Someone
asked me to talk about Maidan and [the barricades] on Hrushevskiy
Street. The most memorable things. So I’ll try. Perhaps because I want
to get all of this off my chest. The people who came here deserve to be
heard.
Over there, you start to feel proud of your
[people][country] and believe in victory. And you know that that the
victory depends on you personally. And today, this is the only place in
the world where you can be who you are – a human being, for example.
It’s easy to become a hero. All you need is a photo of
yourself in front of the barricades. Bonus points if there’s a stack of
black smoke in the background. You can then [safely][confidently] return
as you type on your phone: “Hey, I’m returning from the front lines. We
messed them up badly. But everything’s stable now. See you soon.”
To prove or disprove something is impossible. Over there,
everyone is a hero. And no one is a hero. Instead of faces, you see gas
masks, respirators, construction or medical masks, ski masks. You could
stand shoulder-to-shoulder with someone on a barricade, but in the
morning, on Maidan, walk by without ever recognizing him or her.
Once we take our gear off, unbundle, and show our faces,
perhaps the only way to recognize each other is by voice. But after
hours of yelling, cursing, and swallowing smoke or tear gas, your voice
sounds like everyone else’s. Weak. Hoarse. Sick.
Don’t think that everything is fine and everyone is well if
an assault ends with just an isolated incident or if someone gets shot
with a non-lethal weapon. One night, there were 43 injured. One guy was
shot in the head with a rubber bullet. Another one broke his hand when
he slipped off a burned bus.
Everybody
else got frostbite. From time to time, the fire hoses, instead of
putting out the flames, were directed at the guys. The water is
freezing, with chunks of ice in it. And the men literally turned into
ice statues. Even the proximity to the fire [of burning tires] didn’t
help.
You
feel moved when you see women or girls bringing around the tea in
five-liter jugs. They make it through while tripping over the piles of
ready to be thrown cobblestones or untangling themselves from the wires
of the burnt out tires.
But
what the fighters do next may surprise you. While hiding under a
barricade, they finish the tea and take the disposable cups to a garbage
can, or at least to the designated pile of trash or a barrel of fire,
even though there may be fighting underway. I’m not even going to
mention the cleanliness of the Maidan, itself.
“And
where are the Afghan veterans? Why aren’t they on the front lines? Why
don’t they come and lead us in an attack? Tell me where I need to start
the fire and that thing will burn! But we don’t have the military
experience, so we fight however we know … And if they don’t lead, they
should keep their mouth shut”. That’s what the [football / soccer]
ultras said in response to a supposed plan to form a very large group of
people to push the soldiers of the internal forces and the Berkut [riot
police] out of the Hursevskoy Street and towards the Dnipro river.
“And
who’s going to be in the first few rows – us? Of course. We’re not
idiots. The first few rows will be shot dead on the spot. Let those who
have been leading us and calling for this take the spots in the front
line. You know they won’t. And you know this well. But if there isn’t a
first row, there won’t be a second or third.” This is what a young man
said, decked out head to toe. Judging from his voice, wasn’t even
seventeen years old.
How
easy it is to silence tens of thousands of Maidan supporters. You don’t
need grenades. You don’t need to beat people with a nightstick or shoot
them in the face with rubber bullets (and not only rubber bullets). No.
That’s all for the people with low intellect and no fantasy.
There
are more effective methods. For example, recall how this was done after,
or rather, during Yatseniuk’s speech. That’s when, instead of a bullet
in the head from Yanukovich, he was offered the position of prime
minister. After that, Yateseniuk’s rhetoric changed, and the question of
Yanukovich’s resignation and punishment of those who killed our people
was placed no the back burner. The people of the Maidan understood this
very well.
The
shouts of “shame!” and whistling from a crowd of thousands confirmed
that. And then a miracle happened. From the music stage, a pleasant
voice said, as if not hearing the dissatisfaction from the crowd:
“Friends, let’s sing our national anthem!” Bingo! It’s a crowd of
patriots, who will not, under any circumstances, whistle or yell
“shame!” during the singing of the Ukrainian anthem. Simple and
ingenious.
And
let’s not treat the people on Maidan as fools who believe in amnesty or
the fact that, after the repeal of the “dictatorship laws”, everything
is going to be fine. The people understand that only after they get rid
of Yaunkovich and his cronies will they be able to return home safely.
Otherwise,
is it that hard to fabricate a drug charge? Or provoke a fight? Or
accuse someone of theft? Because doing so [for law enforcement] is not
an issue in our wonderful land. On the contrary, it’s even more
convenient for the government to take that path. Because instead of
charging the jailed demonstrators for civic disobedience, they can
pursue criminal charges, leaving no wiggle room for defense.
But the
rebels know that the maximum prison time for them is six years. It
doesn’t matter if the [new dictatorship laws] carry a maximum of 12 or
15 years. The end game is simple: if we lose, Yanukovich will hold onto
the presidency for another year plus five more in the next term. And
only then will something change.
The
question is whether you’ll survive these six years. Because as of today,
hundreds have been killed. Don’t trust the official statistics. There
are ten times more victims than what’s currently known. It’s just that
they haven’t been found yet. Or they don’t want to admit to it.
The
police arrested one girl simply because she forgot to take her Maidan
volunteer badge off [on her way home]. The cops handed her over to
Berkut. They moved her around from one police station to another, and
when none of the stations would keep her in custod,y they took her into a
forest. This little one has asthma. Berkut took away her inhaler and
left her in the snow, probably hoping she would freeze to death.
Luckily, she survived.
And how
many have disappeared after deciding to go out for a stroll outside the
barricades? They were snatched by the Berkut dressed in civilian
clothing, who was preying on them from parked cars and dark corners. And
how many were arrested by the police? Where are they? Nobody knows.
Because nobody knows that they have disappeared. You can enter Maidan as
a group but not see or talk to each other for weeks, with relatives at
home thinking that you simply don’t have a spot to recharge the battery
for your phone.
Don’t
think that people who fight there are only football fans. Speaking of
fans, I was a witness to an argument between the fans of two different
teams. I don’t know how it started, but the argument was classic: “They
divide us onto a football field. And we will see each multiple times in
the future. But that’s later. Here, we look out for each other, for
Ukraine. Do you get it?”
Speaking of the Russian language, for the first time in my
life, my incomprehension of Ukrainians speaking Russian language was
shaken. You see Russian speaking citizens singing, open-heartedly,
crisply, with no accent, and despite pain in their lungs – “Glory to
Ukraine! Glory to the nation! Ukraine above all!” There is something
incredible in this, especially when they stand on the roof of a burnt
bus while holding a black and red banner.
Don’t
even think that pity from one side or the other can be manipulated. As
cynical as this sounds, those mothers with peaceful signs annoyed us the
most. Well, sort of. They are respected, and their intentions are in
the right place, but everybody knew that their appeals and banners would
have no impact on the internal forces or the Berkut riot police. It
does not matter what individual soldiers or police were thinking. Had
they received an order to attack, they would have attacked.
As for
us, sometimes we had an opportunity to launch [a stone or Molotov
cocktail], but the women interfered. And the priests. Because of them,
we had to partially disassemble our barricades. It so happened that I
had kept to the right side of the barricades and, for some reason, the
priests wanted to get through that way.
I
remember one priest from the Moscow patriarchy. He came to our side
calling for compassion (real or fabricated), looked at the defense line
of the internal forces soldiers, and said to us: “Take pity for the
children. They are not guilty of anything”. I couldn’t hold myself back.
I pointed with a stick at the line of our guys: “And you don’t feel
sorry for them?” He answered something along the lines of us coming here
on your own, but the soldiers being there to execute orders.
And I
cannot omit the word “provocateur”. Were they on the frontlines? Try to
figure that one out when, everywhere you go, you hear someone on a phone
providing the details and the location of everything around. It’s hard
to tell what’s this for. Are they providing coordinates for a sniper or
directions to a group that’s coming here to help us? You just stop
paying attention to this.
But
there are things that force you to pay close attention, like when a pair
of well-equipped people arrive with laser pointers and try to blind
people on the other side. You can’t always tell if they are pointing at
the soldiers with the guns or the ones with the riot shields. What are
they doing? Are they really preventing the soldiers from firing at us?
Or are they signaling the location of the Molotov cocktail cache? You
just don’t ask. You simply sit in the shadow of the barricade and,
without peeking out, quietly move the Molotov cocktail bottles to
another location.
The
same goes for the journalists. If the press shows up in some sector of a
barricade, the guys try to keep their heads down. Everyone has his or
her tolerance of risk. Why take risk for nothing? Right?
The
journalists were a frequent target. Both because they are journalists
and because they were looking for a sensational picture: a box of
[Molotov] cocktails, the catapult… Both sides knew about this and used
this information accordingly.
And
snipers and tear gas attacks – that’s the number one problem. I don’t
even want to state the obvious. Everybody understands this.
One
more word about the heroes. Don’t think that the only agents of change
are those who throw the stones and Molotov cocktails into the wall of
the riot police shields, or those who wield sticks to attack the Berkut.
These
people are just the highly publicized part. Remember what I said…
everybody and nobody is a hero at the same time. Everybody does
something useful. One brings the tires, another one the [Molotov]
bottles, yet another warns about the danger, or simply drums with a
stick on an empty barrel, a metal sheet, or street post flowing into a
single rhythm: “bam-bam, ba-ba-bam.” Or just shouting out with
encouragement and slogans.
There
is another category of participants. Those who don’t go to the
frontlines, but who are trying to be useful in some capacity. You find
these men and women whenever you leave the action zone, young and old
approaching you with a package and asking you to take it to the guys.
The package may contain medical face masks, bandages, harnesses, gas
masks, hardhats, or a bag of sandwiches.
I
remember, in particular, one old man with a Hutsyl cane, so elderly, so
frail. You beg him to go back, but he insists on the same for you: “I’ve
lived enough,” he says, “but maybe I can at least shield one of these
young guys.”
But
don’t think that I or anyone else on the front lines divide the people
into categories – those who are on the Maidan [square] versus those who
are on the Hrushevskiy Street barricades. No. Whatever people may say,
we are a single unit. If it weren’t for the so called tourists who stood
afar from the front lines – those who just came to yell and bang on a
barrel with a stick – we wouldn’t have made it through. The reason for
showing up is irrelevant. What matters is that they came.
When I
got first got here, a female volunteer approached me and offered me some
tea. It felt awkward. I said, “I haven’t done anything yet. Let others
have it.” And she replied, “You’re here, and that means you live for
something.” I was deeply touched.
In
principle, I’m sort of enlisted in a volunteer platoon. But I don’t
usually eat indoors. I spent most of my time on Hrushevskiy Street. And
it’s not just me. Everyone decides on their own how they repay the care
provided by others: you either get a free lunch or you make yourself do
something useful for every calorie you consume.
I
decided the following for myself. If I take even one sandwich and tea
and don’t go to the frontline barricades or to the burned-out buses,
then the least I will do is to excavate the stone pavers and bring up a
pair of car tires. I don’t think I’m the only one with such rule.
In
general, as to Maidan and Hrushevskiy Street, just to set the record
straight – these two are inseparable. We went to “play” by the burned
buses, but we knew that we had a place to return to – Maidan – the
safest place in the world for us.
Let me
to make a historical analogy. The Maidan is like the Zaporizka Sich, the
heart from which everyone [Cossacks] drew moral and physical strength.
And Hrushevskiy Street, Ukrainian House, the Justice Department building
– these are like a wild field where daredevils go for victory. But the
Maidan is above all.
Oh, and
about the daredevils. They, to continue the historical analogy, have
changed. In historical times, they were exclusively dedicated young men
on horses with swords, mustaches, an oseledets [cossack hair], and
lassoes. Nowadays, it’s an old pensioner who’s offering baked goods. And
a 14-year-old girl providing shoe inserts. And the medics (those who
wear vests with a cross). And the old man with a stick yelling “Give it
to them, guys!!!”
In one
word, all those, who the rebels must remember, find, when everything
ends with our victory – and respect forever. [This sentence is unclear.
Check the original] Really, do something and don’t wait for payback,
and the goodness will return to you a thousand-fold.
I’m not
going to sign my last name to this. Why should I claim these thoughts
as my own when they belong to thousands of people? This, and many other
things any participant can tell you – those whose hands and feet were
tied with the duct tape or those who wore a facemask for a few days.
It’s on the Maidan that you become all that you can be. Here, as in the
past, you’re known by how others call you.
Translated by Constantin K. – @iFirebrand
American patriots can look to Ukraine to understand how this sort of
thing needs to go. We like to think that people in the streets will do
nothing, but that's only if the protesters do nothing. It is not hard to
provoke a line of protest-busting cops and reveal the dark heart of the
government. That is the purpose of the front line soldier, to show the
evil forces for what they are.
There are always objections; always principled excuses for failing to do
what we all must know is necessary to re-establish the Constitution.
Let me tick off a few:
-I support the (First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth or Tenth Amendment) I
do not support the (First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth or Tenth
Amendment)
Those are a few that I have heard. They all spell one thing: "let's sit around and complain rather than act."
There are a few hard facts: the people are the only ones who have ever
been able to make a difference. That comes with the risk to one's life.
That comes with making sacrifices of every kind and yet, we lose a
little at a time and that seems better.
We watched the government and the bankers take trillions of dollars
in homes, property and cash without much more than the creation of a
law-abiding, low-key Tea Party, one which, if it had proceeded to demand
rather than ask politely of the government, could have changed the very
structure of the nation in a few short months. But, they didn't
capitalize on sentiment and reaction, rather, they chose to spend their
time deflecting accusations of racism. Out of fear of looking violent,
they chose to strap a yoke on their neck and were quickly co-opted by
establishment Republicans looking for a way to win elections.
When it happens again, when they steal even more trillions from
nationalizing IRSs, 401ks, bank accounts, or restrict deductions from
any or all of these, we will all again sit silent as we have done
before. We have already established our credentials.
Whenever I write such posts I am accused of doing nothing. I have put
efforts into such actions at great expense to myself. I have gone to
Washington, got permits to hold a demonstration, been followed around by
scrubs through the streets of DC. I have written a book to distribute
to get the message across, most of the time free of charge or minimal
charge so I could re-print. I have created organizations to do these
things. I don't blame anyone for not coming along, for not sharing my
vision. It is not important that they see things my way, I am willing to
see things their way, but something has to happen. I have done all I
could and been left with two others on the day of the big demonstration
(the three of us are in a picture somewhere).
Ukraine is an example of what action looks like; Libya is another; Egypt
is another; Syria is another. It is not that we do not know how such
things are done. It is uncomfortable, some people get hurt, some killed,
the demonstration is always in jeopardy of betrayal, of being co-opted
by larger forces bent on taking that initial impulse and turning it to
their ends. There is no safe revolution, or (in our case)
counter-revolution. There is no guarantee that we will get what we want,
but in every other political protest and action, it has caused, or may
cause the fall of the government.
By inaction we have allowed the actions of the DHS, the IRS, the FBI,
the NSA and the bankers. We have put the tools of our own oppression in
their hands. They have challenged us and we have fallen silent. I stood
on the mall with about a million other people listening to Glenn Beck.
One word from him at that moment would have changed everything and he
gave not a word of action.
Peace is delivered by only two methods: 1) the legal and binding
contract between the government and the people which details the rights
of the people and the rights of the government and respect for each; 2)
absolute oppression and suppression of the human right to life, liberty
and property (pursuit of happiness).
The patriot has the law on his side, no matter how well it has been bent
to the aims of the government. It is our great desire to live under the
contract that should motivate us. It is the government that is in
violation of the contract, not the people. Yet, we sit idle, waiting for
the chains; for the pits to be dug so that we can act. We watch while
police departments are militarized, while the military trains to subdue
us and we pay for it with our taxes, believing ourselves to be rational.
I have lost everything in pursuit of these goals. After I formed
Guardians of Liberty, my business was audited by the IRS until they
found one little mistake; the government made survival of my business
impossible by protecting banks instead of individuals, preventing me
from reorganizing debt that would have been manageable. I have been
forced to leave my home state in search of employment.
There are risks of action, but there is absolute certainty of oppression in inaction.
