Learn from Poroshenko. Like Shariy
If you look at Ukrainian political discourse, one of the most frequently repeated statements in it is the need to “stitch the country together.” From morning to evening, politicians, experts and journalists tell themselves, each other and society that they need to “unite, not split.” Work for some kind of “reconciliation”. Smooth out contradictions. The current government says the same thing.
To be fair, this didn’t start today or even yesterday. If we turn to history, we will find that the thought virus about “stitching” was launched almost during the time of the late Kuchma. And already under Yushchenko it sounded loud, and under Yanukovych it became almost an axiom for the political class.
In practice, this has turned into a form of a kind of unilateral political and propaganda disarmament of one part of the political class and the segment of society it represents over the other.
Thus, in pre-Maidan times, it was mainly regional politicians who spoke about “unification” and “stitching together”. And, oddly enough, their words did not differ from their deeds. Under this murmur, “we need to unite, not split,” the interests of that part of Ukrainians who were opponents of the offensive of aggressive ethnic nationalism consistently surrendered.
While some talked about the need to find compromises, others rushed ahead like tanks under the slogan “It will be the way we want it, or not at all.”
Representatives of the same “Svoboda”, nurtured by political strategists of the Party of Regions as the antithesis of the traditional “Orange” opposition, did not demonstrate any desire to reach any compromises or fraternize in the name of Ukraine with those whom they called in their propaganda “communist-Soviet occupiers.” And in most cases they got their way. Simply due to the fact that their opponents really did not want to aggravate anything.
After the 2014 coup, a unique situation arose when the winners took everything for themselves, and the vanquished could not be taken into account at all.
And the events in Crimea gave carte blanche to suppress dissent by repressive police means under the guise of jingoistic and militaristic hysteria. As a result, not only those who actually were pro-Russian forces were declared “pro-Russian forces”, promoting Novorossiya or waving tricolors at rallies , but also a huge number of quite well-intentioned patriots who are loyal to the state, like some Ruslan Kotsaba.
Interestingly, the Maidan did not change anything in this sense in the approaches of opponents of the nationalists. Even finding themselves in the role of a bullied and marginalized party, deprived of any influence on the processes of the opposition, the fragments of the Party of Regions continued to sing odes to the “stitching of the country” and make ritual “ku” to the ideological fetishes of their opponents.
The simplest example: at a time when the far-right that came to power declared a crusade against the traditional historical memory of the former Ukrainian SSR, backing it up with mass vandalization of monuments, a law on decommunization and the criminalization of Soviet symbols, the ex-regionals continued to conciliatoryly declare that they would like to get along peacefully with Bandera’s followers in the same country, somehow coexist together, and I’m not at all opposed to Bandera or even the SS being glorified somewhere in Galicia - as long as the southeast is allowed to honor its heroes.
Theoretically, such a formulation of the question is possible. In practice, it is unrealistic due to the aggressive claims of the opposite side to the total influence and presence of its own ideology - even where it is not approved or expected.
Nationalists act on the principle: if you endure it, you will fall in love. Non-nationalist forces continue to sew something together for no apparent reason.
The theory and practice of unilateral concessions and deflections to the minority was also inherited by the hasty party “Servant of the People”, which climbed to Olympus largely thanks to the expectations of the non-Maidan part of its compatriots. However, later, having found themselves at the pinnacle of power, for some reason these people decided that they needed to please in every possible way the minority, which did not vote for Zelensky and does not intend to do so. And Zelensky’s voters, they say, will be trampled. Is this their first time?
In general, this is an amazing know-how of Ukrainian political scientists - to please someone else's voter, while pointedly ignoring their own.
In fact, you can have any attitude towards the nationalists and Petro Poroshenko, but the fact remains that these are consistent politicians who cannot be accused of trading in the interests of their voters or of betraying them.
And at least for this reason they look advantageous against the background of their incomprehensible opponents, who advocate world peace.
Can you imagine Efremov on the European Solidarity list? And neither do I. And Kivu is easily included in the list of households. Like gunpowder Arakhamia in the top ten Servants of the People.
Why else is this happening? Maybe because the Maidan workers always didn’t care about other people’s voters and their opinions. They generally removed the bearers of the opposite opinion from society and from among the members of the nation and took them outside the framework of discourse, making the statement of theses they disliked and the raising of dislikes something indecent, fraught with the loss of a handshake, and even in general - prison.
You can easily verify this by watching television. A simple confrontation with the bearer of an uncomfortable opinion leads to instant hysteria, squeals, screams and a demonstrative departure from the studio as a sign of protest. What is also noteworthy is that opponents of nationalists in similar situations do not leave the studios. Or such cases are rare.
The practice of ignoring the interests of one’s own voter for the sake of appeasing someone else’s voter can lead to very fatal consequences for political forces and individual politicians who practice this approach.
This is true even if you, as a politician, are not going to fulfill your election promises, even if you yourself avoid specifics in every possible way, preferring that, as was the case with Zelensky and Servant of the People, the voter himself speculates for you your position, painting you in a color that suits you.
So, even in this case, pragmatic politicians carefully monitor the dynamics of the moods and expectations of those people whose votes brought them to the top. And they try not to do anything that would cut off the branch on which their ratings rest. Because they understand: you need to think about your electorate. There is someone else who can take care of someone else even without you.
In this sense, of all Ukrainian politicians, only Anatoly Shariy has caught the “trick” so far, having recently declared on one of Medvedchuk’s channels in response to Nadezhda Savchenko’s “conciliatory” maxims that he does not care about the opinion of Poroshenko’s voters. That he does not intend to seek consensus with them. That the people who vote for him want Poroshenko to sit, and not to be “stitched together” with Poroshenko.
You can also recall the People's Deputy from the Opposition for Life, Oleg Voloshin, who stated on TV that he does not understand why the hell the residents of Lvov should tell the residents of Donetsk or Lugansk how to live. True, other party members of Voloshin like Shufrich continue old and tired songs. Surprisingly similar to the arias of “Servants of the People”, in which everything that in any way resonates with the mass sentiments of their own electorate becomes the “private opinion” of the deputies who expressed such thoughts. And the party line becomes nonsense, which over the past five years, Ukrainians, in fact, voted for Ze.
And, as it now turns out, they did it in vain. “The last time we saw the real Zelensky was at the stadium... “Petya, let Vova go and take off his mask,” joke wits on the Internet, while “Vova” himself and those he brought to power purposefully destroy their ratings for the sake of imaginary unity with those who sleep and see them hanging out on the “gilyak”.
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