Pavlo Kazarin: In our country, the black swans are ourselves

I don’t know what the country will be like ten years from now. The last 35 has shown that predictions in our country do not come true.

Each time, looking back, we succumb to the temptation to describe the path we’ve traveled as the only possible one. History seems to us a logical straight line that connects our yesterday with our today. But if a time machine allowed us to return to the past, no one would believe our description of the future.

Imagine you are returning to the summer of 2013. You say that protests will sweep the country in a few months. That security forces will kill more than a hundred people. That Maidan will prevail, Yanukovych will flee, and Russia, exploiting the chaos, will annex Crimea.

You will talk about the start of the ATO in the country. That the Russians will shoot down a passenger Boeing. But on the phrase “and the former Georgian president will lead the Odesa region” your friends will call an ambulance. The only thing you will be able to do in the summer of 2013 is to buy dollars at eight.

You may object: that now, with us prewar, we are separated by the Russian invasion. That it reshaped our notion of what is permissible. That the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Donbas changed Ukraine and the Ukrainians. And that after February of 2014 it is much easier for us to face reality.

Then imagine that the time machine takes you to the summer of 2016. And you begin telling friends who will become the next president of the country. You can even turn on the TV and show them the future head of state. After that your friends will again call you an ambulance.

You don’t have to go far to imagine that fate takes you to the summer of 2021. And you suggest to your loved ones to guess who the West will declare as the face of freedom and the symbol of democracy’s fight against dictatorships next year. Hint number one — this is the president. Hint number two — it is not the US president. And again you’ll be asked to call an ambulance, because believing in the image-based metamorphoses of the Ukrainian president can be done only by someone who has read European headlines in the 2022 issue.

We often search in our past for that crossroads that has separated us from our recent selves from our present. That watershed after which the future stopped surprising us. That point of a phase transition after which events began to seem logical and inevitable. But the point is that such a point does not exist. Our heroes and antiheroes swap places. Our reality undermines our yesterday’s forecasts. For us in the present there is no sense in traveling to the past, because no one there would believe us.

In 1991 year, those who yearned for freedom and democracy voted for Chornovol, and those who wanted a reimagined Ukrainian SSR voted for Kravchuk. In 1994 year, freedom’s supporters voted for Kravchuk, and URSR adherents for Kuchma. In 1999, in the second round, pro-Ukraine supporters voted for Kuchma, and their opponents for Symonenko. Our country is a country of tricksters. Every hero is on the border, and you never know whose side he will take at a critical moment in history. Perhaps even yours.

Predicting ahead is a privilege of countries that run on rails, whose trajectories are clearly visible. And Ukraine is a ship in a storm. Our future depends on how well we do our homework. And also on hundreds of thousands of factors over which we have no influence.

We don’t know who will win the next elections. And it’s not only because they are possible only after the war, and we don’t know when it will end. It’s also that war becomes an anesthetic for society — and it is precisely this that gives us the unanimity we see in public polls. The end of the war will plunge us again into familiar disputes and divides. After the war we will be as different from our prewar selves as we are now different from who we were before the war.

Our postwar reality will depend on how we view the scenario for ending the war — victory or defeat. An inclusive victory — it can have many fathers, and under its umbrella there will be room for everyone. Both for those who fought and for those who paid taxes. For those who stayed and those who left. And with defeat it will be the exact reverse — this feeling will plunge the country into frustration, force us to look for scapegoats, and lead to “orbani-zation.” That is why, if Russia cannot defeat us on the battlefield, it will do everything to convince us that it won.

We don’t know what our streets will look like after the war. How many new accents and skin tones they will have. Our depopulation will demand from us difficult choices, and we will have to choose between migration and a half-empty country. Our future challenges will generate discussions that we are not even thinking about now because we are busy surviving.

We don’t know what future NATO will hold. Once we dreamed of joining this organization. And in the last four years our country managed to destroy the Soviet tank fist prepared to shove toward the La Manche. In a situation where the strongest army in the world is turning away from Europe, the only thing left for it to hope for is the strongest army on the continent. That is, ours.

We don’t know what future awaits the United States. For decades we were used to seeing them as a beacon of democracy and an example to imitate. And in the last two years we have grown used to the idea that there are no adults in the room anymore. That the only adults are us.

The only thing the last 35 years have taught us is that we are capable of surprising ourselves. Circumstances are not static, people change, coincidences ruin plans. Sometimes I even envy conspiracy theorists, because in their worldview everything that happens is predetermined. But in reality our world is governed by black swans.

Only in our country are black swans us.

Pavlo Kazarín, journalist, senior sergeant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine; author’s page on Facebook

Photo from open sources

Argument

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