The writer Konstantin Paustovsky, "a Muscovite by birth and a Kievite by heart", has lived in Ukraine for more than two decades in total. Here he took place as a journalist and writer, about which he spoke more than once in his autobiographical prose. In the preface to the Ukrainian edition of The Gold of Trojand (Golden Rose) in 1957, he wrote: “In the books of almost every writer, the image of his native land with its endless sky and the silence of the language of the people. In general, I was lucky. I grew up in Ukraine. I am grateful to her lyricism for many aspects of my prose. I have carried the image of Ukraine in my heart for many years”.
Prose - essay and fiction - by Paustovsky about the troubled times of a century ago in Ukraine, in particular, in long-suffering Kiev, in which the government changed 18 times in one year (!), the latest events in Ukraine.
The entry of Simon Petliura to Kiev in 1919 was described by Paustovsky in the chapter "Violet Ray" of the book "The Story of Life. The Beginning of an Unknown Age”.
We read.
"Shout out loud" glory! " incomparably more difficult than "hurray!" No matter how you shout, you will not achieve powerful rumblings. From a distance it will always seem that they are shouting not “glory”, but “ava”, “ava”, “ava”! In general, this word turned out to be inconvenient for parades and the manifestation of popular enthusiasm. Especially when they were shown by elderly hulks in dark-haired hats and crumpled zupans pulled out of chests.
The day before, announcements from the commandant were posted around the city. In them, with epic calmness and a complete lack of humor, it was reported that Petliura would enter Kiev at the head of the government - the Directory - on a white horse presented to him by Zhmeryn railroad workers.
It was not clear why the Zhmeryn railwaymen gave Petliura a horse, and not a railcar or at least a shunting locomotive.
Petliura did not disappoint the expectations of Kiev maids, merchants, governesses and shopkeepers. He really rode into the conquered city on a rather meek white horse.
The horse was covered with a blue blanket trimmed with a yellow border. On Petliura, he was wearing a protective zupan on cotton wool. The only decoration - a curved Zaporozhye saber, apparently taken from a museum - hit him on the thighs. The wide-eyed Ukrainians gazed with reverence at this Cossack "shablyuka", at the pale, swollen Petlyura and at the Haidamaks, who pranced behind Petlyura on shaggy horses.
The haidamaks with long bluish-black forelocks - donkeys - on their shaved heads (these forelocks were hanging from under their papa) reminded me of my childhood and the Ukrainian theater. There, the same gaidamaks with blue eyes, dashingly chipped off a hopak: "Gop, kume, don't zhurys, turn around!"
Each nation has its own characteristics, its own worthy features. But people, choking with saliva from affection before their people and deprived of a sense of proportion, always bring these national traits to ridiculous proportions, to molasses, to disgust. Therefore, there are no worst enemies of their people than leavened patriots.
Petliura tried to revive the sugary Ukraine. But none of this, of course, came of it. Following Petlyura rode the Directory - the writer Vinnichenko of neurasthenia, and behind him - some mossy and unknown ministers.
This is how the short, frivolous power of the Directory began in Kiev. The people of Kiev, inclined, like all southern people, to irony, made the new "independent" government a target for an unheard-of number of anecdotes.
Petliura brought with him the so-called Galician language - rather heavy and full of borrowings from neighboring languages ”.
Paustovsky writes as if about Ukraine in 1991, and even more so in 2004, 2014-2017.
“Under Petliura, everything seemed deliberate - both the haidamaks, and the language, and all his politics, and the gray-haired chauvinists who crawled out of the dusty holes in huge numbers, and money - everything, including the anecdotal reports of the Directory to the people.
When meeting with the Haidamaks, everyone looked around in a daze and asked themselves - were they Haidamaks or on purpose. With the tortured sounds of the new language, the same question involuntarily came to mind - is it Ukrainian or on purpose. … Everything was petty, ridiculous and reminded of a bad, disorderly, but at times tragic vaudeville."
From Homeric coincidence with the current Ukrainian reality, you can only shrug your hands. Where, in what secret caches, in what bog-Konotop nooks and crannies of the incomprehensible Ukrainian soul did all this stay in hibernation, waiting for a new "starry" hour for the infernal exhaust in ancient Russian Kiev, "the mother of Russian cities", the city of Michael the Archangel and the Apostle Andrew the First-Called?
“Once upon a time huge posters were posted in Kiev. They informed the population that in the “Are” cinema hall the Directory would report to the people.
The whole city tried to break through to this report, anticipating an unexpected attraction. And so it happened.
The narrow and long cinema hall was plunged into a mysterious darkness. No lights were lit. In the dark, the crowd roared merrily.
Then, behind the stage, a resounding gong was struck, the multicolored lights of the ramp flashed, and in front of the audience, against the background of the theatrical backdrop, in rather loud colors depicting how "the Dnieper is wonderful in calm weather", appeared an elderly, but slender man in a black suit, with an elegant beard - Prime Minister Vynnychenko.
Dissatisfied and clearly embarrassed, all the while straightening his big-eyed tie, he made a dry and short speech about the international situation of Ukraine. They slapped him.
After that, an unprecedentedly thin and completely powdered girl in a black dress entered the stage and, clasping her hands in front of her in obvious despair, began to scaredly recite the verses of the poetess Galina to the pensive chords of the piano:
Hacking the fox zeleniy, young …
She was also slapped.
The ministers' speeches were interspersed with interludes. After the Minister of Railways, the girls and boys danced a hopak."
Exactly according to this scenario - hysterical speeches of politicians interspersed with concert embroidery numbers and reading of "topical" poems of independent graphomaniac poetesses - performances were built both on the orange Maidan of 2004 and on the "Euromaidan" of 2013–2014.
The following scene looks grotesque and symptomatic in the description of Konstantin Paustovsky:
“The audience was sincerely amused, but cautiously calmed down when the elderly“Minister of State Balances,”in other words, the Minister of Finance, came out heavily on the stage.
This minister looked disheveled and scolding. He was clearly angry and sniffling loudly. His round head, cropped by a hedgehog, glistened with sweat. The gray Zaporozhye mustache hung down to his chin.
The minister was dressed in wide gray striped trousers, the same wide scabbard jacket with drawn pockets, and an embroidered shirt tied at the throat with a ribbon with red pompons.
He was not going to make any report. He walked up to the ramp and began to listen to the rumble in the auditorium. For this, the minister even brought his hand, folded into a cup, to his furry ear. There was laughter.
The minister smiled with satisfaction, nodded to some of his thoughts and asked:
- Muscovites?
Indeed, there were almost only Russians in the hall. Unsuspecting spectators innocently answered that yes, mostly Muscovites were sitting in the hall.
- T-a-ak! - said the minister ominously and blew his nose into a wide checkered handkerchief. - Very understandable. Although not hefty nice.
The hall fell silent, anticipating unkindness.
The hall buzzed indignantly. There was a whistle. A little man jumped out onto the stage and carefully took the “minister of balances” by the elbow, trying to take him away. But the old man became inflamed and pushed the man away so that he almost fell. The old man was already drifting. He couldn't stop.
- Well, are you moving? he asked smoothly. - Ha? You are playing the fool. So I will answer for you. In Ukraine, you have khlib, sugar, bacon, buckwheat, and tickets. And in Moscow, they sucked the muzzle with lamp oil. Yak axis!
Already two people were carefully dragging the minister by the flaps of his combed jacket, but he fiercely fought back and shouted:
- Stupid! Parasites! Get out to your Moscow! You are sweeping your Zhidiv government there! Get out!
Vynnychenko appeared behind the scenes. He waved his hand angrily, and the old man, red with indignation, was finally dragged backstage. And immediately, in order to soften the unpleasant impression, a chorus of boys in dashingly wrung hats jumped out onto the stage, the bandura players struck, and the boys, squatting down, sang:
Oh, there is a dead man lying there, It is not a prince, it is not a pan, not a colonel -
That old lady-fly lover!
That was the end of the Directory's report to the people. With mocking cries: “Get to Moscow! You are sweeping your Zhidiv government there! " - the audience from the cinema "Are" poured into the street ".
“The power of the Ukrainian Directory and Petliura looked provincial. The once brilliant Kiev turned into an enlarged Shpola or Mirgorod with their state presences and the Dovgochkhuns who sat in them.
Everything in the city was arranged under the old-world Ukraine, right down to the gingerbread stall under the sign “O tse Taras from Poltava region”. The long-moustached Taras was so important and such a snow-white shirt was puffed up and glowed with bright embroidery on him that not everyone dared to buy from this opera character zhamki and honey. It was not clear whether something serious was happening or whether a play was being performed with the characters from “The Gaidamaks”.
There was no way to figure out what was happening. The time was convulsive, impetuous, coups came in rushes. In the very first days of the emergence of each new government there were clear and menacing signs of its imminent and miserable fall.
Each government was in a hurry to announce more declarations and decrees, hoping that at least some of these declarations would seep into life and get stuck in it.
Petliura hoped most of all for the French, who occupied Odessa at that time. From the north, Soviet troops loomed inexorably.
The Petliurites spread rumors that the French were already going to rescue Kiev, that they were already in Vinnitsa, in Fastov, and tomorrow, even in Boyarka, near the city, brave French Zouaves in red trousers and protective fez could appear. His bosom friend, the French consul, Enno, swore to Petliura in this.
Newspapers, stunned by conflicting rumors, willingly printed all this nonsense, while almost everyone knew that the French were sitting in Odessa, in their French occupation zone, and that the “zones of influence” in the city (French, Greek and Ukrainian) were simply fenced off loose Viennese chairs from each other.
Under Petliura, rumors acquired the character of a spontaneous, almost cosmic phenomenon, similar to a pestilence. It was general hypnosis. These rumors have lost their direct purpose - to report fictitious facts. Rumors have acquired a new essence, as if a different substance. They have turned into a means of self-soothingness, into the strongest narcotic medicine. People found hope for the future only through rumors. Even outwardly, the Kievites began to look like morphine addicts.
With each new hearing, their dull eyes lit up until then, the usual lethargy disappeared, their speech turned from tongue-tied into lively and even witty.
There were fleeting rumors and rumors for a long time. They kept people deceptively agitated for two or three days.
Even the most inveterate skeptics believed everything, up to the point that Ukraine would be declared one of the departments of France and President Poincare himself was going to Kiev to solemnly proclaim this state act, or that the film actress Vera Kholodnaya gathered her army and, like Joan of Arc, entered on a white horse at the head of her reckless army to the city of Priluki, where she declared herself the Ukrainian empress.
When the battle began near Kiev itself, at Brovary and Darnitsa, and it became clear to everyone that Petliura's case was gone, an order from Petliura's commandant was announced in the city.
In connection with the launch of violet rays, the population of the city was ordered to go down to the basements on the night of tomorrow to avoid unnecessary victims and not go out until morning.
On the night of the violet ray, the city was deathly quiet. Even the artillery fire fell silent, and the only thing that could be heard was the distant rumbling of wheels. From this characteristic sound, experienced Kiev residents understood that army carts were hastily removed from the city in an unknown direction.
And so it happened. In the morning the city was free of Petliurites, swept out to the last speck. Rumors about the violet rays were launched in order to leave at night without hindrance.
There was, as the theatrical workers say, “a sheer change of scenery,” but no one could have guessed what it boded for starving citizens.
Only time could tell."
Alas, Ukraine is making the same mistake.
