When we elect the legislative and executive branches of government, do we really agree that our well-being, our bodies and our very lives are gifts from the state that it can freely dispose of?
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
It's been a year since I left teaching and library work to serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. I think it is worth taking a moment to reflect on personal "betrayals" and "victories", advantages and disadvantages, in a word, to sum up the results of the year.
Note I. An unforgettable year
At the outset, I want to point out that I had no experience of military service - I missed all training during my student days, and was exempt from service for the entire first year of full-scale war because I worked as a teacher. However, I decided that I wanted to mobilize. As a volunteer, I joined the newly formed mechanized brigade and spent eight of the twelve months in the combat zone on various parts of the front.
My motivation for mobilization, as with many others, was my belief in a kind of counterinsurgency myth. Of course, I understood that the war would go on, perhaps even for years, but I hoped to reach new milestones within six months. That's why I wanted to take part in these truly historic events. I had the opportunity to be at one of the rebounded points on the so-called Shakhtar direction - it was then 10 kilometers from the previous line of contact, now re-captured by the enemy.
This year gave me, above all, an unforgettable experience of active participation in a war, which (fortunately?) is not the fate of every generation. Like many boys, as a child I dreamed of taking part in a real shootout (in a winning position, of course). As they say: dreams do come true, although, unfortunately, not everyone gets a happy ending.
I once told my wife that mentally and physically it is easier to spend the night under artillery fire than to sit at the bedside of a sick child whose temperature does not drop. "You don't know what it's like to sit under fire," my wife replied at the time. Now I can safely say that indeed - it is easier.
Among other advantages of military service, I can include improved physical fitness (although in my case the actual physical effort in the army turned out to be less than in civilian life), free trips to various corners of Ukraine that I had never seen before (mainly within the former Wild Fields) and, of course, money. In these branches, where financial matters are handled by skilled and educated people, military service remains a quick socio-economic elevator for both the precariat and the traditional, non-floating intelligentsia.
However, with all these advantages, I still can't decide whether the decision to mobilize was a mistake. The main and ubiquitous disadvantage, which offsets almost all the "pluses," is separation from family and children. Truck drivers and sailors must forgive me, but I never wanted such a profession. The unpleasant effect is compounded by the uncertainty of how long it will all last. It's clear that House Bill 10449 won't solve the demobilization issue, since the possibility of being released to the reserves after an already colossal 36-month period is subject to additional, non-transparent conditions.
I have also become much less sensitive to human injustice and harm. When everyone is lumped together and you don't even have time to memorize the names of socially disadvantaged recruits who are ground down and left to die by yet another posting to an assault unit, empathy gradually fades. One can only try to rationalize the orders of higher command to prevent new losses.
Although I found myself in an extremely friendly environment amidst an entire army of millions, without undue coercion of masculinity, my own motivation to protect the country after what I saw in the army was severely undermined. As one of my comrades rightly said, our success in 2022 was due to the fact that there are a fraction more people in the Ukrainian army who care - but only a fraction. But many of these people are no longer there, and some are attached to meaningless paperwork that, while it may be good to do, is impossible to love.
Note II. Who owns a citizen's life?
Based on what I have seen, heard and experienced, I want to focus in more detail on an issue that is a major topic of public discussion in Ukraine today. Why, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, there were queues of volunteers under the "military commissariats," and by the end of the second year of the war, the tragicomic confrontation between so-called refugees and employees of the Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centers had become one of the most serious social problems?
This issue is raised by the famous Ukrainian philosopher Andriy Baumeister, among others, translating it into the context of a conversation about the limits of legitimate violence in a democratic state, as well as the differences between the statuses of "subject" and "citizen." Despite all the ambiguity of Baumeister's statement, it's hard to disagree with him on this particular aspect: during the year and a half of the war, something changed not only in the operational situation at the front, but also in Ukrainian society itself.
As a person with a background as a historian, I note that mass (or even total) war with the mobilization of hundreds of thousands or millions of people is a relatively new phenomenon. Oleksandr Shulman, who wrote a small but contentious article for Army Inform on mobilization practices in the past, begins with the extremely dubious thesis that "military duty appears when the state appears," but then goes on to give various examples from the early 19th century and later. The examples taken from earlier times clearly do not refer to mobilization in the modern sense of the word, but to a professional military group - knights, courtiers, nobles, or bellatores in the terminology of the European Middle Ages. These individuals, whose number including members of their families never exceeded 10 percent of the total population, had a distinct legal status, which was inherited and to which the characteristics of the Divine Order were attributed. A notable exception may be mobilization law in the Roman Republic, which in some respects resembled modern society.
During the Age of Enlightenment, when ideas of equality of people before the law were spreading in Europe, one of the leading French thinkers of the time, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his famous treatise The Social Contract, or the Principles of Political Law expressed a logically impeccable but extremely frightening thesis:
"The citizen is no longer quite the judge of the danger to which the law wants him to expose himself; and when to him the prince says: 'It is beneficial to the state that you die,' he should die, since under this condition alone he has hitherto lived in safety, and since his life is no longer a mere boon of nature, but a conditional gift of the state."
Although Rousseau is known as a rather liberal philosopher, this statement seems to lie at the very root of the abhorrent and even bloodthirsty actions of regimes that called themselves "democratic," "communist" or "national-socialist."
Today, when we elect the legislative and executive branches of government, do we really agree that our welfare, our bodies and our very lives are gifts from the state, which it can dispose of at will?
Note III. Prospects for Ukrainian mobilization
In the context of the issue at hand, this thesis can only be refuted in one way: by challenging the link that currently exists in public opinion between mobilization and death or disability. This connection, of course, did not come out of nowhere. For more than two years now, the full-scale war has affected every resident of Ukraine in one way or another, and almost everyone has acquaintances who have been killed or seriously injured in the fighting.
On the other hand, rumors are spreading about swaggering commanders, ill-considered operations and senseless orders. These rumors also often do not come out of nowhere, although their absolutization is nonsensical and simply wrong; moreover, the idea of the supposedly spreading nature of these phenomena in the Ukrainian army is constantly exploited by enemy propaganda.
In order to undermine this linkage (completely severing it is still not possible), it is necessary to reform the recruitment system, which is slowly happening in individual units through the introduction of guaranteed combat training and the dissemination of information about the actual number of non-combat specialties in the army.
However, one of the most effective measures on the road to rationalization and humanization of military affairs, in my opinion, would be to establish clear conditions of service for the mobilized. Counter-arguments along the lines of "no one can know what the situation at the front will be like some time from now" are completely meaningless, since not all soldiers want to be demobilized, and due to the large number of unmotivated and unprepared recruits, the situation at the front will not improve (unless commanders decide to imitate the worst practices of the occupying forces, i.e., the so-called use of "cannon meat").
On the other hand, the problems are even more complex, because if a motivated and well-prepared man enters the army, and there meets an alcoholic sergeant or an assigned officer yelling only "forward, forward," there will soon be nothing left of the recruit's motivation (and sometimes training). Relations within the army, which cannot always be regulated by law or regulations, therefore also need reform.
There are also other factors that lead the issue of mobilization to a dead end.
First, instances of arbitrary behavior by employees of the Territorial Recruitment and Community Support Centers actually occur and are recorded on video. If these are not deliberate provocations by an enemy diversionary group to discredit Ukrainian soldiers, I don't know what to call it. During a recent vacation in my hometown of Odesa, as I walked down the street or rode public transportation in military uniform, I literally felt the suspicious stares of passersby: "Maybe he is handing out summonses? And you've just come from a place where heaps are perpetually burning and you have to go back there soon. It just makes a terrible impression.
Well-known writer Artem Czapaj notes that Territorial Recruitment and Community Support Centers often include military personnel, wounded and discharged from combat units. It's hard to imagine how this can be an excuse (I'm afraid to write - an "explanation") for the brutal actions of some of the staff, or the mobilization of epileptics, whom I have also personally met in the army.
Secondly, there are media and "opinion leaders" who literally demonize "uciekiniers" - ordinary people who, influenced by the disorderly flow of information, rumors and experiences of acquaintances, are afraid to change their civilian lives to daily life in the trenches.
https://krytykapolityczna.pl/swiat/znikajaca-ukraina-miasta-reportaz/
The aforementioned Artem Czapaj also expresses another, more serious argument for maximum mobilization, albeit by legal methods only: if we live in a democratic state, if we are equal before the law, then the burden of military service should equally fall on at least the eligible male population. This argument, however, presupposes several important preconditions: the establishment of clear and appropriate conditions for service (which Czapaj himself explicitly advocates) and the use of personnel strictly according to job duties (should everyone equally share the fate of aerial scouts and soldiers sent on assault?).
In other words, the military in personnel work must follow the well-known principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"; it must find the right approach and ensure the dignified use of people according to their level of knowledge and skills, additionally giving the opportunity to join the military to all who are willing and able to do so.
Solutions to this whole knot of contradictions are seriously hampered by the fact that we don't know the real needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in terms of personnel. At the end of December 2023, the media reported "the need to mobilize 500,000 citizens," but former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny denied that such a figure had been submitted for consideration by the political leadership of the state.
Plans to replenish the army are a military secret, which is understandable. However, as people who work in the military, we know for sure that there are many who should have been discharged long ago due to their health. There are many wounded, maimed and traumatized who are considered "at best of limited fitness," who can no longer perform combat tasks, and who are not qualified or skilled enough for staff tasks. For months they are considered "out-of-state personnel" and sit on back "dispatches" with reduced salaries, without the ability to move freely or find other normal work. Why keep in the military these people who have already sacrificed their health for the homeland, depriving them of the ability to support their families and the "economy"? Why keep people in the military who could supply jobs that have long been impossible to find workers for?
One way to solve this problem could be an alternative to military service in the defense industry or other industries that support the country's defense. This would also help reduce the unemployment rate, which has been rising due to the full-scale invasion. But is there the political will to do so? Is it easier to mobilize untrained soldiers than to find employment for trained and experienced workers? These questions remain open.
The final brick in solving the mobilization issue could be a reorientation of Ukrainian propaganda from the demonization and dehumanization of the enemy (and much of its fellow citizens!) to a clear picture of what we are fighting for and against. Russian imperialism really has monstrous features that only maniacs can identify with: the combination of oligarchic capital with special services, the arbitrariness of the security forces, censorship on the Internet, a paranoid fixation on figures and events of the past, power exercised with a "strong hand," and much more. If a citizen realizes that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are fighting for a democratic system, pluralism of opinions and values, at least equality before the law, he will not be touched by the debilitating thought "it's the same here as there - why fight".
In February and March 2022, millions of ordinary men and women, brought up on the same Soviet comedies, Russian rock or rap, jokes about Estonians and Chukchi, came out to defend their homes and families from the Kremlin's brutal aggression. Ordinary kolkhoz workers, couriers and steelworkers, not at all indoctrinated by "Doncow" nationalism, were ready to strangle and quarter the invaders simply because they brazenly invaded our country. According to my private conversations, many hoped that under this "extreme stress" Ukraine would fundamentally change, getting rid of the corrupt kleptocracy (and perhaps the oligarchy). However, this did not happen as expected. Instead of real socio-political change, mobilization in the name of important positive values such as one's own home, freedom and equality as a citizen, the authorities are trying to mobilize people through fear.
I understand that not everyone will like my reflections - both some military and civilians. I too do not like this public discussion. However, it is a painful topic for many. My personal disillusionment with the realities of the military came after the first two or three weeks of service, then military daily life brought a kind of stability, after which anxiety and irritation came again (fortunately, it was time for leave). At the moment, I see some prospects in the service, though maybe it's just the typical "survivor's mistake".
I would like to hope that this year of service will be the last, but I know that this end will come only when Russian imperialism breaks its teeth on us. A prerequisite for that should be overcoming the most acute internal problems of Ukrainian society, which sometimes lead to pessimism more than the operational situation at the front.
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Valenty Dolhoczub - Doctor of Philosophy in history and archaeology, teacher at Gulayiv Gymnasium.
Text published on commons.com.ua. Translated from Ukrainian by Aleksandra Kosior..
