The gas princess. The Tymoshenko Case

Frank Schumann

• Publisher: Das Neue Berlin
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9783360510174
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Essays in Politics & International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the summer of 2012, the author traveled to the Ukraine, driven by serious doubts about the representation of Tymoshenko spread by politicians and the media. Her image is flawless and free of criticism and opposition. And: While hardly a week goes by without news from the PR department of the ex-Prime Minister, there is no objective, comprehensive examination of the events surrounding this person and her Vita.Interviews and field observations show that there are links between private and international interests: Western Europe, meaning the EU used Tymoshenko to keep the Ukraine at bay - and the oligarch exploits the West to gain her freedom and continue to make money.

Kharkiv, Women’s Prison N° 54

It’s already dark and a little stormy, when I step out of the airport. Its a very manageable size, given the dimensions of metropolitan Kiev it is downright provincial. There are only a few taxis waiting. To the hotel »Chichikov«, I say, in Gogol Street.

Nemez, the man behind the wheel asks why there. I cannot easily deny it, and he starts right into it. His age suggests that the only German uniforms he ever saw, were worn by the fans of the DFB-team that recently played in Kharkiv. In their single-EM group match here, the German defeated the Dutch selection in a furious game with 2:1, which still causes the Russians to rave about the »nemezkaja machina«. And the fans also behaved very well, the Germans were just ordinary people.

I think my part, and I grant him apologetically the grace of late birth. Or maybe he’s just being polite and spreads the veil of silence over the crimes of my ancestors. Then the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union was captured by the Sixth Army on the way to Stalingrad, 240,000 Red Army soldiers ended up in captivity. In the nearly two years of occupation, over a quarter million people died in the region. In Drobizki Yar, a ravine in the east of the city, 250 to 300 Jews were shot every day. And mainly women and children died in the gas chambers. This was due to Lieutenant General Jesco von Puttkamer, who had already established himself as a colonial officer before the First World War in Cameroon where he defeated uprisings by the local population. Obviously his rage was too much even for the High Command, which is why the 66-year-old was removed from Kharkiv in August 1942 and retired in Neustrelitz near Berlin. In 1952, he fled from there to the West, because he feared his arrest for war crimes comitted in Kharkiv. Seven years later, the pensioner died unchallenged in Wiesbaden …

The taxi driver is one of those Ukrainians who prefer to »look to the future«. Looking back, they say, would not be helpful. At some point, one must let the wounds that we‹ve mutually inflicted heal on their own.

When I hear such things being said quite sincerely, I always bite my tongue, so as not to contradict. What does »mutually« mean? Wasn’t it my people who invaded the Ukraine and raged like barbarians? Everything that followed, can be causally attributed to this original crime.

I let him babble and look out of the window. New building after new building. Only when we reach the city, do I recognize a few old buildings. At one place a tower with a Soviet star soars into the sky, built unmistakably in the earlier 50s. The most expensive apartments in the city to be found there, the largest at the top cost a million dollars. The Stalin-buildings are so popular, he says, because they are solidly built. The workers knew that if they botched the construction, they were shot, so they made a considerable effort. He laughs. Today a lot of construction was botched. They should all be shot. He does not specify whether he means the construction workers or the building owner who saves on everything. But he laughs at his own joke, which he thinks is a good one.

The hotel is new and perhaps was just finished before the European Championship. Small but nice. Despite the solidity, its prices are very earthy, no comparison with the »Salut« in Kiev. And what I have never experienced before: fresh cut flowers in the bathroom. Instead of the New Testament, I find the Collected Works by Gogol in Russian. Small wonder: After all, the house bears the name of a character from Gogol‹s novel »Dead Souls«.

View along Gogol Street in Kharkiv, in the back the hotel »Chichikov«, in the front the theatre academy

What metaphor, I think, in view of the reason that led me here. Chichikov, a small tax official in the Ukrainian province, coming from a poor family, is industrious, adaptable and clever. So he rises steadily, fights corruption, gets accustomed to the luxury and will soon be corrupt himself, whereupon he tumbles down the ladder again and has to make a living as a hack lawyer. He has a brilliant business idea: In the country, there is still serfdom, and the landlords need to pay taxes for those very serfs to the state. The state has no overview, because the index is not updated in a timely fashion and so the landlords pay for dead serfs, the »dead souls« as well. The eloquent Chichikov talks the landlords out of the »dead souls«, for less than 300 rubles he purchased four hundred such inactive members, with which he asserts about 100,000 rubles of tax claims.

Gogol, instead of the New Testament

It goes on, however, and the attempt by a multimillionaire to purify Chichikov morally fails due to his attitude: »But I feel no aversion to sin: I’m jaded, do not feel any love for the good.« At the end of the story the unrepentant is pardoned and expelled from the country. Just before his departure he has a noble suit made from the little money he has, in order to – continue.

Chance has brought me to this place, and then such a literary work! I can hardly reply with Karl Marx and his theory of the »18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte«, that history repeats itself: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, because Gogol made it all up. Chichikov is fictitious, Tymoshenko, however, is real, but the analogy, is all in the details.

The monument of the national poet Shevchenko

After a wonderful night, I’m on my way. I still have some time until my appointment at the prison and I stroll over to the park which is – how could it be otherwise – named after a different Ukrainian national poet and painter. In the square there is the monument of Taras Shevchenko, erected in 1935, and obviously spared by the Nazi troops. The storm last night has ruffled the trees in the park, there are several groups of gardeners moving to clear the branches from the trails. Joggers run in the morning sun, with their ear plugs, women go for a walk with their lapdogs. The day dawns, the air is warm.

I stroll over to a cultural center whose architecture easily reveals the era of its building. Already the ugly ball-lights on the way reveal the tastelessness of four architects who ran rampage right into the dying days of the Soviet Union, and no one dared to stop them, because during the phase of Perestroika and Glasnost this would have been consedered undue paternalism. The house was completed in 1991, after a total of 25 years of construction, and is now home to the Opera and Ballet Theatre, which had been founded in 1829 in Kharkiv, there is also a cinema in this set. Perhaps the rooms inside are acceptable and I am doing wrong to its architects.

The monument of the national poet Shevchenko

Strolling students in Kharkiv

I take a taxi out to the women‹s prison. The consequences of war are still visible. The cursed war tore holes in the cityscape, which were patched up in subsequent years. There are hardly any tiles on the roof tops, but wavy or smooth sheet metal. Between the blocks there is a lot of telltale green. One also realizes quickly that this is an industrial city. From the hotel window the periphery of the sprawling half-million city some smoking chimney stacks and steaming cooling towers are visible. Moreover, Kharkiv wants to be seen as a scientific and educational center of the Ukraine. There are 42 universities and colleges here.

The traffic pulsates on the tracks, people rush along the sidewalks, the street cars are filled. It is a summer...

Table of contents

• The book
• The author
• Copyright
• Title page
• Lukjanowo
• The Agency
• The Attorney General
• The Scherban case
• Heading to Yulia T.
• Kharkiv, Women’s Prison N° 54
• Railwayworkers Hospital
• The Express Train Back
• The first investigator
• Yulija Timoshenko and Pussy Riot – Outcome open
• Timoshenko Data