Ukrainian Resistance and Courage: Insights from Vakhtang Kipiani on Mykolaiv and Democracy

To be Ukrainian, you don't have to grow up in a family with deep national views. We had different experiences, depending on the places where we grew up and studied, and in one way or another we were influenced by the Soviet Union. However, times and meanings have changed, and sometimes it is worth opening our eyes to the events that are happening today. We talked to Vakhtang Kipiani about the resistance to the Communist Party from students, pressure on journalists, changing society, and the ultimate goal of the war. Read the abridged version and watch the full interview about unnaturalness, courage, Mykolaiv, democracy and integrity.

You described your memories of the Revolution on granite. And then you said that you were ideologically ready for the demands put forward by the students on hunger strike. In your opinion, what was it about your upbringing that made you want to oppose the Communist Party as a young man, as a student?

I come from an ordinary family. That is, there were no ultra-patriotic nationalists or dissidents in my family, but there were no ultra-communists, builders of a great socialist future. My mother worked in the port, then sewed all her life at home. My grandmother worked in the port, as did my uncle. This is Novorossiysk, the Black Sea.

You could say that my growth was in tandem with the time in which I lived. My childhood was still such a harsh communism, the war in Afghanistan, some lines of pioneer camps with songs about Lenin and Moscow. But gradually, in the second half of the 80s, after the Chernobyl disaster and the first rallies that started in Kyiv, I began to open a small window to another world.

There was also a phenomenon that many older people know as foreign radio voices. Again, there was no cult in the family to listen to every episode of Radio Liberty orVoice of America, but we did. There was no passion, just a desire to learn something new. Obviously, these radio voices formed a certain background, and then Ogonyok appeared.

It is now that I know that its editor Korotych is not only a prominent sixties poet but also a KGB agent. But at that time we did not know this. Those who wanted to know more read thick literary magazines, Ogonyok, and then Literary Ukraine, because it was a window into another world. In a word, everything happened just gradually, and there is no heroism in opening your eyes and locators to go somewhere. This path led me to Nezalezhnist station.

Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh

But, of course, this was not the case with everyone. Many people until the last, until 1991, and then for decades in independent Ukraine, somehow refused to recognize this reality and that it was the best for us. That is, to be in an independent state, no matter how imperfect it may be. We know the shortcomings of our country, we can say this a million times, and we will not be punished for it. It's just that we can actually build on the Soviet past, because there were too many victims in it. During Perestroika, I decided to become a historian. Now I realize that it was strategically correct.

What was Mykolaiv like politically and socially in the 1990s?

Mykolaiv in the late 80s was a deeply communist city, it was called Red Mykolaiv. If you look at the city council, it seems that all the members were communists. In the regional council, there was one democrat, a Rukhivist. So it was difficult. But at the same time, the Helsinki Union, Rukh, OTZ, and then Memorial, a student organization that I was a member of and created, were quite visible. So, in fact, we created a new life ourselves.

This was the time when you could do a lot on your own if you just read the newspapers and understood where you were going. It seems to me that this was obvious. But the problem is that other people also read the newspapers, but they saw a completely different perspective. Some of them were even students. It is clear that at that time they did not see that it was possible to change or reform the Soviet Union in any way. Indeed, there were so many problems that were accumulating in the USSR that it was simply impossible to solve them within the framework of the model that existed. When we lived in that period, we could start building a state. And a small part of us, a handful of people, began to do so.

In the summer of 1989, when I was a freshman, I learned that Rukhivists were gathering somewhere on the street. In Kyiv, I attended their rallies, already under blue and yellow flags. In Mykolaiv, everything was red. I ran to the place, but they were already gone. Only a week later I was told the time of the meeting. And I saw a few people.

There was a man named Serhii Karpovych Vdovytsia, a stern, slender, and very firm man who stood with a blue and yellow flag raised above his head, and some crazy grandmothers and factory workers, who were mostly secretaries of party cells, were rushing at him like hawks from all sides. They were specially dressed in folk clothes, in worker's clothes, and they went to snatch that flag.

It stood like flint on the street, then Sovetska, now Soborna. I waited until he was scattering all these attackers on the flag, approached him and said that I was a first-year student and would like to join him. He pulled out a rolled-up newspaper called Literary Ukraine from under his armpit, and there was a program of the People's Movement of Ukraine. He was a crane operator from a factory, i.e. a working class man who was against the state of workers and peasants. It's very symbolic.

For me, Mykolaiv is a very important page in my life. I left Mykolaiv to go on a hunger strike in October 1990. Then I was told that anyone who left would be expelled from the university. It was as if I had disgraced the city because I was the only one from Mykolaiv on that hunger strike. In fact, there were a few other people from Mykolaiv, but they were already Kyiv students at that time.

I returned to the city, passed the exam, and even the teacher of the history of the CPSU, an avid communist, said: "I know who you are, but you know the subject very well." There was an order to lower the grade or fail me. He didn't do it. I mean, I have no illusions about the quality of communists in the late Soviet Union, and this person was just decent internally, and I didn't get kicked out of the university.

Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh

Of course, we were going against the grain, but it was absolutely natural. It is natural to pick up a newspaper, read it, and realize that greater economic independence is good. And the fact that there is not a single Ukrainian school in a city of half a million Ukrainians is not normal. It was natural, I'm not saying that we are heroes of the liberation struggle. The heroes are at the front now. But back then we were candidates for citizenship.

In my opinion, resistance is definitely not natural for a Soviet person.

It is unnatural for a Soviet person to be against the system, just as it is unnatural for a modern Russian person, because they no longer remember when protests achieved their goals. In Soviet times, seven people would go to Red Square to protest the occupation of Czechoslovakia, they would be thrown in jail, and no one would come out for decades. The Helsinki group was released in the 70s-all of them were transplanted. That is, it was really a resource that was being exhausted-these heroic people. At that time, there was no longer any fear.

Sometimes it was uncomfortable, someone was expelled from work, threatened with expulsion from the institute. The only thing that was a serious problem, if you were expelled from the institute, was the danger of the Soviet army. When I entered the institute, Afghanistan had just ended. But then there was Lithuania, Kazakhstan, then Georgia, and attempts are already happening here in Transnistria, not far from us. So I definitely did not want to get into the Red Army at the end of this Soviet regime.

If you were expelled from the institute, and there were such cases in Ukraine, they tried to mobilize people into the Soviet army, and then they demonstratively tore up their military cards or burned them. This happened in Lviv, Vilnius, and Georgia. I definitely did not want to join the Soviet army in 1990. I'll tell you a military secret. I still have my military ID card from the late 1980s. That is, when I go around now, when I have to show my military card sometimes, I show it with a red hammer and sickle. For young people, it is sometimes a shock that it is possible to have Soviet military documents in the fourth year of the great war with Russia and in the 11th year of the war. When you are a young person, if you are burning with an idea inside, then all these are small things that do not overshadow the main goal.

Does society today understand what we mean by the word Victory?

The enemy does not show ceremony with Ukrainians. He blows up where he can blow up, sets fire to where he can set fire to. When they come to a city, they change library collections, street names, and topple monuments. The enemy does not play games with Ukrainians, and we often continue to play a game called democracy, although it has nothing to do with democracy. Russia has a law on languages. There is one language there, Russian, and here they have been saying for decades that there will be two languages. Why don't they have two, three, or five?

To rewrite from one national group to another is genocide. Start a genocide convention. Transferring from one ethnic group to another is genocide. It is not necessary to kill a person in Melitopol, Mariupol, Berdiansk, or Skadovsk. It is enough to take away their documents and rewrite that they are Russian.

The fierceness comes from a clear understanding that we will not have another opportunity to regain independence from Russia. We used to be able to find a form of coexistence with Russia, but now it's gone. It's either us or them.

You were right to see that there is no image of victory as a national symbol and no plan of action, no roadmap. Perhaps it is even right not to multiply frustrations after the war is over. Because if I say that our goal is to hang a blue and yellow flag over the Kremlin, that's a good goal. And I think we can and should invest efforts in it. But it may not be achieved.

We will not hang it on the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin, but we will hang it on the road to Bryansk, relatively speaking. We promised Moscow, but we hanged him only in Bryansk. It is better not to make God laugh, not to tell him about your intentions. Accordingly, everyone has a different global goal. Many want to survive and return to their families. And if their city is not occupied at that time, and their family is alive, or returns from emigration. For this person, it will be a victory. Many families will not return.

The soldier who defends at the front may go to his family somewhere after the war. I believe that this is a defeat for a particular family and for Ukraine as a whole. That we lost a lot of people during the war who we will never see as citizens.

Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh

There are many options for what the victory could be, or what the end of the war could be.

I myself usually do not raise this topic, because even an audience of close friends will have different views. Why should we argue about what the borders will be? Of course, we have in our minds, hearts, and maps the borders of the 1991 state. But tens of thousands of people have already given their lives for not surrendering two kilometers near Pokrovsk or somewhere else. And we sometimes fail to keep these meters.

Or maybe something will happen and in a couple of months we will simply push the enemy back 100 kilometers. This has already happened during the Kharkiv operation. So now there is no need to argue about where the borders will be. They will be there where the Ukrainian soldier will stand and where Ukrainian society will help this soldier to fight.

Марія Литянська