One of the popular myths about conservatism spread by opponents of this rational ideology is that conservatives are against change and would like to bring everything back hundreds of years, or even better, to the mammoth era.
The fallacy of this opinion is that conservatism has never denied change, but only insisted on its rational and reasonable nature. For conservatism, changing something unnecessarily, for the sake of change, or even worse, imitating change and inventing “innovations” that make no sense, is worse than not changing at all.
In our history, Ukrainian conservative forces have been perhaps the greatest advocates of change. And Ukraine’s being under the rule of other states turned the struggle to preserve Ukrainian national traditions and identity into a real revolutionary and sometimes radical struggle, in which conservatives were far ahead of liberals or socialists.
The conservatives in Galicia fought for electoral reform in Austria-Hungary and the introduction of universal suffrage, rather than defending the outdated noble-elite system. The Hetmanate of Pavlo Skoropadskyi became a real driver of reforms during its 7.5 months, while the socialist Central Rada managed to issue only 4 station wagons in a year.
During the era of independence, the conservative People’s Movement was a force that fought for change, while it was the communists who wanted to preserve the colonial position of the Ukrainian language, culture, and national status in relation to Erephia. Initiatives to raise the status of the Ukrainian language in the 1990s, conservative in their content, were called “radical,” “extremist,” and whatever else you want to call them. The fact is that if conservatives were in favor of no changes, they would have to demand that the Russian language and the Communist Party remain dominant in Ukraine, as they were before. However, it was the Ukrainian national-democratic conservatives who promoted revolutionary state-building processes at the dawn of independence.
Conservatism advocates change when it is important and indispensable, not just to change things for the sake of change. In Ukraine, as a result of the prevailing bureaucratic and populist procedures, a system was formed whereby every new leader or minister, upon taking office, tried to “change” something to make it visible that they were doing something. Usually, this was limited to changing the names, signs, and “caps” of documents, although it also consumed a lot of Ukrainian taxpayers’ money and man-hours of government agencies that could have been used to better serve the needs of the population.
Thus, the Presidential Administration of Ukraine became the Presidential Secretariat, and today it is called the Presidential Office, but the essence of its powers has not changed at all, despite the name change. The question is: why change it and spend people’s money on these changes? After all, as the “icon” of conservatism Margaret Thatcher said: “The state has no money of its own, only taxpayers’ money.”
Conservatism advocates changes that are truly important for society and rejects the pseudo-change-making that is used by those who seek to change only their financial situation, often at someone else’s expense.
Author: Valeriy Maydanyuk
