Vladimir Nikitin: We were holding analytical session on Donbas only four years ago

vitki.org

Maidan witnessed an attempt to get rid of a mediator – the state – between life and man. It was a start of a new world. But Donbas doesn’t accept it and, likewise Russia, wants to get off with it.

At the winter conference of the Flying University that took place in Minsk on February 27-28 and gathered together the intellectuals of our country a guest from Ukraine was speaking as an international expert. Vladimir Nikitin, PhD in culturology, methodologist, the author of more than hundred scientific and methodological works, a member and consultant of many social and culture programs, spoke about axled times or world waves of synchronization.

A correspondent of “EuroBelarus” Information Service talked with the Kiev expert about the situation in Ukraine.

- Vladimir, now you are the head of Board of the International Institute for the Research of the Future. What place does the development of situation in Donbas take in research performed by this structure?

- Indeed, I used to be the head of Board, but gave in my notice the other day. The thing is, institute’s funding was organized under the old authorities.

Nevertheless, the voiced topic is the main for me. And it is not the institute that is important for me, but the fact that I am heading the "Foundation for future" club we all are engaged in. So far, we didn’t conduct the research of the situation in Donbas n this institute, but we applied for it now.

Four years ago we held a large analytical session on strategy of Donbas development. The session was very successful, but it touched upon the future. In a month the authorities said, “no, we won’t be doing that, we need to deal with the present”. But he who doesn’t engage in the future rests on what is happening now.

So yes, we tried to do big work on Donbas. We understood back then that we needed to conduct research not only on Donbas, but also on the whole Ukraine.

photo by EuroBelarus Information Service

- As the former head of the International Center of Perspective Research and expert in technologies of public politics, please give your assessment to Russia’s and Western countries’ actions re situation in Ukraine.

- There are three main players there – the West, Russia, and Ukraine. For some reason Russia believes that Ukraine is not a player and that the West is playing through Ukraine’s hands. But I think this is wrong. For the first time Ukraine is trying to become an independent player.

The situation that happened in Ukraine is an attempt to start a new world. Let me explain that. Maidan had a very strong line, and, fairly speaking, the mood of people at Maidan was aimed at overcoming the state.

I am a Kiev citizen and I would like to note the following. What the external observer sees and what understands the party to the conflict are never the same. We understood that when we tried to describe action games. At our first games we even had a special position of external observer. It appeared that the external observer sees the behavior but doesn’t understand the meaning and always judges by how he can describe and understand the behavior.

So what is the use of my words? In April we had a conference for 80-100 people at Maidan in the building of the press service. We were trying to find out what happened and what we should do. The conference was very heated; a lot of things were happening at Maidan at that time. And Sergey Pereslegin (a literary critic, columnist, military historian, and sociologist. – EuroBelarus) from Saint-Petersburg, who helped us to hold the seminar, suddenly understood what happened at Maidan. He proposed an idea that is very strong from my perspective (and later participants of Maidan confirmed it) about the model of ruling the country after Maidan.

He said that the first reformation took place 500 years ago, when Luther tried to get rid of the mediator between man and God, whereas at Maidan happened an attempt to get rid of the mediator between life and man embodied by the state.

Radical shifts always get birth to principally different way of organization. At Maidan it was, first of all, the state of personal freedom, not a situation, which is important. And that personal freedom later transformed into a political situation. Before that in February a seminar with programmers took place at Maidan. And all of them were discussing one and the same question: how can we change the situation so that people are able to take part in managing the country, while the state will be performing a service function?

However, we stuck at one problem: programmers could explain the opinion of the majority in different ways and with different rates, but they couldn’t transfer the notion of democracy to their means, though this is very clear and powerful state. Then, unfortunately, politicians turned it into understanding that this is fight for power.

This was the start of a principally new world. As Reformation is a start of an idea of man talking directly to God, here it is an idea of a free man directly ruling the country.

In Russia, where I work a lot, we see something similar to fascism, some weird things that we still need to find a name to. An external observer always ascribes existing names from a different era to an unclear phenomenon.

Donbas doesn’t accept the beginning of a new world; likewise Russia, it won’t to get rid of it. It is not the fight of worldview that is going on here; it is the fight between different understandings of the future and the time. And this question is principal.

I’m afraid that this fight will be continuing for a long time, as for now no other methods give people a possibility to think and see the world differently. Mass media create artificial reality, and what they create is absolutely different from what we would like to see and different from what is real.

In this sense Ukraine largely supports Western values, as the basic value in this country is freedom or will. Although I’m a native Russian, a Russian speaker, and have no hatred against Russia, I understand that this country is authoritarian. In Russia the idea of freedom cannot be understood from the beginning, as for them freedom means destruction.