Hasta Siempre, Comandante!
Dictators and geniuses depart this life surrounded by waves of human seas. You gain this impression when you watch a documentary film on the funeral of Leo Tolstoy and his sincere admirer Joseph Stalin. I can remember endless crowds following the coffin of Vladimir Vysotsky, and I involuntarily compare this with the recent funeral of Kim Jong-il. And now it is Hugo Chavez who came out, like Zeus once did, to his people in a shower of millions of tears. Who will ever doubt the sincerity of the poignant feeling of love and grief among the people who have just lost their Leader!
But there also are other documentaries. Those who wept of being happy to behold their idols yesterday are turning today into their voluntary executioners. Here is the question of an epoch!
How and why does nationwide love give way to mass-scale hate? Did Mussolini think that Colonel Valerio would read out his death sentence on behalf of the people one day? What were the last thoughts of the shot Ceausescu couple, the torn-apart Muammar Gaddafi, the executed Saddam Hussein, and the poisoned Pol Pot? To continue this list would no longer mean that it is about the demise of persons of major influence or rulers. For some, these deaths are the outcome of their intellectual search; for others, they are just the last bargaining chip in a game for glory and immortality.
The political fate of Chavez happened to resemble the life story of his idol Simon Bolivar who had embarked on the path of revolutionary reforms, only to end up as a hardcore dictator. It is no mere chance that the fatally sick Chavez ordered in 2010 that Bolivar’s remains be exhumed and transferred to a purpose-built mausoleum in downtown Caracas. Only history will decide whether both of them will repose together in diamonds- and pearls-strewn caskets under the canopy of golden stars. Meanwhile, the government of Venezuela has decided to embalm the body of Chavez. The Venezuelan comandante has been put next to Mao and Lenin in the communist idols’ table of ranks. Finally, a Catholic country has now relics to worship to for those who do not believe in Christ but sincerely despise the US. The first to prostrate themselves before these relics are some rarely-smiling people from underdeveloped countries, where one can already hear the sounds of a nationwide wail of love and suffering. But, so far, we can hear the song “Hasta Siempre, Comandante!” Until forever, Comandante!
MODEST POPES NEEDED
In 1268, when Pope Clement IV passed to his rest, twenty cardinals failed to elect a worthy successor for three years. They would sit, argue, go out, and quarrel. In other words, they behaved like our parliamentarians. So one day the embittered faithful locked up Their Holinesses in a cathedral and supplied with only bread and water through a hole in the roof. It being cold, the temple was heated with wet straw, which caused black smoke to billow through the dome hole all the time. But cold and hunger speeded up the electoral process, and the cardinals agreed upon the pontiff’s candidature within three days. Before putting out the fire, they burned the parchment ballots, which changed the smoke color to white. This is the origin of a good tradition of the conclave – literally, locked room. Can you guess why the people, who hold a similar kind of closed-door sessions but can always go to the refreshment room, refuse to borrow this tradition? Not that a person in power cannot do without food for a couple of days. What scares them is the necessity to do their duties at the embittered electorate’s will.
Incidentally, in the above-described case, an ordinary Liege-based archdeacon became Pope Gregory X. If ordinary people do not allow their pastors to fatten, the latter respect the former. Now, from March 13 on, we have Pope Francis I who, well before the conclave’s decision, used to ride on public transportation, wash the feet of AIDS patients, and renounce wealth and offerings. Here’s a papal trend, dear Fathers.
YOU, I, HE, SHE – WE ARE ALL IN A KYIV ADMINISTRATION COMPETITION
Where are praises sung by the law of propaganda? You’re right, where things are too thin and burst at the seams. We extol to the skies the exploits of policemen in a country of unbridled crime, and we laud the work of the teacher in a ramshackle school. And if this country has been going extinct since 1992?
Ways differ then. The Kyiv authorities are holding a competition, Family of the Year, which can involve “the families, in which single fathers and mothers bring up their children on their own.” The Kyiv City Administration must have already outlined a likely model of the future. Same-sex parents, i.e., he or she with a child, are going to personify the ideal Kyivan cell of society. Selection criteria have also been time-tested. Officials and volunteers will be walking door to door to check “observation of the high standards of morality and work ethics, preservation of national and spiritual traditions.” The Kyiv Administration’s “Salvation Army” will do at present what the Communist Party and trade union committees failed to do in the past. They will check whether parents are good fathers and mothers and examine the achievements of a defective family in public life. So good intentions at budgetary cost! Why not hire, instead, a good matchmaker for 300 hryvnias a day? She would save millions and bring more happiness to single mothers. Otherwise, people will be competing for successes in public life until they lose their personal life altogether.
