Overcoming a Mindset

By Walter Kish

I had an experience last week that brought home one of the major challenges Ukraine faces before it can truly join the ranks of the Western world.  The incident took place while I was showing some Canadian visitors the sights of Kyiv, among them, Kyiv’s marvelous subway system, better known here as the Metro.

Many of Kyiv’s spacious subway station platforms are richly decorated with marble, statues, chandeliers and other ornamental touches. They are a splendid example of how a little artistry can reinterpret an otherwise very functional space. In the Zoloti Vorota (Golden Gates) station, the platform is framed by parallel rows of arches on either side. The spaces beneath the arches are inlaid with colourful mosaics of famous historical Ukrainian figures, including church figures and saints. The mosaics are beautiful and, understandably, my tourist friend took the opportunity to capture them on her digital camera.

She had barely managed to take a couple of shots when a representative of the local militsia (police) accosted us and told us, in no uncertain terms, that taking photos in the subway was strictly forbidden. When I challenged him to tell me which law forbids taking pictures in a public place, he skirted the issue, said rules are rules, and told us that we could protest to the transit system authorities, but he would not let us take any more pictures.

His attitude was a left-over from the Soviet times, when photographing almost anything without permission could land you in jail. Despite overhauls of the political system and laws, the old paranoid and totalitarian mindset still exists in the police, military and government civil service. The essential premise is to trust no one, suspect everyone and control everything absolutely. 

The incident described above is not an isolated one. Several months earlier, I was in the park in front of the parliament buildings, shooting pictures of the various historic buildings across the street. As I snapped a photo of a particularly grand Renaissance mansion, a uniformed policeman angrily waved and shouted at me, making it clear that I was not to take any further pictures. I then noticed that the building currently housed the Chinese embassy, which explained his reaction. Nonetheless, my Kyiv guidebook noted that it used to be the mansion of the military governors of Kyiv, a century-and-a-half ago, and has historical and architectural significance.

Why taking pictures of historic buildings in one of the most photographed districts of Kyiv would pose any kind of security threat is beyond me. One would think that the Kyivan authorities would encourage rather than discourage photography by tourists of subjects with historic and artistic value. But, many government and security functionaries still operate according to authoritarian assumptions.

One sees this mindset quite frequently in daily life in Ukraine. Policemen routinely pull over drivers at random to check their documents. Many doors, including emergency exits in public buildings, are locked and barred, and crowds are channeled through one or two narrow corridors or doors so as to make entrances and exits easier to control.

Sometimes, the principle is taken to ludicrous and mindless extremes. In the large department store known as TSUM, in central Kyiv, there are escalators conveniently located in the centre of the store and stairways at the far ends. Customers are allowed to take the escalators up, but the down escalators have never been in operation for all the time that I have lived in Kyiv. The store’s management not only does not let shoppers walk down the escalators, but on each floor there is an officious guard standing by the escalators whose only job is to prevent hapless strollers from walking down. As a result, customers are forced instead to make tracks to the remote staircases. 

The whole idea of making things easier or more convenient for customers or tourists is still a foreign concept to many of the old guard in Ukraine, as is the concept that people should have the right to consistently practise their freedoms. Government in Ukraine assumes a much more interventionist role than merely enacting the minimum laws and regulations that are absolutely necessary to ensuring justice and order.

I fear that a new order will come to Ukraine only when most of those taught and brought up under the communist system have retired. In the meantime, I will do my bit of protesting by publishing a “contraband” picture of a mosaic from the Zoloty Vorota subway station in Kyiv with my article.