Phoenix from the Ashes

by Markiyan Prokhasko

Translated from the Ukrainian by Uilleam Blacker

One episode from the Russian war against Georgia particularly stuck in my mind. When the Russian soldiers captured a military base, one of them said: ‘Oh, look, they even have computers here!’ The invaders then furiously began to smash everything up. Even back then, we recalled the old stories from the mid-20th century. When the Russians entered Frankivsk, they destroyed the city cemetery together simply because of its stone headstones and sculptures. When the invasion began on 24 February 2022, I was struck by how angry the Russians were when they saw the asphalted roads in our northern villages. And once again I understood that, because they are unable to live like others, they want others to live like them. This is the essence of the ‘Russian world’. It is the justification for their holy war and for the murder of children: how dare they live better than us? Why don’t they want to ‘return to their native shores’? Russia is a bully, an abuser. As a Chechen leader said in an interview in the 1990s, Russia always chooses a weaker victim and destroys that victim with ostentatious cruelty in order to inspire terror. Isn’t that the behaviour of a bully?

At the same time, the Russians, as we have seen so many times, want to bring the whole world to its knees. They consider themselves the greatest of nations. They call the Americans pindosy, an insult that implies homosexuality. They call Europe ‘Gayrope’. All my friends and relatives, pretty much without exception, try to avoid Russians when they holiday in Europe. And yet they are almost inescapable. We are always surprised by the Russians’ lack of knowledge of other languages, their rowdy, drunken behaviour, their rudeness and insolence, their dislike for everything European. We speak Russian, so we understand their comments – like ‘what’s the point of visiting Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, there’s nothing to see there’. Not only that, but the cathedral’s ‘proportions are all wrong anyway’.

So why do Russians travel to Europe, if the whole place seems to them to be anti-Russian, stupid and evil? Why do they buy European cars and American computers and smartphones? This is hard enough for Ukrainians to understand, and even harder to explain to our western neighbours. But I’ll try. Russians like to escape from the cold, dirt and harshness of their homeland. The often buy real estate in Europe and live in the West. The children of rich Russians study at western universities. At the same time, Russians want to bring the ‘Russian world’ to Europe or to America. There’s a joke about Russians in Latvia during the Soviet period: ‘Riga’s a beautiful city, just a shame there are so many Latvians in it.’

The Russians like western cities, resorts, cafes, technology, food. But they don’t like the fact that all of this belongs to non-Russians. The ‘problem’ in the West are the people. The people that live in these countries but are not Russians. When abroad, Russians don’t like to integrate, they stick together. Anything foreign is just too strange.

This is where the contradictions of Russian propaganda come from. Now, during Russia’s war with Ukraine, this is very apparent. The Russians say (and I believe them) that they love Ukrainians with all their hearts. But, when you tell them you are Ukrainian, they think you are either being aggressive or that you’ve been brainwashed. A proper Ukrainian should say that he is Russian, just a slightly worse type of Russian than his ‘older brother’, a Little Russian (and that means not only a resident of ‘Little Russia’, but also someone who is in some sense smaller or lesser than a ‘Great Russian’). Russians love Ukrainians, but only those Ukrainians who in no way differ from Russians. The maximum they can allow us are certain ‘safe ethnic differences’ that can be laughed at and which don’t represent a threat to Russia: lovely folk songs, traditional dress, salo [traditional Ukrainian cured pork fat]. All the rest – a distinctive Ukrainian literature and culture, or – God forbid – a political identity – all that is the result of Nazism, fascism, Banderism, drug addiction and so on. I’m sure that, if the Russians managed to swallow up and assimilate Ukraine, they will burp heartily and set about ‘correcting historical injustice’ in other parts of Europe: The Baltic states are basically Russia. Poland was in the Empire, after all, the Balkans – that’s basically all brotherly Yugoslavia, Hungary was part of the Warsaw Pact, Germany was conquered in the Great Patriotic War, don’t forget that Greece is Orthodox, and as for Italy – well, we all know that Moscow is the ‘Third Rome.’ The Russians, however, consider the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ to be the real enemy. Why? Because there the principle of ‘might is right’ just won’t wash. There’s nothing left to do but shake your fist like some medieval warrior outside a city wall. Hence statements along the lines of those made by Russian propagandist Dmitry Kiselev: ‘Russia is the only country in the word that could turn the USA into radioactive dust!’

Russians can’t understand that the quality of life and technological advances of the West arise from the nature of the West itself. They cannot understand the fact that the West lives well because it lives according to its values: good organisation, hard work, valuing intellect, appealing to tradition, fair judicial systems, business development opportunities for all (and not just for criminals, bureaucrats and feudal oligarchs).

For these reasons, Russians are offended by the West: because it lives so undeservingly well. Gayrope with all its pindosy lives too well. How come? And why does everyone speak all these foreign languages instead Russian? Europe long ago introduced Russian in public transport, museums and other places, because Russians simply don’t know any other languages.

After university, I was on a programme in Bavaria, Germany. There, I met a Russian. He was originally from Kazakhstan and had German roots, and so had been given the opportunity to emigrate to Germany many years ago. He likes German roads and the fact that in Germany the welfare system provides free or very cheap clothing. But he laughs at the fact that even after all these years he still hasn’t learned German. ‘I think all the Germans will learn Russian before I learn German,’ he laughs. I wouldn’t say he was a bad person. They, the Russians, are the kindest people in the world. They really believe this. They’ll go to great lengths to persuade you of it. 

We are neighbours, and so we have many connections. We might have parents, siblings, classmates, colleagues in Russia. A girl I follow on Twitter wrote in the first days of the war that she’d been orphaned. No, her father had not been killed. He is in Russia and had told her that the Russians were saving her from Nazism. During those days, many of us tried to inform our Russian acquaintances about what was happening. But their answers were cloned, like agent Smith in the Matrix. They all tried to calm us down, they told us to put it up with it for a while, they were coming to save us.

A poet from Moscow whom I tried to talk to about all this asked me not to do any ‘stupid Nazi stuff’ before the Russians manage to save me. When they do, everything will be fine. Maybe he was worried that I would fall so powerfully under the spell of the Nazis that the Russian liberators would have to liquidate me as a collaborator. Well, a collaborator is exactly what I am. I’m Ukrainian. And that, in itself, enrages the Russians. They are convinced, and try to convince me, that we are one nation. You just have to put up with some pain and then the differences between us will disappear.

They always use their supposed diversity, the idea that Russia contains so many different nationalities, as a cover story. This is entirely disingenuous: in fact, they erase languages and history, force minorities to assimilate, engineer famines and start wars. We’ve seen it all under the USSR.

To use a cliché that’s very popular these days, Russia has now crossed a red line. Russia itself has now shaken the dust of those fairy tales bout ‘brotherly nations’ from those Ukrainians who still felt some sort of loyalty to ordinary Russians. They are burning our cities, but together with those cities they are burning their own lies about friendship. In the fire of war, the whole world can see the true face, bared teeth and all, of Russia. Ukraine is also burning in that war. But Russia is losing because its lies are disintegrating. And without lies Russia does not exist. By contrast, in the charred ruins of Ukraine, like a phoenix from the ashes, an ancient but newly awakened and renewed European nation is rising. And alongside it, to the sound of the bombs of unpunished evil, the whole of Europe and the entire West are also waking up.