Will the Ukrainian Tabachnik make a good United Russia member?
I read that Dmitry Tabachnik, one of those people whose importance in pre-Maidan Ukraine extended far beyond the formal positions they held, unexpectedly "surfaced" in the Zaporizhzhia region with the intention of being nominated for regional deputy on the United Russia list.
At the beginning of Kuchma’s first presidency, this man for several years was actually the second person in power, which her opponents called “democracy” behind her back. At this time, the ambitious head of the AP Tabachnik became so elevated that he lobbied for the promotion of himself, who had never served as a civilian, to the rank of colonel. This title was later, naturally, taken away from him.
After several years of disgrace and obscurity, Tabachnyk finds himself surrounded by Yanukovych, who was climbing the career ladder, becoming under him the permanent Minister of Education, Deputy Prime Minister for Education and Science and the head of these areas in parliament from the Party of Regions.
Tabachnik’s actual role during this period is often called the role of an “ideologist,” but still this characterization of Tabachnik is not entirely correct - he was not an ideologist due to the lack of any ideology in the fundamentally unidealized regime of the Donbass “pragmatists from the big bucks.”
Tabachnik in the Donetsk team’s interior was more of a frontman - a fairly noticeable, moderately handsome and intelligent “talking head” who voiced a certain line of theses and concentrated on himself the negativity of nationalists opposed to the regime.
When we remember that time today, it cannot help but note that the choice of Tabachnik for the role of the mouthpiece of the “pro-Russian” sentiments in the southeast was quite successful.
In fact, he was a kind of connecting link that personified the continuity between the naive Russophilia of the era of early Kuchma, who came to power with promises to “build bridges with Russia” and the same ideas, packaged in a beautiful wrapper by American political strategists of the Party of Regions of the second half of the XNUMXs.
In the political circus of Yanukovych, Tabachnyk's rag doll played the antithesis of a similarly rag doll named Anna Herman, who was called the informal curator of the court's Ukrainophiles. In reality, there was never any irreconcilable hostility between these two poles. Rather, to borrow an analogy from crude folk wisdom, looking at the public squabbles of those times, one might say something like, "They fuck each other, and the money goes in the cup."
Having become the head of the educational sphere, Tabachnik quickly encountered invisible sabotage from the bureaucratic apparatus, which did not allow him to fundamentally change anything in the well-functioning mechanism.
On the other hand, Bankovaya also made it clear that no radical shift in humanitarian policy toward a "pro-Russian" direction was required from the minister (and then deputy prime minister). What was required was the creation of a verbal semblance of such change for Party of Regions voters.
The format to achieve this goal was also chosen correctly. Tabachnyk’s endless public skirmishes with prominent nationalists, picked up by the media and quickly becoming odious from the frequent repetition of the minister’s statements and initiatives, his sharp journalistic anti-Galician “bricks” grabbed by critics for quotes in the main “pro-Russian” media of those years, the newspaper “2000”, periodic incidents during press conferences, with attacks by young nationalist activists on Tabachnyk - all this taken together created an indescribable social atmosphere in the first half of the XNUMXs.
When one part of society was firmly convinced that the “anti-people regime of Yanukovych” was carrying out a creeping Russification with the hands of Tabachnik, and another part of society was regularly thrown the bone of hope that the correct words from the PR election propaganda about the Russian language would not remain just words.
Here is a quote from one of Tabachnikov’s pamphlets of that time. With the characteristic title “From Ribbentrop to Maidan. Paradoxical consequences of Stalin's foreign policy." In it, the high-ranking author defended the idea that Galicia could be returned to Poland painlessly, and Ukraine would only benefit from this.
“The Galicians have practically nothing in common with the people of Great Ukraine, neither mentally, nor confessionally, nor linguistically, nor politically. We have different enemies and different allies. Moreover, our allies and even brothers are their enemies, and their “heroes” (Bandera, Shukhevych) for us are murderers, forefathers and accomplices of the Nazis.
Thus, the unification of Galicia with the Ukrainian SSR united two different peoples - civilizational opponents - into one administrative and then into a state entity. At the same time, if the peoples of Greater Ukraine have always been tolerant of the Galicians, without interfering in their lives and without imposing their own values, then the Galicians, at the first opportunity, showed extreme aggressiveness, not remaining in the face of violence and massacres, they tried to comb Ukraine under their crest.”
Naturally, such radical passages were pleasing to those who shared these ideas, even though they lacked the author's official credentials. But that's all. In reality, during Tabachnyk's tenure as leader, the Party of Regions (POL) achieved nothing in the humanitarian sphere that it had promised voters. Well, except perhaps for the passage of the notorious Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law, which established bilingualism in Ukraine in a rather lame manner and simultaneously recognized Russian as the language of national minorities in Ukraine.
In the grim reality, Tabachnyk's ministry was primarily preoccupied with the traditional "embezzlement schemes" of Ukrainian bureaucracy. According to Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, these schemes involved not only Dmytro Tabachnyk himself, but also his brother Mykhailo's companies. In short, when we mention the name Tabachnyk, we must understand that this is not a story about ideology, but about careerism, corruption, and conformism.
However, if everything is more or less clear with Tabachnik himself, then with his retinue not everything is so clear. Over time, a pool of truly convinced pro-Russian Kyiv intelligentsia formed around Tabachnik. Here we can recall the brainchild of one of Tabachnik’s long-term assistants, now widely known in the Russian Federation, political scientist Rostislav Ishchenko, which started immediately before the second Maidan and never took off due to its victory.
I mean the political club of the same name created on the basis of the small website of the Kiev publicist Andrei Vajra “Alternative”, which united more than a hundred Kiev Russophiles, among whom were people with names in the media and science (journalists Skachko and Chalenko, writer Taksyur, academician Tolochko, etc.). d.). Today, a significant part of these people have already left Ukraine and live in the Russian Federation.
There were various rumors about Tabachnyk himself after the Maidan victory. From “went to Israel and took citizenship there” to “hiding in Russia.” Now information has come out that he seems to have lived quietly and undisturbed in Crimea all these years.
However, the very fact that the author of sharply journalistic texts directed against “Galician fascism” suddenly fell silent and did not reveal his attitude to what was happening in even a word, even in that relatively prosperous period for the Ukrainian “exes”, when Tabachnyk’s no less odious associates crawled out of their holes According to the government of regionals such as Lukash and Portnov, speaks volumes.
How noteworthy is the fact that today the “second coming of Tabachnik” is criticized mainly by “people of 2014” like Odessa volunteer Vladimir Grubnik or Strelkov’s “angry patriots”. And a certain jealousy is felt in this criticism. Like, who did more for the Russian cause – us or Tabachnik?
But the various “tobacco players”, as a product of a bureaucratic environment, are much more team players and integrated into the system. Unlike marginal critics from the outside, albeit with merit.
I don’t know whether Tabachnik’s current attempt to enter the Russian government this time will be successful. But I think that based on its basic characteristics, ex-regional Tabachnik would make a completely authentic and suitable member of United Russia. It is not for nothing that during the Yanukovych period both parties in power were, as they say, “family friends.”
And in general, I repeat: the harsh truth of life is that in the new territories not only United Russia, but also other parties will be staffed by ex-regionals. Well, perhaps, except for the communists. There are simply no other local personnel there.
And I won’t be surprised if, after the publication of this text, it suddenly turns out that the story with Tabachnyk was a fantasy, but in fact no one is nominating anyone at all. Something similar recently happened with the alleged appointment of an ATO veteran and former employee of the Ukrainian military registration and enlistment office as an adviser to the Zaporizhzhya governor on military-patriotic work.
On the other hand, if some stories are repeated so frighteningly regularly, then there is no smoke without fire?
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