Opinion How Ukraine was let down

Its hopes of democracy, socialism were belied

A woman stands outside a local hospital, which was destroyed during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the separatist-controlled town of Volnovakha in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. (Reuters)

G N Devy

March 14, 2022 09:33 AM IST First published on: Mar 14, 2022 at 03:30 AM IST

The motto of the Ukrainian city of Lviv used to be “Always True”, or, in Latin, “Semper Fidelis”. The city’s Latin name was Leopolis, the Lion City. Nearly 4,000 years before it acquired that name, the city distinguished itself by its peoples’ skill in taming horses and harnessing them for combat and drawing wagons. They had developed agriculture some seven millennia before the present time, with human inhabitation of the region going back 34 millennia. Normally, cities emerge by the banks of rivers. Lviv, too, grew on the banks of the river Poltva. But during the early 20th century, the city’s growing prosperity led to a higher population density, which made the rulers cover the river and build over it. Today, those who walk the streets of central Lviv hardly realise that they are walking on the river Poltva.

Five years ago, I went to Lviv for the annual PEN conference. The title of the conference was “Reclaiming Truths in Times of Propaganda”. Over 200 writers from 60 countries had gathered in Lviv to discuss the tyranny of post-truth, fake news, hate speech and state surveillance of citizens. Among them were such luminaries as Madeleine Thien, Paul Auster, Philippe Sands, Yaroslav Hrytsak and Andrei Kurkov. The discussions focussed on the US, China and Russia, and how these powers have contributed to the decline of free speech. Coming from India, I found many aspects of the discussion quite familiar. The joint declaration of the writers stated, “Over the course of the last century there have been moments in history when free expression has been threatened through increased censorship and propagandist agendas. We, PEN’s global community of writers, readers, publishers and activists, have witnessed and stood against these repeated and blatant attempts to erode this fundamental human right for close to a hundred years. Today, we are at such a moment once more.” Philippe Sands said in his keynote lecture, “No place knows more about the rights of individuals and groups than the city of Lviv.” I should add that the underground channel of the Poltva had provided an escape route for thousands of Jews during the Second World War. Prior to the Holocaust, there were about 1,60,000 Jews in the region, just about 2,000 of whom survived. Sands said, “Today once more… a poison of xenophobia and nationalism is coursing its way through the veins of Europe.”

After first the Soviet, then the German occupation of Lviv during the Second World War, it became part of the USSR in 1945. After Perestroika, it became part of independent Ukraine and with that change, its pre-war logo “Always True” was replaced by “Open to the world”. Through its long, chequered history, western Ukraine has always harboured dreams of self-determination. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought that sentiment back into a central role in Ukraine’s politics and culture. However, the conflicting pressures of Europe and Russia were too overwhelming to give it that space. Ukraine’s tilt towards the European Union took place in 2016, a year before the PEN Conference in Lviv. The iconic Ukrainian poet Natalka Bilotserkivets caught the existential anxiety of her people when she wrote: And what can grow from scattered ears of wheat?/ It’s been our fate to see the field denuded/ But someone, all the same, will see the harvest / And the striding foeman’s scythe pass through it/ And they will flail it on the threshing-floor/ And upon the embroidered cloth, the bread/ Will lie before us like a severed head.

The discussions in the writers’ conference were gripping. However, the most disquieting question was one that a young girl asked me outside the event. She was part of the team handling the recordings and interviews of writers for the local radio. When my interview with them was over, I invited the team to have coffee with me. We sat down and talked about the destinies of nations. The young people were keen to know how India was coping with “fake news”. They appeared well-informed and had heard of the murders of intellectuals in western India. When I asked them how Ukraine was coping with the pressure of the superpowers, they gave me a detailed account of Ukraine’s past and its long-standing dream of self-determination. A girl, whose grandparents had lost their lives because they were Jews and whose parents had lost jobs because of their non-aligned views, asked, “Tell me, what is our crime?” I had no ready answer to her question then. Now, sadly, I know better.

The crime is not knowing that Russia no longer cares for socialism and the US no longer cares for democracy. Ukraine is economically the poorest of the European nations, but that doesn’t concern Putin. The nation has just recently turned to democracy, but that is of no concern to Biden. Ukraine’s crime is not knowing that the guardian international institutions have long been defunct and are nothing more than their logos.

The recent discussions in the UNSC on the Ukraine question were so mired in the geopolitical interests of its members that the non-member countries seemed no more than the crumpled paper on which maps are printed. Ukraine’s crime is not knowing that the global media is interested in wars merely as a spectacle and not as a humanitarian crisis. And the Ukrainians’ most serious crime is not knowing that despite the death and destruction they have faced, people in many other countries will continue to sing the glories of myopic nationalism and vote for fascist governments. Didn’t many in our country ask voters to forget individual dignity and economic wants and vote for religious hatred and perceived national pride?

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 14, 2022 under the title ‘A Severed Head in Europe’. The writer is a cultural activist