May 12, 2024, 5:15 p.m.
(Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh)
In the first part of the interview,Zoya Kazanzhy, journalist, writer, member of PEN Ukraine, spoke about her attitude to the old and modern myths about Odesa, her work at the CEC during the Maidan of 2004-2005, and why the case of the transit server ended in nothing. The exclusive interview continues with a discussion of the events of 2013-2014 and the present.
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The resistance of Odesa residents is mostly mentioned in the context of May 2, 2014, but the first rally was in November 2013, then on February 19 and March 3, 2014. Were you at those rallies then, or can you tell us about those dates?
Odesa was ahead of the events in Kyiv, starting in 1998, when Hurwitz was brazenly removed from the elections. Odesa was divided between Eduard Hurwitz and Ruslan Bodelan. This line was drawn along marriage beds in the literal sense, when the husband was for Bodelan and the wife was for Hurwitz or vice versa. Then there were barricades on Dumska Street, and Odessans took to the streets to defend their choice. We were six years ahead of Kyiv.
I remember going to Kyiv at night and taking back disks with information about what was happening here, because it was an information vacuum. But from Kyiv, Odesa looked like Zhmerynka, Zhashkiv, or Zhytomyr. That is, Kyiv was not very interested. At that time, there was arbitrariness in the government-Gurwitz declared war on President Leonid Kuchma, the SBU, and the police at the time. And when you fight like that, you lose. A businessman in Odesa told me that if you fight the authorities, you can lose, or lose badly. There is no chance.
And that's exactly what happened. That's why the same thing happened again in 2013 - on November 20-22. Before the students were dispersed and beaten in Kyiv. We were also the first here. It was a tent city, our MPs, Oleksandr Ostapenko organized it as MPs' reception rooms. Oleksiy Chorny was injured then, he was detained in the district police station, in a pre-trial detention center. This triggered people.
In Odesa, the detentions were already more severe. Then it happened in Kyiv. At that time, Euromaidan, which was organized in our area, worked for the Kyiv Euromaidan. We collected money and delivered various things there. I had a friend, a retired police officer, who helped us not to have our car vandalized. Back then, people were transported by bus. For example, we were traveling in a car with Ivan Rusev, a well-known environmentalist, and his son, who was wounded at the time. We were looking for ski overalls in second-hand shops because the winter was very cold. I've never been so cold in my life as I was on the Kyiv Maidan.
We had a tent with Odesa written on it, and people said that if Odesa was with us, we would win. Donetsk and Odesa aroused some incredible admiration, because again, we were perceived as someone who was not clear. But we were not, we were normal people. Kyiv Maidan is a lot of different Maidans. When everything was already bad, guys from Lviv came.
Odesa has several dates that are important to talk about and know, which should be written into the history of the city's struggle for its Ukrainian independence. This is November 2013. February 19, 2014 - a brutal beating of the media, 11 journalists were injured. It was an arbitrary dispersal ordered, led and covered up by Mykola Skoryk, who is now a member of parliament. He should be in the dock. At that time we had a campaign called "Don't Shoot". We came out on February 19 as a counter to what was happening on the Maidan with these posters. And while I was having a fight with Skoryk, people wearing helmets and similarly dressed started unloading. Skoryk said to me: "You shouldn't have killed our Berkut guys in Kyiv."
We need to understand and remember the date of March 3, when the Odesa Regional Council was ready to adopt a document on the Odesa People's Republic at the request of Anton Davydchenko. And then the Russian flag hung over the Odesa regional administration for several hours. Here's what happened. There was a meeting of the Regional Council, and a pro-Russian rally gathered on the square with these banners and Russian flags. We decided that all the Euromaidan activists would be based wherever they were, I was in McDonald's with some company, sitting in cars - we were watching what would happen, it was not clear yet. And at that time, students from the Polytechnic come out, see this mob, come to the square, and one of them (I still don't know who it is) pulls out a Ukrainian flag. We realize that they are going to be beaten, and we spontaneously start pulling up to defend them.
Photo provided by the interviewee
Many of our people were in the Russian crowd. I have to tell you about this episode. First, the Ukrainian flag is being removed and one of our people cannot stand it, when the flag falls to the ground, he rushes over and starts picking it up. They start kicking him and, of course, all of our demasked men start pulling him away. He was already pulled out of the crowd and someone opens the car door and offers to take him to the hospital. But we don't know whose car it is and where they are going to take him, so one of the activists, Sasha Pogoretsky, went with him. They get into the car and the following happens - one of these pro-Russian activists starts shouting: "Stop beating him, you've already beaten him".
I remember we were standing there - it was March, it was still early in the day, and suddenly this kid with a shield, a self-defense fighter, says to me, realizing that I was in charge of something: "Do you know when it will end? If I don't come home by 10 p.m., my mom will kill me." God, it was so funny. That's what was really going on. And then, it's worth talking about this because Oleksiy Honcharenko is being destroyed by everyone who is not lazy. We remember that he was a member of the Party of Regions, but it was Goncharenko, Shmushkovych and Borniakov - the members of the regional council at the time - who really drove Davydchenko away. It's a pity they didn't beat him up. They really broke him and didn't allow him to vote, which is important.
May 2 was bound to happen, it was prepared by the pro-Russian side, and a week later the book Odessanska Khatynya was published. They needed these sacrificial victims to show that not a single anti-Maidan leader was injured. Why did they drive people from Greek Square to Kulikovo Field in an organized manner? When it was possible to scatter there. But I remember that on May 2, when the guys in those rubber flip-flops were saying: "You've had enough with your Russia." We should remember these dates, because they are very important for the formation of Ukrainianness, for this choice that took place then. It was made for pragmatic and patriotic reasons and has been consolidated in 2022, because our cemeteries are no smaller than Lviv's. We lost people who could clearly pay off, who had money and a fortune that allowed them to get away with it. But they went and died. History teaches us that it teaches us nothing.
In your opinion, did the fact that just before these events, Mayor Kostusev was fired, the head of the regional state administration Matviychuk was fired, and Markov was arrested, have any impact?
We had no power at all, and I can say this clearly, because I was talking to Hurwitz at the time, and we were asking for help. I was in touch with Yuriy Lutsenko, who later became minister, and I should also say that Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Korban helped us then. I know that it was not an advertised security assistance. On the 5th, Katerynchuk, the head of the regional police department, came. And for the next few days, there was absolute powerlessness. Volodymyr Nemyrovsky and Oleh Bryndak were acting. And I am sure that Bryndak was one of those who knew about all these moments and worked on the side of the anti-Maidan.
Then Gennadiy Trukhanov was going to run for mayor, because we had by-elections, Kostusev resigned, and Bryndak was running the city. Trukhanov was preparing to run for office, and he agreed with some of the Kulykivka residents to switch to the 411th battery - he paid them money. This is open information and pragmatic things.
Photo provided by the interviewee
He was standing with a yellow, blue, and St. George's ribbon, meaning he had schizophrenia and couldn't make up his mind. Back then, many people could not make up their minds. Odesa businessmen were generally looking for some contacts to negotiate with the Russians who would come. And I want to say that Odesa was just lucky to have Ihor Palytsia, a very pragmatic person with resources. For example, when he invited me to work, I asked him: "What is your motivation?". And he said that he had a lot of real estate here, and it was not profitable for Russians to come here. It was the most understandable motivation without any pretentious words.
Palytsia was acting like a businessman: he threatened, scared, negotiated, and bought. It was important because we had to hold elections in May - presidential and mayoral. I should also say that Nemyrovsky fired all the heads of district administrations, but Palytsia was not allowed to appoint any. Nemyrovsky did a very cool thing when he fired everyone, and they recruited very cool people to the personnel reserve. And if they had been appointed, it would have been very cool. Since after the presidential election, everyone goes to the status of acting president and there should be a reappointment, Palytsia was kept in limbo. Because there were conflicts with Kolomoisky and he had to be pushed aside. Obviously, it was the Palytsia-Kolomoisky team. And I was not appointed because Palytsia was not appointed.
Photo provided by the interviewee
And then I was very angry when Mikheil Saakashvili came and everyone said that he fired everyone. Everyone had already been fired, he came to a city that was safe, and he could start from scratch. He had complete carte blanche, because he had Sakvarelidze as the head of the prosecutor's office, he had his own police chief, he had his own person at the customs, and everything was fucked up. And when people looked at this chaos. They said: "This is your democracy, and fuck you and your democracy." Without Palytsia, there would have been no Saakashvili era.
How do you develop a resilient, sustainable society that thinks critically during a major war?
I recently read that 6% of people make changes in the country, and we need to understand whether we have them. I believe that now is a more difficult period than February 2022, and all efforts should go to support the army. We have to make many different parallel movements and processes and discussions. We need to understand that the old democracies failed to cope with the challenges, we see what is happening in Europe. Therefore, we shouldn't try to copy the European model; it should be our Ukrainian model, taking into account civilized practices. That's what Putin caught the whole of Europe doing in 2014, when they all went out in uniform, without insignia, on the streets of Crimea. When Crimea was annexed, Europe was very confused because there was no subject of negotiations. Europe has clear rules, and by the time they started to loosen up, it was too late and there were no decisive steps.
Why hybrid warfare? Because these are different levels of warfare, and if we coordinated our actions in 2022, wrote papers and acts, we would all die.
There's a theory about the mental age of the country, and they say that Ukraine is somewhere between 13 and 15 years old, a teenager. That's how we behave: there are no authorities, everything is fast, we hate everyone, we quarrel. But we have come a long way.
Now we need to focus not on Europe, but on NATO, because it is security. We cannot develop without security. I'm afraid that we are being given this carrot before the donkey, regarding the European Union, so that we shut up about NATO.
No one has canceled communication and conversations. In our society, conversations have always been very devalued. There is a leveling of moral authority. How does it happen? Through certain communication channels: media, cinema, art, and the work of opinion leaders. We need people with high social capital who have authority in their communities. This Odesa Decolonization event is a collaboration between business and the active community. When two different environments come together - business and conscious active. That is, we need to form an idea and imagination about the following worldview things: what kind of country we are building, what it will be like in 5-10 years, what we have to do, what is the responsibility of citizens, how do we prepare for the next elections?
Self-education should always take place. There are a lot of challenges now, such as artificial intelligence. Are we working with it, because the next elections will be about artificial intelligence. Europe is seriously working on the legislative framework, but how will we work with it? For this, we need free media. During the war, the media should come to an agreement, but not create a single marathon. We still have freedom of speech, but do we have freedom of the media? A famous Chechen, and I respect them very much, told me: "When your country is at war, everyone does what they do best."
Read the first part of the interview here.
Марія Литянська