Fishbein’s Orange Redemption
In the German exile that he diminutively and derogatorily dubbed Germanchin Strasse, Fishbein realized that sooner or later he would return. His poetic itinerary—from the austere postcatastrophic world through hermetic visions to motley street scenes of the bourgeoning capital of the independent Ukraine he visited from time to time—informed this choice.
The return did not occur overnight, however. In the late 1980s, Fishbein put all his savings into philanthropic enterprises: he brought disposable syringes, then a luxury in Soviet Ukraine for Chornobyl' (Chernobyl) children awaiting treatment. Later he sponsored and brought to Israel a group of Ukrainian children exposed to radiation. At the same time he began regularly visiting Ukraine, where he reemerged as one of the leading Ukrainian intellectuals and as a tireless advocate of the Ukrainian national revival.109 The journal Suchasnist' awarded him the prestigious Vasyl' Stus Prize and the Ukrainian Centre of International PEN elected him a member. In the 1990s he resided in Germany (he lost his job when Radio Liberty moved its operations to Prague), although he spent more and more time in Ukraine, finally resettling there in 2003, for good. He arrived in time: in 2004, Ukraine and the Ukrainian people underwent a major upheaval that demonstrated the country's desire to overcome its colonial legacy.Fishbein never expected to find Ukraine burning with anti-imperial fervor. What started in late October 2004 as a popular protest against fraudulent elections turned into an event of enormous magnitude, inscribed into the annals of Ukrainian revivalism as the “Orange Revolution.” The political upheaval, centered in Kyiv's Independence Square, internationally known as the Maidan, had a profound impact on Fishbein. First, despite the readiness of Kremlin- and government-supported Viktor Yanukovych, a twice-convicted criminal and the mastermind of the electoral fraud, to use force against public protesters, there were no clashes between protesters and riot police, no mob violence, no executed tyrants, no arrested opposition leaders—events typical of revolutionary upheavals.
Second, while mass protests were part of the national democratic revolutions that triggered the collapse of communist regimes in such countries as Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, popular appeals to legal insti- tutions—such as those in Ukraine in November 2004—were not.The Ukrainian opposition not only resorted to peaceful civil protest, but it also sought to use the institutions that guarantee the legality of the country's political undertakings. Fishbein was among those who picketed the Ukrainian parliament, known as the Rada, when on November 27, 2004, the Rada emerged as a “third power” not beholden to the government or the opposition—that is, one committed to a sober approach to the country's political crisis. Its decisions, legal and revolutionary at the same time, eventually led the Supreme Court of Ukraine to annul the results of elections. This decision brought down new runoff elections on December 26, 2004, and brought to the presidency the popular democratic and pro-Western leader Viktor Yushchenko, who in late fall 2004 had been supported by 500,000 to ι,200,000 people in the streets of Kyiv, by an evergrowing majority of the country’s population, and by Fishbein.
Third, and perhaps most significant for Fishbein, this was the first outright anticolonialist event in modern Ukrainian history. Starting in the early 2000s, Fishbein had begun to monitor for colleagues and friends (high-ranking diplomatic and political figures among them) the growing imperial ambitions of Putin’s Russia. Having successfully suppressed the media in his own country, Putin turned to a more aggressive policy toward the former Soviet republics, above all, Georgia and Ukraine. Although the Ukrainian people had voted for the country’s independence in 1991, Ukraine has remained an important focus of Russian geopolitical strategy. The collapse of communism and of the Soviet empire shocked many in Russia. The demise of the USSR was a major blow to Russia’s pretensions and the chauvinistic sensibilities shared by such opposing figures as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Mikhail Khodorkovskii.
The loss of Ukraine was especially painful. IfUkraine were to follow Belarus’s lead in returning to Russia’s embrace, Russia would again be the first among the Slavic people. It would gladly see Ukraine as its new neocolonial addendum.110 Putin’s advisors and analysts worked hard—and very clumsily—to return Ukraine, this runaway serf to the embrace of the former imperial metropolis. Once hundreds of thousands of Kievans took to the streets, Kremlin media puppets and political analysts launched a vociferous anti-Ukrainian campaign accusing the West of designing and sponsoring the Orange Revolution, claiming Ukraine was nothing but a Russian territory, and denying the Ukrainian people the right to decide their own fate.The Orange Revolution dragged Fishbein into an epic event that epitomized his hopes, embodied his dreams, and brought to the fore political leaders with whom he identified. What he had preached for years became the talk of the town—at least for the last two months of 2004. The Kyiv of late fall 2004 overwhelmed Fishbein: the mass media widely publicized his public presentations making some of his claims particularly popular.111 In addition to various poems he penned at that time, Fishbein also boldly put on paper various Ukrainian “nursery rhymes” that made sharp accusations others hardly uttered sotto voce. Later, already in the midst of the unfolding revolutionary events, one of Fishbein’s “nursery rhymes” against the corrupt government became so popular that it was quoted at a public presentations staged at the Maidan on Friday, November 26, addressing the corrupt president, Leonid Kuchma: “Hey, chy ploshcha, chy maidan, / Zbyrai, Kuchma, chemodan!” (Hey, Square or Plaza, Kuchma get your suitcase packed!).
Yet while rejoicing in the popular enthusiasm, Fishbein did not allow himself to forget that many Ukrainian Jews, misled by Soviet-style propaganda and integrated into the Russian-language metropolitan culture, supported the pro-Rus- sian and incumbent candidate.
Jews were as split geographically, socially, and culturally as other national minorities residing in Ukraine, and as Ukrainians themselves, but their visibility among those who supported the opponents of the Orange Revolution, made Fishbein bitter and distressed. He bemoaned the fact that many Russian and Ukrainian Jews chose to support the other side: for Fish- bein it was tantamount to the triumph of Moscow-orchestrated anti-Ukrainian propaganda and the sign of the moral failure of an anti-imperial rebellion.Fishbein’s conduct contradicted his tone. He knew what to do. As if he had been called upon to save the reputation of Ukrainian Jews, Fishbein did not hesitate for a moment to emphasize the Israeli, if not the Ukrainian Jewish, voice among those who joined the democratic opposition in Ukraine. Invited to address the protesters in the Maidan, he recalled the next day: “I spoke to half a million people in the Maidan. I said that the ‘gang’ is trying to entice the Crimean Tatars against Ukrainians, Ukrainians against Russians, the Jews against Ukrainians. They operate according to an old hideous formula, ‘divide and rule.’ But they failed. They were not able to split the nation. We are one, Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, and Jews. I also said a couple of sentences in Hebrew: Le-tiferet medinat ukraina (Long live Ukraine!) and le-tiferet Viktor Yushchenko (Long live Viktor Yushchenko!). I wanted this language to be heard as the language of those who support the revolution.”112 After the event he pointed to an Israeli flag that was hanging together with other national banners in Maidan Square. “This is very important,” he said, reiterating his allegiance to a Ukrainian-Jewish national alliance.
The events of that night had a triple significance for Fishbein. He proved that he was at once a genuine “Yid-Bandera,” a self-conscious Jew and Israeli, and a champion of the Ukrainian cause who linguistically—through his paradigmatic Ukrainian and elevated Hebrew—underscored his cultural identity. Perhaps he saved the reputation of those Ukrainian Jews who supported proRussian policies; the people in Maidan Square remembered him, a Ukrainian Jew coming to cheer them in the Jewish national language, and not those Jews of the previous regime, for whom the Ukrainian cause was irrelevant. As he had done in his poetry, Fishbein brought together Israeli and Ukrainian realities. Ultimately, he reemerged in the fulcrum of the revolution, firmly arguing his anticolonialist position: Ukrainians would not let anybody else decide their destiny for them. To be sure, Fishbein had never had this wide of an audience before— and never had he had such a large number of enthusiastic supporters and sympathizers.