Back to basics

Speech by Andriy Vishnevsky, co-owner and CEO of the Publishing House “Basics”, honored lawyer of Ukraine, a graduate of the University of Ukraine in 2017, delivered during a meeting of the Community of the Ukrainian School of Political Studies

Not only on the question of what Ukraine will be like after the end of the war and what is considered a victory for Ukraine. And also to the question of what exactly we did wrong in the previous three decades that led us to the result we have now. What can we do differently in the future when we want to continue to exist as a separate political community and have our own state. And this, the last, will be, in my opinion, our main victory.

when i write “what will Ukraine be like?”, I do not mean reconstruction at all. After all, any talk about reconstruction under existing conditions and historical background is too similar to an attempt to replace concepts. What exactly are we being asked to rebuild? A bulky and archaic material infrastructure, designed immediately after the Second World War and built on our land by a totalitarian regime in the interests of the metropolis, without taking into account the aspirations of territorial communities and the nation as a whole? Will it make money for donors, recipients, investors and creditors? Of course, yes. Whether this has anything to do with the desired future for Ukraine is doubtful.

But what cannot be rebuilt, even if someone wanted to, are full-fledged political institutions: independent ideological political parties, professional civil service, fair justice. Because it is impossible to rebuild what we have not managed to create in thirty years. And these are the basics. The foundations of a stable, long-term and harmless existence of the political community. Foundations that we have yet to find and on which we can reliably base our further development.

Sometimes it seems that we are moving in the opposite direction

That’s the name of the first of the six clusters under which Ukraine’s membership in the European Union is being negotiated – Fundamentals. It is with this cluster that the functioning of democratic institutions, the reform of public administration, and the economic criteria for membership are connected.

Speaking about the reform of public administration, to which I had the honor of devoting ten years of my life, it is worth remembering who and what started it.

On March 4, 1992, the Institute of State Administration and Self-Government was established by decree of the first President of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk. The initiator and first leader was Bohdan Kravchenko, a Canadian of Ukrainian origin, who earned a doctorate in Oxford and joined the cohort of state builders after the declaration of Ukraine’s independence.

It was this Institute, modeled after the French Ecole Nationale d’Administration, that became the main think tank that initiated, developed and achieved the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada on December 16, 1993 of the first law of Ukraine “On Civil Service”.

Exactly one year before, on December 16, 1992, Bohdan Kravchenko and Solomiya Pavlychko, literary critic and translator, founded the publishing house “Foundations”, which for the first time made available in Ukrainian the entire body of classical texts on which Western civilization is based: from Aristotle and Cicero to Foucault and Derrida, from Locke and Mill to Nietzsche and Wittgenstein.

Also, for the first time, a selection of textbooks, which are still taught in the world’s best universities, was translated: “Economics” by Mankyu, “Sociology” by Giddens, a textbook on the philosophy of law by Feinberg and Coleman. All this was a contribution to the development of the young Ukrainian state and its new intellectual elite, concentrated at that time mainly within the walls of the newly revived Mohylyanka and two or three other universities. Someone may object: humanity is experiencing a crisis of liberalism and the Western world in general. Yes, but does this mean that the texts on which Western civilization rested have lost their relevance? The Roman Empire has fallen, but we still turn to the texts of Titus Livius and Marcus Aurelius.

Three months ago, the publishing house “Foundations”, of which I recently had the honor to be a part, for the first time in the last two decades republished the main work of its founder Solomiya Pavlychko – “The Discourse of Modernism in Ukrainian Literature”. When this monograph appeared in 1997, it caused an explosion of controversies and passions far beyond the literary environment.

As the author herself writes in the preface to the second edition, the book “touched […] deep, comprehensive process of modernization that our society is experiencing today. It is about economic, political, military, cultural modernization, in fact about the modernization of the entire Ukrainian society, which will affect its identity and future destiny.”

This prophecy will especially resonate when we recall the causes of the Granite Revolution, the Orange Revolution, and the Revolution of Dignity. These reasons have always been connected precisely with attempts to stop social modernization. Back in the mid-nineties, Solomiya Pavlychko connected Ukraine’s modernization with its European choice. And in the case of the Revolution of Dignity, this choice was manifested by society as clearly as possible.

Every time, in 1990, 2004, 2014, as well as in 2022 – during the full-scale invasion of Russia – the Ukrainian political community showed subjectivity, made the world hear its voice. But each time a wave, which at first rapidly carried us to the very top of the mountain, then sharply threw us far back, into the abyss of disorder and stagnation, not giving the opportunity for society to catch on at the achieved height.

Although certain political institutions were sporadically involved in the most critical moments of modern history and saved the state one step from collapse — such as the Supreme Court in 2004, the parliament in 2014, or the army in 2022 — these are exceptional cases rather than the rule.

And every time we felt that we lack mechanisms, some wheels and levers, that would transform a short-term passionate impulse into a routine practice of social modernization, daily work on the development and implementation of state policy, nation building and state building. These mechanisms, wheels and levers are the entire set of political institutions, p that is, the same Fundamentals.

Democracy coupled with weak bureaucracies, justices, and political parties—that is, democracy built on a weak institutional foundation—led us, in the end, to kakistocracy—a state ruled by the worst—along with its constant companion meritocide—the purposeful discrediting and marginalization the best forces in society.

Why is this happening and why have we failed to build effective and stable political institutions in more than three decades? Although we are supposedly aware of our European choice and even enshrined it in the Constitution. Because the political and economic European choice risks remaining a declaration, an empty dream without corresponding changes in culture, without building a new cultural identity.

What should this new identity be? It is impossible without the same trends and changes that the discourse of modernism brought with it in the confrontation with the discourse of populism in our literature from the end of the 19th century and throughout almost the entire 20th century.

So, the first trend is actually anti-populism.

Further, Europeanism, or Westernism, is contrary to Eurasianism, which imperceptibly evolved into the “Russian world”.

This is modernity, as opposed to archaicness.

Decanonization.

Intellectualism is against ignorance and superstition.

Individualism as the opposite of collectivism and devaluation of the individual.

This is feminism against the patriarchy.

Minimalist beauty as opposed to kitsch.

This is the removal of cultural taboos, in particular, in the field of sexuality.

And, finally, opening the framework.

Based on this, it is not difficult to formulate a simple program of actions to make these changes a reality:

— get rid of eternal isolation and the fears and complexes caused by it;

— abandon your own cultural narcissism;

— learn to be self-critical and self-ironic;

— learn to be tolerant;

— to learn to see and distinguish shades, subtleties, nuances.

This program is currently implemented incredibly tightly. Sometimes it seems that we are moving in the opposite direction. However, even in the most unfavorable conditions, a lot can be done. Let’s start, say, with smart and aesthetic books. Read and print. Print and read. Work on yourself, help others develop and continue to serve a high social purpose.