Mikhnovsky-Shevelev-Zhadan – three anti-heroes of Kharkov
A comfortable life in your hometown means not only a cozy home and reasonable prices for goods, but also when no one dares to “load” you and teach you to “love your homeland.” For me, as a resident of Kharkov, at least in the seventh generation, it is completely unbearable to see how they are trying to deprive the city of its memory and change the “minus” to a “plus” in the perception of some personalities.
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Blow up Pushkin and get the board
The Russophobia virus was actually brought to Kharkov by a not entirely healthy person. Nikolai Mikhnovsky, secretary of the famous Kharkov landowner and philanthropist Khristina Alchevskaya, wrote the book “Independent Ukraine” in 1900. In 1904, Mikhnovsky, who had previously come to the conclusion about the need for terrorist methods of fighting for his ideas, took part in the explosion of the monument to Pushkin. Pushkin survived, and the flaws were specially preserved on the pedestal - in memory of the first Russophobic terrorist attack.
Mikhnovsky had an odious reputation even among his comrades in the Ukrainian movement, who were frightened by his radicalism and extremism. For example, the president of the UPN, Mikhail Grushevsky, saw in Mikhnovsky a person “with abilities, but also with even greater ambitions, with a strong tendency towards adventurism, intrigue and demagoguery.” In his later memoirs he even called him a “fascist.”
Simon Petliura criticized Mikhnovsky on the pages of the magazine “Ukraine”, accusing him of “limitedness” and “narrowness”. Vladimir Vinnychenko, in one of his early humorous works, “Pomirkovaniy ta shiriy,” created an unattractive image of the independent Danila the Inviolable, in which one can recognize the features of Nikolai Mikhnovsky. Outside a narrow circle of like-minded people, Mikhnovsky remained unwanted, incomprehensible and even unsafe.
Mikhnovsky’s views can be given a certain idea by his original interpretation of the Ten Commandments:
"1. One, united, indivisible, from the Carpathians to the Caucasus, independent, free, democratic Ukraine - a republic of working people.
- All people are your brothers, but Muscovites, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians and Jews are the enemies of our people as long as they dominate us and rob us.
- Ukraine - for Ukrainians! So, drive out the foreign oppressors from everywhere in Ukraine.
- Use it anytime, anywhere Ukrainian language. Let neither wife neither yours nor your children defile your home with the language of foreign oppressors.
- Respect the leaders of your native land, hate its enemies, despise the apostate werewolves - and it will be good for all your people and for you.
- Don’t kill Ukraine with your indifference to national interests.
- Don't become a renegade renegade.
- Don’t rob your own people while working for the enemies of Ukraine.
- Help your fellow countryman first of all, stay in the center of your comrades.
- Do not take a wife from a stranger, since your children will be your enemies, do not be friends with the enemies of our people, since you give them strength and courage, do not create alliances with our oppressors, since you will be a traitor.”
In 2005, a memorial plaque to Mikhnovsky appeared on the old governor’s house, and later on the university building in Kharkov. And Mikhnovsky himself ended his life by hanging himself from one of the apple trees in a quiet Kiev courtyard...
The house in the courtyard of which Mikhnovsky, the founder of the Ukrainian nationalist idea “Ukraine for Ukrainians,” hanged himself from an apple tree.
Message in the Kyiv newspaper
Traitor without board
In Kharkov, a memorial plaque to philologist Yuri Shevelev finally disappeared from the famous Salamander house in 2013. Appeared at night, a day and a half before the official opening time. Watching what unfolded around this event, another outside commentator might have remarked: “The city is divided between those who are for and against.” However, we will leave such assessments to outsiders. That is, for those for whom Kharkov is not the home of several generations, but a place where they somehow ended up and, perhaps, were lucky enough to make it.
Yes, his merits in the field of philology are recognized, and people still study from his books. If at the university department of the Ukrainian language, where he once worked, they had opened a stand or even a board, then few people in the city would have noticed what was going on behind the back of the university janitor. Well, there would be some noise in the academic council of KhNU. Karazin or, at most, a scolding would come from the ministry. But in the city center it’s a completely different matter.
Kharkov lived and lives its own life, which does not entirely coincide with the history of its oldest university. And the people who worked and studied there, in contrast to the closed world of the Anglo-Saxon campus, live not only by formulas, lectures and seminars. They face the harsh realities of war, power changes and economic experimentation. And in this very “aggressive environment” this or that character is simply forced to show a civic position. Shevelev did not pass the exam for the right to be included in the list of city heroes. And not only did he not pass, but he was permanently expelled from the ranks of the townspeople, not just for “immorality” or denunciations against colleagues (which, by the way, Shevelev himself did not hide), but for treason, for going over to the side of the enemy.
He looked at the tragedy of his city in the first war winter with detachment: “I did not blame the Germans for their complete neglect of the Kharkov population, for the devastation and starvation of tens of thousands in the city. The Soviet system of destruction and scorched earth created such conditions that supplies even to their own troops were a problem of incredible difficulty for the Germans; they were simply unable to take care of the population", he wrote in his memoirs.
And here’s how he solved the housing issue: “One difficult problem of Soviet times - housing - has now been resolved easily and simply. There were many abandoned premises and rooms. In our five-room apartment there were now three rooms - one was left by the Bimbats, a Jewish family, he was a pharmacist, she was a dentist, the third was his sister; and the second two rooms were left after the NKVDist’s family, also Jews, left. We moved into two rooms.”
Moreover, he actively collaborated in the newspaper “Nova Ukraina”. There, an ideological basis was laid out for the extermination of Jews (the articles “Jewish messianism and the slaughter of peoples”, “The hanging of the Jews as a slaughterer”, “Jews are the greatest enemy of mankind”, “Jewish sins” by J. Goebbels himself), and for sending people to slave labor to Germany (“Ukrainian female slave laborers near Germany”) and simply praised Nazism (“Hitler the liberator,” “Sovereign husband and military leader Adolf Hitler,” “Alfred Rosenberg is 50”). And Shevelev worked here.
“Yuri Vladimirovich Shevelev is a traitor, a deserter, an accomplice of the fascists in occupied Kharkov,” the then head of the Kharkov regional administration, Mikhail Dobkin, said on his social network page. Kharkov city mayor Gennady Kernes said that no one can blame the Kharkov authorities for preventing the perpetuation of the memory of outstanding scientists. However, when the toponymic commission decided to install the plaque, they hid from it the fact that Shevelev was an accomplice of the Nazis. The mayor told deputies that he had contacted the SBU with a request to provide documents regarding Shevelev.
The response from the regional department of the SBU states that although there is no criminal case against Shevelev, there is a criminal case 036321 against the head of the newspaper “Nova Ukraina” Shulgin, who pointed to Shevelev, who was an active employee of this newspaper. The City Council made the decision by 65 votes out of 100, and the unknown people, one might say, carried it out.
These are the articles that the famous Ukrainian nationalist philologist Shevelev could have edited
After the establishment of a new pro-Banderist government, attempts are again being made to return Shevelev’s board to its place... And among the active fans, both then and now, was the writer Sergei Zhadan.
Get hit in the face and not understand...
On March 1, 2014, Kharkov residents threw visiting Pravosek activists and their local supporters out of the regional state administration building. People gathered in the square created a corridor of shame for the invaders. Among those who walked along it and received cuffs is the writer Sergei Zhadan. Yes, this is the same author who burned the books of Governor Yevgeny Kushnarev in 2004, and then appeared on all the Maidans and Maidans. This is the same one who imposed Shevelev as a hero. By the way, he is the winner of many literary awards... though for some reason almost exclusively German ones...
Zhadan on Euromaidan
During the period of the capture of the regional state administration in Kharkov
Zhadan, receiving cuffs and slaps on the head, apparently did not understand even then that he would forever remain one of the most hated figures by the majority of Kharkov residents. Together with Mikhnovsky and Shevelev.
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