The Demand for Silence | Yevgenia Belorusets
▻https://www.equator.org/articles/the-demand-for-silence
These latest attempts at peace talks are far from the first. Several “bad peace” agreements have already been rejected – followed by notes of satisfied righteousness in the international media. Over time, the very idea of peace has acquired a bad reputation. It is viewed as “peace by coercion”.
I have taken part in several discussions about potential peace scenarios over the past two years. Almost all of them have viewed the conflict through the lens of international law, geopolitics and the need to forcefully respond to the aggressor. In other words, to establish, in relation to Russia, the rule of “peace through strength”, and to make #Ukraine “indigestible” for Russia, as Ursula von der Leyen said this August. As if being part of another’s digestive process could ever bring any good to a country or its allies. In this war, symbolic language has served as a new Iron Curtain, concealing the reality that an alternative to a “bad peace” is nothing other than war itself, in all its forms.
This article was written mostly during August and October, at a time when it felt necessary to describe the violence that has been required to sustain armed resistance. I felt as though I were telling the world something essential – something the politicians had somehow overlooked as they discussed the prospect of the war lasting until 2030, all the while offering no new proposals.
Now I find myself thinking, far too often, that I am merely repeating something that is already well known. The detail has been noticed; people simply choose not to speak about it. At a certain point, writing about this subject even began to seem useless to me.
A friend of mine, who is now in the army, said to me this week: “I won’t let them forget this.” I dedicate this article to his words.
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Despite the threat of fines, a reported 1.5 million men have not updated their information on the database. If these figures are even remotely accurate, then an enormous number of people wish to avoid mobilisation, or do not trust the state conscription process. Figures of this scale speak for themselves. They also reveal that in this war there exists a vast territory of silence – a space for people’s opinions, doubts and decisions, which find no path to public expression, and may not even be fully formed as political positions or judgements.
But where there are no words, there are still actions: hiding, avoiding or disobeying the order to fight.
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These images [of people resisting conscription] usually circulate anonymously. Filming or publishing them could result in criminal prosecution. I am often unable to watch videos like this all the way to the end. They leave me with a feeling of limitless helplessness, in part because hardly anyone seems to acknowledge them publicly. It is as if everyone has agreed not to discuss what we are all seeing. Lately I’ve been asking myself: Can it be be that people aren’t seeing these videos? Not hearing these cries for help and pleas to spread this information widely?
Some of my friends talk about these videos in their kitchens, like people used to in the dissident era. But out in the public sphere, it is as if nothing is happening. We no longer live within the boundaries of national states. News circulates internationally, and the inability to address violations of human rights has also become an international process. It is as if our society – and international discourse as well – has fallen under a collective spell.
I even worried I was going insane, because I was constantly seeing things that, for too many other people, remained insignificant. I hear over and over again from colleagues in European cities comments like: “Now is not the time to talk about that.” The demand to remain silent about the complex dynamics of resistance to Russian aggression is something that has not been truly reflected upon. In my view, this demand has in fact become the background policy for many respected media outlets. Political activists who support Ukraine have told me too often that “if these facts become known, it will be impossible to convince the Europeans to help Ukraine”.
This line of argument acts as an obstacle to discussion, and a form of self-censorship. It helps create the illusions that make it possible to exclude whole fragments of reality, and to look away from so much of the trauma, pain and internal violence that has permeated a society engaged in a protracted war.
I have started to think that this silence gives rise to the image of a country that wants to wage war – a heroic society, united in its opinions and preferences. This is what Ukraine looks like in the campaigns of its information war, in which politicians, journalists and activists talk proudly of taking part.
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The past few months have seen a wave of clashes between civilians and conscription brigades. Veterans and demobilised soldiers often participate on the side of the civilians. In August, there were spontaneous demonstrations in the cities of Kovel and Vinnytsia; people tried to break into conscription centres and liberate those held inside. For some reason, the international news media ignored these evocative protests.
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The news of #David_Chichkan’s death destroyed a part of my world; the grief of this loss pursues me. But so do attacks on the freedom of civilians, the operation of illegal prisons, and military service contracts signed under threats of violence or through torture – all of these things tear at the fabric of society, destroying the very foundations of human dignity.
Why is the entire space of war buzzing with imposed silence? This war has created the illusion that acknowledging one kind of experience diminishes another – as if the very freedom to choose devalues the choice of joining the resistance; as if acknowledging and opposing internal violence in a society defending itself will always mean “working for the enemy”.
Silence not only fails to support Ukrainian society. It normalises and legitimises an abnormal, criminal situation. It forces people to accept that violence is natural, is to be expected, is part and parcel of society. The cry for help receives no response. And that is also a response.
