The pulsation of the present day

Originally appeared @Krytyka

By Maksym Gon

But I don't rule out that something else should come to replace being in the captivity of collective trauma. Perhaps it's a kind of symbiosis reflecting that we, despite Western politicians' expectations and the Russian dictator's expectations, did not capitulate in the first days of the February offensive. Pride for the hundreds of thousands who came to the military enlistment offices. They didn't hide. Those who did and continue to do everything to give Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation a chance for the future.

In my youth, when I was just starting my scientific studies, my father insisted, "Son, read dictionaries, work with them." And I obediently read and worked. Today, with war filling our reality, I thought about how it is one of those terms that has come to life, filled with realistic meaning. If concepts like "liberalism," "apartheid," "Nazism," or other "-isms" mainly belong to theoretical knowledge with hundreds of definitions, it has ceased to be just a category from the glossary since the beginning of the full-scale war. It has turned into a mercilessly concise word that defines the present.

They buried an unknown soldier a few months ago in the city where I live. They never identified him, couldn't find any relatives. They buried the poor hero without the chance that someday his mother would cry at his resting place or his relatives would pay their respects.

This event deeply troubled my soul. I am one of those who knows what Nazism is, and every year, without the government's call, I went to the graves of the fallen soldiers. Especially the unknown ones. These visits to the memorial graves are, understandably, a result of education and understanding of history. During a vacation, my wife, my brother's family, and I went to visit our parents' graves. Before heading to the cemetery, we made it a point to visit that same unknown soldier.

For me, he's not just a symbol of "something." He's from the "case" in which I find myself now, in which I am directly involved. He's not from a book, not from memory. He's from reality — not just my reality or the reality of my loved ones. Now it's our shared reality of all those who have Ukrainian citizenship or sympathize with and help Ukraine.

Among the hundreds and thousands of slogans found in philosophical or historical thesauri, many go unnoticed by us. We don't use them in our everyday lives or incorporate them into the texts we write. However, I am confident that the term "war" automatically evokes and will continue to evoke images in our consciousness of the tragedy we are experiencing. Those three letters unite us, diverse people with varied values and lifestyles, united by the fact that we are all traumatized by war. Bound by it. More than ever, we are consolidated through pain, both individual and collective... Something needs to be done about it, and it needs to be done now. At the same time, it is clear that the Ukrainian version of combat syndrome will not leave us in peace for many years, even decades after the war ends.

I think about what kind of "pills" for coping with this shocking reality we need today. This question corners me and I don't have answers to it. Experience is required for this, and more precisely, thoughtful experience. Meanwhile, today's Ukrainian society, thankfully, still lacks the skills to comprehend the full-scale realities of war, whether on the front lines, in the near-front areas, or in the rear.

I assume we will be able to more or less accurately outline the "parameters" of the response only when the war ends; when historians, sociologists, psychologists, and experts from other scientific realms formulate survival strategies in this war, not in abstract ones that happened somewhere far away, not with us; when writers and artists portray these experiences in works and, surpassing scientists, present them in texts, canvases, sounds, or other artistic forms.

Or perhaps we should seek answers in the past, in the experiences of the past century? What about even earlier?

It's possible that we should, but such a path, in my opinion, is quite precarious. It's valid when it comes to the Ukrainian people's inclination toward independence, political sovereignty, or studying the lessons of history (unfortunately, it's increasingly doubtful whether humanity pays attention to them at all).

I am aware that throughout history, Ukraine has fought against imperial encroachments more than once. Nevertheless, this war is special for us because we are participants in it. And it's a war in which both sides employ the tremendous scientific advancements of previous decades in the "art" of killing.

Actually, it has always been this way. Those who once wielded a sword used intellectual achievements, let's say, in metalworking, and those who shot from muskets employed the scientific knowledge of the time in the realm of taking life. This logical chain can be extended.

But the technologies used in this war by both the aggressor and us — those who defend the right to our own existence — now remove present battles from all possible previous contexts. In a time when thermal imagers and night vision devices have become commonplace, when surveillance is conducted from drones, when the sky is traversed not only by planes and helicopters but also by UAVs, it's futile for a person to hope that camouflage or well-concealed bunkers offer even a slight chance of survival. Guided aerial bombs, damned enemy drones, and life-saving "game changers," in my opinion, have drawn a dotted line in time. Now, the past and the present are united only by the concept of "military history."

***

What do people engaged in intellectual work do during war? Are they fulfilling a civic duty? Undoubtedly, yes. It was one of the first impulses that led me to the military enlistment office. Later, being here, in Donbas, where I am writing these lines, I realized that I am defending my moral right to speak out loud in the future, to address student classrooms, to recite rhymes and texts, and to evoke images from written books and scripts of conceived films. During war, one can comprehend what is usually almost impossible to grasp.

I think intellectuals face a tough time in war, especially writers. They, as it seems to me, are much more refined than myself and most historian-politicians, especially those who brandished swords in all directions, confidently proclaiming the "unadulterated truth." Those who couldn't — and, in fact, never wanted to — go beyond the field of practicality.

How do creators of images feel in war? I can't even imagine... Most likely, they are in fierce anger, impulsively or, conversely, soberly and methodically giving birth to images of our collective pain and heroism, which will be embraced in texts or other artistic forms later. Those images will unite our children and grandchildren, their children and grandchildren...

***

I might be mistaken, but the only "formula" for surviving a catastrophe is to tell yourself: I have to, I must, there's no other way.

I am a university lecturer and de facto a history teacher for adult children. And history teachers are destined to talk about war. There's no escaping that...

I recall the memories of Khaya Musman, a former resident of Rivne, who, among other things, talked about the school of the 1930s where she studied. Fondly remembering her teachers, she wrote about a history teacher something like this: "We, his students, participated in the Punic Wars along with him and passionately argued to hoarseness about whether Napoleon was a hero."

For me, it was a bit different. While teaching history, neither in school nor in college did I ever delve into the details of wars. Instead, I tried to bypass such plots, only outlining, so to speak, the canvas. I am sure those I taught would confirm this. Usually, I concluded my monologue about a particular war in a similar way, naming books where one could read more about military history, battle narratives, army maneuvers, and so on.

I remembered Khaya Musman and my own teaching when, in a moment of reflection, I sought a starting point to capture my thoughts about the war I became a part of. I fervently tried to escape war in classrooms, yet it still caught up with me, if only in a different space and time. Not just me, but all of us: those dearest to me, all those united by the desire to defend the ideals and values we uphold against imperial encroachments.

I believe intellectuals in war are inclined to make sense of what's happening from two perspectives: as representatives of their own profession and as newcomers to a just-acquired reality. Changing the "suit" doesn't give a chance to bid farewell to oneself. The green uniform worn by everyone in the Armed Forces of Ukraine doesn't mean that your "self" stayed at home or at your workplace. It's here, in Donbas, where I have been for fifteen months. It's right beside me, inside me. As one of my comrades says, higher education is a sentence...

The extreme situation we all find ourselves in is a time of self-discovery above all else. It's a kind of synchronizer of what you knew and didn't know about yourself, imagined and didn't imagine. In the situation of war, I had to confess to myself that, on the one hand, I wouldn't be afraid to be here, but on the other hand, there are times when I still feel frightful.

When you realize you're not a hero, that your hands tremble with fear, it's not the most pleasant internal revelation. And indeed, they did tremble, more than once: when you heard the beginning of gunfire, the rattle of automatic weapons; when suddenly in the midst of summer quiet "in nature," you heard a burst of machine-gun fire; when you first heard the whistle of a projectile and when you heard what is now somehow called an "arrival," instead of the usual, ordinary word "explosion." It's frightening when the names of the deceased become impersonal figures, when the plaque attached to the car windshield reads "200" instead of Taras or Mykola.

Yet, even more frightening is realizing your own powerlessness. It's the powerlessness to protect your loved ones who are there — in the rear — under the attacks of hated drones and rockets. In those moments, you begin to experience hate on an even larger scale.

You hate not only because this "deployment" is the longest in terms of time among the many trips before the war. You hate also because you understand that if you stayed at home, you wouldn't have a chance to shield your loved ones from risk either. You can't catch a drone or a rocket with a butterfly net, you can't shoot them down... You hate because you hear the question from your long-grown daughter: "When will all this end?" It's a question raised by everyone — some out loud, some in their thoughts. It's a question that probably defines the main tone of our collective "self" today. Despite what you do to finally bring this misery to an end, the war goes on and on…

It taught us, and me in particular, not just to hate, but to hate sincerely, uncontrollably, consistently, and truly (perhaps psychologists will say that it's a good way to purge inner pain)... Sometimes I start to feel sorry for Muscovites: those who are wounded, lost a limb to a mine (it hurts a lot; oh, how it hurts); torn apart by a shell, someone real or imaginary... And then I pull myself together and don't allow myself such frivolities: they don't pity us soldiers, nor the mothers hiding their sons and daughters, nor the children whose parents are ruthlessly killed. They don't pity the children...

Everyone who managed to pull the trigger of a weapon, or transit information about us on the radio, is a killer. This includes the one who brought shells to the front line, and even the one who cooked soup for those who, having satisfied their physiological needs, fired again. They are all — from stormtroopers to artillerymen, from miners to drivers, and so on — cogs in the machinery of violence and crime. They are the executioners of the 21st century, obscurantists, intoxicated by the lure of the "Russian world." And the only feeling one can have towards its representatives here, on the territories of Ukraine in the conditions of war, is hatred…

At first, counting the days and weeks of the war, you later get used to the military routine. Well, you don't exactly get used to it, but you come to realize that the end to all of this won't come tomorrow or the day after. And you try to prevent the thought of those nearly five hundred days of service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine from taking root in your consciousness with hints of lament. Because who knows how many more days, weeks, and months are ahead. Or, God forbid, years...

Here, you get to know yourself. The war prompted me to become "bloodthirsty." I keep an eye on the enemy's casualty statistics released by the General Staff, and I joyfully welcome the ever-increasing statistics. It's me — the unknown self, even to myself, the one I didn't know and didn't even suspect existed. I eagerly await the enemy count, discovering that the demise of those who fiercely hate us have reached the two hundred thousand mark. I couldn't imagine silently "blessing" each of our rockets flying overhead, wishing it not just to hit the target but to destroy as many people as possible, namely those who, by appearing on Ukrainian soil with weapons in hand, automatically became our bitter enemies.

Against the backdrop of my "bloodthirstiness," I pondered why Pavlo Chubynsky used the word "ворог" (enemy) in a wonderfully tender form? Why "вороженьки" (little enemies)? Just because it rhymed for him? Or does it hide something I still can't fathom? Is it a Ukrainian version of Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy, focused on, if I may say so, a sublime Christian suffix? Or maybe not? Perhaps the author was referring to a lenient designation for those who don't understand what they're doing?

If I had to suggest to those I taught to write an essay on the topic "I'm at war" or something similar, I would take as a starting point that the struggle in its most acute form is the optimal precondition for self-reflection. As it turns out, it's impossible when watching a movie or reading a fictional text. It's there, near the screen, that everyone imagines themselves as a hero on the side of good. In the cinema or in the comfort of your own chair, you see yourself as strong and brave. And only occasionally, reflecting on the screen or the text, do you ask yourself: Am I capable of such things? Most often, the answer is different: you just don't dare to extrapolate the extreme onto yourself; you don't provoke yourself with such thoughts, so you won't have to admit that it's not a "fact" at all.

I think about the fact that, somehow, it will be necessary to get rid of anger and hatred. Not today, not now. Later. It needs to be done for me and not only for me. Because anger is not a creative principle, so, somehow, everyone will have to renounce fury. Living and creating with such inner sorrow is probably impossible.

I don't know what this path will be like. But I don't rule out that something else should come to replace being in the captivity of collective trauma (which has been there for a long time and will continue for some time). Perhaps it's a kind of symbiosis reflecting that we, despite Western politicians' expectations and the Russian dictator's expectations, did not capitulate in the first days of the February offensive. Pride for the hundreds of thousands who came to the military enlistment offices. They didn't hide. Those who did and continue to do everything to give Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation a chance for the future.

***

I am confident that an important place in the perception of our collective "self" will be occupied by the cult of heroes. Their new pantheon has been forming for a long time, since the so-called ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation). At the same time, over the course of about five thousand days of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war, the number of soldiers and officers, partisans who stand out for their deeds, has significantly increased.

Ukraine is already creating a new commemorative policy, naming streets of cities and villages after the fallen, installing memorial plaques on some of them, erecting obelisks, and so on. And this is just the beginning.

I think the primary indication of the completion of the process of proper honoring of heroes will occur when they take their place in school textbooks. Because a history textbook is the best way to shape collective memory and constant remembrance.

In the new worldview, slowly moving away from fury as a marker of the collective "self," the significant element will be the pathos of suffering. It can't be otherwise because they truly have suffered. Both here on the front lines, on the near-front territories, and especially in the temporarily occupied areas.

Therefore, contemplating reality and the future, reflecting on how the dream of a happy "tomorrow" feeds the psycho-emotional space of the present day, I see in the future a collective trauma with elements of suffering and controlled fury, combined with a cult of heroism.

I share these thoughts with my brother-in-arms Andriy. And he responds to me: "The army will not be a carrier of anger; by the end of the war, it will tire of it." Maybe so, I think to myself. I'm not sure about it, but it's not worth ruling out such a perspective. I'll come back to the thought about the anger of the Armed Forces of Ukraine a bit later.

What is happening prompts reflection on statements that teachers, educators, and authors of scientific texts have traditionally exploited. One of the most challenging questions for me, a supporter of the theory of elites, is to answer who truly drives what historical processes signify. Having long abandoned the notion of the creativity of "masses," I have often asserted in classrooms that it ingeniously destroys, restrains, inhibits, and requires guides.

I managed to "turn" students in the interpretation of certain events to show them the need for a certain society in elites. However, not wanting to impose my beliefs on the youth but rather encouraging them to think, I approached this question differently; we jointly contemplated that "visionaries" are doomed to failure without the support of the "public," the "lower strata."

I look at those who are around me and realize there is no elite in the classical scientific understanding of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. (I'm not talking about the military elite here. It undoubtedly exists, but that's not my point.) The main part of the army, at least the one I see, consists of people from villages. Hardworking guys who earned a living on the land. Also, those who went abroad to work: builders, long-haul truckers, and so on. In short, working-class people. There's a shortage of intellectuals. Moreover, people with higher education in our battalion are not too many. I think no more than twenty percent. Maybe even less. However it may be, all of us who sat behind university desks are far from being elite. Rather, we are like laborers who wore jackets and worked not just under the open sky but in offices or other indoor spaces behind work desks or lecterns.

So here's my "theoretical" twister. It turns out that the theory of elites (at least when it comes to war) hits a snag. Besides those in the Armed Forces, there are also volunteers, tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of individuals who donate and thus contribute to the desired common denominator. They are the driving force (if such a concept can rightfully be applied to the realities) of the war, the modern Ukrainian present.

All of them, together with those I identify as passive observers, are waiting for the war to end. It's logical: the daily casualties among civilians and soldiers prompt these thoughts to swarm in the mind on their own. And the end of the war will mean demobilization, the return home of hundreds of thousands of people in pixelated uniforms. Against this apparent prospect, I will return to the idea of the "creativity of the masses," the war-weary military.

I think those who are now in the Armed Forces, especially those directly involved in combat, will form an environment that will demand "something" from the authorities. I speculate that this will not be about (or not only about) projects of social support but about demands for changes in society.

The military environment incessantly discusses what is happening, as they say, "back home." News of the officials' fraud, various abuses, corruption, embezzlement of humanitarian aid, and so on — these are topics that are always on everyone's mind. Sometimes you can hear the question: "What are we fighting for if such things are going on?"

Of course, those who formulate these thoughts well know who our external enemy is. However, people who are at war have their own understanding of what should be happening where the sounds of exploding shells aren't heard. Therefore, it's not unreasonable to consider that sooner or later, soldiers and officers will begin to look for an internal enemy. It won't be just about those who have betrayed or continue to betray the location of strategic objects or other vital information to the enemy. Not just about collaborators.

I am confident that after demobilization, those who have fought will become promoters of the necessary changes for all of us. They will not only send local government officials and bureaucrats who forget their duty to serve society to the trash bin. They will formulate challenging questions for higher-level authorities. They will help overcome corruption and "clean up" the judicial system. Recognizing their experience and determination, whoever their initiative is directed towards, no matter how we describe it in words, is someone not to be envied.

How to survive the catastrophe of war? After who-knows-how-many consecutive night shifts, I contemplate this in Donbas after smoking and observing the numerous members of the bird kingdom that have gathered around the bowl where dogs and cats, whom we have tamed, "dine." I admit, the mornings in Donbas are beautiful: incredibly brisk, with gray clouds I had never seen before hovering over the Siverskyi Donets (somewhere around the fourth or fifth morning, they can be seen for hundreds of meters, maybe even kilometers above it and the numerous lakes formed by this river). Storks fly, and innumerable pheasants "speak" in our current village. And in my mind, there's one answer to the question: constantly telling oneself "I must," "I need to."

We, soldiers, say "must" here on the front, and someone else has to say "must" to himself wherever he is—whether deep in the rear or in temporarily occupied territories. Everywhere, "must" is a verb, and therefore, it implies and reflects action. It's also an internal order to live and fight for those who can. Otherwise, you'll not only have to speak Russian (I admit, I am proficient in it at a decent level; however, like hundreds of thousands, millions of Ukrainians, I prefer to choose the language in which I communicate) but also, and no less importantly, become a victim of Putin's madness imposed by the state machine and the "ideals" professed by today's Russian elite and all those whose imperialistic demands this gang of fanatical criminals managed to satisfy.

I ask myself what the "ordinary people," these little Putin-worshippers, Russophones who came to kill us, are doing here? Why are they convinced that we deserve to die?

In such moments, two "I's" argue within me. One says that I know the answers to these questions and juggles thoughts about imperial thinking, messianism, arrogance, the stupidity of propaganda victims, and so on. At the same time, the other does not understand any of it and refuses to understand. Because, I tell myself, they are people. And in a circle: deceived victims-killers? Or maybe not? Perhaps willing killers-enthusiasts? ... And such is the quintessence of frequent conversations with my brother about what is happening: They are inhuman...

How do we survive a catastrophe? I'll answer like this: try to do at least something from what was familiar before the war. As much as possible. At least a little.

I can't help but recall a familiar picture of a soldier lying in a trench he dug himself, reading a book by Timothy Snyder. The photo, likely taken from a drone, captured his bridge to the past: the soldier reading, lying on his back, under the open sky, and doing what he was accustomed to in "those" pre-war days.

I try to read as well. As much as I can find a book, as much as time allows amid the endless shifts.

That's how it should be done here on the front. That's how it should be done wherever we are. Because it's that link to "yesterday." A link to the past that, God willing, will bear fruit tomorrow...

Maksym Gon
Historian, political scientist
Rivne, Ukraine
Doctor of Political Science, Professor in the Department of World History at Rivne State University of the Humanities. Since March 2022, he has been serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Translated by Yulia Lyubka and Kate Tsurkan.

The "War Is… Ukrainian Writers on Living Through Catastrophe" essay project is created with the support of Ukrainian Jewish Encounter (UJE), a Canadian charitable non-profit organization.

The essays that are part of the “War Is…” media project held in cooperation with Ukraine’s Krytyka magazine are available here.