In the third season of the People’s Servant series, there was an iconic scene.
What to do with Ukraine was discussed at the G7 meeting and the country was portrayed as divided and weakened by the chaos of power, as a source of instability in central Europe. The conclusion was that Ukraine needs its own “Charles de Gaulle,” who will unite the nation. The main character of the series, Vasyl Holoborodko, who was played by current President Volodymyr Zelensky, perfectly matched that image.
Consequently, he tried to repeat this trick in reality. Zelensky entered the international political arena in an attempt to consolidate the image of the “Ukrainian de Gaulle:” A strong, determined, and, importantly, European president, able to unite the country.
This is how he exported his image. However, both in the series and in reality, Zelensky was only a little like de Gaulle. During the first year of his presidency, it turned out that another figure of that era is more suitable for him – the “eternal” first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine – Volodymyr Shcherbytsky.
Shcherbytsky is an iconic figure in the system of the Leonid Brezhnev USSR. For some, he is the one who made the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic a “reserve of stagnation” with the persecution of dissidents, censorship, and a parade a few days after the Chornobyl nuclear power plant exploded in 1986.. For others, he is a figure heading romanticized Soviet republic, a country of delicious ice cream, space exploration, and “friendship of the nations.”
Zelensky found a way out of this ambivalent Ukrainian memory of the USSR. He successfully exploits nostalgia for the Soviet and builds on this his political regime, which can be called neo-Soviet. Zelensky, consciously or unconsciously, borrows visual images, ethics, and the system of public administration from the experience of the USSR. However, he presents it in a modern cover, preserving the apparent progressiveness, modernity, and pro-Western vector.
Zelensky and his team do not even give up on key goals and the political language set by President Petro Poroshenko’s ruling elite. According to the current speakers and in official declarations, Ukraine continues to move in the Euro-Atlantic direction, professes European values, democracy, and human rights. However, in practice, Zelensky continues to roll the state in the neo-USSR.
Adherence to authoritarianism, domestic welfare of citizens as the main measure of politics, “manual” parliament, order instead of legality, censorship instead of discussion, “friendship of the nations” instead of full-fledged international relations, persecution of opposition, demonstrative appeal to “people’s will,” colonial attitude to Ukrainian culture, demonstrative baring of incompetent officials, manual control, “telephone law.” All these send us to the realities of the Brezhnev USSR.
Even the name of the president’s party, “Servant of the People,” is an ideologically Soviet formula. This Stalinist construct marked the specific role of deputies and parliament in the conditions of the Soviet government. They do not have any subjectivity and representation, but are “leaders” of the people’s will and the will of the party. In Zelensky’s view, the parliament also has the purely decorative function of a “green printer” and the legitimization of laws passed from “above.” For him, the parliament is not a place for discussions, not a place for political struggle, not a place for the opposition. I think Zelensky would be most comfortable working with the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
One story that took place at the very beginning of Zelensky’s presidency is also significant. Then the newly appointed president renamed the Presidential Administration to the President’s Office and demonstrated journalists the shock over what was in the building on Bankova street. There was talk about the need to move the workplace of the president and his team in the modern open space. However, the idea quickly vanished.
Instead, Zelensky’s interview with The Guardian in early March was accompanied by a photo shoot, where he appears as a grotesque Eastern European dictator, who feels completely natural in the middle of the heavy gold decoration of the former building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Zelensky portrayed an absolutely Soviet visual image just like young Shcherbytsky. There is a saying that no matter what party we build, the Communist Soviet turns out.
The question is why doesn’t Zelensky play openly? Why does he continue to declare his commitment to the pro-Western vector?
Well-known researcher Alexei Yurchak in his most famous work “Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation,” called this phenomenon “hypernormality.”
Describing late Soviet society, Yurchak points out that everyone sensed the collapse of the system, but no one thought of an alternative to the existing system. Both the nomenklatura (the elite at power) and ordinary citizens had come to terms with the need to pretend. Thus, there was an official “fake” order, a simulacrum of the possible and the real ones.
Ukrainian society felt similar fatigue from the Euro-Atlantic choice, exacerbated by the tragedies of the EuroMaidan Revolution, which ended President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration in 2014, and Russia’s war. The responsible government, understanding the nature of this fatigue, would focus its efforts on further supporting the pro-European democratic narrative and the relevant public discourse. However, it happened so that on the wave of “Euro-fatigue,” Ukrainians elected Zelensky. Holoborodko’s character, whom he played in the series (only on words) was “Ukrainian de Gaulle.” In fact, he offered the audience a completely nostalgic-Soviet set of criteria for successful government.
For Zelensky, the entire Euro-Atlantic narrative is also perceived as slogans, as repetitive speech that needs to be spoken to continue cooperation with the West but it is not a goal in reality. Zelensky identified the impossibility of Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration as a given, but could not articulate an alternative. Instead of setting a pro-European discourse, the current government is talking about social fatigue.
Zelensky creates a “fake” reality in which Ukraine continues to move to the West, but in practice embodies the Soviet-nostalgic ideal. In this respect, the current political regime is even more Soviet than it may seem at first glance. Thus, analyzing modern Ukraine and Zelensky’s policy, it is necessary to look not only at the cover, but also at what is hidden under it. Formalism, declarativeness, and imitation have always been the “strengths” of the Soviet system.
Zelensky uses pro-Western slogans for speeches, but in practice is building a neo-Soviet regime in Ukraine.
Democracy loses because of its straightforwardness. Its ideological enemies have learned to use the tools of post-modernism in politics quite a while ago. If we do not understand the essence of the phenomenon, then we can not react to it properly. Zelensky is now a direct threat to Ukraine’s democratic development. If the international community does not respond, we may, in reality, turn Ukraine into a “powder keg” in central Europe. With the “ghost of communism” inside.
