Taras Kuzio’s Blog

Injured Male Ego’s and Narcissism in Ukrainian Politics

I had thought it was now too difficult for Ukrainian politics to continue to shock me. The last 3 years events (2004 election fraud, Yushchenko’s poisoning, orange in-fighting, strategic mistakes by the president, Moroz’s defection and the return of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych) were enough shocks to last a life time.

But, I was very wrong. Last summer I was watching Channel 5 in the British city of Nottingham when I fell off my chair after seeing Moroz defect to Yanukovych. When I read the Party of Regions list for the 2007 elections and saw Serhiy Holovatiy alongside Taras Chornovil and Sergei Kivalov I was not shocked, just very depressed. The question that crossed my mind, and the opinion of those whom I asked about Hoovatiy’s “re-birth” in Regions, is whether there are any morals in Ukrainian politics?
Perhaps the question is redundant? A question only to be asked by a member of the diaspora which is always accused of looking at Ukraine (as are all diaspora’s) through romantic, rose tinted glasses?
Maybe there never was any morality in Ukrainian politics and the orange revolution was just a pipedream, an aberration from the usual course of immorality?

The well known Kyiv writer Mykola Ryabchuk stayed with us this week. I had asked him to bring two newly published books from Kyiv: Boris Berezovsky’s Moy Maydan Nezalezhnosti and Leonid Kuchma’s Posle Maydana. I was surprised at the title of Kuchma’s book. Mykola had jokingly written a few years ago following Kuchma’s 2004 Ukraina – Ne Rosiya that his next book would be entitled Ukraina – Ne Zimbabwe.

In Russia when Vladimir Putin had granted immunity to Boris Yeltsin he had expressly told him to not publish or comment to the media. Molodets. Yeltsin had kept his side of the bargain. Yushchenko obviously was more generous in his immunity deal with Kuchma and in the last two years we have had the ex-president regularly commenting on Ukrainian politics.
This is a person who has no moral authority to comment on anything! At least that is what I, as a Westerner, think. This is obviously not true of all Ukrainians. Kuchma’s book launch was attended not only by the usual sycophants but also by members of the national democratic camp – Ivan Drach and Ihor Yukhnovsky.

Kuchma’s Posle Maydana has an interesting episode that perhaps says a lot about Yushchenko’s duplicity towards his voters:
“I remember the election speeches of Yushchenko and his team at numerous meetings. And, even on television advertisements. They all began and ended with the same thing: the authorities are bandits, away with the authorities! Yushchenko told me during the presidential campaign: ‘Don’t listen to what I say about you and about the authorities at meetings. Don’t give it any significance. Don’t take it to heart. This is politics’. I did not respond to this but felt that the whole thing was rather comical.”

But, lets return to Holovatiy.
Firstly, it is worthwhile pointing out that he is not unusual in his immorality (as the Yushchenko quote shows). I have a list that I drew up a few years ago of similar defectors. They all share commonalities and it is not necessarily money. Anatoliy Kinakh, Oleksandr Lavrynovych, Ivan Bilas, Taras Chornovil, Moroz, Holovatiy and many others all have one thing in common: they are male and have bruised ego’s, injured male pride and immaturity. If they don’t get what they want they say ‘To hell with you’ and defect to the other side. I suspect that this is more of a psychological issue than a financial one (although I am sure money sometimes crosses hands).

I have known Holovatiy since 1991, meeting him on occasion when he visited Britain, usually on an invitation to an event dealing with legal issues. In 1992 I asked my wife, Oksana, to drive him to the airport which she agreed to do. The problem was that Holovatiy confused the airport he was flying from (Gatwick, not Heathrow) which added an extra two hours to the journey.
On another occasion I took Holovatiy to meet the former Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky in his Cambridge home. Bukovsky is now a candidate in the 2008 Russian elections.

My most recent memory of Holovatiy was when he gave a talk in 2003 to the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Toronto. Then he was a member of BYuT and a radical anti-Kuchmaite. Usually speakers sit in the room with the chairperson awaiting listeners to arrive. Once the allocated time has been reached the chairperson launches the event. Not on this occasion. Holovatiy waited in the corridor and only after everybody was sat down did he made his grand entrance into the room. The only thing missing was an orchestra to announce the arrival of “royalty”.

This was a reflection of Holovatiy’s arrogance and ego. In April over drinks in Kyiv, Stepan Bandera pointed out to me that he had watched Holovatiy on television during the crisis and concluded that he is somebody who is in love with himself. Narcissism is defined in the dictionary as “excessive self-admiration and self-centeredness”. This describes Holovatiy.
Holovatiy had every right to criticize Yushchenko’s decree disbanding parliament. But, the right decision would have been not to stand in this years pre-term elections (especially as he had claimed they were illegal). Instead Holovatiy decided to join the Party of ex-Kuchmaites, Regions. In the process he has totally discredited himself.