By Vitaliy Portnikov
17.01.2014
Translated by Elena Tsymbalyuk
Edited by Isis Wisdom

Source: http://grani.ru/opinion/portnikov/m.223480.html

Vitaliy Portnikov, on Maidan

The unforgettable Victor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin was entered into world quotations as the author of a brilliant phrase about Russian political constructions, “Whatever party we try to build, we always get the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union]”. But, the Russian Prime Minister of the 1990s did not know another civilizational law of the post-soviet expanse:”Whatever country you build, you’ll get Putin’s Russia”.

A friend of Victor Stepanovich, Leonid Danylovych Kuchma, in his time, also shocked the Russian public with a provoking book entitled: “Ukraine is not Russia”. “How could it be – “not Russia?”, this surprised even liberal Moscow and St. Petersburg readers. How could Russia be so different from the former “second republic of the USSR” which they were already used to considering as their own? And if any citizen of Lviv received this notion quietly – well, then it was clear, there they were, the poor people, they suffered under the yoke of Austria and weren’t yet able to apprehend all the breadth of Russian grace), but from Kuchma, a Dnipropetrovsk native, they did not expect to hear something like this.

But Kuchma was right. Ukraine really is not like Russia. It has fewer imperial features. More anarchy. Less confidence in the government. More interest in their own home. Less faith in the special mission of their own state. More attention to the opinion of neighbors. Less oil and gas. More of a need to do something on their own.

And this set of “less thans” and “greater thans” spawned these inimitable Ukrainian freemen leading people out to Maidan twice in the country’s recent history and causing the rejection of a man who became a midwife to the people’s revolt – Victor Yanukovych. And if Kuchma simply stated, “Ukraine is not Russia”, then for Yanukovych it wasn’t a fact, but a nagging question: “Why isn’t it Russia? Why can’t he rule like Putin?”

Yesterday, the answer to this question was found – because the laws are not the same, not Russian. Here in Russia the laws are correct – and as a result, no protester can feel safe, no journalist can denigrate power with impunity, no internet can save people from responsibility and no help from the malicious West will aid its agents to undermine the boat of our statehood. That is why Ukraine is not Russia, because it is still unfinished!

And now Ukraine was completed. And deputies of the Party of Regions, literally in just a few minutes, without any electronic voting, literally just like at Party meetings, rubber-stamped laws which finally transformed Ukraine into a realm of order and managed democracy. Now, no one will go on the roads of the country in a column of more than five cars, no one can buy a SIM-card without a passport, no one will dare write slander against the “best people” of this country, and no one will engage in extremist activities on social networks – just like that. Everything is now under control and the Criminal Code.

Well, and of course, the wonderful Moscow rosette atop the Kyiv torte – is the status of “foreign agent” for public organizations that provide assistance from abroad (presumably due to the Western boundary of “abroad”: because there is no “abroad” in the East anymore, only continuous pleasure). This rosette, so that no one doubts it, is to ensure in whose name the city wrote the new Ukrainian legislation and from whom Victor Yanukovych takes his lead.

So now, Ukraine should turn into, if not Russia immediately, then certainly at least Belarus. And there will be calm, order and socialist legality of action. That this order will have to break through the barricades of Maidan, these authorities do not seem worried: they have made their choice already and they will stop talking about European integration and other promises, until recently considered the core foreign policy of Ukraine.  Because the whole European integration was annoying, risky and unprofitable.

In short, Yanukovych’s Ukraine – is certainly not Europe anymore. And to say that it is not Russia – today – not even Leonid Danylovych Kuchma himself can do that.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (R) and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych shake hands after signing documents during their meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, on December 17, 2013. ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images