Mikhail Frenkel, a correspondent of IsraGeo magazine in Kyiv. The photo taken by the author.
Can the Chief Military Prosecutor of Ukraine Anatolii Matios be called as a judophobe?
Man proposes, God disposes.
Recently I surfed the Internet and saw a quotation from the interview of the chief military prosecutor of Ukraine Anatolii Matios. So, I immediately decided to reply to it with a comment full of sharp criticism; I’ve written lots of such comments already. I strongly disagreed with the prosecutor’s words. And I’m quoting here:
“Every war has its own Parvus who provided Lenin with money for the revolution, after which the Slavs were steeped in blood for decades. He also was of Jewish origin. In such a case (it was subject to the case of German – M. F), the same might happen to Ukraine …”
Literally everything sounds pretty bad here – both playing the Jewish origin card of the “hero” and comparing a low-priority agent to a revolutionary and great theorist of Marxism, who as a child survived by a miracle during two bashings – and for this reason had a bone to pick with the Russian autocracy. To cut a long story short, I hit the ground running.
But the lifelong habit to “measure thrice and cut once” prompted me to study this interview thoroughly. I read it. And I was surprised to find out that the main ideas of Matios are very similar to what I recently stated in the article “And let the Jews squeal”. The prosecutor said that today in Ukraine there is a great danger of a bloodshed and a forcible seizure of power. The key words in the interview were “Augusto Pinochet is already knocking at our door”, not the phrase about the Jews. And this was the reason for changing my initial decision. I called Matios and made arrangements for a meeting…
When I stepped into his office, I was really surprised. There were three portraits of famous people on the walls with the quotes from their works. Vasyl Stus, Hryhorii Skovoroda and… three attempts to guess. Okay, I’ll tell you. And Simon Wiesenthal. Among other things, there were several klezmer figures of the outstanding sculptor Frank Meisler on the prosecutor’s desk.
Having made no disguise of my slight surprise, I joked that portrait and all sculptures were obviously delivered to the office special for me. But Matios answered seriously that the portrait of Wiesenthal (by the way, beautifully made one) is the birthday present of his closest colleague who has relation to the Jewish people, and the works of Meisler he bought at the well-known store in Jaffa, as he had visited Israel more than a few times.
After that, I could only tell my interlocutor that in mid-1990s I was privileged to listen to Wiesenthal’s speech at a journalist conference in Jerusalem. But after thinking about the large number of people waiting in the prosecutor’s reception office, I posed my first question to Anatolii Vasylyovych.
– The commonly known law that was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada three years ago, touched not only upon decommunization, but also upon resistance against Neo-Nazism. However, having vehemently rushed into decommunization, Mr. Vyatrovych and his institute completely forgot about Neo-Nazism. And in these latter days, this political movement was in full swing in Ukraine. Actually, very few people in our country care about demolition of monuments to communist leaders. But we must not only counter stone-still people, but also resist the main supporters of ideologies, which are antithetical to democratic Ukraine.
In the meantime, we see that the example of the National Memory Institute became contagious. For example, on May 9 brave policemen grasped an old lady by her arms and legs and threw her into their car. Yes, she wore “St. George Ribbon”, but in fact, they could behave with an elderly person in more respectful manner. At the same time, we observed many times as the football fans put on swastika t-shirts and shrieked out the Nazi salute, they chanted “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”. And the security staff, whose task is to keep order in the stadium, timidly ask them to calm down. What can we think about it?
– Yes, nowadays there are very dangerous tendencies in Ukraine. What are they caused by? There’s no denying that the reason is situation in our country that has been lasting for the last four years. What’s going on? The war in a hybrid form, which results in revealing both the most heroic and the lowest traits in a man. Heroism, self-sacrifice, defense of the state also take place. These are usual things for any self-respecting people. The vivid example of this is all the history of modern Israel since 1948. The permanent hybrid war, the hostile encirclement of this holy land and state – and the desperate struggle of the people for existence.
And what is happening in Ukraine? Some people are heroes, others allow themselves to do horrible things. There is a complete breakdown of the state institutions under the name of “a reform”. But it’s easier to pull down than to build. Our reforms are beginning “from the roof” instead of a common and logic rule stating that firstly you need to lay the foundation, then build the walls, and then the roof. Indulgence of any acts of radicalism with respect to any person or ethnic group is out of the question. The state must fight against it.
To ensure this, it’s necessary to demonstrate all the preventive, legislative and practical instruments of power in order to combat any nationalistic – in the worst sense of this word – phobias aimed at any nationalities and communities. This is the way for us to follow.
I can affirm many things, but all my words will sound like slogans. And no matter what I’m talking about now, I cannot be responsible for the whole state. But due to my job position, I am the state representative in the sphere of law enforcement activity responsible for law maintenance in military formations, and I am deeply aware of the serious problems we have. But these problems, believe me, are often invisible not just to the public but even to those who are responsible for making serious political decisions.
Who am I talking about? About politicians. Our government policy has become primitive – it is populistic. One strives to be well received by certain part of the population, another one makes efforts to be publicized and re-elected, the third one is keen to get government assistance either from the West or from our eastern neighbor. And nobody sees the dangers to democracy in Ukraine, and even the threat to the very existence of our country.
When our political elite – I cannot call it politicum – signs all agreements, this everlasting populism, this desire to drum up hype by all means, to put it mildly, I’m fed up with it. And the problems are not mentioned. But suddenly, there are three bashings in a month, violence, and finally, they begin to kill an ethnic group, Roma in this case. And please note: half of the population keeps silence, another part that is working for grants, is strongly against it – but only in social networks, no more. Besides, there is no reaction from politicians. No reaction! The fact of oppression of one of the ethnic groups hasn’t become a high-priority issue in the Verkhovna Rada. Why is it so?
