War is the time when game rules change

Today the watershed is not only between those who are for Kyiv and those who are for the Kremlin.

Today the main trench is between those who understand that there is war and those who still cannot grasp that.

A word has a different value at different times. At some epochs, the word was of no value; then, in a different era, it becomes equal to a deed. And the responsibility for the word is the same as it is for something done.

This metamorphosis happened to Ukraine a year and a half ago.

The country lived in the frontier zone for 23 years. The same postmodernism – eclectics of styles, devaluation of convictions, and kitsch as a value in itself.

Rocker is anyone who ads some drums to a pops melody.

A political scientist is anyone who is ready to position themselves like that in TV programs.

It was the time when it was possible to sit at as many chairs as the buttocks can cover. The era when it was possible to laugh at handshaking. Principles and convictions were perceived as anachronism, reputation as something relic, and everyone who tried to be a whole person was accused of being old-fashioned, out of date.

It was the time of blurred identities and convictions, of total mimicry.

Hunger strike was not the deed of Nadiya Savchenko who lost 28 kilograms; the 72-hour longer farsce performed by Vyacheslav Kirilenko.

Everything was over a year and a half ago, when the war started because the war is always Art Nouveau.

The war is the story that says that the word is equal to the deed. When it is impossible to hide in the lacuna of irresponsibility,when one has to make decisions, when one should decide what side to be with. Doing nothing is also a choice, and the person will bear responsibility for it. And the main watershed is between those who have understood that and those who try to live the old way.

Each time when I hear the conspiracy theory that the war was generated by some dark forces which tried to bled Ukraine and Russia, I understand that the person is stuck in the past.

In that convenient past when it was a rule to accuse someone abstract in order not to quarrel with someone real, particular.

The same about abstract talks about peace which “everyone needs”.

Because during the war, the terms of peace are more important than peace per se. Because peace comes after capitulation. And those who repeat “Let’s live in peace” just try to avoid answers to very simple questions.

We are living in the era of destroying reputations. Very little is needed for that.

For example, to state that the war caused the shortening of tours as singer Iryna Bilyk did.

Or to file a suit against Ukraine to London arbitration as Ihor Kolomoyskiy did.

Because it is impossible to be a little pregnant.

Because war is the time when the rules of the game are changed. In 2013 the St George’s ribbon could be a part of Ukrainian political space, but after the annexation of the Crimea it became the marker of solidarity with the annexation.

In 2013 the pro-Russian political slogan was a part of Ukrainian political space. Now it attracts close attention of the security service. And those who claim that Kyiv “suppressed” pro-Russian activists should answer a simple question: Ukrainian army is on the territory of Russia or the Russian army in Ukraine?

The time when slogans at rallies cost the money paid to the people who came is over. Today the word is the incentive to action.

When a politician with radical image says that Ukrainian power is the agents of Putin, this person must understand how the words sound. It is not bored people forced to come who are listening to him. Among the people there may be those who were at the front and the words are offensive to them and  may make them go up the stage and fire at the anti-hero. Because for him the words are not the words of the roles distributed in advance and repeated by the actors. The words are life for them.

Words stopped to be just a sequence of sounds. They became magic, got rich with meanings, and turned into spells. It is possible to kill, to save, to call regiments for attack or to force capitulation.

Sometimes people die for them.

The whole country is divided into those who managed to understand the difference between the 2015 reality and the reality of 2013 and those who did not.

September 4, 2015

Pavlo Kazarin for The Ukrainian Pravda

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