Normal war. How mass murder changes people’s consciousness and their ideas about the norm

After February 24, 2022 and October 7, 2023, for many peo­ple, the war ceased to be part of the news that was not direct­ly relat­ed to their lives. Against the back­ground of these events and very dif­fer­ent atti­tudes towards them, the Research Center “Collective Action”, known for his research in urban pol­i­cy, held an open dis­cus­sion on “Normalizing Evil.” The invit­ed experts in the dis­cus­sion were urban geo­g­ra­ph­er, co-founder of the com­pa­ny HabidatumAlexey Novikov, vis­it­ing researcher at Ariel University, for­mer dean of the Faculty of Sociology at the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences (Shaninki) Victor Vakhshtainand teacher of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, pub­lic speech and for­eign lan­guages, for­mer head of the PR ser­vice of one of the largest oil com­pa­niesGrigory Ogibin.

— We want­ed to under­stand what actions and what prac­tices lead to the fact that war seems not only a phe­nom­e­non from which It’s impos­si­ble to leave, but it’s also a nor­mal phe­nom­e­non, and some­times even nec­es­sary,” explains Artem Nikitin, a mem­ber of the Collective Action team and the leader of the meet­ing. - On the oth­er hand, I want­ed to under­stand how war from an extra­or­di­nary event becomes rou­tine, every­day life, what hap­pens in soci­ety and whether it is nec­es­sary to resist the rou­tiniza­tion of war and get­ting used to it. We saw how, in small steps, cam­eras in the Moscow metro turned from a tool of secu­ri­ty and com­fort into a tool of sur­veil­lance and sur­veil­lance. Unnoticed actions, small steps often lead to glob­al con­se­quences. It seems to me that the war between Russia and Ukraine was made pos­si­ble by anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic prac­tices, polit­i­cal repres­sion, polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, sur­veil­lance and total con­trol, includ­ing over the media.

Norm, routine, war

Alexey Novikov, start­ing the dis­cus­sion, called for sep­a­rat­ing the hard­ships of war for a spe­cif­ic per­son and the exis­tence of war as a norm in general:

War is a sad social norm to which we are accus­tomed. It is not for noth­ing that it is enshrined in inter­na­tion­al agree­ments and con­ven­tions regard­ing the treat­ment of pris­on­ers and the rules of war­fare in general.

But this, in the speaker’s opin­ion, does not mean that we con­sid­er the death of peo­ple or the bomb­ing of cities to be the norm. Alexey remind­ed the meet­ing par­tic­i­pants of Ilya Ehrenburg’s obser­va­tion in the book“The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His Students” about the par­al­lel exis­tence of war and peace­ful life. In wars right up to the First World War, bat­tles could be fought with­out inter­fer­ing with the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of peace­ful life: pas­sen­ger trains and crews calm­ly passed near the front line. Even dur­ing the First World War, German insur­ance com­pa­nies reg­u­lar­ly paid com­pen­sa­tion to the Russian gov­ern­ment, which insured its fleet in Germany in advance, for every Russian ship sunk in bat­tle by the German fleet. The hon­or of ful­fill­ing busi­ness oblig­a­tions was high­er than mil­i­tary patri­o­tism. Now such a sit­u­a­tion is almost impos­si­ble. The war takes on a total char­ac­ter, the armies become sim­i­lar to each oth­er not only in the types of weapons, but also in the uni­form, which, with its col­or and cut, does not sep­a­rate the war­ring sides, but dis­guis­es them, mak­ing their dif­fer­ences bare­ly dis­tin­guish­able. Well, and most impor­tant­ly, weapons of mass destruc­tion appear, which are intend­ed to destroy not only troops, but also civilians.

Alexey Novikov

When dis­cussing the nor­mal­iza­tion of war, in the opin­ion of Alexei Novikov, it is worth high­light­ing three top­ics. The first is the rou­tiniza­tion of war. A good exam­ple for this, accord­ing to Alexey, are the twelve Russian-Turkish wars, which took place with short inter­rup­tions from the 16th cen­tu­ry to the 20th. In Russian social salons these wars sim­ply ceased to be noticed; even if they were a top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion, it was not trag­ic, but rou­tine. In Europe the sit­u­a­tion was sim­i­lar. Eckermann in “Conversations with Goethe” admits that dur­ing the pro­tract­ed posi­tion­al war in In the Netherlands, he vis­it­ed many Dutch muse­ums and dra­mat­i­cal­ly advanced in his under­stand­ing of art. This rou­tine of war may have turned it into a kind of “nor­mal” life cir­cum­stance, he explains.

The sec­ond is the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion or roman­ti­ciza­tion of howlus. First of all, this hap­pens with lib­er­a­tion wars.

— In Russia, it so hap­pens that all the most sig­nif­i­cant and dif­fi­cult wars took place either in the east or in the west of the coun­try. And they turned out to be destruc­tive for the regime exist­ing in the coun­try at that time. Such wars nev­er became rou­tine, like the War of 1812, the Russian-Japanese War of 1905 or the Patriotic War of 1941-45. The romance of lib­er­a­tion or the bit­ter­ness of loss trans­formed the war into a leg­endary epic.

And third - war as a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter. Simplified paci­fist prac­tices are based on this idea: war is abnor­mal, unbear­able and incon­ve­nient - it must be urgent­ly stopped, regard­less of who is right or wrong in it. In such a set­ting, it does not mat­ter who is on which side, and that the “forces of good” may lose, the only main thing is that the war ends as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. According to Alexey, this is a sad prac­tice. This atti­tude is based on a sim­plis­tic view of war as a fac­tor of incon­ve­nience. That is, the main thing is to get rid of the incon­ve­niences of war at any cost, includ­ing for­get­ting about the prob­lems that caused it.

— What hap­pens after the city is destroyed? The lay­out itself, the usu­al rit­u­als, includ­ing com­mut­ing to work, going to the store, and so on, force the city to recov­er, Novikov gives an exam­ple from urban stud­ies. — The sight of a destroyed and depop­u­lat­ed city is one of the most ter­ri­ble. Have you seen the aban­doned city of Famagusta in Cyprus? It scares no less than Mariupol or Grozny after the bomb­ing. The rapid restora­tion of a war-dam­aged city is very impor­tant. But, on the oth­er hand, enthu­si­asm for estab­lish­ing a peace­ful life can over­shad­ow the desire to win the war and become a sign of indif­fer­ence. In this case, we seem to lose sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the goals of the war, turn­ing war sim­ply into a fac­tor of every­day inconvenience.

Grigory Ogibin is cur­rent­ly teach­ing lit­er­a­ture at school and has been study­ing it for a long time. Therefore, when speak­ing about the nor­mal­iza­tion of war, he first of all turned to literature:

— It seems to me that in all those sto­ries, books, works in which we learn about the world, our­selves and oth­er peo­ple, there are always heroes. Heroes are found, first of all, in war. But in the First, with the advent of weapons of mass destruc­tion, a water­shed passed. In the books of Erich Maria Remarque and Richard Aldington there are no more heroes, there is an ordi­nary per­son, pulled out and thrown into the lit­er­ary genre to which we are accustomed.

Grigory cit­ed a recent meet­ing of a teacher at the school where he teach­es as a vivid illus­tra­tion of the split between real­i­ty and the expec­ta­tion of a hero in war. The young teacher returned from Gaza, where he is now fighting:

The chil­dren who wrote to him are stand­ing with bal­loons. The Red car­pet. Someone is play­ing the xylo­phone. He expe­ri­enced some­thing, in our opin­ion, ter­ri­ble. He is greet­ed as a hero. Although he does not feel like a hero, his expe­ri­ence is more ordi­nary, working…

Normalization or routinization?

Viktor Vakhshtein called for a clear dis­tinc­tion between nor­mal­iza­tion and routinization:

— Something has hap­pened that dis­rupts your dai­ly life, makes every­day rou­tine actions impos­si­ble, and blocks your entire nor­mal way of life. All the reg­u­la­tions, all the instruc­tions that you fol­lowed sim­ply stop work­ing. After some time, no mat­ter how mon­strous this event may be, you will find the resources to rebuild this every­day life again. Extraordinary events dis­rupt rou­tine. They burn through the fab­ric of every­day life. But the fab­ric of every­day life regen­er­ates. This is rou­tiniza­tion. Just because you’ve rebuilt your dai­ly life does­n’t mean you think it’s nor­mal. Maybe you are used to the fact that mis­siles are fly­ing or at 6 in the morn­ing FSB offi­cers, accom­pa­nied by wit­ness­es, are inter­est­ed in you, but this is not the norm. Normalization did not occur.

Victor Vakhshtain

Victor remind­ed the audi­ence that rou­tiniza­tion refers to the lay­er of actions, and nor­mal­iza­tion refers to the lay­er of per­cep­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Our per­cep­tion of what is nor­mal or abnor­mal depends not so much on the event itself, but rather on the frame­work through which we look at this world.

As an exam­ple, Viktor Vakhshtain cit­ed the Strugatskys’ sto­ry “The Second Invasion of the Martians.” There, the hero is awak­ened at night by noise, roar, flash­es of light, for which he could not find any rea­son­able expla­na­tion. Later it turns out that this is the land­ing ofmar­tians who estab­lished a new regime. The main char­ac­ter becomes ide­alcol­lab­o­ra­tor. And a year or two lat­er he remem­bers how then, wak­ing up,he saw “space­ships pass­ing in a col­umn, bring­ing light and peace his home.” The soci­ol­o­gist explains:

We can explore nor­mal­iza­tion strate­gies. But rou­tiniza­tion has no strat­e­gy! This is sim­ply the restora­tion of some lay­er of every­day activities.

Many nor­mal­iza­tion strate­gies are well described. Victor reminds us of the work of insur­ance com­pa­nies that make us think about death, thus nor­mal­iz­ing an extra­or­di­nary event that has not even hap­pened yet.

At the same time, Victor reminds that the strug­gle for the right to con­sid­er some­thing nor­mal and abnor­mal has been going on for cen­turies. And it may seem to us that every­one who does not shareour point of view is delib­er­ate­ly nor­mal­iz­ing some­thing that in itself is notnor­mal.

— This is a strat­e­gy of nor­mal­iza­tion and denor­mal­iza­tion. The sub­ject of the researcher is to observe how you will prove to peo­ple who think one thing is nor­mal thatnor­mal is some­thing else.

Is it nec­es­sary to fight the nor­mal­iza­tion of war? Viktor Vakhshtain began answer­ing this ques­tion with a sto­ry about the crit­i­cism of every­day life. In his opin­ion, this phe­nom­e­non is well described by Pelevin. The hero of Pelevin’s sto­ry falls asleep dur­ing a lec­ture and wakes up in the army. He falls asleep in the army and wakes up at his own wed­ding. A cri­tique of every­day life is the idea that we spend most of our lives with­out reflec­tion, as if in a dream. Often, behind the usu­al every­day things there are polit­i­cal or busi­ness ideas. But we don’t even think about their influ­ence. For exam­ple, Leningradsky Prospekt. As Vakhstein said, its width is not acci­den­tal. It was cal­cu­lat­ed so that if all the hous­es col­lapsed, there would be space in the mid­dle through which a tank could dri­ve. Few peo­ple know that the bench­es in Central Park were made by order of the New York City Hall pre­cise­ly so that home­less peo­ple could not sleep on them. Marxist crit­i­cism of every­day life, says Vakhstein, has made its cre­do the the­sis of “awak­en­ing,” “open­ing our eyes”: polit­i­cal will can shape every­day life, push­ing us not to notice or think about cer­tain things.

“When we talk about nor­mal­iza­tion, then this is already a strug­gle around nar­ra­tives,” he empha­sizes. “We have observed how in the three months that have passed since October 7, many peo­ple have reassem­bled the exist­ing real­i­ty, their ideas about good and evil, and are now prov­ing to each oth­er what exact­ly can be con­sid­ered the norm and what can­not be con­sid­ered nor­mal.” Now there is no unit­ed front, where all the “good peo­ple” are on one side, the “bad peo­ple” are on the oth­er, and there are indif­fer­ent peo­ple who need to be taught what exact­ly is con­sid­ered good and evil, nor­mal or abnormal.

When frames shift

Explaining to the audi­ence exact­ly when and how the idea of the norm changes, Vakhshtain sug­gest­ed turn­ing to a sci­ence close to soci­ol­o­gists - anthro­pol­o­gy. For a mem­ber of the tribe, the whole world is divid­ed into the sacred and the pro­fane. The pro­fane is some­thing rou­tine, some­thing that can be dis­cussed. The sacred is the sacred, that which lies beyond doubt. It, in turn, is divid­ed into sacred pure, which is rec­og­nized as absolute good, unde­ni­able good, and unclean - tran­scen­den­tal evil.

From time to time, region­al bound­aries are vio­lat­ed. Something that was con­sid­ered the embod­i­ment of the com­mon val­ues of the tribe can become des­e­crat­ed, mov­ing into the region of the unclean sacred. Such vio­la­tions cause col­lec­tive emo­tions of anger, indig­na­tion, and indig­na­tion. Moreover, Vakhshtain empha­sizes, res­i­dents of mod­ern megac­i­ties and inhab­i­tants of social net­works in this regard are not very dif­fer­ent from mem­bers of tribes stud­ied by anthropologists.

“We can only learn about the vio­la­tion of bound­aries when there is an “effer­ves­sance”, a col­lec­tive seething,” explains Victor. — People can spec­u­la­tive­ly argue about the bound­aries of good and evil in a cafe or in the kitchen, exchange opin­ions and argu­ments. But in a sit­u­a­tion of des­e­cra­tion and sub­se­quent uproar, they go out into the square.

As an exam­ple of a shift in the frame of per­cep­tion of nor­mal and abnor­mal, Viktor Vakhshtain citesThe Watergate scan­dal (relat­ed to the attempt to install lis­ten­ing devices in the head­quar­ters of the Democratic Party in Washington dur­ing the 1972 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign - edi­tor’s note). It is described by the American soci­ol­o­gist Geoffrey Alexander.

It would seem that the pub­li­ca­tion of the fact that the pres­i­dent installed wire­tap­pin­gat the oppo­si­tion head­quar­ters, should have caused a real scan­dal. But, after the pub­li­ca­tion, as Victor explained, the Republicans even man­aged to win the elec­tions. However, work to denor­mal­ize what hap­pened was already under­way, many polit­i­cal (and not only) forces unit­ed to show that it is not nor­mal for the pres­i­dent to wire­tap the oppo­si­tion, when he uses admin­is­tra­tive resources to spy on his polit­i­cal oppo­nents. As a result, an active dis­cus­sion began and an inter-par­ty com­mis­sion was cre­at­ed in Congress. A spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor is appoint­ed to inves­ti­gate this crime. And whom Nixon fires!

“For the Americans, an incred­i­ble, impos­si­ble action took place: in fact, the leader killed the priest of the tribe,” explains Vakhstein. “And only at this moment there is a surge of col­lec­tive emo­tions. Then peo­ple who vot­ed for Republicans just six months ago and did not think that any­thing out of the ordi­nary had hap­pened come out demand­ing impeach­ment. The bound­ary between the sacred and the pro­fane was crossed out. 

The President from the embod­i­ment of the val­ues of American democ­ra­cy (sacred pure) first turns into an ordi­nary cor­rupt gang­ster (pro­fane), and then into a direct threat to democ­ra­cy (sacred impure).

We, of course, may think that right now the war of norms has inten­si­fied, the rel­e­vance of the divi­sion of good and evil, right and wrong has sharply increased. But Victor Vakhshtein warns against such a per­cep­tion of reality.

“This war is eter­nal,” Victor draws the atten­tion of the lis­ten­ers. - For exam­ple, wars between veg­e­tar­i­ans and meat eaters. We hear a nar­ra­tive from their side: “You eat meat, you think it’s nor­mal, you are mur­der­ers!” This is an attempt to denor­mal­ize what is the norm for many. For sup­port­ers of veg­e­tar­i­an­ism, eat­ing meat is a bla­tant abnormality.

— Opposition to the “nor­mal­iza­tion” of war should not be con­fused with rejec­tion of the “con­flict” as such. I think clash­es between dif­fer­ent opin­ions are very impor­tant for nor­mal social life,” adds Alexey Novikov. “Avoiding these clash­es is capit­u­la­tion.” The cul­ture of con­flict in Russia is prac­ti­cal­ly absent; peo­ple tend to be afraid of con­flicts. This is vis­i­ble even at the lev­el of urban plan­ning prac­tices. “What kind of pub­lic hear­ings,” we hear, “will still get into a fight!” However, it is pre­cise­ly this “fight” that is the mean­ing of pub­lic hear­ings; it is to iden­ti­fy the con­flict and resolve it. It is clear that nor­mal pub­lic hear­ings on urban devel­op­ment projects should take years with heat­ed dis­cus­sions, dis­putes, and the search for com­pro­mis­es. I think the cul­ture of con­struc­tive con­flict is the only envi­ron­ment for the exis­tence of a mod­ern city.

War as a routine

For dis­cus­sions about rou­tiniza­tion, de-ruti­niza­tion and new norms, Alexey sug­gests recall­ing how eye­wit­ness­es describe the begin­ning of the Patriotic War. For exam­ple, in his mem­oirs, the Soviet avant-garde artist Alexander Arkadyevich Labas recalls hear­ing a radio mes­sage about the begin­ning of the war on June 22, 1941. He walks through a city, many of whose res­i­dents have not yet heard about the war, and does not rec­og­nize his city, which looks com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent after the news of the start of the war.

“This is an exam­ple of that same de-ruti­niza­tion as a result of strong emo­tions,” says Novikov.

Games with rou­tiniza­tion and de-rou­tiniza­tion in art are a sep­a­rate sto­ry. In par­tic­u­lar, Alexey remem­bered one of the founders of the Collective Action group, artist Andrei Monastyrsky. Monastyrsky and his art group imple­ment­ed a num­ber of per­for­mances on de-ruti­niza­tion. For exam­ple, the per­for­mance “Let’s get one meter clos­er.” People in Russia and America simul­ta­ne­ous­ly began to dig holes, each half a meter deep, as if towards each oth­er through the thick­ness of the globe. That is, they became one meter clos­er, trans­fer­ring sol­i­dar­i­ty and the desire for coop­er­a­tion from ver­bal rou­tine into prac­tice and action. Or they unwound a giant coil of rope and pulled it for a long time in order to real­ize the rou­tine of dura­tion and time. These per­for­mances helped to take a dif­fer­ent look at the norm and rou­tine, as well as at how one can pre­tend to be another.

In turn, Victor Vakhshain shared oth­er exam­ples from the world of art. It is art that allows us to see how rou­tiniza­tion dif­fers from nor­mal­iza­tion. Here we are not talk­ing about the strug­gle of norms, but about the break­ing of rou­tine, its prob­lema­ti­za­tion. The artist Anatoly Osmolovsky slight­ly enlarged the pack of Marlboro, so that it remained almost indis­tin­guish­able from the usu­al one. But she stopped get­ting into her pock­et. “This is an attempt to unpack the rou­tine by mak­ing small changes to it,” explains Victor.

In the sec­ond exam­ple, Everyday life, on the con­trary, became denser.

— Imagine, you find your­self in a city and see ordi­nary life: cou­ples kiss, grand­fa­thers play petanque, grand­moth­er feeds pigeons. The next day, the same peo­ple in the same place are busy with the same thing. Such “Groundhog Day” . Osmolovsky hired actors who, for eight hours, por­trayed the rou­tine in the main square of Ljubljana, and there were those who plunged into this rou­tine by acci­dent. Calls to the police began, para­noid dis­or­ders began, peo­ple tried to under­stand what was hap­pen­ing. Because rou­tine can­not be so visu­al­ly reproducible.

It is inter­est­ing that the same mech­a­nism of “con­den­sa­tion of real­i­ty” that Osmolovsky used for per­for­mance was used by stu­dents at the University of Minneapolis 30 years ago to change the urban environment.

They put on T-shirts with the name of one of the most dis­ad­van­taged areas of Minneapolis and went there to spend time and hang out. The next day they repeat­ed their cam­paign, and the next, and so on. Soon the police appeared in the area, then the press, try­ing to fig­ure out who it was and why they were gath­er­ing there. Then the bohemi­ans arrived: street artists, musi­cians. And the area began to trans­form. Now this is one of the most pres­ti­gious areas of the city. That is, by chang­ing every­day life, they launched the process­es of city regeneration.

The sec­ond exam­ple giv­en by Alexey occurred in one of the Canadian cities.

— There were three parks: one was crowd­ed, the sec­ond was aver­age­ly busy, and vir­tu­al­ly no one went to the third. The may­or pro­pos­es to con­vert the third park into a mixed-use space, where there will be green­ery, res­i­den­tial build­ings, and pub­lic spaces. After this pro­pos­al, protests and demon­stra­tions begin in the city, whose par­tic­i­pants demand the res­ig­na­tion of the may­or. We began to under­stand the rea­sons for the dis­con­tent of the towns­peo­ple. It turned out that 15% of the pro­test­ers sim­ply do not trust any gov­ern­ment and its ini­tia­tives, regard­less of their nature and con­tent, anoth­er 15% are cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly against cut­ting down any trees in the city, even under the pre­text of improv­ing and beau­ti­fy­ing the city space. The remain­ing 70% said that they had long want­ed to go to the park, but now it is being demol­ished and they will not be able to ful­fill their dream. At the same time, a sig­nif­i­cant part of these 70% heard about the park for the first time in their lives.

Photos of hostages, routine and propaganda

Grigory Ogibin recent­ly dis­cussed with his stu­dents why why there are pho­tographs of hostages hang­ing at school. It seems that there is already a lot of this around, and in the school foy­er they encounter it again.

— Can these pho­tos be con­sid­ered an attempt to nor­mal­ize the sit­u­a­tion or, on the con­trary, is it a fight against it? Rather, it is a ges­ture-reminder of the abnor­mal­i­ty of what is hap­pen­ing. But many in today’s Israel seri­ous­ly argue that these pho­tographs are an attempt to jus­ti­fy the inva­sion of Gaza.

Grigory Ogibin

That is, the same pho­tographs are read dif­fer­ent­ly by dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Some Israelis believe that the trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence was so pow­er­ful that peo­ple can­not stop think­ing about it. And pho­tos should be every­where to pre­vent the sit­u­a­tion from becom­ing rou­tinized. Victor Vachstein com­pares these pho­tographs with this per­cep­tion to the raised bricks on the paths of the Holocaust memo­r­i­al in Berlin - as you walk, you stum­ble and feel that some­thing is wrong. But some res­i­dents see the pho­tographs as a reminder of the cap­ture, which helps jus­ti­fy the fight­ing. You can con­tin­ue the chain fur­ther, for exam­ple, con­sid­er that mil­i­tary action is nec­es­sary so that Netanyahu can remain in office.

“This is one of the mech­a­nisms of nor­mal­iza­tion - ratio­nal­iza­tion, place­ment in a con­text in which some action is a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for anoth­er action,” explains Vakhstein. “At the same time, just a month ago no one would have nor­mal­ly accept­ed such a con­struc­tion in the Israeli pub­lic con­scious­ness.” Which of the two points of view you choose depends on what you believe.

Nevertheless, as Grigory draws our atten­tion, in Russia there are no pho­tographs on the streets of peo­ple injured dur­ing the SVO. In the Russian pub­lic space, the state is try­ing to either talk about the war hero­ical­ly, or not talk at all.

Alexey Novikov notes that when dis­cussing the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Russia, it is still more cor­rect to talk about pro­pa­gan­da rather than normalization.

“Maybe pro­pa­gan­dists believe that they are cre­at­ing new norms, but it seems to me that this is not so,” Alexey shares his thoughts. “I don’t see any evi­dence of this new nor­mal.” We see the absence inpub­lic field of reflec­tion on this matter.

A very inter­est­ing aspect was touched upon by the audi­ence and Artem Nikitin with their ques­tions. By ask­ing what is the dif­fer­ence between Kremlin pro­pa­gan­da and pho­tographs of hostages in Israel, are you ratio­nal­iz­ing what is hap­pen­ing or pro­mot­ing your point of view?

“This ques­tion is much more pro­pa­gan­da and manip­u­la­tive than it might seem at first glance,” says Victor Vakhshtain. — These are ques­tions from the series “What is the dif­fer­ence between the occu­pa­tion of Crimea and the occu­pa­tion of the West Bank?” or “What is the dif­fer­ence between the bomb­ing of Mariupol and the bomb­ing of Gaza?” When you ask to clar­i­fy the dif­fer­ence, you are not real­ly ask­ing about the dif­fer­ence. Against. You already know in advance that there is no dif­fer­ence, but there is a field of com­pa­ra­ble actions. You are try­ing to force your inter­locu­tor to look at the West Bank through the prism of the occu­pa­tion of Crimea, and at the ter­ror­ist attack on October 7 through the prism of Russia’s attack on Ukraine. That is, you voice your nar­ra­tive under the guise of a question.

After October 7 in Israel, accord­ing to Victor Vakhshtein, many groups of peo­ple are forced to reassem­ble their nar­ra­tives. For exam­ple, wom­en’s organizations. 

After the European Union demon­strat­ed com­plete indif­fer­ence to the facts of mass rape, Israeli left-wing wom­en’s orga­ni­za­tions direct­ly told their for­mer com­rades: “It seems that you are no longer fem­i­nists, you - anti-Semitic.”

— This is an attempt to reassem­ble the nar­ra­tive in a sit­u­a­tion where it turned out that it is not shared by those with whom you were on the same side just yes­ter­day. We see the same “reassem­bly” in Western left­ist youth cir­cles. Dominik Geisler last year pub­lished a very inter­est­ing study on how the mes­sage is trans­mit­ted through Twitter: “If you sup­port Palestine, you should sup­port Russia.” Why? Because there is an anti-colo­nial strug­gle going on in both places, Russia and Hamas are doing the same thing. In this way, the left is also try­ing to reassem­ble its narrative.

But a very impor­tant dif­fer­ence between the attempts to reassem­ble the nar­ra­tive that are tak­ing place in Russia and Israel, accord­ing to Grigory Ogibin, is that in Russia try­ing to impose a sin­gle dis­course on everyone:

— Moreover, it seems that even those who do it do not believe in it. In Israel, there is still no cen­tral, imposed nar­ra­tive. We see a patch­work of nar­ra­tives, each group try­ing to reassem­ble their real­i­ty on their own. People com­mu­ni­cate, agree, a liv­ing process is under­way. Language devel­ops in the same way, con­stant­ly chang­ing and devel­op­ing. This can be observed as a mir­a­cle, as a deriv­a­tive of sev­er­al vec­tors. It turns out that Israel is an agglom­er­ate of dif­fer­ent opin­ions, dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tives, with greater diver­si­ty even than the much larg­er Russia.

Alexey Novikov believes that the impor­tant prob­lem fac­ing Russia is not even an attempt to impose one truth on every­one, but a cri­sis of truth:

— A cri­sis of truth is a sit­u­a­tion when no one believes any­one any­more, when facts don’t mean any­thing, explains Novikov. - You can cre­ate new data. They may con­tra­dict what is already well-known and proven, but this does not both­er any­one - the bright­ness of the the­sis turns out to be more impor­tant than the truth­ful­ness of its con­tent. As a result, many prac­tices, includ­ing cor­po­rate ones, are built on ver­i­fi­ca­tion rather than trust: “Don’t trust, but verify!”

Alexey admits that the cri­sis of truth is not a new phe­nom­e­non. He recalls that sim­i­lar man­i­fes­ta­tions in Russia were described by the Marquis Astolphe de Custine in his book “Russia in 1839.”

— Maybe this is part of the genet­ic code of Russian pub­lic cul­ture? Don’t know. But, one way or anoth­er, Israel and Russia are two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent coun­tries in this regard. If dur­ing a lec­ture you try to describe a sit­u­a­tion to stu­dents in Russia in the cat­e­gories of “good” and “bad,” “decent” and “dis­hon­est,” then per­haps many will not under­stand this approach and will ask for a def­i­n­i­tion of what “decent” is. Usually ideas about decen­cy are the norm, but here they are not; evi­dence is need­ed. Russia is not like that. Many coun­tries are going through eth­i­cal relativism.

A world without war

The dis­cus­sion end­ed with a ques­tion from the audi­ence about whether human­i­ty can denor­mal­ize war.

Alexey Novikov thinks no:

— Political free­dom has always been and will be under threat, and peo­ple will defend it by all means, war among them. Just one relaxed gen­er­a­tion in the United States - and free­dom was under the onslaught of pow­ernew pop­ulist move­ments that are ready to under­take a con­sti­tu­tion­al rev­o­lu­tion. So even in coun­tries where there is a work­ing sys­tem of checks and bal­ances, even there you have to con­stant­ly fight for freedom.

Viktor Vakhshtein, answer­ing this ques­tion, turned to the works of Thomas Hobbes. In 1651, this English philoso­pher tried to con­duct a thought exper­i­ment that would answer the ques­tion of how free­dom and polit­i­cal vio­lence are relat­ed. He pre­sent­ed a human nature that does not have innate sol­i­dar­i­ty with oth­er peo­ple built into it:

— For two thou­sand years it has been con­sid­ered an axiom that a per­son is born with empa­thy, com­pas­sion, sol­i­dar­i­ty, a pen­chant for coop­er­a­tion and peace­ful coex­is­tence with oth­ers. The Greeks called it “nomos agraphos”, the Romans called it “jus nat­u­rale”. Hobbes sug­gest­ed that none of you is a social being from birth, no one is ini­tial­ly cre­at­ed as an ide­al cit­i­zen of the polis. All that you have from birth is, first­ly, the instinct of self-preser­va­tion, sec­ond­ly, com­mon sense (the abil­i­ty to fore­see the con­se­quences of your actions) and third­ly, an inter­est in high­er spheres. At that time it was pos­si­ble to remove the social from human nature, but not the reli­gious. And then he con­ducts a thought exper­i­ment about how a com­mu­ni­ty whose mem­bers are not endowed with sol­i­dar­i­ty will be organized.

Open dis­cus­sion “Normalization of evil”

In Hobbes’s thoughts, because of the inher­ent desire for acqui­si­tion in every per­son, peo­ple will begin to con­tin­u­ous­ly kill each oth­er - the famous war of “all against all.” But if you killed your neigh­bor, his two broth­ers will come and kill you. In this case, no pri­vate agree­ments work. Even a gang mod­el that would impose its rules of the game on every­one else is impos­si­ble. After all, there is no sol­i­dar­i­ty among peo­ple, and with­in the gang they will kill each oth­er faster than the gang sub­ju­gates the rest. How to sur­vive? The only thing that remains is to con­clude a total social con­tract. This requires from each the basic oper­a­tion of del­e­ga­tion, the exchange of one’s nat­ur­al right to kill for the civ­il free­dom not to be killed.

—But at the moment when this alien­ation occurs, when you no longer have the nat­ur­al right of self-defense, because you have exchanged it for the civ­il free­dom not to be killed, the con­tract with the sov­er­eign is indis­sol­u­ble . Because you are not nego­ti­at­ing with a sov­er­eign. People agree with each oth­er that there must be some­one, a guar­an­tor, to whom, first of all, the restora­tion of jus­tice is del­e­gat­ed. Therefore, this oper­a­tion of exchang­ing nat­ur­al rights for civ­il lib­er­ties is, first of all, an oper­a­tion of exchang­ing the right to kill for the free­dom not to be killed. Therefore, the con­nec­tion between civ­il free­dom and vio­lence is direct. This is when one thing replaces anoth­er. Only from this moment does total vio­lence cease to be the norm and soci­ety emerges.

Text: Yulia Chernaya

Yulia Chernaya  2.04.2024

Israeli-Palestinian conflict, philosophy, society, Ukraine, Victor Vakhshtein, war