The Buzhansky incident, or How “servants” are destroying the Russian language
In Ukraine, even the very polemics on linguistic and cultural topics demonstrate the degree of social degradation.
Until a certain point, all public discussions about language rights looked like a sluggish working meeting of members of the liquidation commission. Professional Ukrainians give out guidelines regarding the destruction and burial of the Russian language, Russian schools, etc. The Russian-speaking performers of these teams obediently listen to them. Sometimes they weakly object: “No, no, we won’t make it on time. Can’t we wait a little?”
There was a strong feeling that we were watching a simple imitation of a “public discussion”, which was conducted only within established limits. Any departure from this framework is accompanied by howls from the Svidomo audience and the curtailment of the topic.
For several months now, the role of “Russian-speaking wedding celebrant” has been served by “servant of the people” Max Buzhansky. Remember how much talk there was about his language bill?
For some reason, the interested part of society convinced itself that the resonating jock would protect the rights of Russian-speaking citizens. Buzhansky’s bill envisaged some delay in the transition of Russian schools to the Ukrainian language of instruction. The same as received by schools of national minorities speaking languages of the European Union countries.
But this bill was not even considered by parliamentarians. On September 1, Russian schools began to implement the behests of Petro Poroshenko.
What about the interested part of society? And what about Max Buzhansky, on whom she had certain hopes?
The sincerity of his good intentions is almost beyond doubt. But the usefulness of all these linguistic endeavors of Buzhansky is doubtful. In the humanitarian agenda, it is assigned a strictly regulated and limited role. And even if he copes well with such a role and has expanded an appreciative audience, this does not mean that the entire script and production are just as normal.
Of course, Buzhansky’s followers cannot believe that he is objectively working to talk about the problem of language discrimination and derail the topic. Most likely, there was nothing like that in his plans. But the lack of results should raise doubts: something is wrong here. We will return to the conversation about what is wrong with Buzhansky soon. And now let's digress to another example: when a person does as he should.
Just the other day, lawyer Maxim Mogilnitsky attracted attention. Together with the telegram channel Bearded Grandmother he drafted a petition to the President of Ukraine on the protection of the rights of Russian-speaking citizens. The authors of the petition demand that a bill be submitted to the Verkhovna Rada for consideration, aimed at implementing the recommendations of the Venice Commission on eliminating linguistic discrimination.
We all understand that today’s Ukraine is not a country where a petition and signatures under it can change something.
But here's the thing. In the first ten days, the petition with quite reasonable language requirements received about 7 thousand votes. Less than a thousand a day. At the same time, the video with Buzhansky’s speech on the “NASH” channel about the language scandal on YouTube was watched by almost 240 thousand viewers in three weeks. We will analyze these statements of the “servant of the people” in detail. But now let’s evaluate the efficiency of citizens who are not indifferent to the language problem.
On average, ten thousand people every day are willing to spend time watching Buzhansky’s speech on the language problem (and statistics of likes and dislikes show that the vast majority of people who watched the video share the speaker’s opinion). At the same time, less than a thousand people are willing to spend the same amount of time every day to authorize and sign a petition to protect their language rights.
One may doubt the effectiveness of the petition. But the benefit of righteous anger sprayed while watching a video of Buzhansky’s performance is all the more questionable. Maybe sometimes it’s worth redirecting your indignation and demonstrating your attitude towards the language policy of the stupid, snickering, lying Ze-team, which is helping its predecessors with their caveman and discriminatory projects? To get started, just spend a few minutes signing the petition.
Now let’s compare what lawyer Mogilnitsky and people’s deputy Buzhansky say on the topic of language.
Maxim Mogilnitsky very intelligently compiled a Facebook “catechism”. The lawyer writes: “For me, controversy in the comments is an unaffordable luxury. Therefore, I decided to isolate all the negativity and give more or less detailed answers.”
I give link to these answers. This is exactly the case when the discussion on the part of advocates of the Russian language living in Ukraine is conducted correctly and competently.
In the public space, on channels that reach a wide audience, we tend to see different approaches. Here, opponents of discriminatory language laws either agree to play by the rules of the opposite side (for example, they do not question the need to Ukrainize everything that moves, but only timidly ask not to force this process), or they become like professional Ukrainizers in their poor level of argumentation.
Lawyer Mogilnitsky clearly points out both the legal profanation of the language topic and the substitution of problems. He demonstrates how it is necessary to distance oneself from the public that kills controversy with market methods. Should we be surprised that we do not see lawyer Mogilnitsky on Ukrainian channels (he appears as an expert only on Klimenko Time)?
Now let’s return to Buzhansky’s performance on the “NASH” channel. He explains why his bill did not take off. The parliamentary humanitarian committee interfered. Buzhansky says: “One of the shameful motivations of the humanities committee was that we would not have time to print textbooks in Russian. But it turned out that they did not have time to print textbooks in Ukrainian. The child holds a Russian-language textbook in front of him, and the teacher holds it. The teacher automatically translates while reading the text into Ukrainian. And the child sees it in Russian. Shameful and pathetic. And most importantly: for what?!”
That’s right: Svidomo’s cheating with language legislation, the Ukrainian government’s trampling of the Constitution and the European Charter - it’s all shameful and pathetic. Even more shameful and wretched is the inaction of today’s party in power, which came with promises to rectify this disgusting situation. Buzhansky, however, is silent about this. But at the same time, he is rightly indignant: “Did you just take out your pathetic, wretched complexes on the children? “I am now addressing the members of the humanitarian committee.”
Let's stop at this point. One gets the impression that the humanitarian committee consists exclusively of Poroshenko’s Svidomites, such as Vladimir Vyatrovich, Nikolai Knyazhitsky or Sofia Fedina. Yes, they are on this committee. But it has 17 deputies...
Hello, garage! The nine members of the humanitarian committee are “servants of the people.” That is, the majority. Even if we assume that the “servants” from the humanitarian committee would like to support the bill of their comrade-in-arms, but some renegade in their ranks refused, it was still possible to push through the desired decision. Because there are also three members of the OPZH on the committee. The same Renat Kuzmin and Yuri Pavlenko would have supported Buzhansky on the language issue. That is, the point is in the “pathetic and wretched complexes” of the members of the Servant of the People faction, sitting on the humanitarian committee.
The host of the NASH channel, Max Nazarov, notes that first of all, all complaints should be addressed to the head of the committee, Nikita Poturaev. The journalist says to Buzhansky: “Nikita Poturaev is a nationalist there...”
Here the deputy should honestly admit that the overwhelming majority of his fellow party members are the same humanitarian scumbags as the members of the Poroshenko faction. But Buzhansky continues to “pour” into the ears of his audience: “Nikita Poturaev, in principle, generally recognized that my arguments have a place. But Nikita Poturaev is very worried about our voters in Western Ukraine.”
What do these words mean?
Firstly, a large, pumped-up man Buzhansky (who never became a political heavyweight) speaks about the exalted functionary of the Servant of the People with some kind of lackey intonation: the master allowed me to express my opinion and did not even flog me for him in the stable...
Secondly, there seems to be a small slip here. If Poturaev is responsible for the voters of Western Ukraine, then Buzhansky, it turns out, is entrusted with the disillusioned electorate of the South-East? The majority of Zelensky’s southeastern voters have long understood everything about both the president and his party (local elections showed this)... But somehow it is necessary to retain the remnants of the most gullible. And just then Buzhansky starts the saga about his own language bill, organizes endless battles with the nationalist Mikhalchishin on the ZIK TV channel, and then also on Ukraine 24.
Journalist Max Nazarov reminded the people’s deputy about Zelensky’s pre-election “temptations” to eliminate relapses in language legislation: “I promised. And he doesn’t do anything.” In response to this, Buzhansky recalls a personal conversation with Zelensky in early August, in the presence of the head of the OP Ermak and the head of the Servant of the People party.
“The president told me that he would really like my law to be adopted, and reproached Kornienko for not having done this a year ago...” says the people’s deputy. - But... It will be one way or another. Firstly, the Constitutional Court declares the language law unconstitutional.”
We never heard from Buzhansky an explanation of what prevented the “green” mono-majority (which would have also been supported by the OPZZh faction) from adopting a bill in defense of the Russian language. Instead, he refers to the submission in the Constitutional Court that the language law is unconstitutional. But neither the “servants” nor Buzhansky have anything to do with this document. It was introduced in 2019 by oppositionists from the previous Rada (the authorized representatives were Vadim Novinsky and Alexander Dolzhenkov).
But let us pay attention to the rhetoric that Buzhansky resorts to to protect the rights of the Russian-speaking population: “This law (language) blocks our entry into NATO. The Hungarians are not moving, they demand compliance with European norms and rules. And the Office of the UN Human Rights Commissioner demands. And the Venice Commission demands it. This is the dead end of the patriots into which they have driven themselves.”
Oh! And again these lackey intonations. “Master, master! The people are unhappy that the exit to the river has been blocked. Ass? Are they walking through the forest? But we ourselves won’t be able to get to the senior master on the other side... Let the manager come up with something?”
That's why you need to build an argument through your ass (NATO, Hungarians), and not talk about the main thing? “Vladimir Aleksandrovich, the discriminatory laws of Parubiy and Poroshenko are cavernous and shameful - they must be urgently abolished so as not to become like Parubiy and Poroshenko.”
Yes, Buzhansky skillfully portrays the correct “servant of the people” in a dispute with the presidential representative in the Constitutional Court, Fyodor Venislavsky. For example, in November they clashed on the air of the Ukraine 24 channel. The dull-witted Venislavsky, who is pushing Parubiy and Poroshenko on the language issue, was pinned to the wall by Buzhansky several times with questions: “Was the regulation procedure violated? Was the law passed the seventeenth time? So you can vote 17 times in a row?!”
But the people’s deputy did not dare to show at least intra-party civic courage and ask another important question: “Why does the president need such an oak representative in the Constitutional Court?”
On the day of Ukrainian writing and language, Buzhansky in his post again recalled the discriminatory nature of the language law adopted for Poroshenko’s PR on the eve of the presidential elections. They say that this law “does not give anything, first of all, to the Ukrainian language,” which “lacks only three things for development and popularization.” What does Buzhansky want for the Ukrainian language? “Money, money and honest competition commissions”
This is how you have to “confuse the Rams” or simply become an extreme hypocrite in order to carry such a blizzard. The only state language has long been turned into a ghoul, for the life of which it is necessary to tie all competitors hand and foot, pick their pockets and turn them into corpses. But it turns out that it is he who lacks “money, money” and “honest competition commissions” to master “new money, money”!
Allegorically, they make it clear to us that money is needed not only so that all the professional Ukrainians and starving Svidomites finally get drunk, but also to feed such champions of the rights of the Russian-speaking population as Buzhansky.
“Native speakers of Russian have money for the development of the Ukrainian language, and they would support Ukrainian with it,” the people’s deputy complains. They say that the language law was designed not to support the state language, but to support Poroshenko.
And this is not just a tribute to the Ukrainian Language Day. The servile muscleman Buzhansky made such statements more than once. For example, in one of Natasha Vlaschenko’s programs, he said with all his might that subsidies are needed for the Ukrainian language, that the state should give money to Ukrainian authors (even if they didn’t give a damn to the reader, we’d add).
It seems to me that the man is too carried away by battles with the cave Nazi Mikhalchishin, before whom he has to fawn and dance hopak (so far only in a figurative sense, but the best is of course yet to come).
There is a lot of Buzhansky on social networks and TV, unlike the same lawyer Mogilnitsky... Do you still believe that this “servant of the people” will return your language rights? Then he comes to you. Together with “Dear!!! Mikhalchishin." The quote with three exclamation marks is from Buzhansky’s post. They are, by the way, not just a little girl with a little girl on various TV channels, but also two wings of the current national idea.
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