When I can’t find the right words, my hand moves of its own accord towards books. Recently, this feeling of being lost for words comes over me more and more. Or life is becoming richer and stranger, or the words capable of describing it are shirking their responsibility. I am leaning towards the latter theory. People are using fewer and fewer words, and more and more interjections and gestures.
Yesterday evening, I finally bought Anton the computer I had promised him for New Year. The salespeople tried to flog me Microsoft Office with a one-year subscription. Is Bill Gates becoming a racketeer? A month ago, you could buy this software with a permanent subscription, even if you could only install it on one machine. I will look for another solution.
Outside, it’s still freezing. In the Maidan, people are worried. The Internet is full of reports saying that the government is sending more and more soldiers and Berkut detachments to Kiev. Traffic police are terrorising members of the Automaidan. They have issued nine hundred ticketsfn1 confiscating driving licences for ‘refusal to obey an order to stop’; all these tickets look as if they have been copied, and they are signed with an illegible name, so much so that it is difficult to work out which police officer is responsible. Mezhigorye is completely surrounded by police special forces. Impossible to get there by car, as the road is blocked by buses and trucks. It is even impossible to walk around the neighbouring streets. The local farmers must have to struggle to find a way home among all the rows of police vehicles. They have to show papers proving that they really do live in the village. One old guy who didn’t have his papers with him was hit with a truncheon for attempting to bypass this blockade so he could get home. Ukraine in the twenty-first century is like a return to the nineteenth century, before the abolition of serfdom.
In the evening, there are discussions on television about the interview given by Cardinal Lyubomyr Huzar from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.11 He said that when the government resorts to unjustified violence, the people have the right to resist them with the use of force. Political commentators working for Yanukovych and the Party of Regions are already outraged by this provocation. They are saying they should complain to the Pope about the cardinal and demand that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church stops getting involved in politics. One wonders why a priest from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church should not have the right to say Mass in the Maidan, while the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate – the biggest Church in the country – is seemingly free to interfere in politics and to propagandise on behalf of Yanukovych and the Party of Regions during religious services whenever there is a parliamentary or presidential election. The Moscow Patriarchate represents millions of parishioners, the Greek Catholics just a few hundred thousand. Which one should be afraid of the other?
I found the interview in question, and here is the exact text:
There are situations where armed resistance may be permitted. When the government resorts to excessive violence, the people have the right to defend themselves with the use of force. Everyone has the right to defend himself. There is no need to write that in the constitution; it is the law of nature. I have the right to defend myself and my loved ones, as does every human being.
fn1 These tickets are police protocols with court decisions depriving the guilty ones of the right to drive for a period of one year.