Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church: Buying and selling votes sells our country and our future

- The UGCC and many civic organizations and a large part of Ukraine urged Yanukovych not to sign the language law. He nevertheless signed it. Why do you think the president did not heed these calls?

- I think with time we will be able to make conclusions. All the components of this process will become visible. For my part, I would like to express a few things that trouble me.

Indeed, most of the leaders of Ukrainian churches signed a petition, in which we asked the president not to sign the law, because, in our opinion, it will bring no good to the Ukrainian society – which we see today.

We don’t know why our president didn’t listen. But it is a fact that our voice was not listened to.

All the same, the language issue is being exploited for political purposes, especially during the pre-election time. In my opinion, the issue is artificially turning away people’s attention from a really important topic – the election campaign.

We should be seriously scrutinizing the candidates who are running in the parliamentary elections.

We should not be debating over the language law but over the platforms of various political parties that want to get a mandate from the people. Unfortunately, today the programs of the parties are not even mentioned.

Moreover, it is not even easy to find the parties’ programs online – not to mention that they are under the watchful eye of public opinion. So then one could see how the deputies perform the programs by which they come to the people.

De facto, the language law, and not a program, was presented to the people. Thus the unarmed eye sees a very strange strategy that is being used to distract the voters’ attention.

When the language issue spreads, it concerns respect for human dignity, because it is a very delicate point of human identity. And when this language is so shamelessly exploited ahead of the parliamentary elections, it is, I think, disrespectful to the very voters whom the candidates should present with their political programs.

- What is the Russian language to you personally? Have you ever used it?

- For me the Russian language is a language that a cultured person should know, especially someone living in Ukraine.

I remember I started to learn Russian from the second class. I never spoke it at home but explored various Russian philosophers and classics of literature so that I could reach the wealth of the Russian people.

We used Russian in the army.

Today, in my opinion, the Russian language is used in Ukraine in order to implement to some extent the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture and Ukraine in the process of globalization, assimilation.

We see how the ideological myths of the former Soviet Union are being activated, where Russian was used as a tool to massify the peoples of the Soviet Union in order to convert them, as my grandfather said, into a mishmash called the “Soviet people.”

We see that this ideological scheme is being launched in Ukraine in order to draw the country into a wider program of forming a strange Eurasian space.

“When someone wants us to draw us into the ‘Russian world,’ he is denying us of our identity”

- Why do you call the Eurasian space “strange”?

 - Because no one has explained what it is.

Today, I often speak of the “Ukrainian world.” I try to invite our intellectuals to have other schemes of thought, visions of modern Ukrainianness as such, because a lot of these thoughts and visions are narrowly confined by the past. And they are for the modern person often empty topics that need to be filled with something new and modern.

In my opinion, to talk about the Ukrainian world today is a very effective and appropriate.

Developing this idea, I would like indicate three components of the Ukrainian world. I could be wrong, but I would like there to be a debate on this in the society.

First, very often Ukraine and Ukrainian culture is presented as a part of a larger whole. Doing so denies us of an identity. In fact, our Ukrainian culture is holistic in itself.

We are hurt when we are called “Little Russians” and our land “Little Russia.” Here we have a very interesting distortion of concepts.

The concept of “Great Russia” and “Little Russia” are in fact borrowings from Greek terminology. But in the Greek context it had the opposite meaning.

Great Greece was made up of Greek colonies. And Little Greece was the center of culture, the source of what the Greeks brought to their colonies.

So when someone talks about “Little Russia,” we should understand this notion entirely differently – that is, it is the root of everything that went to “Great Russia,” the outskirts that consider themselves adjacent to the culture of Kyivan Rus.

We have a powerful identity root, which no one can uproot. And it is developing.

So when someone wants us to draw us into the “Russian world,” he is denying us of our identity. And when we talk about the “Ukrainian world,” we talk about the integrity of our own culture, language, and worldview.

Second – assimilation. This, in my opinion, is a very important and interesting. We once talked about assimilation as a threat to Ukrainians living outside of Ukraine.

But our communities have always tried to resist this assimilation and not be dissolved in the “seas” of other countries. And the Ukrainian church has always been the guardian against such assimilation.

 But today assimilation exists in our homeland. It is known under the name of “Russification.” It is a specific phenomenon that cannot be overlooked because there is a real threat of Ukrainianness becoming extinct.

And here our Greek Catholic church, in my opinion, should play a role, because none of the other denominations has such a large network that can unite the diaspora with Ukrainians who live in Ukraine.

For many years our church was the only bridge for many centers of Ukrainians living abroad.

Take Brazil for example – for many years there haven’t been new waves of emigration there. But thanks to our church, this community preserved its language and culture, which start with the lifestyle in Ukrainian colonies and end with the construction of Boyko and Hutsul style churches in the jungle.

Previously we thought that borders would be an obstacle to the influence of a country. But the boundaries are relative; the policy of a government, even of an independent one, is very different. Therefore, we must build a strategy to resist assimilation in our own home.

The third thing. We see that it is impossible to preserve the identity of our Ukrainian world by only concentrating on itself. In today’s world this can be achieved only by being open. After all, openness is one way to preserve what we have.

I have seen many times how those who are not native to Ukraine respect our culture. For example, in Argentina every parish has a dance troupe. And not only do the parishioners of our communities dance in them.

Often it is advantageous for certain people to depict Ukrainians as aggressive, closed, representatives of the Ukrainian ghetto who are incapable of having a dialogue with someone without attacking them. But it absolutely does not correspond to the psychology of a Ukrainian.

“In constructing the ‘Russian world,’ the church is being used as a propagandist”

- When Patriarch Kirill builds the "Russian world,” the entire Russian government stands behind him. Who stands behind you? Is this why you maintain good relations with the government?

- Somehow it happened in the history of our church that we never counted on the full support of someone. And we did on our own what we could do.

The “Russian world” it is not a church project – it is a state project. And the church is used as an ideologue, a propagandist to, first of all, renew or restore the Soviet Union, which is a utopia.

But it manifests itself in a very interesting way. For example, Russia finances through its embassies the creation of communities of Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians.

These communities are parallel identity communities, for example, with Ukrainian communities. And when Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian people are presented in a country, it turns out that the real Ukrainian community does not have the exclusive right to represent Ukraine because there are others who also speak on behalf of the Ukrainian people.

And it does not matter that they speak Russian. Russia of course funds these communities very well. On the other hand, the Ukrainian government can’t even provide its communities with Ukrainian language textbooks.

I was once present during a conversation when the head of a Ukrainian educational institution asked the ambassador of Ukraine for some Ukrainian textbooks.

The ambassador asked for forgiveness, saying that they are written but are in stock at some port, because there is no money to deliver them – and I’m not even talking about wider opportunities to promote Ukrainian in the world.

- Your Beatitude, the Moscow Patriarchate has cemented itself in the place of the Tithe Church. How do you feel about this?

- We are sorry that de facto, despite all rules and laws, one denomination is privatizing a part of the history of Kyivan Rus, particularly a monument of that time – the Tithe Church.

It is a very important monument for all the churches that are churches of Volodymyr’s baptism. So, even if the site went to one denomination, it would have to be open to all. However, we already see that the place of the Tithe Church will not be open.

We have repeatedly said that, particularly in Kyiv, the authorities must treat all the churches of Volodymyr’s baptism equally.

We are a canonical church. The Moscow Patriarchate received part of that inheritance, the Kyivan Patriarchate – did as well; only the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Kyiv does not have its inheritance of Kyivan Christianity.

Returning to the Tithe Church... It must be demanded that the rule of law be kept.

- And how are you going to counteract this? The Moscow Patriarchate behaves, to put it mildly, straightforwardly; for example, first they build a church, and then they legalize it. Why not do something similar?

- I think the issue of counteracting goes beyond religious activities. Denominations should not pursue such activity. We can express our opinion, follow various developments, but counteracting is not our function.

- How would you describe your relationship to the Russian Orthodox Church?

- They are our neighbors... In our history, in our present, there are difficult moments... It would be good if we at least learned how to be good neighbors. This has already been said more than once by my predecessor His Beatitude Lubomyr.

- Recently Patriarch Kirill was in Poland on an official visit, which was perceived ambiguously. Why do you think he went to Poland?

- The gesture and the message that were given to the Russian and Polish societies were unambiguously positive, because the message was nevertheless one of reconciliation.

That gesture, obviously, is only the beginning of a process that is intended to heal the wounds that have been in the history of the two nations.

Many people in Poland have compared the gesture to the one made ​​in 1956 between the Polish and German episcopates, which led to the improvement of relations between the Polish and German peoples after World War II.

If this visit was sincere, then it will have positive effects.

I’ve said before that we’d love to have something like that happen in Ukraine. The fact that the protagonist of this gesture was Patriarch Kirill means a lot. This shows that he nevertheless speaks on behalf of the Russian people. This is the cue for the Russian church, for the environment which he represents.

It is quite interesting for our church that Patriarch Kirill, when it came to national churches of the Universal (Catholic) Church, held meetings only at the level of the Holy See. There was only communication on the level of the heads of churches: the Holy Father and the Patriarch of Moscow. And here Patriarch Kirill met for the first time with the head of a local church.

For us it is important because every time we declared that the head of the UGCC must hold a direct dialogue with the Moscow Patriarchate, we were told that for the Moscow Patriarchate it is not a level. So often we were discussed between the Apostolic See and the Russian Orthodox Church without us present.

For us it is important because we are still a subject of international law, the subject of diplomatic relations, and not the object of any agreements.

“Recently I heard the phrase ‘cheap voters’”

- How would describe the electoral process in Ukraine? Are Ukrainians again being cheated?

- I cannot respond to all aspects of this issue. I will mention a few key points.

First, our voters are desperate now. And instead of providing normal conditions of existence to these people, they are given some kind of handout, which is one hundredth of what they are entitled to. But, unfortunately, our people are gullible. They respond positively to these handouts.

The second aspect is corruption. The very fact that some people buy votes and others are ready to sell them is a glaring instance of corruption. Corruption always implies the existence of two participants. Perhaps that is why corruption is most evident during elections. 

Recently I heard the phrase “cheap voters.” It made me think that someone must really despise the voters to describe them in that way.

Buying and selling votes is selling our country, our future.

Recently I heard from an average citizen the following: “Why should I want a fair trial if it rules against my favor?”

This made me think about whether we ourselves want this justice.

We demand from the government fair elections. Rightly. But in no case can we evade personal responsibility here.

- There has already been a lot of talk about how priests should not be involved in politics and not campaign for a particular political force. But priests are called to distinguish between good and evil... So why should they be distanced from the political process?

- There are several moral principles. A priest cannot tell anyone whom to vote for. It is not his job, because a priest should point to the eternal truths that must be implemented in public life, particularly when it comes to civic responsibility. He should educate the people.

And if he tells them whom to vote for, he will dictate to them a certain behavior, thereby treating his parishioners as foolish children who themselves are not capable of distinguishing good from evil.

I think our people are rather conscious, sometimes more conscious than those who wish to manipulate them.

Our church at the Synod decided to prohibit priests from campaigning. If they do it, they will be subjected to disciplinary action.

 “We must respect the government, but that does not mean we have to agree with its ​​actions”

- Often these Greek Catholic priests publicly praise local authorities, is this not agitation?

- Of course! So in Kolomyia I said that a priest has no right to praise anyone but God.

Yes, we must respect the government, but that does not mean we have to agree with its ​​actions. And elections are that moment when we can evaluate the actions of the government.

- How do you make your own choice?

- I try not to be gullible. I try not to look at minor things. I try to analyze whether a particular political force is capable of changing something in the country or not. So I would like to see the parties’ platforms to make my choice. And this for me, as for ordinary voters, is not easy today.

- The halfway point of Yanukovych’s presidency passed on August 25. When he was running for president, he promised to “improve lives today.” Have you personally experienced this “improvement”?

- Honestly, no. It was probably only an election slogan.

I remember such a case – after the Orange Revolution a public official came to His Beatitude Lubomyr in Lviv and began to boast how he will fight corruption, that in a year or two there would be no corruption.

His Beatitude listened and then said, “It would be better for you to speak differently, because corruption is something everyone is fighting, but no one has defeated it. There isn’t a scale to measure corruption.

“It would be better for you to talk about your political program, how you plan to raise wages, to create jobs... so in a year or two we could see this.”

The official left His Beatitude disappointed...

Maybe over these past 2.5 years someone improved their welfare, but certainly not the average citizen.

Oksana Klymonchuk, for Ukrayinska Pravda

Translated by Areta Kovalsky for RISU