On Dislike of Football. Column in KomputerraOnline #58

I shall remind readers of KT that for most of them I am a foreigner, and they may take comfort in the fact that in their country football and everything else is in perfect order. To my Ukrainian readers I will clarify that I have no intention of complaining about our country to anyone. I am merely attempting to establish priorities in my own life and, perhaps, may be able to assist someone else in doing the same.
The current university semester is ending convulsively, in a crumpled fashion. Ukraine and Poland are to host the European football championship, Euro 2012. Once, before the 1980 Moscow Olympics, prostitutes and the homeless were removed from the city. Before Euro, students are being removed from Ukrainian cities. We are required to vacate the university by the beginning of June.
The current semester began late due to winter cold and unheated lecture halls. We started later — we will finish earlier. Alas, university courses do not compress well. When two or three classes are squeezed into one, the session becomes so hurried and convulsive that the purpose of holding it comes into question. But most regrettably, both students and instructors understand that their primary occupation is being treated as secondary. And when, at the end of the semester, the final (a mere handful of!) classes are cancelled — reportedly by ministerial decree — so that students may clean litter from the streets, I cannot contain my irritation. Young people are sent to universities to study! What the devil gives you the right to disrupt classes for the sake of some spectacle or to plug gaps in the work of street sweepers?!
We are made to believe that for the sake of Euro 2012, which will raise the prestige of the country and the city, sacrifices are worth making. The sacrifices are evident; the growth in prestige is doubtful. Euro has made the entire world speak of Ukrainian corruption. I do not know whether it is true that 60 percent of the appropriations for the football celebration ends up being stolen. I cannot confirm whether the reconstruction of Ukrainian stadiums truly costs more than building new ones in the wealthiest of nations. I have seen the benches in the Kharkiv metro that (allegedly!) cost eight thousand dollars each: rather plain, in fact. In any case, given the priorities demonstrated by our leadership, I readily believe that Euro is for them simply a means of laundering money.
Oh yes, they are fighting corruption, of course. In universities, for example.
Is it I who am somehow wrong? I do not take bribes not because I am forbidden to do so; if I did take them, I would derive no pleasure from my work. Measures such as the encryption of examination papers, the marking of answers by outside instructors, and emergency inspections seem to me directed against the very psychological mechanism that keeps decent instructors and students from accepting bribes. A dishonest actor will circumvent these obstacles in no time, while honest work is made more difficult by them.
I emphasise: we provide students with a worthy education, among the very finest in our country. If the biology faculties of certain other institutions surpass us in some parameters, they also fall short of us in others. Yet both we and our professional colleagues strive to maintain standards not owing to the actions of our authorities, but in spite of them.
Do you want an honest educational process? Then demonstrate that the state has a vested interest in individuals whose level has been transformed through education. And students should not merely be told about Nobel laureates from our university; they should be shown in practice that study and scholarship matter more than street cleaning and mass spectacles. Utopia?
The fate of Kharkiv in the early nineteenth century was dramatically altered by the venture of a local landowner, Vasyl Nazarovych Karazin. In simplified terms, it may be described as follows. Karazin persuaded the Kharkiv merchants and nobility that if they found the funds to establish a university, Alexander I would permit it to be opened. He assured Alexander that if the latter founded the university, the Kharkivites would find the money for its opening. In 1804 the university was founded; in 1805 it enrolled its first students.
Had this not occurred, Kharkiv would today be the district centre of Chuhuiv or Bohodukhiv oblast. Our city, with all its intellectual force (largely unappreciated by the Kyiv authorities), is the offspring of the university. And now we are being shown that what matters most in it is the stadium.
To reach the metro from the university, one must walk across a square (the largest in Europe, incidentally). On the square there is talking advertising. On one occasion, as I was about to descend into the metro, I was caught by the cheerful voice of an announcer. An event had occurred that fills all residents of the city with pride. Some celebrated footballer — African-American or African-European — will now play for our football team. The contract by which he was bought away from another club is worth three million euros (or something of the sort).
What strikes me most is not even the fact that the purchase of this “star” (and do not tell me that slavery has been abolished!) costs more than my entire working life spanning many centuries. What saddens me is, for instance, the following.
State-funded universities and research institutes pay communal utility services — owned by that same state — at extortionate rates. The state allocates no funds to these institutions to cover those utility payments; each must manage as best it can. Our university at least has money earned from fee-paying and international students. Less fortunate institutions levy a tax on their students in the form of “voluntary” “charitable” contributions. Research institutes send their staff on unpaid leave, using the wages denied to employees to make payments from the state to the state. There is nothing to be done: the treasury must economise. It has more pressing matters: Euro, for example.
The majority of commercially valuable property in my God-preserved country has been claimed by oligarchs. I do not know whether systematic psycho(patho)logical studies of this category of citizen have been conducted. I understand people who aspire to sufficiency or even to wealth. But when this aspiration grows as it does in the sharks of capitalism, who swallow factories, regional energy companies, and shopping centres, it is surely driven by morbid complexes. Children compare toy cars, dolls, and new clothes. The wealthy compare jewels, supercars, yachts, and palaces. Oligarchs compare football clubs: teams of living toys. Which of the teams shall beat the other is the occasion for the excited attention of the broad popular masses. The system of brainwashing keeps the common people in a state of exalted empathy with the amusements of oligarchs.
Receiving his few hundred dollars, the skilled worker invests them in maintaining the productive potential of himself and his family. These funds serve the common good. Receiving his millions and tens of millions, the oligarch devises ways to spend them with extravagance, including on his living toys — footballers. Is he truly disposing of his own means, if he has simply found himself in the right place within the flows of financial capital? I have not forgotten about taxes, but the oligarch pays a smaller share of his income than the worker, since he has his schemes, lawyers, and offshore arrangements.
I am far removed from egalitarian ideology and from the perennially yesterday’s bawlers with red banners. I respect wealthy individuals who have made their fortune by developing technologies and organising socially important processes. The easier it is for them to work, the faster society will develop. Let their creative capacities serve the common good! But such wealthy individuals do not spend their money on football. The resources poured into lavish spectacles do not accelerate the development of society; they retard it. This is an example of sub-optimisation — the optimisation of a part at the expense of the whole.
One of the causes of the Greek crisis was the 2004 Olympics. After the temporary economic stimulus associated with Euro 2012 spending has passed, the consequences of those funds not having been spent on something sensible will come to the fore.
And please do not tell me that football promotes a healthy lifestyle! School-level football very likely does; professional sports football does not.
…About ten years ago I sometimes had to travel home via the metro station located near the stadium. Occasionally I found myself in a crowd of supporters pouring out from a match. A melancholy spectacle. People who, individually, are probably quite sane, become an aggressive herd. If one of them shouts something, the others take up the boorishness; if one of them leaps and smashes a lamp in the underground passage, all begin to jump, smash lamps, and act out. Beer, sweat, urine, broken glass, drunken brawls — quite the celebration!
But why must we tolerate events that encourage such behaviour?
The strange actions of our authorities have led many European politicians to call for a boycott of Euro 2012 or for it to be relocated to another country. Sometimes it seems to me that our state is simply inviting this — after all, the money has already been disbursed! A boycott would furnish a pretext for rallying the people against the Eurobureaucrats who have spoiled the bright celebration. If Euro were to be relocated, some part of my soul would rejoice. Though by now I no longer know which course of events would be more destructive. However events unfold, the preparations for Euro and the insane expenditure associated with it have already caused considerable harm to ordinary life in the city and the country.
We are also made to believe that sport must not suffer because of politics. The competition to host championships is politics. The distortion and embezzlement of budgets is politics. The infringement of citizens’ interests for the sake of the championship is politics. And the championship itself is something pure and elevated — a celebration of team solidarity, courage, and patriotism. Do you not understand that this is manipulation, enabling the masters of football to enrich themselves and promote their amusements? The championship does not awaken local and national pride; it accustoms the population to brainwashing and to humiliation.
I have read what I have written and paused to reflect. My conscience is not troubled by my hostile remarks about football — it deserves no pity. What matters is that I should not have shaken respect for university values. These values are under constant attack as it is. The state as a whole and education in particular are managed by professors and academicians who have been repeatedly caught in acts of plagiarism. Their success is not connected with systematic, purposeful labour, with the successful combination of scholarly research, study, and teaching. Even if they sincerely desire what is best for our field (do you believe that?), they act in accordance with the priorities determined by their life experience.
Oh, how I have complained… Ahead lies the celebration of sport. What happiness!