To read more about Boris Dervyanko, see these articles in the Kyiv Post:
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Murder silences maverick editor
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Ask any editor of a Ukrainian newspaper whether the press is free or not, and he may snicker, or more likely, sigh, and tell you: “The press is expensive.”
Ask the staff of Kievskie Vedomosti, whose innocent little dig at a speech delivered by Kyiv Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko provoked a $1 million lawsuit a few months back. The mayor claims his reputation was damaged. (Between you and me the mayor’s reputation is used to being damaged.
Ask the chief of Golos Ukrainy, which was sued for $100 million by Odesa Mayor Eduard Hurvits, who didn’t appreciate the paper’s charges that the city reneged on a building contract with a Toronto-based firm in order to award the job to a Greek competitor. “We must protect the city from irresponsible journalism,” thundered Hurvits.
You can’t ask Boris Derevyenko, however. The Vecharnyaya Odesa editor and outspoken critic of the Hurvits administration was gunned down on his way to work on Monday morning.
Truthfully, politicians and government officials may have good reasons to fear unfounded and irresponsible attacks by the media. The bulk of the nation’s press has suffered the same fate as its natural and industrial resources in the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. On a good day, most Ukrainian publications find the scope of their editorial freedom limited by the political interests of powerful patrons. On a bad day they serve these interests outright, by shining critical spotlights into the faces of their benefactor’s rivals. It is unrealistic to expect that eventually these targeted attacks will illuminate the entire arena. The sum total of private interests will never equal the public interest. A free press, like any other principle of democratic government, needs time to develop the strength to protect itself, to sink roots deep enough to stand upright despite the gale-force winds of political and profit motives. That means securing financial backing unfettered by the type of strings that bind, gag, and strangle.
The Ukrainian press considers even its limited freedoms to be a blessing rather than a right, and for this reason it practices docile self-censorship, lest an unwanted angle deprive the printing presses of subsidized paper supplies or incur the wrath of the Tax Administration. It was not all that long ago that the paperOppositsiya was shut down and its editor jailed for publishing caricatures of the president. Merely the threat of a prolonged, expensive court battle, like those the mayors of Odessa and Kiev have threatened to wage, is often enough to keep editors from coloring outside the lines that have been drawn for them.
Derevyenko’s murder leaves many questions unanswered, and makes many others terrifying to ask. It leaves Western journalists and free press activists who would urge their Ukrainian colleagues to sharpen their editorial vision biting their bottom lips and feeling helpless and stupid. The realities of Ukrainian politics can never be forgotten, and the ties that bind cannot be broken by sheer force of will.
Whether or not you believe that the government itself violates the principles of the Constitution, it is clear that it cannot yet guarantee them. Without those supports, Ukrainian editors and journalists cannot realistically be expected to try the dangerous climb to an objective perch above the ruling fray of violence and corruption.
Yet some have tried, and more will certainly follow. That is the calling of journalism.
Derevyenko spoke to a Times reporter in March, saying: “I believe it is my responsibility to be critical of authority….especially since, although the names are different, those in power are exactly the same Communists as before.”
With one difference. Those in power no longer need to arrest and gag voices of opposition. The specter of organized crime has given everyone plausible deniability. Those same voices can now be silenced on street corners, by anonymous forces as reliable and predictable as those that drive a free market. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Sean Lawler was a former editor of the Kyiv Post from 1996-1998. He died in 2006 at the age of 32.
