Sophie Cooke on Ukraine: Behind the facade of Euro 2012
‘Why don’t you visit Euro 2012 and protest for us?‘ Ukrainian novelist Yuriy Andrukhovych
The diamond-encrusted presidential toilet is perhaps the most appropriate symbol of Viktor Yanukovych’s regime. Milan Kundera’s description of totalitarian kitsch as ‘the absolute denial of shit’ never found fuller expression than in this image. The famed toilet sits in a lavish mansion, at the end of vast halls of Italian marble, in an estate the size of Monaco. There is a private yacht club, riding stables, and a small zoo. The name of the Ukrainian president’s personal estate is Mezhyhiriya.
Where did President Yanukovych find the money to pay for the construction of his insanely lavish mansion? Part of it, apparently, has come from his literary endeavours. According to his latest tax return, he was paid $2 million for as-yet unwritten memoirs by a small Ukrainian publishing house, Novyi Svit (New World), based in Donetsk. It is unlikely that Novyi Svit was impressed by the performance of Yanukovych’s last publication with them: Opportunity Ukraine had to be removed from bookshops due to plagiarism allegations. Perhaps a clearer explanation of its excitement over the author can be found in the fact that the director of the publishing house is an employee of the Yanukovych administration, as pointed out by Alexander Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers University, in his blog for World Affairs: (http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/yanukovych’s-shady-royalties). Of course, one must still wonder where the little publishing company found the $2 million with which to pay the president.
The time has come when each of us
faces the choice times give to us:
now gangsters and liars govern,
con-men and pig-herds fill Parliament.
They have ground the state down to powder,
drunk from our veins like vampires;
now their leader, pelted with egg,
draws us on to the cliff-edge.
A gangster before: he’s a gangster now
but of a better class, the kind that are allowed.
It’s not fur hats he’s nicking, but public millions now –
Kill the bugger.
For flogging the country to ones who aren’t its friends,
along with Taras’ Testament;
for bringing us Tabachnyk, and other Moscow shamans –
Kill the bugger.
Tabachnyks are the governors of this sleazy witches’ ball,
their kind has risen like a star above the spoils.
Once more, we’re Little Russian khokhols –
Kill the bugger.
Ukraine will not lie back:
miner from Donbas,
lift your steel pick-axe
to kill the bugger.
We have no more holy purpose
nor any other hope!
Go ask God for forgiveness
and kill the bugger.
When they serve us on a plate
to a Kremlin whose saliva is already in full spate,
it will be too late: rise up and kill!
Kill the bugger!
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