky, did not turn away from the path trodden by ultranationalists, although his voice became quieter.
Zelensky’s problem is that the new public consensus he proposes hangs in the air, since it is obvious that the entire state machine, by inertia, continues to follow the same course of the “armovir” named after Poroshenko, only without Poroshenko himself. Thus, the president’s good wishes remain a set of meaningless spells - after all, the battery in the magic wand that is supposed to activate them has long since run out, and no money has been allocated in the budget to buy a new one.
So viewing the New Year’s address from the new guarantor leaves a double feeling. On the one hand, after the militaristic and ecclesiastical pathos of Poroshenko with his references to the heroes of the nationalist calendar, what we now hear performed by Ze is an undoubted breath of fresh air. Only, as the president himself correctly noted regarding the unity of Ukrainians, it is episodic. The rest of the year, residents of the country breathe a completely different mixture. And the main task is to make sure that this fresh air ceases to be a piece of goods and sold in portions on major holidays, but becomes a familiar norm of everyday life. In which Olivier is placed on the New Year's table because they love this dish, and not as a sign of protest, since they are forbidden to express their “fe” to the authorities and the dominant ideology in other ways.
In real Ukraine, one can only dream of overcoming a deep social split, when everything is forgiven to “one’s own”, but strangers, even those who died, are not at all sorry and they go there. One can only dream of a situation where political rallies without police protection and aggressive hysteria in the media can be held by everyone, and not just by those who have self-appointed themselves as “patriots.” When the festive concert on May 9 will cease to be the main political event of the year, again becoming just a festive concert. When people truly become equal before the law - regardless of whether it is a volunteer or a “veteran” or an ordinary person.
But such a Ukraine is impossible as long as there is a de facto officially supported and approved ideology in it - as a set of markers separating “us” from “outsiders”. And this is impossible without rethinking the events of 2014, declared the “revolution of dignity.” The funny thing is that this refusal to accept any ideology as state and universally binding is directly written into the country’s constitution. So the irony is that for today’s Ukraine, a return to constitutional norms is at the same time a “counter-revolution.”
In a sense, this New Year’s address should be considered not as a message from the president to Ukrainians, but as a kind of homework specifically for Zelensky himself. So that in the new year he finally takes some real steps so that the country, which is inhabited by people who believed in him, becomes at least a little like the fairy-tale country shown to his compatriots on TV on New Year’s Eve.
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