1

The newspapers called him a prince. Ergo, she was a princess. And so they were laced up in the corset of a cliché known throughout the world. To extend the cliché, those who come into the King's inheritance are themselves happy and make the land happy by reigning long and justly. With this comfortable formula, the fairy tale concludes: the happy ending requires no continuation.

But in our fairy tale, a continuation is indispensable. The way fairy tales about princes and princess usually end can't convey the drama that comes afterwards. It could authorize itself to do so, but then it would be a barefaced lie, a dream that has no more in common with reality than an orchard with a car park. But isn't a fairy tale a lie? No. There's a consensus about the dishonesty of the lie stroke fairy tale. To accuse a fairy tale of lying would be absurd.

So afterwards there was a drama. Afterwards: in other words, after the happy ending. Which there was, albeit a short-lived one. That's the difference between a fairy tale and life, between a fictional reality and the real reality. Even a fictional reality can't be stopped randomly, let alone the real reality. A fairy tale ends only insofar as it perpetuates the state of affairs described at the finish: a happy ending isn't a real ending, but the beginning of a state that is infinitely constant – an inversion of the myth of the end, a consolation that one understands as such but that one nonetheless needs (all the more so?).

In our fairy tale, this state of affairs is only temporary. No more than a honeymoon. And honeymoons are renowned for their brevity. All of a sudden, the prince is surrounded by evil courtiers, who, it should be added, stood on the stage on the Maidan wearing orange scarves, and who bore a significant burden, both organisational and financial, of the revolution. Now they are evil. But evil enough to persuade the prince to divorce the fervently loved princess? They wanted to help themselves and the princess made it impossible for them! What a spoilsport! Or perhaps not? Perhaps it she who wanted to help herself, as the courtiers have hinted to the prince? Or was it that both parties wanted to help themselves and in doing so got in one another's hair? Or are these accusations simply evil presumptions, staged by a media ruled by the oligarchs and susceptible to the influence of the Kremlin? Staged with success, one has to say. With a catastrophic success that will last for the next few years, if not decades. Perhaps it wasn't even love, but hate, which, as a result of an error – intentional or not – by the court lexicographer, took the place of love in the lexicon of feelings? An arranged marriage that the vox populi, as it were, yearned for.

No sooner has the princess left than look – the jack-in-the-box is back. The strength that he represents had been diminished, like Balzac's talisman, or a party balloon the day after. A comeback: the man that can is big and strong once more, maybe not as confident as before the revolution, but growing more so by the day. Now he's bragging about a parliamentary majority of 300, which converted into the language of possibility means: alter the constitution however you like, let the president be elected by parliament. Of course, for a democracy, the latter option is by no means a disgrace. But in the fairly-tale land that is the Ukraine today, the triad "parliament-president-prime minister" would be a PLC without liability, with the oligarchs as the main shareholders and with one minor shareholder: the people.

Why did the revolution happen? What a question! The answer is so simple: he was a prince too. The outgoing king, who despite the ingenious casuistry of his court (sorry, constitutional) judge couldn't hold on to power, wanted to bequeath the throne and the land to him, so as to carry on (co-)ruling. But the nasty people didn't want him – he was just an evil prince. All of a sudden, the nasty people, "that rabble", were calling themselves "citizens", were able – miraculously! – to organize themselves, went out onto the Maidan – the biggest square in the kingdom's capital city – to protect the good prince. A significant proportion of the nasty people were so nasty as to claim not to be defending the prince, but their own right to vote: an unprecedented impertinence!

2

Recently, I was back in the fairy-tale land. In my fairy-tale land. It's not so far away as to be unreachable. You can get there by every means of transport available in this day and age: by bus, train, plane, even by ship, not to mention bicycle. It takes a while to get there from Germany. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it took up to 12 hours by rail; at the beginning of the beginning of the twenty-first century, today in other words, it takes 22 hours; around 1989, it took between 16 and 17 hours. I travelled there, back home, by train. By train you get to see things that not even an aeroplane passenger has access to on a clear day. Admittedly: aeroplanes are a higher, more abstract level, one must learn to generalize first. I, on the other hand, love detail.

I turn on the television. A cabinet meeting. I take a telescope – the meeting is taking place in Kyiv; I, meanwhile, am in Lviv. More than five hundred kilometres away, after all. Through the telescope I can see everything in detail (incidentally, aeroplane passengers can also use a telescope to see what the train passenger sees). But what do I see? A serving deputy prime minister – wasn't he the inventor of the transit server, that miracle of technology? The English built the first sowing machine, the Germans invented the printing press, the Ukrainians the transit server. Isn't the invention of the transit server enough to merit the inventor's promotion to deputy prime minister? One would hesitate to deny it.^[1] And who's that? Another deputy prime minister, expert in humanities. His most famous remark until now: "The stratum of the Ukrainian intelligentsia is so thin as to be imperceptible". Why it should be so thin, of course, was not acknowledged.^[2] And who's that? That's the former Director of the Central Election Commission,^[3] who declared the fraudulent election result to be legal; now he's a member of parliament with a good chance of once again donning the mantle of Director of the Central Election Commission. And the prime minister too, the "election rigger and thug". Translated into the language of the rule of law, it means: those who laid blame on the officials just mentioned are liars and the officials pure as driven snow. The fact that I repeat such a thing places me among the chorus of liars. Or have I inadvertently taken a time machine (like the sowing machine, also invented by the English engineer, this time called Herbert George Wells) instead of a train and gone back to before the revolution? I take a second telescope: the faces remain the same. I don't have a third telescope.

Now both princes, the good one and the evil one, govern the land. Each denies the other's authority. Lately, the evil prince has wrested hold of authority. And the princess? The princess is singing, "O du lieber Augustin...".^[4] And the nasty people? They're learning to distinguish between fictional reality and real reality, that there's no such thing as good princes and princesses, especially not ones who look after the people so that the people won't have to look after themselves.

But wait! The princess has managed to convince the (good) prince to halt the (evil) prince by dissolving parliament and ordering new elections. What is the princess hoping for? Could it be that she feels sorry for the (good) prince? And what is the (good) prince hoping for? The astrologers alias sociologists are warning of an unfavourable constellation – more unfavourable than during the last elections, above all for the presidential party. The so-called national democracy, the pro-European political wing, which in reality is colourful mixture of neoliberals, social democrats, and nationalists, is, as before, divided up into tiny, Hetman-led ^[5] splinter parties and a rapprochement is nowhere in sight.

Ukraine and Europe? It's enough to make a trip across the eastern border of the EU and the western border of Ukraine, to queue up outside one of the European embassies in Kiev with the vague hope of approaching the little window of the consular department, in order to find oneself on the receiving end of an interrogation – and then it dawns on you how cynical the European pledges of Ukrainian foreign minister, and equally the neighbourhood rhetoric of the EU, really are.

• ^[1] The author is referring to the rumour that the results of 2004 Ukrainian elections were altered in Kyiv en route to the central electoral commission. At the time, the politician in question, Andij Kljulev, was dubbed the "inventor of the transit server" (technology that sorts incoming online data and rumoured to have been used in the fraud) – ed.
• ^[2] The deputy prime minister in question is Dmitri Tabachnyk. This comment was made during a television interview; when asked why the Ukrainian intelligentsia was so small, a question that referred to the repression of intellectuals and dissidents during the Soviet era, Tabachnyk declined to answer – ed.
• ^[3] Serhij Kivalov, Ukrainian MP.
• ^[4] Viennese folk song dating from the plague period during the seventeenth century; the song, about the death of a poor street musician, is a cheerful ditty about futility and finality – ed.
• ^[5] In the Grand Lithuanian Duchy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the Hetman were military commanders independent of the monarch and had considerable powers. In the Ukraine during the same period, the Hetman was the title of the head of the Cossack state. The title was revived during the conservative, anti-socialist revolution of 1917-1920 – ed.

Published 2007-05-04

Original in German
Translation by Simon Garnett
© Tymofiy Havryliv
© Eurozine