I Expect Fast Change in the New Year

You go to bed in the evening, everything seems normal and quiet. Then you wake up in the morning and all of a sudden find inflation, biting Siberian frost, yet another jump in utility rates or other costs, or some other accursed nuisance. And mind you, it happens overnight, coming right out of the blue.

It has taken us long centuries to become prepared for freedom and democracy. Then all of a sudden we found ourselves cursing democracy and turning away from freedom in disgust, because freedom appeared different from what we had expected. It just does not fit into our pattern. What a sudden jump in that same dark direction.

Another example. For years on end you have been taking leisurely strolls in a big grove over the Dnipro, then one day just can't find the place. Gone! The oaks have been chopped down, instead of grass and wild flowers you find asphalt and hundreds of parked cars, and the place is surrounded by a tall concrete fence. Just think how many years it took that grove to reach its splendor and offer us a small haven in the heart of the megalopolis!

Or take the Church of the Mother of God at Pyrohoshcha. They had hardly finished restoration work when the structure became covered by damp spots. One would expect the fresh paint to liven it up, not make it look ugly.

Roman Emperor Diocletian is known to have unexpectedly abdicated at the peak of his power and retreated to a backwater province to indulge in his favorite occupation, planting and tending cabbage. They say that he did it because of his contempt for his subjects. Can we expect to live to see a single legislator or ranking government bureaucrat follow suit, even if also for contempt? I wish so, for this would really mean a change in direction.

It also often happens that a well-known person whose every word or deed you trust implicitly suddenly turns out to be utterly corrupt, even criminal, and an inveterate anti-Semite. So I want this situation reversed, so we could discover virtuous knights in some of our coarse politicians.

Nozdrev, one of Nikolai Gogol's characters, tells about how Chichikov, fearing imminent arrest, replaced a million of counterfeit rubles with genuine banknotes overnight. Here such operations are commonplace, except that the procedure is reversed.

Overnight all our talented journalists have begun publishing scandal sheets.

Quite recently television programs were created by educated people for their ordinary audiences; television cultivated erudition and good taste. Then, also practically overnight, our channels started pouring out stuff leaving us stunned and not knowing what to do to somehow raise it at least to our own intellectual level.

You close your eyes, open them and instead of a personality you see a living doll on your TV screen, made according to the best technical standards, looking human and even talking, but a machine nonetheless.

Of course, there are exceptions from the rule, unexpected joys, however small, such as the remarkable adventures of one people's Deputy in Switzerland. Now who would have expected such public entertainment from him? After all, the world is changing for the better, even though slowly. And I am not worried about the lawmaker. In his own way he is brilliant and will figure out how to crack Swiss bank safes as well.

I could cite examples on and on, for the list is long enough to last until the year 2000, so best I stop here.

Finally, dear reader, I will deliver a New Year prophecy, although I am no clairvoyant, not like our Globa. I can predict that in a couple of months we will be in for a very pleasant change, spring. It is sure to come, no doubt about it. Happy New Year!