If you haven’t got a calendar for 2011, perhaps you may like this one. Twelve female students from Taras Shevchenko State University pose on the pages of next year’s calendar and ask the Ukrainian president some head-on questions.
They are the latest addition to the calendar rush started in Russia in late September.
First lingerie-clad girls, calling themselves journalists, posed in pin-up fashion to wish Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin a happy 58th birthday.
Angered journalism rookies from the prestigious Moscow State University responded with a calendar of their own. With their mouths taped shut, young women asked Putin when former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky would be released from prison and who killed journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006. It was all part of their journalistic retaliation by calendar.
Rival groups of Moscow State University students put out two calendars, the one (below) represented by Miss March supporting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on his 58th birthday on Oct. 7. That inspired a retort from students (top) who decided to pose hard questions for Putin in their version of the calendar. (Courtesy photo)
Inspired by the second Russian effort, Ukrainian journalism students created a version of their own and presented it to the media on Oct. 26. “What should we do with a president who doesn’t keep his promises?” asks Yaroslava Kutsai on February’s page. With the rest of the months asking similarly frank questions, the calendar finally ended up in the Presidential Secretariat. And so the trouble began.
Students were called to the dean’s office “to discuss how professional and appropriate” their questions were, Kutsai said. After that meeting, the students stopped talking to the press.
“There were some aspects we decided to keep in secret. We will comment if there’s still interest in us after [Ukraine’s local] elections,” said Kutsai in an interview with the Kyiv Post. She denied she was singling out Viktor Yanukovych from her February page. “Whoever our president is, the question stays the same,” she said.
By softening their public stance after the release, the group fueled suspicions that they had been pressured by the university’s administration to play the story down.
Volodymyr Shevchenko, deputy rector of the Journalism Institute, denies these allegations.
He said the project invited suspicion because it was released on Oct. 30, on the eve of local elections. “It’s a political project, which shouldn’t have appeared in the university,” said Shevchenko. “These kids are only 18 to 19 years old; they are too young and too inexperienced to ask such questions,” he said about his budding journalists.
On the pages of the calendar, however, the questions seem to be quite penetrating and to the point. “When will officials stop taking bribes?” asks Miss April. “Journalism is not prostitution, right?” reads the December page.
Shevchenko, however, thinks that posing in pin-up style, like in the original Russian calendar for Putin, would have been a better project. “As for me, they should have spread calendars that proclaim beauty of youth,” he said.
The organizers, however, deny that it was a political project. “We don’t promote anyone and were not financed by any political party,” said journalism student Oleksandr Klimashevsky.
Klimashevsky, however, said that the calendar was prepared specifically for Yanukovych. If former President Viktor Yuschenko won a second term, “we wouldn’t have included two questions: ‘Is the death of Ihor Indulo [student] an official negligence?’ and ‘Why did Ukraine fall to the 131st position in the international press freedom rating?”
The president, however, didn’t take offense. “This means that Ukrainian universities are able to educate real journalists who, unlike their Russian colleagues, can ask the politicians sharp questions,” said Yanukovych’s spokesman Denys Ivanesko.
Despite an unwelcome reaction from their teachers, the calendar crew members say they want the president to answer their 12 burning questions. “At least one per month,” said Klimashevsky. “That would be a great start for changing something for the better.”
Journalism students from the National Taras Shevchenko University strike controversial poses and ask tough questions on the pages of the political calendar presented on Oct. 26. (Oleksiy Furman, Serhiy Polezhaka)
- Miss January: “When will there be affordable housing for young families?”
- Miss February: “What to do with a president who’s not living up to his promises?”
- Miss March: “When will Ukrainian universities start merging theory with practice?”
- Miss April: “When will authorities be held accountable for taking bribes?”
- Miss May: “Is Ihor Indylo’s death a matter of official negligence?”
- Miss June: “Where’s the infrastructure for the Euro 2012 Football Championship?”
- Miss July: “How to make entrance exams to universities honest?”
- Miss August: “Why did Ukraine drop to 131st place in the freedom of press ratings?”
- Miss September: “Who killed Georgiy Gongadze?”
- Miss October: “How much longer will we trample over our Constitution?
- Miss November: “Will Ukrainian remain the single state language?”
- Miss December: “Journalism is not prostitution, right?”
Kyiv Post staff writer Elena Zagrebina can be reached at
