People need to learn how to control the power, local first of all

One of the most prominent dissidents of the Soviet Union, weighed after a four-month hunger strike in BC political zone 389/35 in the Perm region of 39 kg. The author of “Handbook of Psychiatry for dissidents,” a member of the American Society of Psychiatrists, UK Royal College of Psychiatrists, the rehabilitation of victims of the World Council of Torture, International PEN, the author of several books and hundreds of articles. All of this – on human rights defenders, public figures and the head of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association Semen Gluzman.

Semen Gluzman  –  on the Maidan, and the syndrome crowd of friendship with the “Bandera” and enzyme resistance, control the power and responsibility for the past.

– Semen Fishelevich, you are one of those who supported the Maidan, but never torn his scene. Why, by the way?

– I never wanted to the scene – from the time of Rukh has never been on any shodnyak, I mean … on an important meeting decent people. Just realize that the psychology of a decent man and the psychology of thousands of decent people differ dramatically.

At the same time, I must admit, even during the Orange Revolution called me many foreign colleagues, the stars of the world of psychiatry, with one question: where’s syndrome aggressive influence of the crowd?

Ukrainian people have shown themselves quite surprisingly and in 2004 and in 2014. During the recent hurricane in Houston because of marauding police had to impose a curfew. Are there many cases of looting, we can remember when the city center, with its many shops and expensive boutiques, stood up to 200 thousand people?

– In the mid-1970s, in the Perm region, a young Jew Gluzman made friends with Ukrainian nationalists – 25 annuals. But then you have joined a common enemy and not the overall vision of the future.

– Yes, I spent several years in the camp side by side with those who were called “Bandera”. They were simple people, the names of Bandera or Shukhevych of their mouth, I had never heard. They just defended their land from “outsiders”. I once asked Uncle Vasya –Basil Malozhinskogo, whom he regarded as the UPA soldier, and he was from the SS division Galicia-evil so asked reproachfully, saying how could you ?! And he did his best to explain: “Spershu boule sovєti Potіm priyshli nіmtsі OAO All – A Stranger’s one I never pobachiv i pochuv svoїh, yshli hloptsі that spіvali of Ukrainian pіsen What I first bailiff to them That Well svoї boule ……. . “That’s right, simply and without ideological pathos.

– Jewish support of the Maidan has not surprised?

– Not in the least surprised. One of the most striking childhood memories – I was 10-11 years old, I was returning to his home on the bus, with rises on Artema October Revolution Square (Maidan current). At one of the stops came an elderly lady, very polite, a good Ukrainian language, asked the passengers where it’s okay to leave. Trolley bus exploded with anger – I was scared, not knowing what was happening. Started the persecution of some lumpen, perhaps a T-shirt, he was supported by his aunt vociferous – it was a stream of insults that hit a woman, just to speak in Ukrainian. Then I realized that with me live one more Jews – Ukrainians.

Frankly, when Ukraine got its independence in 1991, I was tense, remembering how aggressively treated here to the Jews in the Soviet era. I remember how the Jewish boys and girls, which were practically closed local universities, leaving to other republics, where there were quiet and well attended. In addition-and this is for me as a dissident is very important – in Ukraine was the most ferocious in the KGB Union. I tensed and because he saw who vote for independence in Parliament : a group of 239, which is officially called “For a sovereign Radyans’ka up Ukraine”, in other words, the communist majority, sensing the winds of change. And along with them – thousands of opportunists, rinuvshihsya from the Komsomol straight into Roc. Professional killers of Ukrainian culture, instantly became the accusers “hand of Moscow”.

Then, when it became an annual index to measure the tolerance, it appears that anti-Semitism and xenophobia are retreating, although the anti-Semites, of course, is and always will be. This was true of all the other areas – the country got a chance.

I remember one of the first American ambassadors told his friends in Ukraine, saying that you frequent to Moscow, come here, there is a very different people. And it’s true, that’s not the idealization or romanticizing, and the herald of the European mentality.

Of course, at 2014 Independence were different people, and they stood for different things. But it was in the area – some seven years I have not filed a hand.

– Today, three and a half years later, do not be disappointed?

– I am not so naive as to fail to understand: the revolution does not end as the dream of its members. Therefore anticipated that possibly will be disappointed, but … did not expect so much.

You see, in his initial optimism, I relied on the camp experience. With me sat a lot of people of different nationalities, but the Ukrainians have always been the most – about 30-40% of prisoners. Very different – not very smart – and wise, educated – and almost illiterate, sincere – and on your mind. I do not quite understand what the ethnic psychology, but in all the years in the political area, I have not met one Belarusian, Kyrgyz or Uzbek dissident. But the KGB was everywhere. Therefore, unlike many former Soviet republics, Ukraine was able to gradually come to some kind of European values. There is a resistance to the enzyme, but the people are not trained in democracy and have no control over their politicians.

This, incidentally, turned out rather quickly, so, in my opinion, the only way out – a long way to majority elections.

– Where buckwheat is everything?  

– It is everything because of her hand nobody put. Of course, the new laws, withdrawal Institute, etc. needed – need to teach people to control the power, primarily local. Do many Ukrainians need a report from its regional deputies? That’s it. And who offended us?

As for buckwheat, remember the scene in Bishkek Tulip Revolution, when revolutionaries dragged on his back stolen refrigerators and television sets? In Kiev, as it was not … Here, both the Maidan demanding from the authorities not buckwheat, and quite another.

Just people accept defeat very quickly, sitting in the kitchen or in the FB and wailing: again m … Duck elected. And also choose not the best, but they are controlled -and this should be taught in Europe. I know many who are helping with the support of Western partners to build democratic institutions in Ukraine. The vast majority of them work just for money. Some of them are rascals. Unfortunately…

– In 2014, many thought that the Ukrainians are the European political nation. How far along the process, or, conversely, stopped, given the historical memory of the policy, with its cult of new heroes?

– For me, the new heroes – a Heavenly hundreds, not the leaders of the OUN and UPA. And the fact that the memory of the heroes of the new vulgarized, obviously. She vulgarized when stopper criminal cases, which should be called the perpetrators of the massacre. She vulgarized, as the country’s leadership does not want to admit that on the other side, too, were Ukrainians. I know one family in which the boy grew up, the only son, who was “bad” brought – he wanted to be a Ukrainian officer. He was burned at the Maidan. Perhaps one of my daughter’s friends, occasionally throwing Molotov cocktails.

There are many things that we uncouple. But in a situation where the people in the mass hates and despises the power, what kind of love for each other can be said?

– What do you think about decommunisation receiving more and more sophisticated form?

– As a former political prisoner and anti-Soviet, I can not but welcome this process. But in its present form it gives me a feeling of disgust. As lustration, which was clearly organized and controlled from the top and stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

Lustration was illegal and generally meaningless, and it was followed by the same kind of pointless and illegal Decommunization. Autos of the dead will not work, especially when it conducts a marginal rot.

We voted in favor at the time of Kravchuk, and after the KGB has arrested dissidents only after the approval of the Central Committee department of ideology, which he headed. Why not to prosecute? And at the same time and all the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the group 239, by which the independence was proclaimed.

It is very convenient to demolish monuments, taking responsibility for the past. We are the eternal victim, with a demand for us? “We endlessly criticize Comrade Stalin, and, of course, to work and yet I want to ask. Who wrote denunciations of four million?” – once said Sergei Dovlatov. The question hung in the air. We’ve no sense of responsibility for the acts of their fathers and grandfathers, as in Germany, where the children and grandchildren remember well what difference their loved ones. Where they are – children of the NKVD, the party nomenklatura, which, after all, millions of ordinary people obediently raises his hands at the next party meeting, the stigma of renegades, traitors to the socialist motherland, etc.?

So it is not an ideology we have to sew in the XXI century, and the way of the future.

I am not an enemy of perpetuating the memory of Stepan Bandera, but when acting Health Minister Suprun declares that, taking important decisions, mentally consults with the leader of the OUN, this is in any gate … And apparently, it is something to her counsels, as the results of this tandem we see.

– Donbass, which has become a springboard for the “Russian world”, lost to Ukraine? Or not very much, and we need it?

– Russian is impoverished, it has fewer features include these territories, and Putin, in the end, death. Deliberately or not, but he pulled the plug by their actions many influential people in Russia who stole billions, access to which is every day more and more difficult, given the sanctions. They are used to a different level of personal freedom, where they are, after all, now the rest? On Baikal?

So I believe that sooner or later Ukraine will return to the region. But not the kind of young people who went to the Donbas and already settled in Kiev and other cities. They have made their choice.

Sometimes it occurs to me seditious thought … my camp friends were fighting for the independence of Ukraine, and once the day has come – not because we were sitting at it in the camps. If Donbass really wants to live differently, if it is him and not someone external choice, from a moral point of view, why not think about the idea of ​​independence for these people? This is only one possible solution, but it must be spoken. Apart so apart, we do so and are doing everything to isolate these areas – with the help of the blockade, for example.

– It is clear that the war promotes the division of society into friends and foes, and the formation of a black and white picture of the world. All this of course, but … if we do not turn into “Russia on the contrary”, with its contempt for the private view, the search for their fifth column, and so on?

– I am fully aware that the current president is also seeking to usurp power, but I understand that he is also not released, because, even Kuchma, Ukraine wrote – not Russia. Our man in the street is different from the Russian. There genuinely respected Putin. Here the power is changing, and every new government we do not like, and often despised or hated. And it gives grounds for optimism.

Regarding the split in society, we are thrown into the past and because they do not offer a vision of the future. This also applies to the heroes of the UPA – stranger to a large part of the country, and to the language problem, which is the vast majority of Ukrainians do not consider the problem, but that again raised the shield on …

After the trial, I spent twenty days in a cell with Vasilem Stusom – and it was a luxurious 20 days. From time to time I even forget where I was, plunging into the Ukrainian culture. But we were talking in their own language, and Stus took this quite calmly. With 25 annuals UPA camp communicated in the same way – no one ever said nothing.

I was once again transferred to the new barracks, and that same day I was admitted to the “family” Eugene Prishlyak and Vasil Pidgorodetskim. The first was to arrest referent Security Lviv OUN, the second – a simple fighter in the UPA. Collected in the bedside table meal, we shared equally and ate together. After some time went to Vasil old policeman – a bastard – and said, “Vasil you train a respected man, an old convict, are not you ashamed to Zhydenko eat?” “I have it on s … sent”, – he told me later Vasil.

I am absolutely convinced that the state language is necessary to know, but since independence can not remember a single attempt to create appropriate courses for civil servants. Told me how hard they taught language after work – reading aloud Shevchenko, etc. Ethnic Ukrainians, but completely Russified Soviet reality. Such mockery, with complete indifference of the state, caused the rejection, rather than patriotic feelings.

So let’s publish good books, cooking class teachers – the key to successful language policy. I sometimes have to deal with some of the upper class of pedagogical universities – it’s awful. They academics some of their academies, wealthy people, but are engaged in playing the Soviet zhlobstva.

Ukraine has ruined a lot. When NaUKMA took its first steps, I tried to explain to the rector that it is necessary to keep the schools of mathematicians, theoretical physicists have developed in “mailboxes”, with excellent professionals. It was just necessary to allow these professionals to teach at first in Russian, but … we got rid of high intelligence.

– Who is able to pull the country out of the vicious circle? As long as people do not totally trust the government, naively hopes on the most rabid populists – and we have already passed … Civil society is defeated – or simply lost the battle?

– Civil society must help, rather than push. I am following with great concern for the future of the country in which I live and which I am a part of. I’m afraid that if this continues, the Ukrainian state will be defeated not by external forces, it simply dissolved, as a solid in a liquid. And will Vodicka, sweet or salty – are not so important.

– And what about the resistance enzyme?

– The enzyme resistance – an important condition for independence, but not sufficient.

Build the country – it does not sit in the cooler. We need other skills. When the Soviet Union ended, many former dissidents in Moscow continued to engage in human rights activities. In Ukraine, a number of my colleagues on the Gulag have gone into politics – and what?

It is clear that the government is constantly tosses a bone of contention that we at loggerheads in the past, instead of building the future. And less remembered about the reforms that are needed, as the air, and at the same time painful, so hold on to your seats, the tops are in no hurry to carry them out. A bottoms – bottoms grow, and this is our chance.

Interview by Michael Gold

Sourse, 13/10/2017