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maryxmasДмитро Лисак
Megan Moe and her team read my snarky comment on the interview and kindly invited me for an additional session (which certainly more than most would have done, considering their tight schedule and all).
I am much happier now even though it was shorter, as now the interviewers prepared some follow up questions and honest time limit, and when I strayed and did not manage to properly answer some of them I felt that it was my own fault. I mostly was getting off the point, though, because I felt that without giving the context the answers will be misleading, and then I was kind of carried away by the context.
Also, Vic Mallory, I referenced them to your translation of my blog entry, and some photos, so they had a bit more context to work with. Sadly, of course, there is a limit of how much you can get across within such a limited time, but my hope is that I could get at least couple of points across, and that they got other pieces of the puzzle from other people they interviewed.
I'd like to mention, while it is still fresh, two questions I did not manage to answer properly. Nice questions, Cassandra (and a nice name for a fact-finder who brings a message home, albeit evoking sad associations).
First and the most important was - who were the real leaders of Maidan. It is funny because I heard it asked in so many contexts - like, police wanted to know the "real" leaders to arrest them and be done with it. British journalists who came there asked me the same thing - "Who is in charge here?". Because in their world, someone is always in charge. When I answered "the people are in charge", they thought I was some kind of a nutcase.
The people themselves asked the politicians on the stage about selecting one leader to be in charge and responsible, and for taking some kind of actions. Yatseniuk, being caught off-guard by the issue, answered the blatant and unbelievable truth "we do not have the leaders here, the people is the leader". Yeah, and then the people understood that every known figure is too cowardly to even step up and take responsibility - that's when the violence really started.
In truth, Maidan was a network movement, grassroot phenomenon more than anything. Asking who was the real leader is like asking where is the center of the Internet. It is not to say that there are no important hubs, servers and databanks - just taking them out will not make the Internet shut down.
It is sort of foreign concept for the Western culture where the center of a narrative must always be the Hero, Superman, Messiah - so it is a damn hard point to get across. You say it, people nod and think to themselves "yeah, but still there obviously was a leader". So let me soften the blow - there might have been leaders around, but there was no one indispensable - if you take one out, there would be a new one on that place in a day.
Now, you also asked what needs to happen now. Again, I felt that by giving a short, honest and obvious answer would be misleading. If I said "The judicial system needs to be reformed like it was done with the police, only the old judges and policemen need to go. Some of them need to go to prison - and that's the start", you could notice that our current politicians are kind of speaking a lot about judicial system reform, so you might conclude that they are moving in the right direction. It would be very wrong.
Instead, they fake reforms. In reality, the oligarchs (the lords) are now consolidating their postions against the common folk - they bought off natural monopilies like water and gas supply and they feel ready to reap full benefits of being the monopolists, squeezing the peasants dry. War and talks about reforms and taking European vector are meant to deter and suppress any resistance that peasants might have.
Of course, this system cannot hold much longer - if the reforms are not done from the top, there will be an uprising from the bottom. All that, combined with the pieces of broken global security system coming down on our heads will create an era of turbulence where the only thing we can really do is hold tight and brace for impact - any far-fetched plans now will be crushed by rapidly changing landscape.
Sorry for making it so long again - I hope insight on what people think during and after interviews could be of some interest to you, too. I know you have your hands full now, but sometimes the right words strike you years later and help you to see a broader picture where you never really expected them to.
That is why I think sharing experience with those willing to listen is so important - does not matter if you share it with a big group like film audience or small, like a single person who somehow will make use of what they learned years later.
Megan Moe and her team read my snarky comment on the interview and kindly invited me for an additional session (which certainly more than most would have done, considering their tight schedule and all).
I am much happier now even though it was shorter, as now the interviewers prepared some follow up questions and honest time limit, and when I strayed and did not manage to properly answer some of them I felt that it was my own fault. I mostly was getting off the point, though, because I felt that without giving the context the answers will be misleading, and then I was kind of carried away by the context.
Also, Vic Mallory, I referenced them to your translation of my blog entry, and some photos, so they had a bit more context to work with. Sadly, of course, there is a limit of how much you can get across within such a limited time, but my hope is that I could get at least couple of points across, and that they got other pieces of the puzzle from other people they interviewed.
I'd like to mention, while it is still fresh, two questions I did not manage to answer properly. Nice questions, Cassandra (and a nice name for a fact-finder who brings a message home, albeit evoking sad associations).
First and the most important was - who were the real leaders of Maidan. It is funny because I heard it asked in so many contexts - like, police wanted to know the "real" leaders to arrest them and be done with it. British journalists who came there asked me the same thing - "Who is in charge here?". Because in their world, someone is always in charge. When I answered "the people are in charge", they thought I was some kind of a nutcase.
The people themselves asked the politicians on the stage about selecting one leader to be in charge and responsible, and for taking some kind of actions. Yatseniuk, being caught off-guard by the issue, answered the blatant and unbelievable truth "we do not have the leaders here, the people is the leader". Yeah, and then the people understood that every known figure is too cowardly to even step up and take responsibility - that's when the violence really started.
In truth, Maidan was a network movement, grassroot phenomenon more than anything. Asking who was the real leader is like asking where is the center of the Internet. It is not to say that there are no important hubs, servers and databanks - just taking them out will not make the Internet shut down.
It is sort of foreign concept for the Western culture where the center of a narrative must always be the Hero, Superman, Messiah - so it is a damn hard point to get across. You say it, people nod and think to themselves "yeah, but still there obviously was a leader". So let me soften the blow - there might have been leaders around, but there was no one indispensable - if you take one out, there would be a new one on that place in a day.
Now, you also asked what needs to happen now. Again, I felt that by giving a short, honest and obvious answer would be misleading. If I said "The judicial system needs to be reformed like it was done with the police, only the old judges and policemen need to go. Some of them need to go to prison - and that's the start", you could notice that our current politicians are kind of speaking a lot about judicial system reform, so you might conclude that they are moving in the right direction. It would be very wrong.
Instead, they fake reforms. In reality, the oligarchs (the lords) are now consolidating their postions against the common folk - they bought off natural monopilies like water and gas supply and they feel ready to reap full benefits of being the monopolists, squeezing the peasants dry. War and talks about reforms and taking European vector are meant to deter and suppress any resistance that peasants might have.
Of course, this system cannot hold much longer - if the reforms are not done from the top, there will be an uprising from the bottom. All that, combined with the pieces of broken global security system coming down on our heads will create an era of turbulence where the only thing we can really do is hold tight and brace for impact - any far-fetched plans now will be crushed by rapidly changing landscape.
Sorry for making it so long again - I hope insight on what people think during and after interviews could be of some interest to you, too. I know you have your hands full now, but sometimes the right words strike you years later and help you to see a broader picture where you never really expected them to.
That is why I think sharing experience with those willing to listen is so important - does not matter if you share it with a big group like film audience or small, like a single person who somehow will make use of what they learned years later.
