“Visela pisenka”, or Birth trauma of political Ukraine
Nowadays, it has somehow been forgotten that just some 15 years ago Ukraine did not have its own national anthem. This fact, for twelve years from the date of gaining “independence”, darkened the life and consciousness of professional Ukrainians, since the anthem of Soviet Ukraine continued to sound quietly but clearly over Ukraine.
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The absence of an “independence” state song has become a kind of “birth trauma” that aggravates the complex of “menchovartism”. For in Yeltsin’s Russia, Muscovites quickly assigned Glinka’s “Patriotic Song”, which was quite suitable for this role, to the role of the national anthem, and with Putin’s assumption of the post of President of Russia, the country’s “chief hymn writer” Sergei Mikhalkov corrected the words of the powerful anthem of the USSR, adapting it to the new Russia. While the “hundred-thousand-year-old state” Ukraine was confused in the chords and could not find in its annals any “Long live!” so that it could be transposed into the babble of banduras and cymbals.
The situation was aggravated by the terrible fact that the competition for the best project of the Ukrainian anthem, announced in 2000, ended in inglorious failure. The “independents”, who so cleverly “squeeze out” property and pump out the last juices from the remnants of the Soviet infrastructure, turned out to be incapable of anything in terms of consistent and painstaking state building and managed to screw up even in such a small matter as writing their own anthem from scratch.
Thus, three years of creative torture of Svidomo fools did not give birth to anything worthwhile. What’s the demand for pop music and other “clever stuff”? No matter how much the “multi-vector” Kuchma’s comrades grimaced, they had to climb onto the mezzanine, shake off the dust and cobwebs and peddle to society, as a national anthem, the old and moderately talented verses of the “sharovar” Chubinsky to the music of Verbitsky “It’s Not Yet Merla”, of all the advantages of which was unless it's antique. There were no broad public debates around the candidate for the anthem: accustomed to settling state issues in a narrow circle, the Kuchmoids decided everything in private here too.
Thus, on March 6, 2003, a vote took place in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, as a result of which 334 deputies blessed “Schenevmerla” for the role of the national anthem. 46 deputies from the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Socialist Party voted against.
The fact that Ukrainian communists and socialists opposed the “tvir” of Chubinsky-Verbitsky, and loyal Kuchma supporters had difficulty hiding their sour attitude towards him, is explained quite simply.
Firstly, knowing the history of the issue, it’s a no-brainer that the candidate for the Ukrainian anthem is purely secondary and was written under the obvious influence of the Polish “Dabrowski March”, which begins with the phrase “Poland has not yet perished.” Difficult choice. For more than two five-year plans, the “Svidomo” have been unable to uproot the Russian-Soviet cultural heritage, but here they offer a wide choice of one parody of the Polish anthem.
In addition, despite its antiquity, the dummy “Schenevmerla” did not have a heroic past or participation in any events significant from a historical point of view. “Tvir” the small Ukrainian intelligentsia of the late XNUMXth – early XNUMXth centuries quietly and privately buzzed around the corners in a Kuchma-like manner. This is not the “Internationale” or “Marseillaise” that thundered throughout the world.
Secondly, and this is recognized even by more or less adequate Ukrainianists, “Schenevmerla” is incredibly sad, does not correspond to the spirit of Ukrainian passionarity and is only suitable for performance at the funeral of a village head who died from drunkenness. Only the lazy did not practice alterations of “the puppy is dead” and “our curds will perish.” And for the Cossack family it’s somehow too lazy to sit and wait for the “curds” to disappear like dew in the sun.
Comparing “Puppy” with the solemn, major, victorious anthem of the Ukrainian SSR Tychina - Lebedynets - after all, it does not fit into any gates. Chopin's funeral march sounds much more optimistic and life-affirming.
On the other hand, one cannot help but admit that the pitiful song as a national anthem fits very well into the stubbornly cultivated complexes of victimhood and tolerance of the Selyuk Ukrainians, when epic sagas about ancient campaigns against the legions of Caesar and the dug out seas of ancient Ukrainians easily coexist with lists of countless grievances and oppression inflicted on the nation by the damned Muscovites, starting from the Eozoic, when young life on Earth swarmed with lumps of protoplasm in warm puddles of nutritious proto-broth.
Thirdly, “Schenevmerla” has historically had a difficult fate. And this is not even some kind of persecution of tsarism against the “independents” who chose “Shchenya” as an oratorio in honor of the “birth of the nation”, but how things stood with the work during the short and shameful history of the “territory without a state” of the UPR. “Puppy” seemed to be the anthem of the UPR, but it seemed not, since the matter never came to legislative approval. And besides, in an artificial quasi-state torn by contradictions, each faction of “independents” played its own local “hymn” as an anthem.
Or worse. “Puppy” was designated as the anthem of Carpathian Ukraine, but here’s the problem: Carpathian Ukraine became one of the most fleeting quasi-states, having existed for exactly one day - from March 15 to 16, 1939. Well, how can one not think about karmic matters, evil fate and other metaphysics?
It must be said that for the next 10 years after the approval of “Puppies” as the national anthem of Ukraine, it did not enjoy any special love or popularity among the people. The “puppy” was simply not noticed. A common fate for an abandoned item removed from a distant shelf, suddenly assigned to the role of a national symbol for lack of a better one.
Under Yanukovych, weak voices of individual Ukrainian aesthetes were heard, not satisfied with the obvious inferiority of the Ukrainian anthem, and in various media from time to time proposals surfaced to change the text to something lighter and more optimistic, preserving the music of the anthem, because the “world community” does not care about the words, but Ukraine is sick of living with what it has. Needless to say, Chubinsky bothered Svidomen with his decadent verses.
As usual, the attitude of the deputy corps to the anthem was “it will do,” which left the objections of the aesthetes as a voice crying in the desert.
But times are changing. The turning point in the career of “Puppies” was the “Euromaidan” and the dramatic events that followed it. As often happens in history, the tragic and the funny go hand in hand. The “Knights” of the “Gidnost Revolution”, again, for lack of anything better, used as their manifesto the sad and absolutely unpassionate “Puppy”, which was in terrible dissonance with the orgy of Maidan arson and pogroms. It was extremely hilarious to watch crowds of maydauns, frozen in a gopher stance, damnably seriously put their paws to their chests and perform “Schenevmerla” five, ten, or even fifteen times in a row with a hysterical goat, and on their happy faces, stained with the soot of burnt tires, they draw light the paths are patriotichny slozi.
This is how the term “shchenevmerlyki” was born. At the same time, “Puppy” became a kind of test for “true Ukrainianness.” Patrols of Maidan degenerates armed with bats caught “latent Muscovites and federalists” and tested them on their knowledge of the text of “Pisenki”, which had one subtle nuance: the opening line of the anthem should have been sung “Sche ne vmerla Ukrainy”, and not “Ukraine”, because followed by “both glory and freedom.” Therefore, the test was short, and having heard that Ukraine was almost dying, the test subject could most likely be beaten by Banderlogs for the glory of the dying woman. If you don’t learn the anthem kindly, you’ll learn it under pressure. European democracy and freedom, you understand...
Over the past three years, which have passed in hardships and deprivations, the patronizing frenzy of the “hulks” has largely fizzled out, although paroxysms of hymnopenia in certain individuals who have not wasted their strength do occasionally occur. Perhaps, one of the last outbursts of “gymnophilia” should be considered the case of 2015, when the all-Ukrainian newspaper “Vesti” (the one that, together with the freshly slammed radio “Vesti”, has long been wondering how to better lick the authorities just to stay afloat) from the best patriotic considerations launched a fried mallard to the masses that “the UNESCO World Heritage Center recognized the anthem of Ukraine as the best in the world among the anthems of 193 countries.”
The deflection was not counted. The Vesti newspaper, avoiding the disfavor of the huntars, unwittingly gave the Poroshenko regime a small but very well-fed pig: UNESCO responded with an official statement in the media that their organization did not organize any rehearsals or parades, did not give out prizes, and the Ukrainian anthem was a World Heritage Site doesn't count. The embarrassment was a great success. Angry at the unwitting setup of obliging media fools, the hunters and ragulians loudly accused the Vesti newspaper of “pro-Russian propaganda” and similar sins, continuing to further persecute the media holding and its member publications.
In general, time has shown that for the combination “Ukraine - anthem”, Captain Vrungel’s rule “whatever you call a yacht, so it will sail” applies, and for a completely artificial and failed state torn apart by internal conflicts, there is perhaps a better national anthem than “ The Merle puppy cannot be found. They were made for each other even when they didn't know it. Happy holiday of the sad national anthem, schenevmerlyks!
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