Saturday, 2 May 2009
Ukrainians are a hospitable nation, and that cannot be denied. To be sure, the people here don't smile as a matter of civility, and service-industry workers are sometimes blunt to the point of rudeness. But anyone who has been invited to a Ukrainian home can attest to the warmth and attention with which their hosts invariably received them.
Behavior on the streets is a different matter, with pushing (by people and automobiles alike) seemingly representative of the public order. Civility, or common courtesy owed to one's fellow passerby, is sorely lacking. Nevertheless, hospitality, or the considerate treatment of a guest, is something that Ukrainians take for granted.
What may seem like a paradox can be explained by the recognition of an underlying Ukrainian value: the insularity of the homestead and "village'. In other words, friendliness - the sincere kind - is reserved for people one knows or wants to build a relationship with, even if the relationship is as tenuous as an invited visitor to one's office.
Visitors, particularly Western visitors, to Ukraine are often delighted by the hospitality they receive, be it as small as a cup of tea that they are offered by a secretary during an office visit, but we cringe at some of the crude indifference we encounter in a corner shop.
The fact of the matter is, however, that Ukrainians' infamous indifference to those outside their village zone also has a "positive' side. The world of big cities like Kyiv is a lawless no-man's zone in Ukraine.
It doesn't take long for Westerners to get used to breaking all the little pesky laws and regulations that they would normally be subject to in their homelands. In Ukraine, one can litter, jaywalk, be drunk in public, come on to his female co-workers and, best of all, avoid taxes with impunity (as long as you don't earn too much)! It's not that the more respectable elements of Ukrainian society don't disapprove of this sort of public behavior; they do, but they are unlikely to say, much less do anything about it.
Many Westerners also don't seem to care until they become the victims of this lawlessness. Moreover, few seem to realize that Ukrainians' public indifference is not just the flip side of their warm hospitality; it's also the foundation another Ukrainian virtue - tolerance.
Despite the media hype about prohibitions on gay-rights parades and the occasional racially motivated attack, Ukraine is a very tolerant place. The country is not only tolerant in comparison to its northern neighbor, but in many ways more tolerant than the societies found in traditional democracies.
Just because Ukrainians don't publicly condone gay rights and multiculturalism, doesn't mean that they persecute homosexuals and people of color. For the most part, as unpleasant as it may seem to the more politically correct but also self-righteous West, people here don't really care about such issues.
If ignoring makes one ignorant, then Ukrainians can easily be characterized as the cretins of Europe. But if in their ignoring, the people of this country are saying something like "this isn't my village, so let them get on with it, as long they don't threaten my community norms', then we are dealing with something different here.
Acknowledgement is a far cry from acceptance. And there is something to be said for just minding one's own business. Those who find indifference morally reprehensible would do well to consider the consequences of self-righteousness.
At any rate, a "fair' comparison of the occurrence of hate crimes between Ukraine and, say, America would likely put the latter in a better light.
Tolerance isn't just about laws, but about how people behave in their daily lives. For the most part, Ukrainians just get on with their lives and let others do the same.
There has been talk coming from Ukraine's presidential secretariat that the visa requirements for EU citizens may be re-established. Typically out of step with the declared values of the continent they so hope to join, the authorities in Kyiv explained their motivation as an attempt to keep out undesirable foreigners - presumably non-Europeans.
Political analysts have interpreted the real motivation for the move as a bluff by Kyiv to force Brussels to remove visa requirements and other restrictions against Ukrainians. Others, in Ukraine and Europe, have pointed out that Ukraine has more to lose from the measure (i.e. tourist and investment income) than Europe.
While all this may be true, the average Ukrainian's perception of the issue may well be that their village has been abused. The presidential secretariat must be aware of this public perception or it wouldn't have made the threat public. It's not hard for Ukrainians to find examples of how drug use, pornography, aggressive missionaries and heartless capitalism have made their lives the worse, and blame the influence of foreigners.
Even the good things that have visited Ukraine from the West since Independence have been a mixed blessing, such as glaring economic disparity, social upheaval and the recent credit crisis.
If the bad imports eventually outweigh the good ones, it shouldn't come as surprise that tolerance will wear thin and hospitality will run dry. Because whether anyone notices or not, these national characteristics are ultimately based not on universal ideals and rights but rather on cultural perceptions of the threats and benefits to the village order.
John Marone, a columnist of Eurasian Home website, Kyiv, Ukraine
