Who is the Tsar here? The meaning of Холопдомор

If there is one thing I think we should have picked up on by now it is that we can’t trust what Russia is saying. We have inadvertently been victims of Russian propaganda and now it is time to take a bath and clean up our understandings. This is something that we were not previously aware of but that is becoming increasingly obvious. We need to start looking at what Russia actually is doing.

It has become increasingly clear that there are significant differences between Russia and Ukraine. But is it possible to investigate a bit deeper what these differences are?

A slave mentality

Through conversations with my Ukrainian friends and while traveling in Ukraine as a music composer both before and during the war, a theme has come to the forefront on several occasions.

It is hard, bordering on impossible, to draw all-encompassing conclusions about the nature of societies, and Russia and Ukraine are particularly hard in this regard. But even if we don’t see the whole picture, we can still look at individual pieces of the puzzle.

The idea that Russia is a mystery beyond understanding (in the words of Churchill) and that its uniqueness makes it impossible to gauge or critique (in the words of Putin) is less than helpful. This is no longer something we can hide behind. 

Recently, when I was traveling in Ukraine I heard a story of a Russian commander asking the inhabitants of a small occupied Ukrainian village “Who is the tsar here, who makes the decisions? I want to talk to him!”

The Ukrainians looked at him with slight bewilderment and said “We all make decisions here, we are all leaders”. The Russian said “Impossible! This is not how it works!” A top-down society will naturally struggle to understand a more egalitarian one. It might even feel threatened by its organic nature. 

My historian friend in Chernigiv says that Russian society is built on the idea of servanthood, that you are brought up to serve the state. The way it works is that your life is, by design or general lethargy, often not good in many cases, sometimes because there is little point in working hard for something you might not reap the rewards for. You then have to find pride in something else that is bigger than yourself, and often this would be attaching your self-worth to the Russian grand narrative.

This narrative is one of superiority, often with a spiritual quasi-church-based overlay, and sprinkled in the idea of being the dominant force. This in turn gives the state enormous power over the individual. Russia is, both on an individual and collective level, simultaneously strong and threatened, and this paranoia creates the ghost it fears.

The Russian people are unaware of other ways of thinking about themselves and the world, which leads to them being unable to take off the distorted glasses they read world news through, as the officer in the Ukrainian village mentioned above.

Since they often link their self-worth to the state, they consequently go down with the ship. Being a voluntary slave that is tied to the mast of the Russian ship is a guarantor of your self-worth. When Russia dominates other nations the people feel strong, respected, and important.

In this way, the strength of the empire is built on boosting the ego of its people by growing the empire itself. Hence it is fundamentally unstable at its core. 

A culture of violence

In Russia, there has been a culture of violence, both physical and verbal. This is combined with an understanding that you are either the giver or receiver of violence. This has the perverse consequence that if you are not the giver of violence in some way, you are de facto a receiver and a victim. Hence you are compelled to start handing out violence. A middle ground does not quite exist.

We can see the consequences of this with Putin himself, with the actions of Russian soldiers, and in how people treat each other in society.

This creates a society of fear and suspicion where you don’t trust others because you know how you would behave in the same position. Low self-esteem leads to violence that leads to suspicion that leads to low self-esteem that leads to violence.

The saddest part is when people choose, out of fear or complacency, to become slaves. It is a comfortable choice because you don’t need to take responsibility. You mostly get what you need, and you only need to give up your freedom. It leads to a subservient society, that is easy to control and direct. Russians seem to choose this in large numbers, while Ukrainians do not.

When I was in Chernigiv not long ago I saw the place where there once was a statue of Lenin. There were now a multitude of tulips in its place, a poignant difference between the cultures. A functional democracy cannot be built by people who choose to become slaves.  

Slaves who become kings and who still have slave mindsets are lethal, as history has shown us. If you get to a place of power and still keep the identity of victim or inferior, you will be dangerous. In the West, we too need to let go of our issues in this regard, and Russia has an even longer way to go. 

Holodormor (Голодомор) is the artificially induced famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932/33, the literal meaning being “death by hunger.” It still is vividly alive in Ukrainian self-understanding. A more long-term and overarching understanding of the inflictions of the Russian state can be labeled as Hollopdomor (Холопдомор). The old word hollop means slave which in turn translates Hollopdomor as “death by slaves” or “death by slave mentality.” 

Not an isolated example

Russia serves as an example of what happens when we don’t become aware of our own national wounds. Eventually, they will all lead us into victimhood or domination of others.

The “make my country great again” trend is an example of this. It happens in states that we were once great and that we think deserve to still be great, alongside a particular idea of what it means to be great. In most cases, this means being dominating. Brexit can be seen as a national wound resurfacing, and Germany will need to face its own ghosts to truly embrace the Zeitenwende that Schultz has heralded.

We need to form dynamic societies where honesty and vulnerability are virtues, and where sharing opinions in constructive manners is an act of necessity. Forgiveness, grace, and transformation need to become practical words with hands and feet. They need to come down off the shelf of abstract ideas and concepts into the practical world. Otherwise, we might fall prey to similar acts of voluntary slavery.

It is not beyond our reach, and reach for it we must.