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Back in 1989 the USSR First Congress of People's Deputies shifted world perception of many Soviet people including me, giving up for lost just another zealous Young Communist and a would-be disciple of Lenin’s ideas. And even though the “History of the Communist party of the Soviet Union” course was still obligatory in high schools and at the meetings of the Narodny Ruh (public movement of Ukraine) one could see “men in plain clothes” offering their “friendship” to the young frequenters of the meetings, the wind of change was blowing stronger with every new day. Dean of my Arts School Ludmila Starovoit never tried to break down the spirit of young libertines, on the contrary, she vindicated our actions before theHead of the University; and for that I want to express my personal appreciation to her.
So, I never had a chance to feel myself a dissident, except perhaps, when in 1993 at the summer pioneer camp, where I worked as a pioneer leader, I was persecuted by the director of the camp for showing my indignation at seeing the red banner with Vladimir Lenin profile on it planted down in the center of the camp – back in 1993 the Pioneer Organization’s logo had already been changed, but nevertheless my reaction resulted in a newspaper story and vigilant control throughout that summer.
Herewith I wasn’t very antagonistic towards the symbols of the Soviet era seeing clearly that it was more important to fight the ideas, not the symbols.
But when I hear today, sixteen years after Ukraine gaining independence, youngsters in Kyiv say “ruble” meaning the Ukrainian hryvnia, I understand that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. I can see a little part of the Soviet Union “alive and kicking” in this “rubles” as well as in all sorts of sickle-and-hammer souvenir stuff they still sell in Kyiv.
True, it is more important to fight the ideas, but symbols such as the figures of the “leader of the world proletariat” that they sell on squares all over Ukraine, serve to legitimate the ideas of the “political pterodactyls” that pull the country “back in USSR”. The figures embody images and serve to shape ideas and perceptions. Students studying at Arts School learn about this unity of form and content principle during their first year. And it doesn’t demand a degree in political science to grasp that in a political system with free elections control over the ideas can pave one’s way to power.
We didn’t pass through the process of lustration here in Ukraine. And maybe it is for the better – this policy would have dispatched many professional and decent people whose mentality was shaped by the Soviet system.
But a New Independent State being a former Soviet Republic, whose people had for years been brainwashed by the Soviet propaganda, needs such measure as “lustration of symbols” like the denazification of the after-war Germany. I don’t mean to compare here Soviet and Nazi regimes – for me they are equally perverted. But we have to get rid of our Soviet mentality if we want to maintain a sovereign state in Ukraine.
Symbols are rooted deeply in the cultural archetypes: at the surface sickle and hammer symbolize the union of workers and peasants, but if you look into this symbol you’ll see that it embodies the totalitarian Soviet regime. Absolutely in this logic the policy of denazification in Germany went further than simply banning swastika. One highly regarded artist told me that in early 1950s German bureaucrats were prohibited to have German realism on the walls of their cabinets for this art was associated with the fascist propaganda. It was a rather voluntaristic decision; our recent history hasn’t known such measures.
It’s not surprising that we don’t find it an easy task to perceive “conceptual” Western art our cultural background being socialist realism and our every day life limited to the vicious circle “home-work-home”.
Ivan Gayvanovych
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