On a suggestion that I might tap out a column on Ukraine, my mind turned to history. I though first of the beach in Kiiv, on the Dnipro River, in one part of the city that had been bombed to ruins in the war and since converted to parkland and recreation. I recalled the beautiful cupolas of tiny churches that can be seen shining in the sunlight as you pass along the river by boat. And quickly, my thoughts turned to Rus’, the rather large state organized around Kiiv, where Slavonic literature had its roots.
On a suggestion that I might tap out a column on Ukraine, my mind turned to history. I though first of the beach in Kiiv, on the Dnipro River, in one part of the city that had been bombed to ruins in the war and since converted to parkland and recreation. I recalled the beautiful cupolas of tiny churches that can be seen shining in the sunlight as you pass along the river by boat. And quickly, my thoughts turned to Rus’, the rather large state organized around Kiiv, where Slavonic literature had its roots.
One of the gems of this early literature was the “Sermon on Law and Grace” (its modernized short title) delivered by Metropolitan Hilarion in the 11th century. It contrasts a fundamentalist vision of the law (the Old Testament) with a more humane vision informed by tolerance and compassion (the New Testament vision). Hilarion poses the question “What has been attained by Law? What has been attained by Grace?”
“As moonlight departs when the sun shines forth, so the Law departed when Grace was made manifest”. He cites the Bible: “mercy is praised against judgment”. Charity and compassion are praised against fundamentalist interpretation of scripture as law. When I recalled this famous work, its political significance to one aspect of modern Ukraine was all too obvious. It appears that the only big question now separating the Yanukovich government from close relations with the United States is the question of democracy. This was discussed during the July visit by U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, to Ukraine. According to one source as I heard it, her style in pronouncing on various human rights issues was seen as “throwing down this list and that list, this name and that name”, referring one presumes either to people who had suffered human rights abuses in some way or to people the U.S. would prefer not see in positions of power). A caricature quickly formed in my mind: Hilary, throwing down lightning bolts of judgment on wayward sinners, meets Hilarion, a bishop from a thousand years ago advocating a measure of “understanding” in preference to a strict interpretation of the law.
As appealing as the cartoon image might be, it is of course misleading. It is an asset to the world that states like the American one care about human rights, and actively promote protection of these rights in general and in individual cases. But the style of American human rights advocacy remains more akin to some austere crusading fundamentalism than to a posture informed by “grace” – that is charity and understanding. Hilary needs to learn from Hilarion.
The other “h”-word is one many are waiting to see in American human rights advocacy. This is “humility” – some self awareness that the United States itself has problems in protecting human rights at home. In fact, there are deep divisions in the United States about the precise character of some human rights. That is understandable, normal and desirable.
What Hilary might reflect further on is how seriously other governments or other people take her government’s pronouncements on human rights when these statements reflect no self-reference points about the profound moral contest and confusion on the home front – and no self-reference points of a historical kind.
In Hilary’s adult memory, some states in her country were still apartheid states and in most of the country women did not enjoy equal rights under the law. The USA did not become a democracy overnight. Slavery in America was abolished by law four years after the decree abolishing serfdom in Ukraine (then ruled from elsewhere). There is no pre-set timetable for entering the “paradise” of full democracy, a paradise that must by definition be universal in appeal and application, not American in fundament nor appearance.
19 September 2010, New Europe