Some heritage should be treated critically - Pavlo Derevianko

The military is not a stranger among its own. However, the public reaction is not systematic and stable - it fluctuates. We talked about literature as a business, the perception of the Soviet, Maidan, and attitudes towards the military with Pavlo Derevyanko, a writer and a soldier of the 12th Special Forces Brigade of the Ukrainian National Guard. Watch the full version of the exclusive interview and read the shortened version about dissonance, deadlines, the need for history, and talking to children about the war.

You were born shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, did your family ever talk to you about the country's collapse, did you have any understanding of gaining independence?

I never had any emotional connection to the scoop at all. I knew that I was born in Ukraine. This is my country. There was a Soviet Union, and it collapsed. My parents never grieved for this. Although they are a Russian-speaking family. I grew up speaking Russian. And I grew up with the realization that I live in Ukraine, I am a Ukrainian.

Many times I had a certain dissonance: if I live in Ukraine, why do I speak Russian, but study in Ukrainian? Over time, I crystallized a certain question and self-awareness of this.

As for the Soviet Union, I have never understood why people born in the late 1980s and 1990s, who did not see anything at all, are sad. I think that this is a matter of upbringing, the influence of parents, family, relatives-people who have lost something and are transmitting their sense of nostalgia. They pass on their trauma, it's the parental authority.

It should be understood that some heritage should be treated critically, especially this kind of heritage. I think that we are gradually dealing with this trauma, but there is still room for work. Especially when there is more distance in time to the conditional scoop, the more opportunities there are for various IPSOs, stories about how cool it was.

The people who could tell how it really was are gradually dying, and you can tell anything. The audience is ready to listen, and you can put any noodle on their ears and they will believe that this is how it really was.

This is a huge problem, and we need to work on it at the state level, to educate them about national and patriotic values from childhood, so that they don't think that life was really better in some scoop.

Now we understand the role of the Maidan even more clearly and vividly, how did you react to these events?

I participated in the events on the Maidan. Of course, the European choice was obvious to me and the rejection of it was absolutely outrageous. I started protesting even before Euromaidan turned into the Revolution of Dignity. That is, it was a completely peaceful protest, around the stele, not very crowded, by the way, back then. And it would have dissolved by itself if not for the beating of students.

Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh

I remember that there were hundreds of thousands of people there, and I was already wearing a leather motorcycle jacket with special stakes. A friend of mine was teasing me, saying why? I said, "You'll see. I have always believed that we are the gateway to Europe, its shield, simply because the state is located in such a place - we have a multi-front.

We have always lived, fought, and survived at the crossroads of three civilizations. Few nations could survive such a constant struggle. Ours has survived and hardened, despite all the cataclysms and genocides, and we are still fighting for the right to exist. Therefore, it is logical that we need to be with Europe, and Europe needs to be with us. They don't have an army at all, but we do. This is an absolutely natural alliance at this time. I don't know what will happen in the future, but today, here and now, we have to be with them.

The Orange Revolution happened when I was at school. My parents didn't let me go to Kyiv, but I used to go to the local square in the White Church there. So it's clear that when the events in Kyiv began in 2013, I was already an adult and participated in it to the fullest.

You don't realize that these are historical events until time passes and you look at them from a certain historical perspective. It just happens, you just participate, and then it turns out that these are historical events.

It's quite ironic because in the early 2000s, everyone had the impression of a conditional end to history, that all the wars were over, great events had happened, and all the continents were open. It did not happen as expected. As you can see, history is really cyclical.

Every century begins, and the first half is war, and the second half is a departure from wars, a kind of post-war peace. A couple of generations pass, a new century begins, and a new war begins. The twenty-first century is no exception. We find ourselves in a whirlwind of history. This actually gives us a great chance to take our rightful place in the world. Because, let's be honest, in that old world, few people knew Ukraine, few people accepted it. Few people could find it on a map, few knew much about it, except for Chornobyl and Klitschko.

Now everyone clearly knows who we are, what our coat of arms is, what our flag is, that we are warriors. And now many people refuse to believe that this old world is gone, everyone wants to live comfortably. It's just that the world lives at its own pace, according to its own rules. The world has already changed, and we have a truly historic chance to make sure that Ukraine is among the first countries in the world to be reckoned with.

I have never had any pro-Russian sentiments. I was never drawn to this narrative of brotherly nations. It was alien to me. I can give you an example of a friend of mine. I was on the Maidan. He was an active anti-Maidan activist, believing that America was organizing everything. He was grabbing this information from all the public media, VK at the time. It was very difficult to convince him that it wasn't true, that you were being fed noodles. It's just propaganda that blurs reality. And the person realized that he was wrong only when the annexation of Crimea began.

Then the scales fell from his eyes. In my opinion, in reality, in 2014, with the occupation, Russia made a strategic mistake. Up until that point, it had been occupying very, very skillfully, quietly, with soft power, bringing in a lot of money, buying the right people, and it had every chance of turning Ukraine into a second Belarus.

If we imagine that they would have really supported us then, saying that Yanukovych is a really bad dictator who shot people, Crimea and Donbas remain part of Ukraine, Russia does not touch them at all, and still shows that we are friends, brothers. So what happened? The pro-Russian sentiments of these regions persist, they bloom and smell.

But they decided that now they would take it by force, and in fact, with this direct attack, they forced nationalization and retaliation. And that's it, then there were fewer opportunities for these compromises every year. And the fact that a full-scale invasion took place is a clear indicator that they have exhausted any tools outside of the military. That is, war is a continuation of politics.

When there are no political opportunities to influence another state, they try to force it to do what is necessary by force. They counted on a blitzkrieg and again miscalculated. Mistake after mistake, today about 19% of our country is occupied, but we continue to fight against one of the largest armies in the world. No matter what people say about Russia, its equipment is a formidable force that knows how to fight, adapts, has a lot of manpower, enough equipment - they are constantly trying to storm.

Perhaps no other country in Europe could resist the way Ukraine is resisting today. If we imagine that on February 24, all the forces that were thrown at Ukraine were thrown at the Baltic states, for example, I think they would have been occupied in a week, and NATO would have done nothing. And then history would have taken a completely different path, but this is the realm of fiction and science fiction.

You mentioned that you have a daughter, have you talked to her about the war, does she understand what is happening?

Given that she is 4 years old, at first we just said that there were abstract uncles, and then we said that it was the Russians. And it's not something exploding, it's missiles being launched at us because they want to destroy us. She understands all this perfectly well.

Children are often treated as if they don't understand everything. They do understand a lot of things. They don't have the life experience of adults. They are not guided in some matters. But in terms of understanding basic things, they are doing very well. If we're talking about most children, their cognitive abilities are already working well from the age of three or four.

Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh

Therefore, I would like to see national and patriotic education work again. Explanations of what is happening and why should start in kindergarten and continue in elementary school and beyond.

It is good that the subject"Defense of Ukraine" was finally introduced. We didn't have such education, which is why enemy IPSOs and topics like why we should fight at all, about one nation and that's it. It works for many who grew up in families nostalgic for the scoop. Where the family fails, the state must step in.

The Russians have been working in this regard for 30 years. They know exactly how to zombify their own people since the Soviet Union. They know exactly how to work with the younger generation so that they go to war without asking questions.

And what about us? People see that this is our country, we are under attack. Is it true? They ask the question: why do this, why defend ourselves? That is, these people have missed a lot in this life, including the history of Ukraine in the twentieth century.

A very vivid example is when the UPR lost and what happened after that: The Executed Revival, the Holodomors, the Gulags, Stalin's pressure, World War II, and a bunch of other things. When, in fact, we lost so many people that we would not have lost in any war for independence.

Марія Литянська