It’s Hard to Believe in Sincerity

September 2004

Dear friend Richard,

I was glad to here from you a few good words about the time we had spent together in Ukraine and Russia. I attach two photos to the message just to remind you a few more detail about our trip. I see you are becoming more and more interested in the Slavonic world.

As for the article by David A. Mittell Jr. you recommended me for reading: Independence Day in history-soaked Ukraine.

Long-long ago - in 1986 I happened to meet with the first Secretary of US Embassy in Moscow. Two of us had a private conversation not far from the place where I live now. His name was Shown Birnce, though my spelling may be wrong.

We discussed some problems which were quite acute at that time: Afganistan – who’s to blame for unleashing the war – the Soviet Union (political advisers, soldiers – on one side) or the States (money, armament – on the other side).

When I mentioned Vietnam and the role played by America there he confessed that he took part in military actions there. To prove this he showed his calf burnt by napalm. I told him that the chemical was brought by American planes to burn the “savages” whose only crime in the eyes of the USA government was to live the way they liked, to settle the problems of their country by the means they choose themselves, to prefer the country’s economic, political and ideological courses without pressure from any other country.

He told me that his father was history professor and that he would be very grateful for any ancient map of the Crimea...

The US Embassy Secretary, Mr. David A. Mittell Jr., the notorious Mr. Zbignev B. and thousands and thousands of US officials have been pursuing and they are still pursuing the aims which do not take into account the interests of the Slavonic peoples. They are full-time and well-paid executors of the US monopolies interests in this or that part of the world. Divide and rule + cheap bread and vulgar shows for those barbarians...

That is why we Slavonic people understand why the US Government is very-very keen on the problems of the Crimean Tartar’s independence, we understand why it stimulates anti-Russia ideas in Western Ukraine. It is not always possible to view long-forgotten (by the society) facts as the keys for political solutions of this day. It’s more often than not the way to the abyss. Let bygones be bygones.

More important is to take into account today’s status quo. The fact is that only rotten to the core, corrupted Ukrainian politicians and newly-born\quick-baked oligarchy gain on the so-called “nezalezhnost” – independence – from what? – from poverty of the majority of the population? From whom?– from that brown bear – Russia who sleeps and dreams of the Ukrainian pork? Wasn’t it Russia (to be exact Mr. Khrushchev) who personally gave the Crimea to the Ukraine in 1954? Wasn’t it Russian President who initiated real political independence for all former Soviet republics?

It’s hard to believe in sincerity of the US Government towards Slavonic peoples after Sarajevo, Bosnia, Croatia. Destroyed unity of the Slavonic peoples made the US Government absolutely ignore the will of these peoples and the world public opinion. The Soviet Union was deliberately destroyed in favor of the main\only super-power. The world lost the parity.

Now the lack of real culture and human morality in the upper political, financial, economic echelons of the American society may cause great problems not only for the Ukraine but for the whole of the mankind.

Yours, Aleksandr

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Rotten Leaves of Ukraine

May 2005

Hi, my dear friend Richard!

One more occasion to show you my deep respect to your character and to your public actions in the name of freedom, justice and dignity of Man. If there were but a few progressive figures like you in the US the rest of the world could feel itself safer hoping that the aggressive-minded politicians would be wiped off the political arena forever before the end of Civilization V.

Our orange leaders (all of them) turned rotten leaves for good after a few months of the so long-cherished state power. President’s “dearest friends” quarreled to death with each other fighting for ministerial positions and state posts. The humble and “dumbly” patient Ukrainian people were the last to think of by the corrupted political leaders of the so cold “orange revolution”. The Socialist Party headed by the trimmer – Alexander Moroz and even Mrs. Timoshenko’s men are a bit ashamed of there former "indestructible" unity with “orangists” of pure water – President’s party – Our Ukraine.

Sure this feeling of shame was caused by a great number of big mistakes which brought the country to the total economic and social stagnation, to artificial political isolation from the closest neighbor – Russia. Ordinary people here cannot find reasonable excuses for Yushenko’s insane hatred of Russia, Russian culture and especially Russian language which is being totally eliminated from court, education institutes and mass media. Is it the way to really unite the East and the West of Ukraine?

In its turn some regional bodies of Eastern Ukraine declared Russian as the official language on their territories. Yushchenko and his company having no positive economic results make use of the language topic to play the ultranationalist card and distract the people’s attention from disastrous policy of the country’s rulers doing their best to satisfy Uncle Sam by inspiring hatred to Russia and by showing great desire to become a new NATO member despite the fact that the absolute majority of the Ukrainians are firmly against of it. Who cares after they are elected for five years? Here and there we see that the worse are the relations btw the fraternal Slavonic peoples the more satisfied are the top-ranking American politicians… Well, that’s not the way to the world of freedom, justice and equality – the only way to live with dignity, without fear of bloody revenge.

As for my social and private life. I did my best to explain the local people why they shouldn’t vote for Mr. A. as a mayor once again. The local newspaper which we started lately made a good result – a new man whom we supported headed the municipal body. Hope that the tiny place of ours will be more prosperous in a year or two.

A week ago I was greatly pleased by the opening of my big one-man show in a very good exhibition hall. Really it took much of my energy and money to make a good result. Now I feel that a new period in the evolution of my inspirative art is going on. Hope for the best.

My best regards to all my good American friends.

Wish you all the best, good health and devoted friends – one of them lives in a very-very independent state of Ukraine – it’s me –

Aleksandr Klyuyanov (SASHA in Art).

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Do Not Be Afraid, Do Not Cry, Do Not Ask…

September 2005

Hi, dear friend Richard.

Sorry, was away from town for a fortnight and could not answer you immediately on the hot but long-expected political events in the poor-poor orange-colored\PAINTED(!) Ukraine.

Perhaps you remember some of the remarks on Mr. Yushchenko and Mrs. Yuliya Timoshenko made by me ten-eight months ago when the faces of the top “orange” people were shown 25 TV hours a day. I felt it even then that those were not faces but political masks of the fat cats.

From the very beginning it was clear for more or less independent mind that all the declarations of the so-called people’s president Yushchenko about unity in his team of close friends and associates were false, made for pure political needs.

It was clear that the majority if not all the main instigators and speakers of the Maidan (square in Kiev used for mass meetings during the “orange revolution”) were not sincere and hardly one of them was disinterested. All of them came together to the rostrum to exploit eternal people’s dream about honest power for one and the same goal – to satisfy personal interests. They had a lot of political and material interests to defend. Their image makers including Aleksander Zinchenko tried to play with the name of their political union – “Our Ukraine”. The dark side of this story is that each of the newly-born leaders thought about his\her own direction to his\her personal Ukraine.

Close friends of the president - Timoshenko and Poroshenko when they got real state power in the government unleashed a war against each other trying to win more and more spheres of influence for their own political and economic benefit. Speaking (Telling lies) about their devotion to the country’s interests they really thought about their own ones. Mr. Poroshenko is one of the richest men in the country – sugar, sweets, metal, banks and a lot of other sources bring him good money.

He quickly made his fortune as well as Mrs. Timoshenko freely playing with "raw" laws of “independent” Ukraine. The latter is still wanted by the competent organs of Russia which would like to know how she could manage to fool the Russians and the natives of her own country and get $ 120 oil\gas mln at a time.

More than that it turns out (in today’s news) that V. Yushchenko as the President knew but hid the facts of corruption in his government! Not a clever one by nature on the post he showed himself as unforgiving, wicked and irresolute man. The man of this character can unite neither his ministers nor the people of his country.

Now the economic results 2,5 time lower than they were before the orangists came to power to the great satisfaction of the pro-westerners, pro-NATO men…

The country got the president, he gave it the government; the ministers taught the people another good lesson of the GULAG archipelago: Do not be afraid, do not cry, do not ask… but fight and demand!

All the best.

Yours, Aleksandr

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The Yushchenko Regime

November 2005

Hi, dear friend, Richard,

Happy Thanksgiving to you and to everybody of your kin!

Well, the American holiday coincided with the holiday of the Ukrainian "orangists" who celebrated God knows what\over whose victory. The economic situation in the country is awful - three times worse than it was under Kuchma-Yanukovich.

Narrow-minded political dilettantes came to power on the wave of the people's quest for good and social justice. Millions of those who voted against the old-style bureaucrat Yuanukovich are aware now of betrayal of their pro-Western calif whose nickname in the country is "freak"... Words, the seas of right, nice sounds pleasant for ears... sounds without sincere feelings and without being true to reality. The pack of shameless liars surround "the Guarantor of the Constitution" who declares them his "dear friends, loyal assistants and true patriots of Ukraine"...

Loyal to the Guarantor? No! Several months of the orange power showed that they easily betray "the ideals of the Maidan" - the square in Kiev where the mass gatherings took place last dramatic year. Loyal to the people? No!! Repressions spread over the country to punish those who voted against their chief. They ignored the Law having given about 30 000 officials the sack on political reason.

The Yushchenko regime does its best to drag the country to the NATO membership against the people's majority will. The Yushchenko regime breaks all the relations with Russia. In return for non-friendly attitude the latter raised the price of its exported oil and gas up to the world level - 1:3... The Russian government sees that the Russian language in Ukraine is being eliminated in kindergartens, high schools and colleges. My wife's grandson "studies" Russian as a foreign language (!) 1 hour a week in the second grade...

Lies and hypocrisy on the TV... The people are tired and lost their faith in everything and every politician... There's neither Ukrainian Putin nor anybody else on the political horizon of the devastated country. 450 newly born deputies of the Supreme Soviet (Rada) - 300 of them are dollar millionaires. But…, but lately they adopted the law according to which they would get the pension 5000 times (!!!) more than the average pension in the country... No morality, no conscience at all.

As for my soul - it rests and saves itself in art. Preparing great one man show of my pictures in Ukraine (May-June) and perhaps in France.

Truly yours, Aleksandr Klyuyanov

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Ukraine. Time For the Left Front

March 2009.

My dear friend, Richard

I can hardly express my joy on getting your very long-expected message! I am glad that you keep on moving in every sense of this word; the main thing – you are still active and not indifferent to the ugly sides of the world which some of the politicians venture to declare “civilization”.

Without any delay I called Tanya and sounded your warmest regards to her. That was just on the right occasion – the International Women’s Day of Solidarity. She thanks you and returns you her cooking love… As for me I presented her with one of my new pictures.

Richard, thank you for the article. I’ve read it and I’m ready to add some of my thoughts while the midnight time and … Tanya let me do it. Here we go.

«Ukraine. Steel and chemical factories, once the muscle of Ukraine’s economy, are dismissing thousands of workers». That’s the headline of the article you’ve sent me lately.

Let’s make some digging in modern history… The end of 1991 was marked by dramatic changes in the style of life of more than 200 mln people whose country – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (15 of them) came to the collapse. Mr. Gorbachov - the first and the last President of the USSR turned out to be good for Europe but not for his country -lost his power. The leaders of Russia (Boris Eltsyn – Russian President), Ukraine (Leonid Kravchuk – the Ukraine Communist Leader) and Belorus (Stanislav Shushkevich – the Belorus Communist Leader) and a bit later Kazakhstan (Nursultan Nazarbayev – the Kazakhstan Communist Leader) signed the documents in Belorus winter forests (like secret gorillas) which immediately caused peaceful but nevertheless catastrophic disintegration of the huge country. Thus they totally betrayed their communist ideals and turned their now independent (from the Kremlin!) republics to the capitalist way of development. The main reason of their act which had not been approved by their parliaments beforehand (!) was getting personal power - be the king in one’s own kingdom.

The capitalistic transformation of the socialist economy was begun by the process of privatization of the state, that is people’s property: natural resources (gas and oil), huge steel and chemical factories, ships and sea ports, banks and food factories… This was mainly done by their former directors and chiefs. But before buying they used to intentionally ruin the object for privatization and for sale to dramatically decrease the price. All the newly disintegrated countries, fifteen of them, got very little profit from this swindle financial and economic procedure. The people, the ordinary families felt the “advantages” of the bloody capitalism the very next day they sold their privatization shares for some roubles to their former “comrade” directors.

The degradation of once relatively powerful socialist economy was caused not only by the fact of intentional industrial ruining (mentioned above) but also by the absolute lack of desire for its modernization on the part of the new private owners. For the first few years they could hardly believe that their luck is for long, not for one day. They wanted to get as much money as possible from the material property. None of them was eager to invest enough money to modernize the equipment and so on. More and more products became beyond any competition. The Soviet market was lost and the new markets did not let in the rival products so easily as it had been in the time of the state socialist central planning.

The decentralized states lost almost all means to positively influence the deteriorating situation. The attempts of some kind of new central planning was also out of use: no planning at all – absolute economic freedom of the wild capitalist market! Do what you want, make what you consider profitable and get as much money as you can – keeping in mind that the officials at any levels of state permitting and control offices have their own families and kids to be fed and milked… Well, well… congratulations… Now you are the owner of the big company which has some little financial problems… and you want our bank to give you some money for the production of… what? Thus banks turned into financial and industrial octopuses.

Now in the Ukraine about five hundred very rich families and a few banks have the undeclared right to buy the majority of the people’s deputies, to lobby any bill they consider useful for themselves. All the supreme power was very quickly corrupted – bought by the new owners of the independent (from justice!) country. The fall of 2004 was marked by great inflation. The national currency – hryvnia lost half of its value. The people lost their bank savings without any further compensation. At that time Mss. Yulia Timoshenko was the Prime Minister for the first time (9 months). The situation in the country was awful. Her crazy will for power (she won with one vote!) brought her for the same post in 2008... to put again the country to the rack.

In summer 2008 one gave 4.05 hryvnia for a dollar. The banks eagerly bought tons and tons of cheap “green paper” from the people. They stimulated the process of making naïve citizens free of any foreign currency. The government and the National Bank assured people in stability of the national currancy… In fall it turned to be the sophisticated operation with the aims having nothing in common with the state or people’s interests. Just in a few weeks dollar was being sold for 7-8 and even 9 and 10 hryvnias! All the state top officials and the National Bank began telling tales that they do what they can for improving the hryvnia’s status. Having sucked all the dollars from the Ukrainian people, farmers (in fall…) and enterprises the banks turned their, sorry, fat asses to ALL their depositors! Even now, in March 2009 they still refuse to return ANY money to their true owners. For half a year all the banks stopped any credit lines. No longer they give any money to those who want to buy an apartment in the city or a cottage in the country.

Thus in September 2008 my real estate business came to a complete halt. Now when I am writing these lines in my office I have a heap of keys to different apartments for sale which I got several months ago! This dramatic situation causes a lot of tragedies taking place every day. People became bank hostages. They can neither return their own money, nor pay the bank interest, nor return back the credit sum. Some of my clients gave the money as a hostage to the sellers of the apartments they intended to purchase… Who to be blamed for the money spent by the seller?

From time to time I think that this country was chosen for a mystical project – How long can people survive without money turnover in the so called wild market system? Richard, from the stage you could witness the country eight years ago, the Ukraine turned into the bankrupt begging every half a dollar here and there in the world to the shame of its honest citizens. Now she is ahead of only two European countries Albania and Moldova as for the level of life.

The only profiteers are again – banks – 76% in 2008! The first part of the sum (16.4) begged from the IMF – 4.5 billion dollars disappeared in the bank guts being digested for their own needs. The suffocated national economy got nothing to support the mines, metallurgical furnaces, farmers… The Pension Fund lacks great sums to pay the old agers. The ruined national army did not get hryvnias enough to feed “the great patriotic Ukrainian defenders… from the cold wicked steel hands of Moscow”.

Sure, it’s the time for you to ask: Where’s the President of Ukraine? What, on earth, is he doing to act as a real Guarantee of the people’s Constitutional rights?.. Eh,… You see, Richard, “we the people of Ukraine” have not a single right fairly guaranteed by the “sovereign” state. All the branches of the state power bear no real responsibility for doing nothing or even against the people’s interests. That is why the banks continue to squeeze people’s pockets up to the last coin – copeck, that is why the ultra nationalist President V. Yushchenko drags us against our will to NATO, that is why that same ominous “national leader of the most ancient titled Ukrainian nation” does his worst to eliminate the Russian language all over Ukraine. His hurrah-patriotic Minister of Education left ONE period a week for the Russian language in Form Five of my grandson, leaving not a minute in senior grades of Ukrainian public schools of Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea populated 90-95-100 % by the native Russian speakers – citizens of “the civilized democratic European country of the XXI century”.

All this made me feel very insulted by the people’s deputies betrayal of the country’s interests. For the very good money they serve their real masters – industrial and bank magnates. Not more than three percent of the voters trust the President Yushchenko! Still lacking the drops of dignity and honesty he “implements the will of his beloved people of the Unitarian Undivided by any (“Northern”) enemy Great Ukraine”… Hm, he always “forgets” the status of the Crimean Autonomous Republic . He doesn’t want to know that all the Ukrainians understand and speak Russian; more than half of the population consider it their second language and for 30% of them(even according to the nationalistic government statistics) this language is the only native one. You know, how I am crazy about the Russian language… Do you remember my hot arguing about bad language of one of the team guys on the way back from the Crimea?

Well, Richard, the worst thing we have here in Ukraine is not what we have in small private business, national economy, people’s education and culture, international affairs… The worst thing is the unprecedented dumbness and submissiveness of the ordinary people! That is the reason for the derisive, loutish policy of all the branches of the state power towards the Ukrainian people. All the political parties but the communist one serve open-heartedly the interest of the nationalistic and oligarchy regime.

I cannot stand aside… For the last three months I’ve written 20 chapters on the way of life we were palmed off after the Soviet socialism. Now I am finishing the book of about 500 pages – UKRAINE. TIME FOR THE LEFT FRONT. For me it would have been a great pleasure to have it read by you before publishing... But you’ll do me a great favor by simply looking through those yet unpacked chapters on my own site: WWW.SASHAART.NET (Литература - Literature). Well, they are mainly in my beloved Russian…

My Ukrainian regards to all my good American friends.

Aleksandr Klyuyanov (SASHA)

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