During my
schooldays, I heard an
interesting account of the etymology of the word “shantrapa”
(šantrapá),
broadly used in Soviet slang to define petty thugs or, as a dictionary
more
politely suggests, “worthless persons.” The word had arguably come from
the
French ne chantera pas, meaning will not sing. It referred to actors
who lacked
a singing voice and were used in operas as mere figureheads -- just to
give the
appearance of a huge chorus on the stage. In actuality, one dictionary
claims,
the word originated from the Czech šantrok, šаntrосh (“liar”) and old
German
santrocke (“fraud”).
Whatever the
truth, the word has
regained broad currency in Ukraine within the past year, referring both
to the
ruling elite and to the habits they reintroduce and reinforce at all
levels of
societal life. One of the notable luminaries who deployed the term
recently was
Taras Chornovil, a defector from the Orange camp and ardent supporter
of Viktor
Yanukovych during the Orange Revolution. Some time ago, he left the
Party of
Regions after a serious disagreement with Yanukovych’s personnel policy
but he
still remains a member of the pro-government majority in the parliament
and, in
his own words, “support[s] the government and tr[ies], as far as
possible, to
avoid fighting with the president.” In sum, he is neither a clear-cut
loyalist
nor a member of the opposition. This might be a good position for
rather
impartial observations of political shenanigans, especially if combined
with
insider knowledge of both camps.
“Yanukovych,”
Chornovil says,
“gave shantrapa a free hand. Even under Yushchenko, shantrapa did not
behave so
defiantly; there was someone who supervised them… There was no control
from the
top, but at least at the middle level, there were some people
authorized by
Yushchenko who took care of something, more or less. And, from time to
time,
they attacked shantrapa, keeping them at bay. Now it’s gone. And
shantrapa reigns
unchecked. First, they pillage en masse, and second, they shut up all
opponents… Here we have an absolute lawlessness (bespredel) at the
level of
local authorities, law-enforcement agencies, and so on”
http://from-ua.com/politics/c3bdfdac02c3c.html.
The phenomenon is
barely new.
Long ago, it was observed in Russia where critics of Putin’s regime
argued that
he created an atmosphere of lawlessness and brutality, so familiar and
convenient for the post-Soviet elite that he did not necessarily need
to commission
the murder of Politkovskaya, or Estemirova, or other human rights
activists. He
just signaled to society that revolutionary expediency, not the law,
reigned
supreme, and that all the enemies of the regime should be cooled off in
“cesspools.” This was a clear message to all the thugs both inside and
outside
the government that they had a free hand to decide arbitrarily who was
the
enemy and when and how they should be cooled off.
This is exactly
what is happening
now in Ukraine. All the shantrapa who were somewhat unnerved by the
revolution
and had kept a rather low profile under Yushchenko’s feckless rule, are
now
taking revenge, encouraged by Yanukovych’s comeback and his
unscrupulous words
and deeds. Try to imagine how post-Soviet officials (rather Soviet,
than post-)
feel when they see that corruption is tolerated at the top and only
political
disloyalty causes a problem; or when they hear the president warning
opposition
mayors that he will (literally) tear off their legs and screw off their
heads. This
is a clear signal to all the loyalist bureaucrats, police officers,
judges and
prosecutors, to all the unreformed host of homo sovieticus to tear and
screw
off whatever they wish and whoever they feel appropriate.
And they do. The
number of
violent crimes against journalists within the past year increased
exponentially; the number of cases of tortures and obscure deaths in
custody,
recorded by the reputable Kharkiv Human Rights Group, doubled and
tripled; the
number of illegal searches, arrests, detentions and politically
motivated
interrogations exceeded everything that had happened within the
previous two
decades.
What kind of
restraints can
officials feel after they see how thugs from the ruling party (real
thugs
placed on the list of the Party of Regions as former drivers and
body-guards of
oligarchs) savagely beat opposition MPs (many of which were
hospitalized with
broken limbs)? What conclusion would a policeman make after listening
to the
description of the incident in the parliament made by one of the
Regions’
bosses Mykhaylo Chechetov: “There was no beating. Probably they broke
their own
heads against the wall and now try to accuse us”
http://glavred.info/archive/2010/12/17/170622-9.html.
It is no surprise
that the number
of detainees in Ukrainian prisons (not necessarily political inmates)
who “beat
and injure themselves,” and commit very unusual “suicides” has
dramatically
increased since Yanukovych’s installment. Some reports from police
precincts
sound like black humor: in Kharkiv, the Loziv district police
department
acquired some fame when within a week of their arrest, two detainees
fell from
the fourth floor window during interrogation, allegedly committing
suicide --
even though in both cases the relatives claim the victims were severely
beaten
beforehand
http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine_police_brutality/2296124.html.
Yanukovych’s
spin-doctors,
international lobbyists, and Ukrainian diplomats work hard to whitewash
his
image and to downplay the systemic and escalating character of abuses
of power
under his presidency. One of them, smartly enough, has recognized
recently that
“the corruption here is a precondition of doing business,” “the
judiciary in
Ukraine is a disaster,” “the mentality of the SBU is not helpful,” and
so
forth. Nonetheless, he assured readers, Ukraine is headed in the right
direction, and “most of the embarrassing, stupid and somewhat cruel
actions are
random, there is no pattern,” and, perhaps most encouraging, “people in
Yanukovych’s administration aren’t really bad people. Maybe they lack
confidence, maybe they are poorly educated, and a bit provincial,
without good
knowledge of the laws and the Constitution. But they are not stone-cold
killers
and these are not the kind of people that try to establish an
authoritarian
state” http://www.day.kiev.ua/303062.
One may recollect
here a similar
revelation of George W. Bush who claimed some time ago to have
discovered a
“true democrat,” having gazed into the deep, snake-like eyes of
Vladimir Putin.
But we will not engage in reminiscences about the past. We just note
that the
features observed above in Yanukovych’s administration by his American
lobbyist
are exactly what political shantrapa is about. And the low-level
shantrapa
sense the mood and respond accordingly. If the president can nominate
an
outspoken Ukrainophobe, Dmytro Tabachnyk, as minister of education, one
should
not be surprised when a traffic policeman somewhere in Odesa responds
to a
citizen who approaches him in Ukrainian that he doesn’t speak that “cow
language” -- an insult to a Ukrainian, that can be compared to calling someone in
the U.S.
the N-word.
Like masters,
like servants.
Whatever the
PR-specialists might
claim about the “random” character of multiple abuses of power in
Ukraine, the
sheer statistics collected by human rights NGOs, both domestic and
international, demonstrate the opposite: they are ubiquitous,
definitely
systemic, and growing dramatically in number and scope since Yanukovych
assumed
power. In other words, this is not a deviation, but rather is typical
of the
sort of lawless, authoritarian “normality” that is being introduced in
Ukraine.
In such a
context, all talk about
“order,” “stability,” and the “fight against corruption” sound
hypocritical.
And all attempts at “reforms” -- without the rule of law -- are futile.
Maybe
Yanukovych’s lobbyists are
right: he is not a bad man, and his associates are not “stone-cold
killers,” as
Mr. Bruce Jackson puts it, and some of them perhaps are even smart
enough to
“be running a software company in Washington state.” I don’t know. I
know, for
sure, however, that “they will not sing".