Aside from Landyk, the actual offender and the son of a pro-presidential Party of Regions parliamentarian, the list of the “guilty” includes: restaurant patrons who indifferently watched the beating; restaurant employees who did not call the police; the police officers themselves, by default, because they are so corrupt that they are not worth calling; the nation’s government, which nurtured this system of injustice and impunity; the legacy of the years following the independence, which seeded widespread crime in Ukraine. Even Korshunova herself is guilty, according to some. Surprisingly, the Tatar-Mongol yoke was not mentioned.
Except for Korshunova, everyone on the list is, in fact, responsible in some way. Yet, they are no aliens.
The split between “us: regular and fair Ukrainians” and “them: government, police, wealthy, foreigners” has always been convenient.
This time, however, is different. No matter how much we try to convince ourselves that the indifferent restaurant visitors are “them,” we can’t. The reason is that we realize that “them” is really “us.”
Police are a bright example of the imaginary “alien” social classes we create. How many Ukrainians experienced police brutality or know at least one person who did? Many. But who raised, educated and set the values for the nation’s 300,000 police officers? We did.
We also as a nation raised the doctors who demand bribes before they look at a patient in a critical condition.
We nurtured Landiks. We also nurtured the indifferent spectators of the Bakkara restaurant as well as the journalists who, instead of protecting Korshunova, publish naked photographers of her.
Why would we then be so shocked by something we not only see, but encourage on a daily basis? Does it really take that level of ugliness to notice what kind of society we have created?
Landyk was able to beat a 20-year-old woman in public for the same reasons that many Ukrainians treat waiters as a medieval servants, throw animals on the street and throw trash in a neighbor’s yard.
Why did no one in the restaurant stop the 20-minute assault?
For the same reasons that few of us ever stop to help a person lying on the street. We convince ourselves that the person is a drunkard and if so, why should we care, regardless of whether he was drunk or had a heart attack. No one helped for the same reason we sit, poker faced in the subway listening to our i-pods, pretending not to notice an elderly person who needs our seat.
For the same reason a man was beaten to death in front of an apartment building in my home town years ago, and yet not a single spectator called the police.
There is also Landyk-driven fear, which often, however, becomes a convenient excuse.
Finally, our society does not encourage heroes and often perceives heroic behavior as weakness rather than strength.
The prize for the ultimate cynicism, however, I would give to Ukrainska Pravda, the online news site that published pictures of a naked victim, the authenticity of which has not been proven yet.
Did they really have to add to the humiliation of Korshunova? The journalists, in deciding to preserve the right of freedom of speech conveniently forgot about professionalism and ethics. Should we start searching protection from the news media in Ukraine?
Maybe it is time we stop looking for scapegoats and stop attributing today’s crimes to the legacy of the past.
By doing so, we create newer and newer categories of “immoral aliens” in our society, deepening the illusionary split between “them” and “us.” As one famous American cartoon strip once said: “We have met the enemy and it is us.”
It is time to admit the “them” is just “us.” We must assume responsibility for the beating in Bakkara.
It is a must, but not enough to punish the actual offender, just as it is not sufficient to treat a virus with aspirin. Otherwise, new Landiks will be rising among us.
Nataliya Bugayova, a former Kyiv Post staff writer, is a graduate student at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is currently working as a summer consultant for the World Bank in Washington, D.C.
