ENGRussia resorts to terrorist attacks because it is failing. A conversation about this phase of war

Russia’s war in Ukraine has entered a new phase. Despite intense fighting in the east and south of Ukraine, it is the systematic acts of terror – such as what Russia carried out in Olenivka, Vinnytsia and Kremenchuk – that had become the aggressor’s main weapon. “A terrorist’s goal is not to kill a large number of people, but to sow fear in them. [...] In terms of the current state of the war, it has entered its third phase: during the first phase, we saw attacks on Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy; during the second, the large battles in Donbas. Now we are seeing that as the Russian army stalls, the attacks on Ukraine’s peaceful cities – Vinnytsia, Odesa, Kharkiv, and other cities – are ramping up,” Tetiana Oharkova, a literary critic, says in Kult: Podcast, which she co-hosts with Volodymyr Yermolenko, a journalist and philosopher.

The Village Ukraine editor-in-chief Yaroslav Druziuk talked to Oharkova and Yermolenko about the idea of “sur-terrorism”, which seems to perfectly capture this phase of the war, the fact that hatred is a poor motivator, and the Ministry of Education’s decision to keep certain Russian writers in school curricula.

Цей текст також можна прочитати українською.

– Let’s begin with the notion of “sur-terrorism”. Tetiana, you came up with it back in 2014. Can you tell us about its origins and why it’s particularly relevant now?

TETIANA OHARKOVA: I came up with this term through my studies of literature; this ability to imagine certain events or fears seemed very important during the first phase of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine [in 2014]. If you recall, the scale of the hostilities was not that extensive back then, but still had a rather powerful effect. Exactly the effect that Russia wanted to achieve: to intimidate Kyiv – and not even just Kyiv, but the entirety of Europe.

I remember that Volodymyr and I were travelling a lot around then and had lots of meetings abroad; it was difficult to explain to our foreign friends that this wasn’t a war for Horlivka or Sloviansk [cities in eastern Ukraine], but that it also unfolded in people’s imagination. This sounded a bit absurd, but Russia used the fighting in Donbas and its ability to capture a small part of territory as an attempt to demonstrate that it was in the major leagues. It wasn’t just the military actions that mattered then, but this intimidation.

For many years we called this a “hybrid” war. But I thought that hybridity didn’t quite cover it all. Because a hybrid can be a combination of any two things. In contrast, the term “sur-terrorism” suggests clear parallels between Russia’s actions in 2014 and now, and the actions of terrorists. [Terrorists] generally lack physical resources to capture large territories, as we now see. So they’re trying to take advantage of people’s susceptibility to pressure and intimidation.

And they’re doing it quite skilfully. Just recall how surprised the entire world was by the fact that Ukraine was able to stay standing [following Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February]. Why was this the case? Because everyone was convinced that Russia had an advantage; everyone knew the numbers…

– All this talk about “the world’s second army”...

OHARKOVA: It was an image they created. They peddle fear, horror, terror, and indeed, violence, but imaginary, not real. They trade in imaginary fears. This is something they share with terrorists.

We are all afraid of terrorist attacks. Obviously less so in Ukraine, because we’ve never had one. But Europeans are really fearful of acts of terrorism. Volodymyr and I lived in western Europe, we know this from experience. Where does this fear come from? Not that many people actually die in terrorist attacks: the media often share data that indicate that more people are killed in car accidents or die from certain diseases. But it is terrorism that people are afraid of. One of the reasons is that anyone, anywhere can become its victim.

That’s exactly how Russia acts: they want to use threats and intimidation to achieve a comparable effect. And now they are increasingly using the nuclear threat to this end. This was particularly obvious back in March: the West took that threat very seriously, especially during the first months of the full-scale war, when it became a deterrence mechanism. Despite the fact that the use of nuclear weapons would be absolutely incomprehensible. The 20th century taught us that there can be no winners in a nuclear war.

– Then my next question is, what can be done about this? Russia is a terrorist state, it deliberately draws on these methods, deliberately stages attacks on Olenivka, Kremenchuk and Vinnytsia, deliberately circulates videos in which Ukrainian prisoners of war are subjected to torture. On the one hand, there is the full-scale war, which really is an unprecedented and serious test for Ukraine. On the other hand, we understand that Russia is using these acts of terrorism to project its power. How can we process this?

VOLODYMYR YERMOLENKO: I think above all we have to understand that Russians live and act according to a totally different logic. Let me pick up Tania’s thread: in the 19th and 20th centuries, the development of the Western world was grounded in the logic of wealth; wealth was seen as the main source of power, wealth as a source of productivity and creativity. The two competing theories of the 20th century – Marxism and liberalism – actually share this premise. Both of them assert that politics and economics are inextricably tied together, that economics – and thus production – is what gives rise to politics. Therefore, control over means of production is the main source of power.

Russia thinks differently. It thinks that the main source of power is not control over means of production or construction but over means of destruction. That’s what underlies Russia’s – and any other terrorist’s – ability to shock us. A terrorist would think: “I cannot outcompete you in a constructive way, so I will outcompete you in destruction.” Or: “I cannot compete with you in the economic realm, I cannot build a better society, for various reasons. But I can have power over you, because I will be the one to decide when you die.”

– That’s why you called Russia an “anti-system system”.

YERMOLENKO: Yes. First and foremost, it’s about having power over death. And actually I think that if we look back at the 20th century, the moment when the USSR ceased being a Marxist state was associated with the rise of Stalinism.

Because Stalinism began to draw on the logic of Bulgakov’s Voland: “Man is unexpectedly mortal.” That’s the logic at the heart of Stalinism. The state decides when you will die. It’s no longer something that is decided by yourself, by nature, by old age. It’s decided by the party, by the state. What the West has always feared, and continues to fear, is the encounter with this force which is toying with death. This [offhand treatment of death] manifests as unmotivated aggression, as nuclear blackmail: “You will never be able to predict when or how I will strike.” So, I think we must be prepared for Russia to act unpredictably…

– For example, deploy nuclear weapons?

YERMOLENKO: Either this, or they might once again try to terrorise Belarus, even though they seem to already have control over Belarus. Or they might continue escalating the already horrifying violence in Ukraine.

That’s their necromaniac philosophy. I think that our response must be grounded in the possibility that this philosophy might have an advantage in the short term (we might be buried under the weight of the bodies of our dead soldiers) but in the end such necrophiliac societies always lose. They lose to societies which invest in their citizens, which have the capacity for production, for creativity, and so on. We have to oppose their necrophilia with our biophilia, our love for life.

That’s why the Ukrainian resistance must be twofold. First of all, we must put up military resistance because we must trust that we can stop them; we must acknowledge that each citizen must devote some of their time to the frontlines, to donate some of their income to the army or to volunteers. Each citizen must dedicate some of their day to this aid, to these actions aimed at bringing a victory closer. There is work that must be done behind the physical frontlines, whether it’s volunteering or work on the informational front. At the same time, however, it is very important to maintain our productive and creative potential; this is what saves us and what will continue to save us.

Kult: Podcast · Що Україна дає світу?

– The Village Ukraine audience shares this belief. This interview will be read by members of the creative class, entrepreneurs and engaged citizens. How can they continue working in the present circumstances, when the enemy wants not only to destroy Ukraine as a state but to keep us constantly in fear?

YERMOLENKO: This is the usual logic of history: your flaws are the obverse of your advantages. Weakness is the obverse of strength. We have to learn to transform the fear that we’re immersed in into our strength. In fact, it can foster creativity and reflection, which will be of great interest to the rest of the world. Our artists right now are doing extremely interesting things.

I think we must all realise that right now we have to all work for our country. Regardless of whether we remained here or left. I understand that it’s difficult for people who temporarily left to imagine bringing their children back to a country which continues to be the target of missile strikes. But one must always be prepared to return; if not right now, then at least after the war is over. Otherwise, there is a serious risk that the creative class will just abandon Ukraine.

For example, if you’re a musician, there is no work in Ukraine for you right now. But you can come up with something else: fundraising concerts abroad, recording new songs, doing something online. And all along keeping in mind that eventually you will come back here. Because if we lose people now, if our creatives leave the country for good, then we won’t have that creative, constructive force that will be able to oppose Russia’s force of destruction.

OHARKOVA: The goal of Russia’s war is to make our society closely resemble the Russian one. And the goal of these relentless terrorist acts is not just to kill those people in Kremenchuk or the 53 Azov Regiment fighters in Olenivka [the prison camp where Russian forces held Ukrainian prisoners of war, including those who served in the Azov Regiment, and which the Russian forces shelled on 29 July 2022 - ed.].

Thus, they will be able to demonstrate that they are in control of this territory, these people, these minds and hearts. Their goal is to prove we are the same as them.

That’s why – despite all of the daily horrors – we must continue guarding our personal boundaries, where each of us can find their own sources of strength. This will prevent us from becoming mad with hatred and desire for revenge.

On the other hand, I can share with you my personal observations. [Last week] the list of finalists of the first PEN Ukraine competition, which we helped judge, was released. It’s a competition which awards stipends to creatives who have ended up in difficult circumstances due to the war but who want to keep up their creative practice. I was truly astonished by the insane number of applications we received. There were 214 applications for 40 places – crazy competition. The applicants ranged from 16-year-olds, schoolkids, to people over 40. Many of them wrote in their applications that it was the war that sparked their creativity. You’d think that war is only about violence, blood, and destruction, about death. But people respond in this other, creative, way too.

I think that this is indicative of a healthy societal response. Obviously, those who want to can take up arms – and we need people to do that. But others must also work to preserve the reputation of our country [as creative and productive].

– War is a unique experience and of course it would have been much better if we could all avoid this experience. But we’ve ended up with it. And, moreover, when we talk to young Ukrainian artists – directors, musicians, stand-up comedians – they often say that hatred has become some kind of motivating force or source of inspiration for them. How can we make sense of this?

OHARKOVA: On the one hand, there is hatred. But on the other hand, I was surprised by the number of applications [to PEN Ukraine] that talked about love.

To defend our families, our friends, our world, our reality. We truly are defending our definition of reality, our right to live in that reality. I think the majority of Ukrainians have no interest in inhabiting a reality dominated by this endless game of violence; though it’s more than a game now – it’s just plain violence.

There is a lot of violence in Ukraine’s history. Unfortunately, Ukrainian people often assumed the role of victims. What we want to avoid is this cult of violence that exists in Russia at the level of [interpersonal] relations, at a societal level. I think we have a different approach to culture and creativity. For example, I was surprised by the number of fantasy submissions [to PEN Ukraine]. Fantasy is about parallel realities, a sense of escape…

– This makes me think about Tolkien, who drew inspiration for Middle-earth in the trenches of WWI.

OHARKOVA: Many [of the PEN Ukraine submissions] were war diaries, but there was also a lot of imaginary world-building. And poetry! You would think war and poetry are very far from one another. But some people have written their first poetry collections because they felt the power of poetry, the importance of words. I keep returning to this example [the PEN Ukraine contest] because it’s so vivid in my mind, but I think these feelings are shared by many Ukrainians.

– What do you think about hatred as a source of inspiration?

YERMOLENKO: I don’t think that hatred is productive. Obviously, that’s the circumstances we find ourselves in now. Obviously, we have a right to hate. When someone from the outside tells us that we must make peace with Russia, to organise some procession in Rome [as proposed by the Pope] – this obviously elicits resistance and denial. We have a legitimate right to hate, no one can take it away from us. Another thing that Taras Hryhorovych [Shevchenko, a prominent Ukrainian poet from the 19th century] taught us is that we, Ukrainians, should not be afraid of being angry. This emotion – a righteous anger, like in Shevchenko’s writing – is everywhere now.

But I don’t think that hatred can be productive or creative. Only love has this capacity to create. That’s why in our work, for example, we are trying to talk not only about Russia, but first and foremost about Ukraine and Ukrainian people. About our volunteers, our military, about Ukrainian villages. It’s important to analyse Russia and someone has to do it. But that’s a cold-blooded analysis of pathology.

Creativity, art must be born of love. I once said that books are written either as declarations of love or of war. Books can be born of both love and hatred. But books born of hatred are entirely different. Dovzhenko’s "Ukraine on Fire" was written with this hatred, and I think that’s what makes it a bad work of art. Hatred can be present, but it can’t be at the centre of our creative efforts.

Conveying hatred is impossible. It is not very emphatic, though people who have a shared grief might experience it in similar ways. [In contrast,] love can be conveyed and shared, it is possible to create something that would move people in a particular way: people might cry or they might experience other emotions while watching your film or looking at your painting. But each person has their own hatred. It is private, subjective. There is a risk of ending up in a place where you’re just stewing in your own hatred, while feeling shocked that no one understands you. Because no one will ever understand your pain, it is impossible.

– You recalled Dovzhenko and WWII; now we have Mariupol, Volnovakha, Borodianka – cities that used to exist, but no longer do. How can we make sense of this trauma, a trauma that is at once physical and psychological, that exists on many different levels? There is a risk here of wallowing in self-pity, complaining that we have historically never had any luck. But there is another possibility. For example, I like Yevhen Hlibovytskyi’s argument that Ukrainians are world champions when it comes to survival.

YERMOLENKO: I think that the mistake made by many of the people who tried to analyse Ukraine’s values [prior to 24 February 2022] was to assess us from the Western perspective. For example, in the Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world, societies are seen to transition from the values of survival to self-expression or self-fulfilment. I think this might apply to a certain kind of society, but it turned out to be more or less irrelevant to us right now. Turns out that Ukrainians don’t really prioritise survival and safety. If we were all so concerned about [those values], 35 million Ukrainians would be abroad now, not eight.

– So the value of freedom prevails?

YERMOLENKO: I think so, yes. There is something deeper, more profound than this juxtaposition of survival and self-fulfilment. Some values are more profound: fraternity, unity of a community, responsibility – in particular, responsibility for your community, not just for yourself as an individual.

It also turned out that Ukrainians can be creative even when fundamental safety has been taken away from them. So this somewhat simplified understanding of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (even though Maslow’s views are often somewhat misrepresented here) turned out to be irrelevant. Turns out that something very powerful can arise from the void created by lack of safety and security: desire for freedom, for values, ideas that are lofty or great. Because there’s this moment when you realise that life can just be taken away from you; it’s as though you’re teetering at the threshold of the very meaning of life.

Another thing that’s crucial about Ukraine and that is impossible to comprehend for people like us, right-brained people, who work with texts: the middle class doesn’t define the entire society…

– Well, and the notion of “middle class” can have a lot of different meanings…

YERMOLENKO: Yes, but I would say that we used to have a somewhat Western-influenced interpretation of it: we live in a post-industrial economy, white-collar workers are the middle class, and it’s a good thing if they form the basis of the society. But if they were indeed the basis of Ukrainian society, we would never have had Maidan.

I think that what we’re calling a middle class is actually the good old kurkulism [a kurkul is a (supposedly) rich peasant, targeted during Soviet collectivisation, especially in Ukraine - ed.], in a good sense of the word, which implies being a good master – of your home, your business, your village, and so on. A kurkul is someone who has a capacity to live with dignity, to make ends meet, to find sources of income.

And most importantly, a kurkul has “good screws” in their head, as Tania’s father, Anatolii Oharkov, likes to say. “An ability to make a bullet out of shit” – I like this definition. Ukrainians can make something out of nothing, they’re capable of making anything with their own two hands. I think that’s exactly why we have people in the military, middle-ranking officers who are capable of making their own decisions and being flexible.

It’s not like that in the West. If your toilet is clogged, you call a plumber and pay them for their work. This division of labour is, on the one hand, good, because you can specialise in one particular field and succeed in it; on the other hand, however, it’s not so good because when plague comes, you suddenly become totally useless because you can only do one thing. Ukrainian people are jacks of all trades – many of us are like that. Maybe that’s why we can keep fighting.

I think now is the time to rethink our attitude towards Ukrainian society as a whole. In the past, we used to perceive Ukraine as a lesser Russia. Thank god, we’re starting to move away from that. Though unfortunately not everywhere. Or we can look at Ukraine as a lesser Europe. But we have many things that Europeans lack. And maybe those things will become the foundation for our victory.

– When you were a guest on The New York Times’ Ezra Klein show, you said that Ukraine was “Europe’s United States of America” and emphasised the similarity between Ukrainians and Americans in terms of their ability to quickly mobilise, in every sense of the word. Tetiana, what would you say we have learned about Ukrainian society since the beginning of the full-scale war?

OHARKOVA: I agree with Volodymyr, but can add a few things from a woman’s point of view. Ukrainian women are continuing to take care of their families, they are actively joining the volunteer movement, taking up arms – even in these extremely stressful circumstances. I know many women who have ended up in the armed forces without any military experience, via the volunteering initiatives they joined.

It’s true that in contrast to this postindustrial, highly specialised society where everyone has their own specialism or territory, the boundaries of which they do not cross, Ukrainian society is highly adaptable. People learn quickly, they’re capable of doing more than what they have studied or trained to do. This is even the case in politics: Zelensky was elected as the President of Ukraine three years ago as someone completely devoid of any political experience. This created huge risks for the country (and we were not among the people who had high hopes about Zelensky’s election) but we have to admit that he was able to learn very quickly. And he is continuing to learn even now.

We might look like a bunch of amateurs because social advancement works completely differently in Ukraine; people in leading positions – in business, in education, and generally in society – tend to be a lot younger here. Ukrainian society generally values young people more than the Western ones do. “Social lifts” operate [differently].

Just the other week we were discussing Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and everyone was absolutely astonished by this woman’s age…

– She’s eighty-two years old.

OHARKOVA: And she only got into politics well after she turned 40. This is unthinkable for us, everything happens much quicker in Ukraine.

– Yaroslav Hrytsak had this insight: it’s not just Zelensky himself, but his entire team – they’re all 30–40 years old; it’s the first time they came to hold positions of power. Compare this with Russia, which is governed by practically ancient politicians.

OHARKOVA: Yes, that’s true, but it’s about more than politics. Ukrainian business is also quite young: people in their 20s and 30s work in positions that would rarely be entrusted to someone so young in Europe. I’ve always been impressed by how many young people are studying in the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School. The gerontocracy that prevails in Europe and – in a bad sense – in Russia, is not common here. Of course some people might say that this means we have an immature society, that it has not been polished over the course of many years. But it’s our advantage in this war: people are learning quickly, both men who can make a bullet out of shit and women who volunteer to organise logistical and supply systems and get to grips with collimators.

For example, Lesia Lytvynova who ended up in a platoon of sappers. She is a director [of the Svoi charitable foundation] who started volunteering during Maidan, then she got involved in some complicated stuff around palliative care. You would think she has absolutely nothing to do with explosives. But within a month or two she distinguished herself as a sapper, too.

When I tell stories like hers abroad, people are really shocked, it’s very difficult for them to imagine such audacious, almost reckless career changes. I would call this plasticity, a Ukrainian sort of flexibility and plasticity. Maybe it’s related to survival, because we were forced to take care of our own survival over the course of many years. But it’s also related to creativity. So when we talk about a value system which juxtaposes freedom and safety, I think this is very different in the Ukrainian context. [Ukrainians] demonstrate that these values can be combined.

– There is an interesting idea that Russia’s war against Ukraine feels so unprecedented because it is the first war against a functioning democracy on this scale. Ukraine is therefore being attacked precisely because of its democratic foundation and horizontal distribution of power. Would you agree with that?

OHARKOVA: We have a political culture that’s totally different from Russia’s. We can call it democracy, but the most crucial element of Ukrainian society is our ability to quickly and effectively forge horizontal connections. We do not need to wait for official decrees, for special institutions to be created – we just act.

This mistrust towards institutions and the state more broadly used to be quite problematic. For years after 2014, for example, we were seeing volunteers step in where the state was absent. That’s how it has always been historically: we did not have a state of our own, so the state was always something external, something that would take things away from you. But oddly enough, this turned out to be a rather effective model at the beginning of this war. We were able to join our forces despite everything that was going on, we were able to act effectively [together].

– And we can see this clearly in the Ukrainian army, too: the military are not just relying on orders from above, they are much more flexible. My last question is about the announcement the Ministry of Education made today regarding changes in the school curriculum. The Ministry of Education decided to keep the works by authors “whose work was closely related to Ukraine”, such as [Nikolai] Gogol and [Mikhail] Bulgakov, the author of The White Guard, in the curriculum. There is an active, ongoing conversation about the place for Russian literature in Ukraine, which you cover extensively in your podcast, Kult. What do you think about the Ministry of Education’s decision?

YERMOLENKO: I think that we have to know Russian literature. In a way, we have to be its conscience. Because neither Russian imperialists, nor Russian liberals have an institution that would be able to analyse and process all of it. Even their experts on Russian literature aren’t capable of that.

I don’t know what the best way to do it is, whether this should happen in schools or universities. But I think that some Russian texts should be included in World Literature curriculum and analysed from the standpoint of the critique of Russian colonialism and imperialism.

– To once again quote from Yaroslav Hrytsak: he had this idea that we can keep Russian books in our libraries, but mark them with a special sticker – “Toxic material”.

YERMOLENKO: Yes, “Harmful for your health”, “Can cause lung cancer”. [he laughs] In truth, I don’t know how prepared our schools are to handle this; quite possibly rather unprepared. Teachers have to develop an entirely new perspective. Maybe this should be done over time.

We are always complaining that we don’t have adequate, expert understanding of Russia. Turns out that our understanding of Russia is very indirect, mediated. Yet we need to know our enemy.

I think that Ukrainians have to write books about Russian literature in English, French, and German, analysing those texts like Edward Said analysed French and English literature [from the perspective of their colonial and imperial roots and motives]. So far, there are no books like that on the market. Polish author Ewa Thompson has written one; there are some books by people from Russia. Shouldn’t Ukrainians have a say in this? I believe they should. Do we have the ability to say something about this at the appropriate level? Not quite yet, I think.

Turning a blind eye to something is never a solution, only sight – and critical sight – can save us. Maybe this should happen in universities, not schools.

OHARKOVA: I’m also opposed to banning something for the sake of bans. If we’re talking about school, a very simple mechanism is at play there: anything that’s banned is interesting. But of course [leaving Russian authors in school curricula] will require appropriate contextualisation. If [Russian literature] remains [in school curricula], we have to properly contextualise it.

I would also emphasise that Russia’s failures in the war against Ukraine, in particular during the war’s first phase, resulted from the fact that the Russians had no idea about how we live. They never read Ukrainian literature, they didn’t know how Ukrainian society functions, they had no clue about how anything works here. But we’re still going to have to deal with them, or at least with whatever they leave behind after this war is over. You have to know your enemy in order to defeat them.

That’s why simply banning [Russian literature] would create an air of danger, of something forbidden. Especially if we’re talking about Gogol and Bulgakov, whose books are usually read by teenagers, not primary schoolers. Maybe if kids read Pushkin [one of the most prominent – and widely studied – Russian poets credited with being one of the creators of Russian literature - ed.] in first grade, they won’t get the relevant political context and won’t be aware of his role as the poet of Russian statehood. But I think many parents will agree with me that if you ban teenagers from doing something, a generation later there will be pushback. Like what we saw recently with young people who had never lived in the USSR somehow being nostalgic about it.

But of course, any reading [of Russian literature] has to be critical and Ukraine-centric. We have to bear in mind that there shouldn’t be too many of those books. Russian literature has to be studied on par with other foreign literatures, English literature for instance. We have to also bear in mind that the curriculum isn’t limitless and there are very few kids who actually read everything that’s on it. So each Russian author takes up the space that could be taken by a Ukrainian or a European one.

– There was indeed a problem of proportion: World Literature curriculum contained many Russian authors and disproportionately few other foreign writers.

OHARKOVA: This [curriculum] was inherited from the Soviet times, and we have to move away from it. But we shouldn’t go to the other extreme and risk making [the Russian texts] more attractive by banning them.

– How do you talk about this with your children?

OHARKOVA: We have a child who will soon turn 14, a reading child. There wasn’t a single Russian author in their curriculum: maybe it was the school’s decision. They did study Vasil Bykau, a Belarusian writer, when they were studying war literature. They don’t have Russian language lessons, either; Russian literature is not a threat for them.

I can’t say that they are particularly interested in or passionate about it. So I don’t think it’s such a huge issue.