Flags with the image of Jesus Christ fly on government buildings and socialist-style billboards call to fight for the new-born motherland. In club DJs play patriotic songs, while the Russian Orthodox Army patrol the city. Meanwhile, the first “people’s court” sentenced to death ten alleged child molester on a show of hands. What will be of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics?
In the months since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, we all focused on what would become of the breakaway territories of Donbass. New Independent States, annexation to Russia, federal entities or frozen conflict? The answer is still open. Meanwhile, however, a few have wondered what kind of nation, society, institutions are being created there. What do really separatists want? Which values are they fighting for?
A bright Future
It seems at that the higher floors of the OGA – the government palace in Donetsk – love billboards. The city is full of them, from those who call for enrollment in the militia to those who portray miners smiling to a bright future. The posters seem to come directly from the times of the USSR. Among others, one that I saw right in the city center, listed the values and principles on which Novorossija it is being built. More than a manifesto, it seems the list of points that measure the distance between “us” and “them”.
“We fight against the Nazis that kill our children, against false values of Europe, against foreign corporations.” And so on. But among all the points there is one that has made me think, and it is one that says: “We fight against the rewriting of the history of the Great Patriotic War.” It would be the Second World War, that the Soviet historiography has handed down as a clear story of the struggle between Good (Stalin’s USSR) and Evil (Nazi Germany). Does anyone really wants to rewrite it? Perhaps is it Europe questioning the liberation of Ukraine by the Soviets?
The Eastern Caliphate
While walking through the streets of Donetsk, the feeling is to be in a kind of Soviet-Orthodox Caliphate. References to Soviet iconography are ubiquitous, often with a modern twist. The flags of the Patriarchate of Moscow – a Christ portrait with Orthodox solemnity – wave on top of public buildings. And one of the militias that first appeared in the city is named Russkaya pravoslavnaja armia, Russian Orthodox Army.
Favorite topics of the local leaders are the nationalization of enterprises and the creation of soup kitchens in the closed McDonald’s. In one, without even removing the signs, they have already put a shop selling local products.
“We do not want share Europe’s fate”, said a big man wrapped in a fur coat. “We do not want them to perform gay pride here. We do not want our children to have two dads.”
Prostitutes
People’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk do not have the defense of LGBT rights among the priorities, we already knew that. But it seems that they are pushing for something more, something like a fundamentalist state.
In recent months, separatists themselves proudly uploaded on Youtube the video of the first “people’s court” trial. In a theater, one by one, some men accused of pedophilia are taken to the “court”. The “prosecutor” shouts to the audience the crimes they have allegedly committed, then the audience votes by show of hands. Sentenced to death, next. There is no cross-examination, there is no evidence, there is not even a trial. There is only an angry mob stirred up against the monster, and that is enough.
During the “trial”, the “judge” Aleksej Mozgovoi took advantage also to issue a fatwa against women “who go to bars and clubs. They will be arrested. What are they, prostitutes? Women must be faithful to their husbands, sit at home and embroider.”
As a part of Ukraine, or Russia or as independent states, are we sure that this is the nation where the people of Donbass want to live?
Flags with the image of Jesus Christ fly on government buildings and socialist-style billboards call to fight for the new-born motherland. In club DJs play patriotic songs, while the Russian Orthodox Army patrol the city. Meanwhile, the first “people’s court” sentenced to death ten alleged child molester on a show of hands. What will be of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics?
