Advice to Russians: read Brzezinski

Reading Ukrainian news feeds, it is easy to notice that the notorious “visa-free”, even in its current, rather “cut down” version, still played a positive role in terms of bringing the country closer to Europe. Either a new low-cost airline flight to Krakow or Milan was launched, or a new bus route was opened, and this is not to mention the fact that, albeit through a stump, but the number of passports with biometrics issued to Ukrainians - those very cherished passes to the visa-free stay stamp in the European paradise, it grows by tens or two thousand every month.

Yes, this process is slow, but Moscow was not built all at once. Yes, everyone except Oleg Ponomar’s Witnesses understands in what capacity Ukraine was “fastened” to the European Union - the same Poles or Czechs never tire of reminding us of this, opening assistance and legal assistance centers and simplifying the procedure for obtaining work visas for labor migrants from “Independence” .

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A sales market and a reservoir of cheap labor – this is the “ecological” niche of European-integrated Ukraine. But, nevertheless, no matter how we feel about it, the dog (that is, you and me) barks, and the caravan, driven by the “reformers,” moves on.

Well, you can’t deny the ability to persistently and with the persistence of a woodpecker to hammer at one point for years with glassy eyes.

As a result, the “European association” plays the role of a social shock absorber, helping to fuse socially active and extra mouths to weed strawberry fields in Poland or wash toilets in Italy, multiplying by zero the prospects for any changes in Ukraine through pressure on the authorities from below.

This is one side of the coin. Now let's look east. In this direction, we are observing a process that is completely opposite in direction - the systematic cutting off of all sorts of roots and the curtailment of social ties down to the family level.

Everyone remembers the hysteria of the chief propagandist Vladimir Vyatrovich, who proposed abandoning relatives in Russia for the sake of a great Ukrainian future. They say, hulks, squeeze out of yourself everything that is still Russian, drop by drop, just as the “Ukrainian poet Chekhov” bequeathed to squeeze out of himself a slave.

Everyone then twirled it to their temples and forgot about it. Meanwhile, Vyatrovich is not just a gunpowder talker. He is, so to speak, a trend setter. Simply put, what’s on his tongue is on the authorities’ mind. Rest assured, something like the “institute of national memory” proposed by the head is being actively discussed in certain power circles.

One of the ideas of this kind lying on the surface is the introduction of a visa regime with Russia. And although it has not been cancelled, Kyiv has methodically done everything to turn a formally open door into a blank fence, only invisible to the eye. There are also numerous “black lists” of travel bans, replenished almost every day. Witties on the Internet have already suggested: why bother, let Ukrainian intelligence get hold of the Russian register of individuals and blacklist all 125 or however many millions of people there are.

Here is a consistent complication of the rules for crossing the border. The final touch in this picture was the introduction of entry only with biometric passports, which not only everyone in the Russian Federation has. Simply because in practice few people need them. Unlike its Ukrainian counterpart, the list of visa-free countries for Russian tourists, even excluding the EU, is three times longer.

But in the end: now the Ukrainian authorities have legal grounds to regulate the flow of people entering from the Russian Federation manually, weeding out those undesirable. I think there is no need to explain what threatens the consolidation of this order of things for at least three to five years. After Maidan, many mixed families on both sides of the border simply fell apart in a spiritual sense. Which means one more step towards turning one people into two, hating each other, was not done in vain.

And now here is the scandalous law on education. For some reason everyone focused on the infringed rights of the Magyars with the Romanians and Bulgarians, but real statistics indicate that the main victim of the “reform” will be the Russian language. Which, by the way, was excluded from the list of compulsory subjects when passing the External Economic Examination (Ukrainian analogue of the Unified State Exam) under the guise of the adoption of a new law. Last year, in one of the central Ukrainian regions, the authorities reported an “achievement”: from the entire region, less than 40 people registered for this same EIT in the Russian language, and even less actually arrived.

In the medium term, and even more so in the long term, this will mean disaster. In some 7-10 years, a generation will grow up that will not know the Russian language at all. More precisely, you will understand some simple messages from the TV, but you will lose the ability to competently express your thoughts on it orally, and, especially, in writing. In pedagogical language, this has its own name: functional illiteracy.

Especially for those who like to throw hats at the enemy without leaving the Moscow or Tula sofa, I’ll add: this is not a problem for Ukrainians. They can easily do without the great and powerful. Moreover, the government is creating all the conditions for knowledge of Pushkin’s language to become less and less necessary in an increasing number of spheres of life. Although, of course, some “elite” reservations, where you shouldn’t go without a good Russian, will continue to exist. But they will be available mainly to the children of the current elite.

Here Poroshenko’s son will speak good Russian. You don't even have to doubt it. The lot of the majority of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is not to really know either Russian or Ukrainian. Servants have no use for tongues.

With such dynamics, our countries will diverge like ships at sea and beyond. And all sorts of bypass gas pipelines and railways will only consolidate this disappointing trend.

The world does not stand still: years go by, children grow up, old people die. And before we have time to look back, in a fairly close historical perspective, we will suddenly discover that there are almost no people left who remember how we all once lived in one big friendly country. And the bulk of the population will be those who know about life in Russia or Ukraine solely from television propaganda and the cliches it produces

Actually, We are already seeing the fruits of such propaganda.

Moreover, as you yourself understand, an ordinary Russian will not reach Poroshenko and Turchinov, but will throw out his negativity towards Ukraine on an ordinary Ukrainian who turns up. With whom, quite possibly, I went to the same Soviet school just a quarter of a century ago.

And then that’s really all.

Perhaps someone will say that this is healthy pragmatism, that this is how it should be. That the appearance of a new Russophobic Estonia or Georgia on the borders with Russia is not a problem, tea is not 41st, we will survive.

Maybe you are right.

But then let’s not remember about some kind of “Russian World”. Because without Ukraine it cannot exist by definition. And if the late Brzezinski understood this well, then you and I should understand it by default.