The collapse of industry and descent into civil war
have left people longing for old certainties
“It’s a different time zone over there,” said Oleg, an officer with the
Ukraine Army’s 93rd Brigade. “They follow Russia’s clocks.”
The soldier gazed towards rebel positions down the
deserted highway, now a no-man’s land strewn with debris, shrapnel, tank traps
and unexploded munitions. Troops in the frontline village of Pisky have a
nickname for this desolate stretch: Doroga smert. The road of death.
Driving a further wedge into Ukraine’s bitter divide, separatist
authorities have imposed a new time zone on their breakaway republics to keep
them in line with Moscow. Just a few hundred metres from this frontline
position, it is no longer GMT+2, but GMT+3.
While this only lasts during the winter months,
prompted by Russia’s decision to reject the European habit of setting the
clocks back, the change underscores the growing gulf between Ukraine and its
rebel-held statelets as fighting flares once more. More than 9,000 people have
been killed in clashes between the pro-Russian separatists and government
troops since April last year, despite numerous attempts at a ceasefire.
Some in the separatist stronghold of Donetsk have
welcomed the altered time zone. “We are Russia now – why stick with Ukraine’s
clocks?” said Vasily, a pensioner in his 60s, identified solely by his first
name due to ongoing security concerns. For others, it is purely of practical
benefit. “It’s nice that it stays lighter longer though I feel like a foreigner
in my own country” said Maria, an office worker in her 30s.
But pro-Russia rebels have not only synchronised the
clocks with Moscow’s present. They continue to revive a shared Soviet
past as a means of forging a new identity to shape public space and policy.
Long considered taboo, Stalin’s cult of personality
has been resurrected. Portraits of the dictator appear in Donetsk’s main square
and adorn most separatist commanders’ offices. Rebels have rewritten school
history books to take a pro-Russian slant and airbrush Stalinist atrocities.
Eduard Basurin, the rebels’ Deputy Minister of
Defence, pins a badge of Stalin to his military fatigues and is defensive when
questioned why. “I respect this man,” he said. “I suggest you read your own
history – English kings are far from perfect.”
Such nostalgia in the restive east is understandable. The collapse of
the USSR sent Ukraine’s industrial heartland into a spiral of decline; demand
for coal dried up and inflation ruined miners’ pensions. For years many in the
region have yearned for Soviet-era stability.
Disenchantment and industrial paralysis thus provided
an ideal incubator for Soviet nostalgia. The hammer-and-sickle is now a regular
sight throughout rebel-held territory, flaunted alongside Russian flags and the
banners of various militant factions.
Soviet fervour is perhaps most extreme in the Luhansk
People’s Republic (LNR), which straddles the Russian border and centres on the
forlorn city of Luhansk, Ukraine’s best preserved Soviet-era city.
The emblem of this separatist territory is the
embodiment of Soviet kitsch, complete with red star and sheaves of wheat. A
smaller eight-pointed star is a simultaneous nod to Slavic paganism, Orthodox
Christianity and the Eurasian Economic Union. The LNR parliament’s powerful
communist faction is understood to have pushed through this heraldic symbol in
favour of one based on Catherine the Great’s coat of arms and a more neutral
one modelled on the shape of the Luhansk region.
Taras Kompaniets, the designer of the emblem and a
former senior official in the LNR’s Ministry of Information, told The Independent on Sunday: “The Soviet system got
inside every aspect of life. Even after the USSR was deconstructed 25 years
ago, the same inner system remained... Soviet culture remains the main basis
for people’s identity here and is stored deep in their subconscious.”
Local councils in sovereign Ukraine continue to act on a raft of new
laws which prohibit the display of Soviet symbols and have led to the toppling
of numerous Lenin statues. This controversial, nationwide overhaul has prompted
horror among rebels, with the LNR’s autocratic leader, Igor Plotnitsky,
branding it “moral genocide”.
Looking ahead, the clock is ticking for a resolution
to when, and in what form, the rebel-held east will hold local elections,
postponed after the rest of the country went to the polls in October, something
required by the peace deal agreed in Minsk earlier this year. Back on another
stretch of the front line, government soldiers stationed in Mariinka seem
unfazed by the unsolicited time zone that appears just one hundred metres away.
In an abandoned cottage on the edge of no-man’s land, a platoon commander
laughed it off as an opportunity amid a war that is proving as intractable as
it is incessant.
“The separatists will be celebrating New Year one hour
before us,” said Chester, in his 30s. “When they raise a toast, I’ll be ready
to pick them out with my rifle.”
No comments:
Post a Comment