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   Destruction in Kharkiv, Much nearer the actual front; this building in Kharkiv is completely destroyed by shellfire.
I grew up
believing, and not wrongly, that the Soviets stood ready to rain nuclear fire
upon the West. In 1983 it almost happened, thanks to a faulty Soviet early
warning system that incorrectly showed the United States had launched five intercontinental
ballistic missiles. To me, the
missileer who had the independence of thought to recognize that his instruments
were malfunctioning, thereby preventing the Russians from firing back, is the
greatest unsung hero of the 20th Century. The man on the button that
almost-fateful day was Stanislav Yevgrafovich
Petrov, who retired from the Strategic
Rocket Forces as a lieutenant colonel. It was 26 September 1983, and only three
weeks had elapsed since Korean Air flight 007 had been shot down by a fighter
for straying into Soviet airspace. Both sides were on high alert due to both
the shoot-down of the airliner and former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's
somewhat reckless rhetoric. In that environment, it took a really strong man to
do what Petrov did: trust his instincts even in the face of second missile
warning, and with full knowledge that if he was wrong, the Gulag would be the
best he could hope for. But trust his instincts he did – he correctly believed
the equipment was malfunctioning – thereby saving the world from a catastrophic
nuclear exchange. Where
I write this was once part of the Soviet empire, and traces of the Soviet
system are everywhere, in transportation systems virtually unchanged, in
architecture details. In Kharkiv, near the train station, there is a building-sized
image of a Soviet Ukrainian man leading his troops against the Nazis, wearing
the Order of Lenin on his soiled utility uniform. Lidia Litvak, one of two
female aces known to history (Budanova was the other, and they were wingwomen
for some time), a Russian fighter pilot in the Second World War – the great
Patriotic War, here - went down over southern Ukraine, never to be found, when
the expert fighter pilots of the Luftwaffe finally turned tables on her…but not
until she had gotten some 11 of them. On
the other hand, a bust of Lenin overlooks the place we camped last week. I
found it when it was my turn to take the garbage out, and he was grinning his
tight-lipped, snarky grin at a heap of rubbish and a swarm of flies, the bane
of southern Russia and Ukraine. There he was, relegated to the garbage heap of
history, cast aside by the scientific dictates of dialectical materialism. Therein
lies the problem. The elevator in the apartment we all contribute to in Kyiv
says UCCP – Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic --, and no one ever bothered to
take it down. Is it ennui? Is it simple disgust, or is it a form of reverse
nostalgia? It may be all those things. People,
too, are still stuck in the communist mindset. Passersby look down at the
ground as you pass, and it is easy to see how a bodacious sort could get past
barriers by snapping “komitet' – “committee,” meaning “KGB,” and simply walking
by. People are still in terror of the secret police. So many traces remain of
that vanished time that it is impossible to say it is gone. It isn't, and it
shouldn't be, for we should remember the horrors of forced collectivization. In
fact, it seems to be creeping up in the formerly sane United States. I have a long
view on things nowadays, and I do not like what I see. Cancel culture,
restriction of freedoms by a Supreme Court gone wild, factionalism and hatred:
such are the ingredients of revolution. Yet the end result of revolution seems
invariably the place where we find ourselves now; nations born in strife seem
to end in them, for they haven't the organic cohesion of those that emerged
naturally. Refer
to the accompanying pictures. Vladimir Ilych Lenin, despite his expression of
superiority, gazes over an empire of rubbish. A streak of urine anoints his
head, courtesy of a young Kansan comrade. Maybe we in the US should take
history to heart; maybe we who live in the alleged beacon of light, now tearing
itself apart with sectarianism, need to pay attention. It
isn't that serious, say soldiers, which is what they say about anything that
does not involve death, which is their yardstick, their baseline, their natural
touchstone. I didn't expect to soldier at this age, approaching 50, but here I
am, with guys half my age. In fact, that worked out well for them when I had to
sign them out of Kyiv jail. They had gotten drunk and tried to talk to a
Ukrainian beauty, of which not a few abound, but this one had a boyfriend who
was a member of Kraken – Ukrainian Special Forces - and the next thing you
know, they were calling their uncle. Ah, me…but as I signed them out, and
signed the peace bond for 3000 gryvnia – about 100 US dollars – I realized how
war has a way of sifting out the inconsequential. There was no judicial
process, no permanent record, no payments to greedy attorneys…nothing but the
reasonable expectation that boys thrust into battle would be a little rough
when suddenly thrust back into civilization. The old jailer smiled as we left.
“Good boys, strong boys…fight Russians, not Ukraines. God to bless you.” He
meant it.
We
should all stop and take stock for just a moment. What is important is peace
and prosperity, living and letting people live, regardless of beliefs, or
creed, or something less than a hair's breadth wide – the color of one's
epidermis, or the preference of partner. Spend too much time wrapped in
such things, and find yourself – like Lenin, once the terror of the West –
thrown away in a garden, overseeing a kingdom of trash. The writer is a former military man, now researching and writing about the Ukrainian Conflict. Questions can be sent directly to lhaesten@gmail.com.
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