To Have, or Not to Have a Gun, That Is the Question…

BOHM DIALOGUE 

Milan Šimečka, Lene Rachel Andersen, Anton Tsivatyi, Julia Ovcharenko, Chris Keulemans, Demyan Om Dyakiv-Slavitski

Vol. 4 | May 29, 2022

Bratislava—Copenhagen—Amsterdam—Vienna—Kyiv

Summary

The participants discuss proposed gun ownership in Ukraine. They compare the concepts of state and ‘держава’ [derzhava]. What are the obligations and rights of a state? Global companies as a threat to the state. Is a strong and democratic nation-state the best form of government available? The seven domains of the Buildung rose as a guide to state development. 

Key words

gun ownership, defense, public safety, nation-state, corruption, parallel polis, democracy, media

Timecode

12:21 personal gun ownership in Ukraine

20:42 origins of the term «держава» [derzhava]

30:10 Ukrainian patriotism 

41:02 nation-state as the best available choice

51:05 The Bildung Rose

1:00:44 the problem of corruption

1:09:12 post-war Bosnia as a case-study in aid investment

1:19:11 russian influence in Europe

1:31:23 Ukraine’s choice of models of democracy

1:42:22 Ukraine’s alignment with U.S. model of democracy

1:50:20 media

1:59:05 digitization

Participants

A: Anton Tsivatyi
C: Chris Keulemans
D: Demyan Om
J: Julia Ovcharenko
L: Lene Rachel Andersen
M: Milan Šimečka

THE DIALOGUE

C: I think one of the valuable features of these conversations is that we take our time in these circumstances of crisis to think about what we can reinvent and reorganize, once we get through this destruction. Once we have the liberty to build our society in a more decent way. 

J: Ukraine just opened the discussion of allowing everyone to have a gun, very recently. And the government ran an online questionnaire about this, to know the public opinion. It brought really concerning answers.

C: What was the outcome of the poll?

J: Almost 60 percent agree that everyone should have a gun. Not a heavy weapon, but just a gun for everyday use and for private defense.

M: For private defense against whom?

J: That’s the question. Wartime and fear make people think they need to be armed for any occasion. 

M: I understand that it’s under the circumstances today. The logical answer is that everybody has to have a gun to defend himself, but mostly against the invaders. But in peace times I would be careful with that. Look at the US, where everybody has a gun and what’s going on there. The basic question, as I understood, is whether a state has to protect citizens. And my answer is yes, more than the citizens have to protect themselves in the state which is not able to protect them. I’m quite scared of masses of people having guns. What about those who don’t or don’t want to have a gun like me? I’m defenseless.

L: I would be scared with a gun. It also depends on what kind of gun. If you’re going to defend yourself or the country against an invader it’s one kind of gun. If you’re going to defend yourself and your family against a burglar it’s a different kind of gun, hopefully. Otherwise you’re going to end up with the situation that you have in the US right now. Perhaps you could discuss whether there should be one gun per adult in the country and they should be ready and stored centrally or locally with security measures. That might actually be a good idea, but that’s different. 

My granddad was part of the Danish civil defense. It was at the end of the Second World War and in the years after that. And him with a gun would absolutely have been a joke. He had this machine gun kind of thing under his bed, which my cousins and I found very interesting. We were never allowed to touch it. We had no idea where he kept the ammo, but he seemed like the most cowardly man who actually only joined the civil defense after the war. I can’t imagine him being useful at any kind of wartime defense of anything. But he went to the training, he got a certain group of friends, it boosted his self-esteem. He could tell his neighbors that he was part of civil defense. They’re still around and we mostly see them now on the Friday before Easter. Because then they regulate the traffic jams at the parking lots in front of the biggest supermarkets. So they’re a volunteer police force kind of thing, whenever there’s a local need for regulation of public behavior. They’re not armed, of course, they’re just wearing yellow vests. I think they actually do good training, and I think they would be useful in case of a war. But that requires a lot of training, a lot of knowledge, and it isn’t just about handing out guns. It has to come with education. And having guns in people’s private homes would have to come with a very thorough program and screening of everybody who has one of these guns. One gun per adult, I really think that’s a bad idea. One gun per a screened adult with the right education and with a central storage of the guns under the right safety measures, that would make sense. We’ve also seen, unfortunately, that some of the army’s guns and ammunition have been stolen by gangs because they were not kept sufficiently secure. There are other questions in the same area. For example, what about being able to 3D print a gun. Not a machine gun, but a handgun. What are we going to do about that? How are we going to handle people having access to guns? They may only be able to fire one shot or a plastic bullet, but even that could cause a lot of harm.

C: Anton, how do you look at these questions? Now that you’re in the middle of a war.

A: Right now I’m a military officer and every three days I carry a gun, because I’m on duty. At the moment, we have a curfew, from 11 pm to 5 am every night. Only people who have the password can go through town. We can stop and question anyone during this time, to find out if they have the password. This password is permission. And by this example I can say that a gun is also a kind of permission. To compare these two examples, what if everyone has a password? That’s not right. Persons who got through some preparation, yes, I agree with Lene, actually could have this permission. But as for the American situation, they want to return some kind of policemen to schools and universities, because I read a story recently where one person shot maybe 10 children.

M: Nineteen.

A: Oh, sorry. So it’s not about the number, it’s about the case itself. Perhaps, if we allowed gun ownership, we could do it just for the time being and set an expiration date on the permission. But I still think not everyone should have a gun. 

[12:21] personal gun ownership in Ukraine

M: The idea of having a gun in Ukraine — and we are talking now about a peaceful future — it’s very anti-European, it’s an American way of thinking. How that would be accepted in Europe, that Ukraine would go the other way, that people will have guns in their homes. I mean legally millions and millions of them. From the European point of view it would be very suspicious that Ukraine is going the way we don’t understand in Europe. Because in Europe, we are used to this idea that the state is there to protect us against violence. And I think you should think about that in the future. It could be one of the burdens which would make it difficult for Europeans to think about Ukraine as a real European country.

C: In our part of Europe the principle is that the state has the monopoly on violence, and this idea of individual gun ownership goes against that. Milan, by your remark, we’re going back to Demyan’s first question, should it be the state that can protect people or should the people protect the state? Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

D: There’s another very important thing about this question, and I mean the word «state» which we have in English and other languages. In the Ukrainian language we do not have «state» — we have «держава» [derzhava]. «Держава» [derzhava] means, maybe Julia help me, we’ve discussed it. «Держава» [derzhava] in Ukrainian is…

J: I’ll try to describe the term. It means an institution that keeps power, some kind of power keeper. For Ukrainians “state” means something institutional, rules or rights as a system. It’s not much about power, the word «держава» [derzhava] feels very uncomfortable right now, because it can relate to an individual, to somebody who keeps the power and uses it at one’s own discretion. Or just have the right or a delegated right to exercise power over the others. This is a very archaic word that we would like to get rid of and maybe use something different. Because language reflects the mindset, how people relate their rights governance, to the civic governance.

D: Thank you very much. When our president, the president of Ukraine, talks about «держава» [derzhava], I don’t like him using such an archaic word and institution, and how it can defend me and help me move to the future. I see different ways of how every people can move to the future with their own ideas, with their own understanding. I am not sure about the word “state” yet, but I think it might be archaic too. And nations, and political nations, and society, civic… 

L: Let me just ask a clarifying question. So Zelensky used the Ukrainian word which means “institution of power”. He did not use the word «state» when he said what he said. He said «the institution of power should be able to protect the people».

D: Yes.

L: Would he… And would you normally use the word «state» in Ukrainian? Is there a Ukrainian word for «state» or have you imported the word «state» from another language, so that you can use that word as well in Ukrainian?

D: We don’t use the word «state» in Ukrainian, but we use the words «country», «nation», and «nations», and «people» of course, and «society».

A: And «government».

D: And «government» too.

L: What does your constitution say?

J: The Constitution says that Ukraine is a state, but it uses the word «держава» [derzhava] as the Ukrainian equivalent of “state”.

M: Anyway the first goal is to change it, because I don’t want to insult you, but «держава» [derzhava] comes from russian.

[20:42] origins of the term «держава» [derzhava]

D: Yes, from old Slavic.

M: Okay, that’s a russian past. I’m from Slovakia, so I can understand. «Država, držíme» in Slovak language is quite similar. It means to own or to hold, I am the one who holds everything, who owns everything. But that’s very bad in linguistic concepts of power. It’s just a russian concept of power, and we shouldn’t be like russians in this, we want to build a European way of thinking about the state, its responsibility. The state is us, it’s not whoever has the power.

A: «Держава» [derzhava] actually very similar to hold.

M: Hold and own. I mean, I own you, I hold you. It just means that actually all the citizens or the people are the property of those in power. It’s a very interesting russian concept.

D: In old russia, in tsar russia they had the word «держава» [derzhava] too, and later they had the word «государство» [gosudarstvo], which in English means monarchy or emperor power. 

J: It derives from «государь» [gosudar’] as a person, the only one powerful person.

L: Ruler?

J: The owner of everyone, the owner of the state.

D: Back to my first question. I want to help this country, the nations, people, communities living in Ukraine. I like to build new institutions. And I know how to rebuild old institutions, political institutions too. But it’s not about «держава» [derzhava], and I think in Ukraine it is not about “state” either. Because now we’re searching, we’re looking for a new way.

C: It’s a very interesting discussion, because it is happening right at the moment when Ukraine is all about defending its country, its borders, its identity, its culture. We are here discovering, at least I’m discovering, that there is not the right word for the kind of society that should come out. «Держава» [derzhava] is not the right word. «Empire» is certainly not the right word. We’re not looking for a future in which one person or institution can say: I hold the power and I own you. We’re looking for a totally different concept here.

M: And I think the words matter, because exactly, if you have it in the constitution, it’s just wrong. It’s just wrong to have «держава» [derzhava] as a synonym for «state». The Constitution is a very precise text where every word means something very specific and understandable for everybody. So this is the wrong concept.

L: I’m from Denmark. The Danish constitution, since 1849 has become to some people almost like a religious text that cannot be changed at all. So it came with almost a civil war, which did not happen, but then it came with a war with Bismarck and the Germans instead. And in that war the whole Danish sense of Danishness and peoplehood emerged or became a cultural factor throughout all layers of society. And until — I think it was 1901 actually — there was still the King. We still had it written down that we are not a democracy and there’s not a government, but there’s the King. Which makes no sense, because there is a government, and we have a queen. And the Queen needs to sign all laws in order for them to be legislation. And she cannot refuse to sign them, so it is the parliament that has the political power to make the laws. But the head of state is the King, so you can’t read the Danish constitution and actually understand what goes on in Denmark. Which works as long as we don’t have an autocrat as the royal head of state. But the Queen could actually make a coup rather easily on paper… During the war with Bismarck in 1864, the Danish King actually offered Denmark to Bismarck, and he didn’t want it. Which was kind of embarrassing when it came out about eight or ten years ago, it’s like what, the King did what, and Bismarck said no? But the reason was the King wanted to keep the two Duchies under the Danish crown, and together with the rest of the country. And if he couldn’t keep these Duchies, he figured he could apparently give away the rest of the country to Bismarck. So this concept of state, of country, of people within the state nation, I think it’s a historical process. Look at the United States, the country is the United States, the states are the individual states, but the United States is also one country which is a state. In Germany you have the Bundeslaender, which have legislative power individually. And then you have the German state, which is the one that’s a member of the EU, not the Bundeslaender. So we need to be careful and specific every time we look at a country of a certain size. For example, I don’t know if Ukraine has regions with individual legislative power. But if you only have one legislative power for all of Ukraine, I guess that would definitely be the state then and the country. I think this calls for an opinion piece in Ukraine about that word, and what should be the wording after the war, of what is Ukraine and what is the political power, who has the monopoly on violence after the war and what it should be called. That would be really interesting.

[30:10] Ukrainian patriotism

M: I’ve been following Ukraine and politics very closely since the annexation of Crimea. Ukraine is now fighting for its future as a sovereign state. Ukrainian nationalism — let’s say patriotism, ‘nationalism’ has a negative connotation in Europe, and I want to be positive — it’s based on the idea of defending our country to be democratic, and I think it’s such a strong legacy of this war. I wouldn’t be afraid very much about the future of Ukrainian democracy after peace, because this legacy defines Ukraine now. But there are of course questions how to do it better, and when we talk about this «держава» [derzhava] word, we should confirm that this legacy is now crucial and we should take it seriously. Coming back to Demyan, if you think about the future, I understand that you would be probably happier if the state were not as strong as it is today. We can talk about various types of societies where the state is weak. I would say it’s a long way off, because actually everywhere in the world today states are stronger than they were 10 years ago — because of the pandemic, because of the financial crisis, and now in Ukraine because of war. The very idea of a weaker state at least in this era of the last 10-15 years has been proved just wrong. Weak states were not able to defend their citizens against the pandemic, for example. I would be happy if we could live in a society where the state is weak and we live in peace together. I love David Graeber and I love his last book “The Dawn of Everything”, about the past societies that were actually anarchistic. It’s fantastic reading, but today I think it’s better to think about the state which should be strong but democratic.

L: And one of the threats against the state today are the global companies, particularly the tech giants, because they have more power than nation-states. There’s not a nation-state that wouldn’t lower their corporate taxes in order to get just a little bit of Amazon, Apple, or Google. The tech giants can divide and conquer among the nation-states. So far they haven’t done all of what they could do, but they’re definitely gambling in the different states. I’m very happy about the EU, because there is actually political muscle and the strength to battle these individual corporations. I’ve also approved of the EU military collaboration. We have a referendum in Denmark about whether we should join NATO. We stayed out of it in 1992 and have been outside of it since, but I think we should definitely join. russia’s attack on Ukraine is in some ways an anachronism. But in other ways it’s a wake-up call for the rest of us to realize that this use of violence is still part of the political toolbox in some places. We in Europe have decided it is not part of our toolbox — which is not quite true, because we also invaded Iraq, and we’ve done a bunch of other stupid political interventions with the military. But overall, we are in a place where nation-states are not attacking nation-states. We also did not attack Iraq to take over and rule Iraq; we attacked Iraq because of bad decision making, but in order to leave Iraq, which is different. So yes, a strong state, a democratic state, a rule-of-law state, and strong institutions in that state, and democratic institutions. One of the things we have in Denmark and in the most democratic countries in the West in general, is that a whole infrastructure of democratic institutions and organizations. Top to bottom in society, there are all kinds of democratic structures that interact. There’s the state, which is the biggest democratic structure, with courts, and parliament, and government, and free media. But then you have all kinds of unions, large NGOs, and associations that are also organized democratically. Then you have municipalities which are organized as democracies, and you have smaller organizations, local, for example, tennis clubs, and music schools, and others that are organized democratically. And then we have — and I usually bring this up when people discuss the monarchy in Denmark — have these non-democratic institutions inside democracy, because one of the hallmarks of democracy is that we can actually contain non-democratic institutions. And we have two really big ones: one is the monarchy, which is there because we, at least half of the population, decided we want to keep it. It’s a cultural institution as well as a historical relic, and a reminder of where we’re coming from. If we got rid of it, you’ll never be able to recreate it. The decision to get rid of it is a once in a lifetime one — or you can keep it as a memory of history. And then there is the alternative city — the Christiania in Copenhagen, which started out as a hippies project in 1968, and which is anti-democratic to its core. They claim that they have all these negotiations, and everybody must agree; that it’s all peace and love and understanding. But it’s totally corrupt, and you can only get a place to live there if you know somebody who knows somebody who can sweet-talk somebody to let you have a little lot where you can build a shed or something. And somebody can beat you up if you live there. I know this from somebody who has experienced this. He lost basically all of his teeth in one side of the mouth, and they encouraged him not to tell the police, because they wanted to fix it internally. Which of course meant that he couldn’t report it to the insurance company, which meant that he did not have money to get new teeth, which meant that nobody ever got punished for beating him up. And this anti-democratic organization in the center of Copenhagen is our biggest tourist attraction besides Tivoli Gardens, which is not a democratic organization either, it’s a company. It actually speaks to the strength of our democracy that we can have these organizations and contain them within the state. If you don’t want to get beat up in Christiania or smoke pot, don’t go there. If you just want to go for a vegetarian meal and a beer on a sunny Sunday, you can go there. But if you start running, there will be dogs running after you, because they taught their dogs to run after anybody or bark at anybody who starts running. And don’t use your camera: they have all these signs where you’re not allowed to take pictures of anything, probably because they’re selling drugs or at least hashish. This completely non-democratic organization within Copenhagen has a lot of land and some of the most attractive real estate in the city, and somehow we just let it sit there. I’m actually in favor of letting it sit there, because it does add value to the rest of the country and to Copenhagen. But don’t call it Democratic or legal in any way, because it’s not.

[41:02] nation-state as the best available choice

C: It’s very good to know that kings and queens are less dangerous than hippies, that’s good. In your questions, Demyan, it seems like you want to move away from «держава» [derzhava], you want to move away from political alliances on the defense field, you want to move away from the constitution, you want to move away from the system where one judge can rule the law, and you want to move away from religious institutions. I follow all of this, but now you’re here with people who are saying, still at this moment in time, the nation-state that is strong but democratic is the best alternative we have. What do you think?

D: I think this is good news.

C: But a nation-state will always be built on a constitution, on the monopoly of power, on a legal system where a judge decides, etc.

D: And history, and local mindsets, and far away from russia. It’s a very aggressive neighbor, and a very active modern empire. We don’t see it if we’re far away. We were not aware of it enough in Ukraine until 2014. Yes, we have strong democratic institutions in some countries. We also have a very big world, with many countries and different interesting systems and political institutions. I think we look too exclusively to the Western civilization, and we should explore other, very old political systems that exist in nations which do not have governments, for example. But they still have very strong societies, very strong cultures, and very old languages. I mean the various peoples of India, for example, and Tibet, and so on. 

We have seen that the democratic countries can’t stop imperial aggression immediately. Yes, we have constitutions, and these countries have a very clear picture about how to move to the future, but they don’t practice how to prevent aggression. How to live when the war is coming? U.S.? No. East European countries? No. Our future is not about democracy I think, not about liquid democracy or other types of democracy. And I think this future is very near. Our peaceful mindsets don’t work. We are now having a peaceful dialogue, but we are being transformed — not right away, we can’t stop russia after our dialogue today. We haven’t answered this question. We do not have the right instruments. But Lene, your colleagues wrote about it yesterday, and we can just keep moving, keep moving to our future, keep having these dialogues. We must understand more and more about ourselves. Then one day we will see what the new institutions might be, what the new words are. There’s a lot of energy in new words. Then we have new narratives, we build new narratives, then we have new types of small groups, working groups, and communities, and we keep building. And only then will we understand what type of societies we can build. Yes, we have constitutions now, and we have laws and rules. Paradoxically, we cannot suspend all the rules until we win this war. We cannot cancel our constitutions, our rules, our governments, and create a special, international, multi-government cross-country crisis management group. We cannot do it, because we have such strong bureaucratic systems and conservative societies. 

So all we have is questions, and I thank you for listening and sharing your thoughts. Here’s one question: if you, Lene, think about building rules, you think about the future, a peaceful future. But now when you see that war is coming, not in Ukraine, but in the world, in our Western world and in Europe, what resources or instruments or knowledge about building rules can help us right now? Because Ukrainians right now are building new institutions and looking for new words. Not after the victory, right now.

[51:05] The Bildung Rose

L: Is everybody familiar with The Bildung Rose?

C: From what I saw online.

L: Basically it describes society through seven different domains: production, technology, aesthetics (and that can be both pop culture and avant-garde art), power, which can be in any form, either the holder of the power or democratic institutions and parliaments, science, and narrative which can be any kind of narrative that holds a society together. This can be religion, it can be national self-aggrandizement of any kind or it can be history in the scientific sense. The final domain is ethics. The reason it’s called the Bildung Rose and not the society rose is because in order to thrive in your society you need to be able to understand some of each of the domains, otherwise you won’t be able to decipher what people are talking about. I would say what we’ve done in the West for the past 50 years is to throw money at production technology. We have starved our political institutions and have not developed them so that they match the reality we’re in. We have turned science into a servant of the market, and the arts and aesthetics are considered “nice to have,” but not need “must-haves” which is dangerous. It’s in the aesthetics that we create new symbols that allow us to understand the world we’re in. And then narrative… you could call it either toxic nationalism or national chauvinism. That’s a narrative that confirms your history, confirms everything that’s nice about your own country, and sort of edits out all the problematic stuff. That is where you can have a nationalistic or a national chauvinistic agenda. And then there’s ethics to which we have not paid attention for a very long time. Anywhere we want peace and prosperity, we need to make sure that we focus equally on all seven domains in our own lives and politically. There are two major things I realized due to the war in Ukraine: first of all, you cannot warn people against things they cannot imagine. When Ukraine kept warning the West about russia being an aggressor, people here simply did not have the imagination that allowed them to understand what that meant, people were identifying with the Western European mode of things. The second thing is that I don’t understand why Western media have not been able to show us, tell us what was going on in russia, this bizarre tsarist messianic narrative. I knew putin couldn’t be trusted, but I don’t understand why the Western media did not pick up on the extent to which he had transformed the whole russian political infrastructure. Now there are people who dig out all kinds of stories about what has been going on in russia, but I don’t understand why they didn’t do that five years ago. 

I think one of the mistakes that we have made both in Denmark and other places is that our embassies were not focused on this, and neither were our public national television and radio. They used to have correspondents in Moscow, just as they used to have them in all the major capitals in the world. And we don’t have that anymore, we have a couple of journalists that travel from hotspot to hotspot, but they don’t live there, they don’t build relationships with local sources, they don’t put their ears to the water pipes, as we say, and listen to what is going on behind the scenes. 

I think we really believed that not just the Cold War was over, but war was over. That it was something that just happened in other parts of the world. We have really deceived ourselves and I know we’re paying the price for it. Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, which means she’s also the commissioner for tech development and privacy and all that stuff, just said in an interview in Germany that we have actually walked into this situation, not out of naivety, but out of greed. I think that’s very brave, because I think it’s true. We thought that we could let the market rule everything and it turned out we couldn’t. So we need to have politics, we need to have an ethical compass, and that’s why we need to invest in ethics and actually take it seriously. The Bildung Rose can guide us towards spending as much time on ethics as we do on making money. As long as we don’t do that, we’re going to have a situation like this, and there are going to be more Ukraines and more Chechnyas, and Georgias, and Syrias and Taiwans.

A: I have several thoughts. One of them is the state, in my opinion, is a pool of services and laws and duties implemented in a democratic way. However, right now and for a long time in our country, it’s not the state managers serving the people, but people giving service to the government and that’s not actually right. In Ukraine we have the word «воля» [volya], maybe you heard it. It means the ability to decide freely what to do and do it without obstacles. I can compare it with breathing, and in Ukraine right now we say we can breathe, but for many countries breathing is a normal process. These countries may not understand why we are crying for help. Which is because of authority and this kind of rudimentary vision that people have to serve their government or this kind of, how we say it, «держава» [derzhava]. 

[1:00:44] the problem of corruption

L: So Zelenskyy studied law, right? I mean he’s a lawyer.

J: He is.

M: I’ve just seen this series of Zelenskyy’s, the Sluha narodu. I think I will write about it, because it’s just so amazing. I think maybe it happens that actors somehow take the role seriously then in their lives and that’s what happened to him now in this war. I live in a country (Slovakia) where corruption is just crazy, but it’s still far from what’s happening in Ukraine. Because Slovakia is a small country, the corruption is smaller, but I think corruption is a real serious problem. And I don’t know how to deal with the fact that when the country will have to be rebuilt, you can’t do it without European money. And when the European money comes in, there will be demands for how to spend it and how to build the country again. And I think with that money will come European ideas of what the state should look like. So I think it’s good to think freely about the concept of futures and society, but you have to be realistic. If Ukraine wants to be again a prosperous country, it will need European money, and that means Europe will, I don’t say dictate, but they will demand some rules, European rules. We are coming back to the idea of state, which is of the European idea of state. 

In Slovakia, we have been fighting for democracy for 32 years already. I can tell you, it’s just hard, it’s really hard. And sometimes I’m frustrated, but still I can say that after many mistakes, many crimes, Slovakia is now more democratic and more European; it’s almost incomparable to what the country was like 30 years ago. Only now I can see the fact that what we didn’t ask ourselves questions, there was no debate about what the future of the country should look like. We thought it should be a European country, and Europe knows how to deal with that. That was a mistake. Nobody asked the question what we Slovaks actually want. It’s very important, the debate is very important, because otherwise you will follow a path that is unfamiliar, of which you have no concept.

I still believe that a strong democratic state is a good solution inside which there are plenty of possibilities. And as a former dissident from communist times, I remember the idea of creating free societies inside the totalitarian state, and how important it was. I don’t know whether you know about that. It was called «parallel polis», a kind of society which lives on its own in its own internal structure of freedom, respecting all members of that society. And I still believe that this kind of parallel polis ideas are good for the future. The only problem was, in those times, parallel polis was an alternative to the system. Now, I think parallel polis may and should exist. I’m not talking about something like Christiania in Denmark. Parallel polis could be across the society, for example, a parallel polis of journalists who are honest, a parallel polis of intellectuals who have their idea of democratic visions and other parallel polis inside the nation. With the original concept, I think it was a mistake to think that a parallel police should have nothing to do with the larger society. 

C: This whole thing, I think your Culture Hub, Julia, Anton, Demyan, could be a kind of parallel polis.

So what you’re saying, Milan, is these kinds of movements, of conversations are the best thing you can do in a time of totalitarianism or war like now, right? Because otherwise you will not be ready for what comes after.

M: Exactly. These debates of these parallel polis, the structures created by the people were absolutely crucial for the future in Central Europe.

[1:09:12] post-war Bosnia as a case-study in aid investment

C: Just one counter example. I am more familiar with Bosnia as you know.

Somehow they didn’t have these parallel polis going on during the war, during the breakup of Yugoslavia. After that, as you described the future of Ukraine, the European Union came in with a lot of money. More money has been spent on the individual Bosnian per capita than in any other country of the world, and it’s now a failed state.

M: Yes, but I think the European money in Bosnia was at least to keep the peace there, not thinking about building the country which is complicated.

C: It was, it was. A lot of it was spent on building the legal system, the financial system, the tax system, the police system, the cultural system, the media system, but it’s all evaporated.

L: One thing that I have considered exploring, and for various reasons I have not had time to do yet, is how to develop a sort of five-step program from a failed state to a functioning democratic state. Because when we talk about democracy and implementing democracy particularly, Iraq is a really good example of how badly you can do it. We tend to think that either there is democracy or there isn’t democracy, and if people just get to vote then there’s democracy. And what you’re talking about right now is that there needs to be an infrastructure, a cultural infrastructure, a human infrastructure that has democratic training where people can engage, and where you can learn how to run democratic meetings, and be accountable, and have transparency. That is not something that you just create overnight, definitely not from having none of it to running a country like that. The question is how do you do that? I would like to run a workshop series on this: how do go you from a country that has one ruler, chaos, no economy, barely any education, and all kinds of human rights violations to a functioning society with democratic institutions, a functioning economy, transparency, oversight, rule of law, monopoly on violence and democratic institutions. What are the intermediate steps, and what is the low-hanging fruit, what are the first steps that you can implement? 

Ukraine has a higher level of education. The school system per se is not the problem, the problem may be what people are taught and how they are taught. Is there equal access to it and can everybody afford the education that they want? You have the institutions for a democracy, but do you also have people who know how to behave inside of these institutions? And do you have a population that understands what it is they have to be looking for in the people that you elect? 

One of the democratic institutions that we have in Denmark and that I’ve seen in the United States, the Netherlands, and Switzerland where democracy tends to function very well, is cooperatives. An interesting thing that very few people have noticed is that they started the cooperatives on the consumer side of the economy, not on the production side of the economy. There are plenty of places in Africa where Western aid organizations have tried to start cooperatives on the production side. Dairy farms, slaughterhouses, chicken farms, etc. but what happens when you create corporate decisions on the consumer side is that you create a market for industrial production under cooperative ownership for that market. If you don’t prepare the market first, you can make as many cooperative production companies as you want — there won’t be any local consumers to buy their products. Creating cooperatives on the consumer side is one of the things where you could actually start, in a failed economy or an insecure economy. What that would look like in Ukraine right now with the level of industrialization that you have there would be different from what it looked like in Denmark 150 years ago, but there still might be something worth learning from it. 

So these are some of the structural things I would like to explore. Is there a way to stepwise introduce the cultural infrastructure, the educational infrastructure for having a non-corrupt democracy? I met Igor Kolomoisky a couple years ago. He was at a meeting that he tried to completely take over and manipulate. He almost succeeded, and I learned a lot from that, and I think a lot of other people who were not prepared for somebody like Igor Kolomoisky trying to take over an organization did as well. So I know the people that you’re up against. There are people out there who do want a lot of that, holding the power and then doing whatever they want. And the best way to prevent that is to create strong local communities, other structures that they cannot take over. Luckily we were actually a democratic organization with some adults in the room who realized what happened and we had an executive meeting to discuss how this organization is going to continue without Mr Kolomoisky in the leadership or with any of his money in it. That was an interesting experience. The best medicine against that is to create strong civic structures where people are not tempted to run after the money and the power. 

All the people who have been at war right now in Ukraine and have fought for Ukraine, after the war, they’re not going to just hand over political power to oligarchs again. You have all the people who are refugees right now in other parts of Europe, who will experience countries that work in a different way. They will come back with an experience of what society can also be like. And I think we can actually harvest that, we could organize that learning and we could make people aware of that learning while they’re refugees, so they bring back a different view, different expectations with regards to political power. This could be a learning opportunity for everybody and I think it could be extremely useful for all of us, not just for Ukraine, but also for the rest of Europe.

C: And it’s very interesting that so many of the people who are going to come back are women.

L: Yes, and children who are going to grow up having experienced a different society. A lot of them will be traumatized, but a lot of them are not traumatized and will actually come home more resourceful people because of it.

[1:19:11] russian influence in Europe

J: The learning opportunity is something that we really appreciate in this situation, even if the reason for that is bad. We hope that a large number of people come back with this new experience. This makes me also think about the russian influence all over Europe. Big money and the people who want to benefit from all the successful societies organized by others. We can see many consequences of this: European voices that become friendly to russia, or at least plead understanding — just because of money, not because of ethics. Do you feel this influence in different countries? Does Europe feel really threatened by russia? Sometimes we hear voices that say that Europe doesn’t feel threatened by russia, that’s why they think: oh, that’s a local Ukrainian story, we can support Ukraine in its fight, in this war, but it doesn’t feel really dangerous for Europeans.

M: I’ve been following this russian influence on Europe for years and years, and this is one of the European sins — getting corrupted by russians. You can mention London itself and Germany. Here, in Slovakia, the influence is less economic, more political. Now of course we see the debate in Europe whether to continue with russia as a neighbor you can’t get rid of. And Germans or Italians and French try to push Ukraine to make a deal with putin, because Europeans want peace and they are now scared of the coverage that’s coming out of Ukraine. They admire the courage, but some of them are getting tired. But the russian question is first on the European agenda for the first time in decades. Europe is now aware that russia is a dangerous and corrupt country, dangerous not only for Ukrainians, but also for Europeans because of that enormous corruption. I think that what’s happening now is a total, enormous shift in thinking. If you look at the opinion polls in Europe, from Eurobarometer and the others, 80% on average are convinced that russia is an aggressor and a dangerous country. I think that this is a shift, it’s a change of history from the position where russia had been at least for the last 200 or 300 years — more or less accepted as a part of Europe. Now, European thinking is that russia should be isolated, and it will be a big historical change. I might be too optimistic, but I feel it’s going this way. And I think this is the right way.

L: I think the analysis that we did this because of greed is correct. I agree with you. I think there is a major shift in understanding and attitude in Europe right now. Sweden and Finland are applying for membership of NATO, which has been totally out of the question before. Finland is prepared for russian aggression and they have been for years. Sweden had been in the past and realizes that they should be again. Denmark is pathetic, so we will have to improve radically. But we have this island called Bornholm in the Baltic Sea which would be very attractive to russia. It does have the Danish military there, but there are not supposed to be any American troops. We’re going to have an exercise this summer where there will be American troops, and russia is offended by that. And I think they should just be offended. If it hadn’t been for nuclear weapons, russia would have been kicked out of Ukraine two months ago if not three months ago. 

When I think of russian money, I have not seen that as much in the Nordic countries, some in Stockholm I think, but not in Copenhagen. I’m not saying there aren’t any rich russians here, but they’re not a group, they’re not an influence on Danish society, and definitely not the way that they are in London. I hope I’m not just naive and haven’t noticed. What we have experienced is that russian fighter jets are entering Danish airspace and flying too close to commercial airliners. We of course then send Danish fighter jets to sort of shove them off and stay away. And so far that has been it, which is bad, but we’re aware of it. I think russia is a bully and a thief, and they’re really not culturally ready for the modern democratic world, which is a Buildung issue, an educational issue, and a cultural issue. 

We should definitely keep russia out of our economy, we should definitely increase our military spending and preparedness, but we do need to have contact with the russians, because we need to influence them culturally. We can only do that if we have some kind of interaction, but we should be very specific and conscious about how we do that. And the same goes for China. We should have an ethical compass with regards to who we’re trading with, and where we’re sending our money, and our work, our labor. And we have not done that, and I think it’s greed, it’s true. Somehow we need to convince the Western middle class, and the upper class, and the richest westerners, that we have to change our ways, and we have to have a different kind of economy and that’s the only way that we can keep our own freedom and democracy. It’s also the only way that we can actually save the environment and create a stable planet for ourselves. So we need to act and think differently and that’s going to be a hard sell, so we have to come up with something that is more attractive than what we have right now, so that people say: oh, I want to join that kind of future. 

[1:31:23] Ukraine’s choice of models of democracy

M: I have a question for Demyan, but for all Ukrainians. Realistically I think Ukraine will have to decide whether it will choose the concept of democracy that’s more American, or more European, or even more Eastern European like in Poland or Baltic republics. But you should ask what actually will be your way? This will be a strategic decision and you should somehow have an opinion on that. 

D: Historically, Ukraine and Ukrainian people had the first constitution, the first documents and we have this historical fact. The institution similar to parliament is also a very old institution on Ukrainian territory. So Ukrainians remember it too. But as my friend Ukrainian philosopher said, the Ukrainians are a little bit anarchists and they are very democratic people. They like democracy, they like the historical American way, because the first American thinkers were a very interesting group of seven philosophers and two warriors. It’s interesting for Ukrainians because we have cossacks and the same process of creating the document all together. But now I see in Ukraine we have not one nation, we have nations. The communities can be very polarized. So some people like the American way, some people like the European way, some people like Scandinavian and Nordic Secret ways. People have strong opinions about how Ukraine can develop in its own way, and they have 10 ways, 10 concepts. We haven’t answered your question, but we’re looking for this answer every day. What is the way of Ukraine for tomorrow? I want to see beyond tomorrow — in order to see tomorrow. 

J: As a country, a “state”, Ukraine has to follow existing models, examples of governance. At the same time Ukraine as a culture, as a mindset is much older than the independent state. We have experiences from different historical periods, being part of empires, or even from the time before. The Kyivan Rus was an active participant in European economy and culture, before russia even existed. Since 1991 we want to move faster building a democratic society after totalitarian soviet decades, and this creates competition inside the country: whose services are more progressive, or who changes faster with digital technologies. This makes me think that Ukraine can generate an innovative experience, different from what is already known in the Western culture. Something that combines the challenges from tomorrow, like digitalization, or the way we now experience the war [news] on our smartphones, with real-time updates. Or how can media be misused in different societies? The concept of free media is under question now as well. Those who have money pay for the media. I hope Ukraine can provide a new experience that will be fruitful for both Europe and the United States.

[1:42:22] Ukraine’s alignment with U.S. model of democracy

A: I want to add two things that make, I think, the American experience relatable for Ukraine. There was no monarchy in the U.S., which is a big difference between them and russia and other European countries. There was also a history of slavery, and a similar system existed in the past in Ukraine. So as an answer to your question, I consider the Ukrainian future to be aligned with the U.S. path. 

M: One remark, Julia, that was interesting for me. I’m a writer and journalist, and I do believe in a free press, and I know it, because I am a part of that. I know something about Ukrainian media, but I live in a country which is small, five million people. Seven years ago, we created Dennik N which is a website completely based on subscriptions, not on any advertisement or ownership. It’s owned by the staff, and we’re extremely successful. We have now 70 000 subscriptions which allows us to be not only free to readers, but also allows us to develop. Free press is possible, you just have to try.

A: But it’s also possible to be shut down in Ukraine. We had some free media, but they were closed and it’s all about politics.

L: What would get them closed?

M: What does it mean, shut down? By whom? By a court? 

A: By the government. It should have been a court decision, but it wasn’t.

L: What was the reason for it?

A: The reason is not important, because the decision was made on a very high level. Sometimes the reason is that an outlet was operating in conflict with government regulations, or perhaps was pro-russian. We’ve had instances when a media outlet was closed in a matter of days. 

M: In the war time or before?

A: Even now.

M: Well, the same happened in Slovakia, Czech Republic, they just closed the websites which were pro-russian. Not only paid by russians, but the content was really pro-russian, with fake news and all that. There was a big debate of course, and the government did it — not the court, which it should have been. I agreed with the government that these websites, which were obviously tools of russian influence, should have been shut down. But I’m talking about real media, serious journalism. The independent media are quite crucial for the development of a free and democratic society. And I can tell you that it is possible.

D: It is possible, I agree.

J: For sure, I agree too. We do believe in independent media. That’s one of the reasons why our organization wants to have an analytical media outlet and we are developing that.

[1:50:20] media

D: I think having many small media groups, websites or papers, is best for a large country. Because we have small groups, we have opinion leaders for these groups, we have dialogues. When columnists and readers have the dialogue and see each other it’s very constructive. Having 70,000 subscribers is a great success. But I, personally, don’t understand how you could build a dialogue with all these people. You could do polls, right, but how do you go deeper? This is why I like outlets in Ukraine that have 500 subscribers or 5 000 subscribers and that’s all. It’s very effective in this situation, in the war. Now, we only have about 20 media outlets in the entire country. It’s not enough. 

M: It’s not, it should be more.

D: These are independent media, crowd-funded. Five of them publish in English. It’s not enough, especially against russian propaganda. But in the last three months, I have seen three new media outlets launched. With millions of subscribers on Twitter.

J: But they are the followers, they don’t pay money.

D: Followers.

M: I went to Kyiv a couple of years ago. Another problem I see for Ukraine, is the large amount of financial assistance that is coming in to support free media, culture, etc. Sometimes, aid can be a little corrupting because if you rely on aid you don’t have to find your own path to sustainability. What I have seen in Ukraine is that people from independent media were paid by various organizations from the West and so they didn’t need to think about their salaries. Well, one day they will have to be on their own. But they don’t know how to survive without aid, and that’s a challenge that’s waiting for you. 

D: Yes, it’s about the education for media managers, of course and editors-in-chief. We only have one education institution now in the country that can educate our media professionals. I try to think about what we can do right now to be stronger. I think the media is one of the first answers. And the other is building new words, a new lexicon.

M: I agree. I mean that’s the thing, to create new visions, ideas, and the second is how to build a national debate. Without media you can’t do it.

D: Yes.

M: One reason why Hungary failed is not just that Orban bought two-thirds of the media and killed the rest. Hungarian journalists — people I know personally — were not prepared for that situation. They did not have the creativity and courage to start from the ground up again and resist. And that’s a problem of Hungarian society. You have to look ahead. Ukraine will be maybe fine for one, two or three years in peace. But after that, aid to the free media will stop because the donors will say, okay, now you’re on your own. And that could be a dangerous situation for you.

D: We have seen a very strong response to crowd-funding campaigns in Ukraine, and I believe that it’s the way forward for many media after the war. We also know how to build social entrepreneurship. And I think the world will change so much that we will have the institutional foundations not only for Ukrainian media, but for media against emperors, and against wars, and these will include Ukrainian media professionals. And I believe that out of this war, we will build an international cross-conscious media together.

[1:59:05] digitization

M: I think this big advantage of the digitalization of the country is just a huge advantage you have for the future. Mykhailo Fedorov is that minister for digitalization, is that right?

J: That’s right.

M: He must be a genius. You’re far ahead from the rest of Europe, except Estonia maybe. That’s a fantastic thing; it’s a tool you should think about.

J: Unfortunately, I cannot compare, because I don’t know how much every country is going to paperless services. In Ukraine, digitization has meant building one app for your smartphone that makes interacting with government institutions easy. You have to trust the data keeper, and you are safe as long as the government is democratic. But if the next president is totalitarian or we are occupied by a totalitarian country and somebody gets access to all this data and all these systems, it can become really dangerous. 

L: Unfortunately we do not have that discussion here, because the Danes think that that will never happen. But I mean the amount of data that the government has on us is just astounding. And there have been municipalities who illegally try to bring data together from the social authorities, local municipalities, tax authorities and the schools, the reports that the kids have produced in school. There’s this whole system for the public schools where parents and teachers communicate. Once you connect that to the social authorities and to the tax authorities and then your freedom is gone. And nobody knows where the data for their children is stored. I don’t have children, but I don’t understand why people who do are not causing a revolution and telling the government to stop. Nobody knows how much data is collected on the children, and nobody knows how that data is going to be brought together in the future or right now actually. We’ve had a health care system based on social security numbers for at least 50 years, more, 60 years I think. And that worked really well when it was wooden cabinets with paper files and you kept all the data at the doctor’s place at the hospital. But now when everything can be brought together under one social security number, you can really find out everything about the individual. This has not been thought through. It’s really easy to do your tax returns, because everything is registered under your social security number. It’s really easy to go to the doctor, because they can find everything under your social security number, but you have no control. We digitized communication from municipalities and governments about 10 years ago, so we have this citizen.dk, Danish word but .dk, and you log in there and there’s all your communication with the government or the local municipality, tax authorities, everything. it turns out that unless you download your files and store them in your computer, there’s no way to prevent the government from changing data in your documents, the dates, for instance. I’m not saying they’re doing it, but they can. There are a lot of issues that have not been discussed. It’s just been a political discussion, and of course a lot of politicians think it’s really clever. Which it is of course, if you’re only thinking of the institutions and the money they can save, but you’re not thinking about it from a citizen’s perspective. I wouldn’t say I’m considering moving to Germany, but I’m definitely happy that we do have Germany in Europe in this regard, because they know how bad things can go if you register everything. And we need to be smarter about this. Actually what we ought to do is to switch the ownership of the data around, so that citizens own their own data and the government only has the platform that can analyze the data and then you submit the data that you want them to have access to. But that’s a different discussion.

Questions

1. The participants discuss various models of future gun ownership in Ukraine. What is your personal view on this? What purpose, in your opinion, should gun ownership serve in a democratic society?

    

2. Chris Keulemans raises the question of alternatives to the nation-state. Claire Vergerio in her essay “Beyond the Nation-State” points out that “States enjoy far more rights than any other collectivity — ranging from indigenous peoples to transnational social movements — simply because they are states.” Historically, the alternatives to Nation-State have been empires, kingdoms, and city states. Today, the power of non-state actors is undeniable. What democratic alternatives to the Nation-state can you envision? What are the principles on which they would be founded? 

Resources

Andersen, Lene Rachel. “The Bildung Rose.” Nordicbildung,
https://www.nordicbildung.org/the-bildung-rose/. Accessed 13 November 2024.

Graeber, David and Wengrow, David. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Penguin Books, 2022.

Vergerio, Claire. “Beyond the Nation-State.” Boston Review, 27 May 2021, https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/beyond-the-nation-state/. Accessed 13 November 2024.

Vestager, Margrethe. “Europe paying price for being ‘greedy’.” eKathimerini, interview with Yannis Paliologos, 8 March 2023,
https://www.ekathimerini.com/opinion/interviews/1206204/europe-paying-price-for-being-greedy/. Accessed 13 November 2024.

Transcription Editor: Oleksandr Kukharchuk 

Copy Editor: Nina Murray

Content Editors: Julia Ovcharenko, Natalia Babalyk

Programme Directors: Julia Ovcharenko and Demyan Om Dyakiv-Slavitski

First published within “Philosophical Garden” Programme on: 13.11.2024