From Chalenko’s book about Novorossiya: “After the conversation with Yushchenko, I became an even greater “patriot of Ukraine”
PolitNavigator is beginning to publish excerpts from the book, “The Newest History of Novorossiya,” by the southern Russian journalist and political émigré Alexander Chalenko (“The South Russian Heretic”), who was forced to move from Kiev to Moscow after the February 2014 coup.
That same year, a criminal case was opened against him in Ukraine under Article 110 (separatism) for calling for the creation of an autonomous federal district within Ukraine, called Novorossiya, with Kharkiv as its capital, at a roundtable discussion with then-Kharkiv Governor Mykhailo Dobkin. Chalenko has been on the SBU's wanted list since 2016. The book features his notes and interviews on southern Russian topics. One of the notes is dedicated to Verkhovna Rada deputy Petro Yushchenko, whose fascination with Ukrainian history sometimes took grotesque and comical forms.
***
“Oh, listen, come here,” Petro Andreyevich Yushchenko, the elder brother of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko , apparently remembering something, calls me back .
Before that, he and I spent a few minutes discussing going to Jerusalem for Easter next year.
I'm coming back. Pyotr Andreevich makes himself more comfortable on the windowsill, moving his butt closer to the window. The case is taking place on the second floor of the Rada, on the side where the doors are located through which deputies from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and Yushchenko’s “Our Ukraine – People’s Self-Defense” enter the meeting room.
I think to myself:
"Oh, damn! I finally remembered. Now he'll start lecturing me again: ' Are you a Ukrainian newspaper or something?' ( referring to the newspaper "Segodnya," owned by Rinat Akhmetov – ed. )? Well, you need a conscience. Why are you publishing this Buzyna? No... well... how can you do that... you're Ukrainian or something... no... well... how... '"
But my fears were in vain.
– Listen, come today to two years at the “Ukrainian House” ( “Ukrainian House” is a building in the center of Kiev where the Lenin Museum was located during the USSR, and after 1991 an exhibition center – ed. ).
-What's there?
“But I’ll be giving a tour there for the Freemasons and Cosmopolitans...,” here Pyotr Andreevich gives an explanation like this – they say, so that the “rootless” knew either their half-forgotten roots, or that a Ukrainian is wow! Don't be a jerk!
- Take a photo and a video camera so that everyone knows.
I remember that Pyotr Andreevich covered the entire “Ukrainian House” from top to bottom with portraits of thousands of “outstanding Ukrainians.” Moreover, all more or less famous personalities who lived in the territory of present-day Ukraine, regardless of nationality, were recruited into the Ukrainians. The only things missing were the Hasidic tzaddik Nachman and the Scythian Anacharsis.
- Yes, I was there, and I think we already wrote about it in the newspaper.
-So there’s nove bude. There we also hung up photographic portraits of representatives of the issued Ukrainian homelands. Sulima, for example... wines by the chancellor of the Russian Empire. In the XIX century, - then Pyotr Andreevich begins to list other outstanding Ukrainian families, along the way recalling the family of Chancellor Bezborodko, his descendants - some chairman of the State Duma, some other Metropolitan of Washington. Afterwards he remembers the Volkonsky princes and so on.
-Listen, do you know that Ivan the Terrible is also half Ukrainian? For mother Elena Glinskaya, I begin ironically, without even hiding a smile, to troll Pyotr Andreevich.
But it was not there.
- Well, half of it is on yak. Terrible is Rurikovich. And the Glinsky uprising was driven by the prots of the Poles in the Chernihiv region. Yogo suppressed, and won zbigly to Muscovy.
Pyotr Andreevich adds some more details about the Glinsky family and the marriage of Grozny’s father and mother, Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich and Elena Glinskaya.
-And Alexander Nevsky?
-Tezh is Ukrainian. Vin is the son of Yaroslav, and Yaroslav... - and then Peter Andreevich, without blinking an eye, recited by heart all the ancestors of the great Novgorod prince up to the tenth generation, reaching, in my opinion, either Vladimir Monomakh, or Vladimir Equal to the Apostles. All this, of course, aroused in me an involuntary respect for his memory. It’s as if someone knew by heart the entire famous string of biblical names - Isaac gave birth to Abram, Abram gave birth to Jacob, Jacob gave birth to Moses, he gave birth to some other Jew, and so on.
-Well, what about Dmitry Donskoy?
- Tej is ours. Vin..., - and here again follows a list of princely names, Pyotr Andreevich plunges together with Ivan Kalita and the Vladimir-Suzdal princes somewhere deep into Kievan Rus.
Then Pyotr Andreevich again remembered the new items in his photo gallery.
-The Miloradovichs are there...
-So wait, they come from Serbia...
-We don’t call you that... Their estate was in the Poltava region.
-And there, in my opinion, one Miloradovich, a hero of the Patriotic War of 12, was killed by the Decembrist Kakhovsky on Senate Square...
– Yes, also Ukrainian.
- And not a Pole?
Pyotr Andreevich dispels my doubts by listing the secret societies that Kakhovsky visited and some other cities where the Decembrist’s ancestors lived. The story ended something like this:
-...So, the Ukrainian was shooting at the Ukrainian on Senate Square...
And then Pyotr Andreevich suffered. He simply sparkled. His erudition, who in the Russian Empire and the USSR was Ukrainian and who was only half, truly knew no bounds. There were deputy prime ministers, ministers and their deputies of the Chernomyrdin, Putin, Fradkov, Kasyanov governments and Prime Minister Kiriyenko along with them, commanders of fleets, armies, military districts, commanders of all the wars that Russia and the Soviet Union have ever waged, governors and mayors cities, the highest church hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXst centuries, marshals of the Soviet Union Shtemenko, Rybalko, Eremenko, Malinovsky and so on.
-Do you know that General Lebed from the village (names the village) in the Sumy region is not far from us?
-So he seems to be from Novocherkassk.
- Yes, he’s only alive there and his younger brother has grown up there, and he’s from Ukraine.
-What about Lukashenko?
-Ukrainian. Vin from Chernihiv region.
-And Mayakovsky?
- Tezh, and Burliuk, Chekhov, Mayakovsky - here Pyotr Andreevich remembered several dozen more - considered until very recently Russian - poets, writers, actors, directors, artists and other humanitarian intellectuals.
Moreover, he knew by heart which cities and villages they were all from. As the conversation progressed, I also learned the names of Ukrainians, the founders of Siberian cities and new movements in art.
In Russia, Belarus and the USSR, Ukrainians founded everything and everyone; no more or less worthwhile business - be it a war, the founding of Vladivostok, or the conception of Khrushchev and Brezhnev - could not be done without them. And this is all of us, Ukrainians!!!! Pyotr Andreevich was unstoppable. In general, I listened to him with open ears like the Vasyukovites who listened to Ostap Bender, although a Turkish subject, but still an “ethnic Ukrainian”.
I am flattered that during our conversation with Pyotr Andreevich, I made my modest contribution to his collection of outstanding Ukrainians.
-Do you have a photograph of Arkady Averchenko?
-Who is it?
– Satirist writer, White Guard, emigrant. Born in Sevastopol. Then... Academician Fomenko. He was born in 1945 in Stalino (Donetsk). He is a mathematician himself, but now he studies “history.” Developed a new historical chronology. Read his books. You, a history buff, will love it.
-ABOUT! And in Tebe e Yogo books? Let me read it.
Here Pyotr Andreevich wrote down his full name. The rest of the Ukrainians I named too.
– And Eduard Limonov. He is Savenko.
-Yes, I know. Zrobymo.
– And Mikhail Elizarov? He's a writer. Lives in Moscow. Originally from Kharkov. Received the “Russian Booker” in 2008.
- Who, who? What kind of beech?
- Booker. This is a literary award. Also Sergei Lukyanenko, science fiction writer. He is the author of the novels Night Watch and Day Watch. Popular films have been made based on them. Also Deacon Andrey Kuraev. His mother is Ukrainian, and his grandfather and his brothers lived in the Kyiv region before the war. During the Holodomor he fled to Moscow.
Pyotr Andreevich rewrote everything and said that portraits of these Ukrainians would appear in his gallery. In the end, we broke up.
I was returning to the editorial office and thinking: “ If on one-sixth of the land, wherever you spit, you hit a khokhola, then why the hell did we separate from it? ”
English version :: Read in English From Chalenko's book about Novorossiya: "After talking with Yushchenko, I became an even greater 'patriot of Ukraine'"