On Nov. 21 President Volodymyr Zelensky presented the Ukrainian people with a choice the nation is currently facing: “Either losing dignity or risk losing a key partner.”
The video announcement came on the heels of US generals, emissaries of the Trump administration, having come to Kyiv and strongarmed him with a 28-point so-called “peace plan.” To any Ukrainian, the plan looks like a reheated iteration of the same terms of surrender Moscow has been trying to sell since it first became clear in March 2022 that they would not be able to take Kyiv through force – that Ukrainians would fight back and fight hard.
Zelensky’s announcement came, by coincidence or not, on the Day of Dignity and Freedom, a holiday that commemorates the first Euromaidan protests in November 2013, which devolved, after a series of violent government attempts to crush it, into the what has become known as the Revolution of Dignity.
When I remember how the Euromaidan morphed into the Revolution of Dignity, one man comes to mind. He was an veteran of the Soviets’ Afghan War, who came to Independence Square (the Maidan) on Dec. 1, 2013. His daughter had been on the square in the early morning hours of Nov. 30, when then President Viktor Yanukovych first sicced his Interior Ministry troops on the fledgling protests to avoid a repeat of the 2004-05 Orange Revolution. His daughter had been cudgeled and bloodied by the police.
“I don’t care which side the government goes to,” the Afghan veteran told a TV journalist. “Europe or Russia, it’s all the same to me. But when the government comes to beat the crap out of our kids protesting peacefully, everyone is going to react. If we let them start beating our students, then it’s just a matter of time before they’re beating all of us.”
He was talking about dignity – before it became a rally cry.
As protests continued into 2014, through sub-zero cold, they became more about a way of life than mere economic cooperation.
A French journalist who had been living in Kyiv during the protests noted to me: “What I love about Ukrainians is their dignity. Regardless of social status, they all go to great lengths to maintain their dignity.”
In fact, many observers who come to Kyiv marvel at how a society so embroiled in violent conflict can be so placid on a day-to-day level. You seldom hear arguments in public.
Ukrainians will fight for their dignity.
On the surface it seems contradictory. But the deeper into the Ukrainian psyche you go, the more you realize how important it is not to impinge on anyone’s sense of dignity. Ukrainians will fight for their dignity.
Why? Perhaps it’s a reaction to centuries of having their dignity trammeled by invaders, colonizers, serf-lords, sadistic apparatchiks, et. al.
What Zelensky reminded us of is the fact that this is much more than a territorial dispute, that unlike what the “28-point surrender plan” seems to imply, this is about the potential of “life without freedom, without dignity, without justice.” And Zelensky knows he speaks for nearly all Ukrainians when he suggests that such a loss is simply unacceptable. We have no choice but to fight.
It’s a loaded word in Ukrainian – dignity (гідність) – especially today. Unlike so many Ukrainian concepts, it does not have a ready-to-use cognate in Russian. The Russian word godnost’ (годность) is more accurately translated as “suitability,” more in line with the Old Slavonic usage.
And like “maidan,” hidnist’ is one of those Ukrainian words that are rather foreign to Russians – who would normally use dostoinstvo (достоинство), the cognate of which could also be used in Ukrainian.
Like with the Latin root “dignitas,” the notion of worth or worthiness seeps into the concept and turns it into a virtue – to the point where it accrues the connotation of self-worth.
As I’m thinking about the notion of dignity in Ukraine, I’m reminded of the Maidan through a book I’m rereading by one of my favorite American authors, Don DeLillo. In his novel “White Noise,” the narrator is walking through an old cemetery.
When the air was still again, I walked among the stones, trying to read the names and dates, adjusting the flags to make them swing free. Then I stood and listened.
The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.
Today, the Maidan in Kyiv is full of such flags, to remember the fallen. Those who wrote the 28-points probably don’t realize the dignity and freedom being dreamt by our dead. Wittingly or unwittingly, the authors are proposing a collective nightmare.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.