Religion managed to convince the humanity that there is an invisible man.
Economics managed to convince the humanity that there is an invisible hand.
History is a myth. Politics is show business.
Mass media is a market square in the global village.
Really?
The perspective of an incurable skeptic is not a universal remedy for the information fatigue. Neither is the perspective of a beatific enthusiast. Of course, it is always easier to crop the picture and focus on a small and flat segment, yet, “there are no short-cuts to places worth going to.”
In the jungles of facts and endless cause-effect chains, a political animal shouldn’t surrender to either of the extremes: give up on the political component and go into the wilderness or become a domesticated Animal Farm inhabitant. In the end, a three-leg limping base will never be able to carry a nice weighty and well-argued opinion.
Solid reasoning needs multiple angles of vision. Like the fly’s way of seeing.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
the Fall 2009 issue is out
"Natural Novel" by Georgi Gospodinov
BOOK REVIEW BY ANNA DUSHINA
Natural Novel by Georgi Gospodinov, 1999
“The fly in my head needs a way out.”
48 parts of the Natural Novel as 48 movable facets of a Rubik’s cube. Rotating faces, permuting stories and ideas Georgi Gospodinov tries to assemble a perfectly natural novel, to arrange its colors plainly and firmly. He gets absolutely absorbed by this task, while somewhere in the background linger the ruins of his marriage, which he is unable either to explain or to justify, but has to accept as an absurd yet irrevocable given. “Why am I trying to write a Natural Novel? So I can forget a certain woman? So I can remember how I used to live?” Gospodinov's thought keeps wandering from the “before her” times in the socialist Bulgaria to his present 1999 state, and further to his possible future of a crazy man in a rocking chair on the streets of Sofia. A real brainteaser for the reader, the story unfolds switching perspectives, characters and settings, with the voice of the narrator rather confusing than directing.
In his search for a solution, Gospodinov looks for patterns everywhere he can possibly find them. He narrates numberless anecdotes, real and hypothetical, tightly linked to the Bulgarian context and such that could happen to anybody anywhere. He blends his own reminiscences with references to movies, music, novels, philosophical works, private conversations overheard in cafes – every source has an equal chance of becoming the one and only clue to his “cube.” Gospodinov, calling himself “a lunatic who purports to be a writer,” does not disdain to dig in the garbage left out of other novels: flies, botanical classification and “the toilet topic.” (what can be more natural?) All the mishmash gets splashed on the “nuzhnik” of his novel paper.
Wrong impression. The author is in fact extremely conscious of what he is writing, how and why, hence all the reasoning about linguistics and language: a writer identifying the instrument he is given to work with. The instrument is carefully cleaned from the dust of redundant metaphors and put in an elegant rhythmic case of a “pleasant pointless afternoon conversation.” The chronology of the Natural Novel is not shattered, as it appears to be, but rather broken in clearly defined spots. The epigraphs for the chapters are not just random lines like “Sclerosis will make us new people. Old jokes will always be funny” but rather pencil marks left on the margins by somebody who has read the book before. Numerous suggestions for the beginning of the novel are not just vain attempts by a failing amateur, but rather a generous selection of possibilities to approach the book. Gospodinov intentionally obscures the border between fiction and facts, between sober reflections and playful thought experiments. Some chapters are clad in a very casual homey humor; others wear the high heels of irony.
48 parts of the Natural Novel as 48 facets of a fly’s eye. “A multi-angled novel, like a fly’s way of seeing. A novel full of details, matters small and invisible to the naked eye. A novel as banal as flies.”
"The Palace of Dreams" by Ismail Kadare
BOOK REVIEW | BY ERMELA BUFI
The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadare
“An open judgment of any form of totalitarianism.”
Ismail Kadare, Albania’s best known poet and novelist, was not a dissident on the scale of Milan Kundera or Alexander Solzhenitsyn; On the contrary, he was allowed some breathing space and given some privileges under the Socialist regime. In fact, he was a Member of the Parliament. Yet, his Palace of Dreams was banned in Albania right after its publication in 1981.
The novel is about Tabir Serrail (Turkish: Palace of Dreams), one of the most influential institutions of the Turkish Empire. The Palace’s mission is to sift, select, classify, and eventually interpret the dreams of the Empire’s citizens. In many aspects, Tabir Serrail is the state itself, a perfect totalitarian regime in miniature, monitoring every aspect of citizens’ lives including the subconscious. Twelve giant archive rooms have been storing detailed data on every dreamer since the creation of the Empire. Most importantly, the palace makes one feel “insignificant in the heart of a gigantic mechanism,” with its corridors “so long, [one] could scarcely see the end of [them].” Nepotism is the only way to rise up the career ladder, all the work is done in absolute secrecy and rumors are the ultimate source of information. Mark Alem, a scion of an old noble Albanian family Quprili, makes it through the hierarchy of this mysterious ministry while living in the Kadarean hell.
The destiny of a family is closely interlinked with the main motif of the book. Quprili’s relationship with the regime lists as many glorious deeds as prosecutions. They are “like people living at the foot of Vesuvius. Just as [those] are covered with ashes when the volcano erupts, so [are Quprili] every so often struck down by the Sovereign in whose shadow [they live].”
In a similar way, Kadare’s own relations with the regime in Albania were going up and down, threatened by the unpredictability of the absurd system, while he was in the process of what he himself called “discovering freedom via writing.” Living under the regime is the Kadarean inferno: an inferno he decided to re-create in his book, because, as he puts it, “if we know what hell is like, we will know what is right.” The inferno, for the novelist, was the regime itself; for as he stated in 1990, when seeking political asylum in France, “a writer is a natural enemy of dictatorship.”
Ukrainization of Ukraine: the language they prefer
DEBATE| BY ANTONINA DAVYDENKO AND OLEKSANDRA BUBELA
By Antonina Davydenko
The geography of languages in Ukraine is more complicated than it is usually presented by western media. One often hears about the Russian-speaking east versus the Ukrainian-speaking west, however, the language frontier often lies between the urban and the rural. Up until now, there is a deeply entrenched stereotype of Russian being the language of the urban lifestyle. In the times of USSR, people from all the soviet republics came to large urban centers and, naturally, adopted Russian as the language of communication. While it was suitable for the creation of the soviet identity, it is not acceptable for the Ukrainian one.
After the declaration of independence in 1991, Ukrainian became a single official language of the newly founded state. With the creation of the national educational system, profound studies of the Ukrainian language, literature and history were introduced in many schools in Kyiv. It was a significant development, considering that 20 years ago there were no Ukrainian universities and hardly any Ukrainian schools in Kyiv. Nowadays, Ukrainian has become the lingua franca of the intellectual youth, experimental music, and progressive theater. It is widely spoken, enriched, and developed. Renowned contemporary writers like Andruhovych and Zabujko have contributed considerably to the revival of the Ukrainian language. Nevertheless, numerous people still speak Russian in Kyiv as well as in other parts of Ukraine.
The use of the Ukrainian language was suppressed for around 300 years, when Ukraine was a part of the Russian empire. In 1876, the Russian emperor explicitly outlawed using Ukrainian at public events and in print. Later on, at the dawn of the Soviet Union, any expression of Ukrainian identity was labeled as nationalism and prosecuted by criminal law. Thousands accused of reactionary ukrainianism were executed or died in camps. Generations of Ukrainians raised in the Soviet Union have not even learned the language. Naturally, it is not reasonable to expect that immediately after the formation of the independent state Ukrainian will automatically regain its positions. Some effort is needed to reverse the years of Russian assimilation and to popularize the language.
The bare minimum is to maintain Ukrainian as the single official language. In the end, it is natural to expect citizens of Ukraine to know some Ukrainian. Everyone has a choice of what language to speak and what media to watch. No one will ever reproach you for speaking Russian. There is an abundance of Russian TV channels, newspapers and magazines in the country. At the same time, there is nothing extreme about learning the language of your own country to be able to use it, at least in official documents. It is a mere sign of respect.
However, people deal with this problem in different ways. My high school history teacher refused to lecture in Ukrainian claiming that she was incapable of learning the language. As a result, we took notes in Russian and then wrote our essays in Ukrainian. My mother, on the other hand, bought a dictionary and carried it to work for a couple of years, before she learned her professional vocabulary in Ukrainian. Both women are of the same age, nationality and cultural background.
Most people in Ukraine know both languages due to the Russian media. However, I disagree with the idea of accepting Russian as the second official language, because it will automatically eliminate the need to learn Ukrainian, and thus, reverse the progress of reviving the language. Although it will surely take time and effort to reestablish the status of the Ukrainian language, the result will be beneficial for rebuilding the identity in a young country. After all, when the state of Israel was founded, hardly anyone besides rabbis used Hebrew. It took some political will to adopt Hebrew and not Yiddish, or Russian, or English as the official language. As a result, Hebrew is revived and currently spoken in Israel and abroad.
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By Oleksandra Bubela
Historically, before the creation of the Soviet Union, the Western and Eastern parts of Ukraine were under control of different Empires and were influenced by different cultures. Western Ukraine was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Poland. Since the rulers did not intrude into the language policies there, nowadays people in that part speak Ukrainian. Eastern Ukraine, on the other hand, was under the Russian Empire and afterwards a part of the Soviet Union, which did impose Russian as the main language, so nowadays people in Eastern Ukraine speak Russian.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the national language issue in independent Ukraine was publicly brought up for the first time during the 2004 elections. Numerous politicians used the “language question” in their political campaigns. It resulted in a severe alienation between the two parts of Ukraine and created an ongoing dispute.
In the city of Kharkov, where I come from, one can rarely hear Ukrainian. It’s shocking to hear it in the street or on the subway. Somebody speaking Ukrainian risks being stared at, as if he or she is an uneducated villager. Most people from the surrounding towns and villages speak a mixed version of Ukrainian and Russian.
Almost everybody from the young generation in my city knows Ukrainian, but prefers not to use it. However, it becomes a real problem for older people, who do not know the language at all. At the age of 50 or 60 they have to learn a new language just because all the state paperwork is now required in Ukrainian.
“Speak Ukrainian in Ukraine” is a remarkable slogan, but should we think first of the nation, or of the people who make up that nation? Imposing anything on anyone was never the best way to create a free democratic state. Instead of making the Ukrainian language compulsory for national institutions, as well as TV channels and movie theaters, the Ukrainian government might take a look at more developed European countries and approach the issue liberally.
For example, in Switzerland the official languages are German, French and Italian. In Belgium - Dutch, French and German. So, instead of imposing its own ambitions, the government should represent the interests of the society by making both the Ukrainian and the Russian languages official. After all, in a democracy people should be able to use the language of their preference without suffering any consequences.
Belarus - European Union: Selling Democratization?
OPINION | BY ANTON RULIOU
The travel ban on the Belarusian leader was lifted temporarily in October 2008, after the release of the presidential candidate, Alexander Kazulin, from prison. EU officials ignored that the parliamentary elections, which were held a month before, were conducted in the usual “old-school” way. The vote counts were assessed as “short of OSCE commitments for democratic elections” at 48 % of polling stations. No wonder that no member of the opposition was able to get a single place out of 110 in the newly-formed Parliament.
Despite no major improvements with the human rights situation in the country in 2009, the travel ban on Lukashenko was waived once again until January 2010. The president used this time efficiently. He met Pope Benedict XVI (trying to invite him to the meeting with the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church), Italian prime-minister Silvio Berlusconi (trying to get support from one of the most controversial leaders in the EU), and Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė (trying to explain to Lithuanians their total dependence on Brussels).
So, the strategy of the European Union towards Belarus changed from isolation towards dialogue without any substantial change in the domestic policies of Belarus. The regime seems to be willing to make only minor adjustments of some policies that are not crucial for its existence. For instance, the government permitted selling two independent newspapers “Nasha Niva” and “Narodnaya Volya” with the total circulation of only 25 000 copies through state-owned stores. Nonetheless, television remains dominated by the state propaganda and the opponents of the regime are being persecuted for expressing their beliefs.
Certainly, the previous strategy of isolation towards the Belarusian regime did not bring any results. The EU simply did not have any influence on Belarus: politically, Lukashenko was still independent from the West in conducting repressive policies inside the country; economically, he was able to rely on cheap Russian oil and gas, which were supplied to Belarus for a price four times lower than to the rest of the world.
However, everything has changed recently. The relationship between Russia and Belarus is deteriorating. Not only the stabilizing credit of $500 million was denied, but also the gas price was raised significantly. This created a serious problem for the economy of Belarus, which is based on preserving the Soviet-type economic model with the state maintaining its control over most of the industries. The viability of this model depends largely on cheap energy resources from Russia.
This course of events made the regime turn around and look for assistance from the “evil West.” The program of Eastern Partnership, a special initiative by the European Union to improve its relations with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine promised these countries deeper and more comprehensive free trade agreements in exchange for their deeper commitment to social values and democracy.
Will the new strategy of the European Union towards Belarus be more effective? At the moment, it seems that the regime is going to balance between Russia and the EU by using foreign policy as its instrument. A compelling example for that is the fact that the Belarusian president, who was the greatest ally of Moscow in the ex-Soviet Union (at least in terms of rhetoric), still has not recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. This position certainly pleases the European Union and seems to infuriate Russian officials.
As to the home affairs, a rapid change should not be expected. A recent demonstration in honor of allegedly murdered public figures, such as former interior Minister Yury Zakharanka, businessman Anatol Krasouski, journalist Dzmitry Zavadski and opposition leader Viktar Hanchar, was brutally dispersed. Thirty people were, quite traditionally, beaten up and arrested. For a change to happen, the opposition movement inside the country should strengthen its positions. So far it is impossible, since its leaders continuously struggle with each other, not with the regime.
