This text was written by a winner of the 2024 call for feminist essays.
Before the full-scale invasion, I watched a TV series where the main issues were recycling and the environment. We lived in a world where we needed to protect the environment, surrounded by Harry Potter, anime, and restaurants. In early February 2022, my friends and I had a long, emotional discussion about whether we should eat sushi in a restaurant with disposable chopsticks or carry our own in little cases. We even quarreled with a friend. She said that ordering chopsticks on AliExpress was also wrong because it increases the—what’s it called—carbon footprint. Or emissions. Footprint and emissions.
And suddenly, we, the owners of ultimate Xbox subscriptions, had to go to the trenches. It’s untrue when they say that they resemble the trenches of the First World War. No, these are the same trenches. It’s just that now the enemy has many more ways to kill us in them.
We put away the AC remote on an ecological mattress and went there to fight, to shoot at the enemy with automatic rifles, and possibly die for the sake of other people. What foolish Shakespearean passions, right? Ask ChatGPT what it thinks about self-sacrifice. It will say that it’s irrational behavior inherent to humans. And it is wrong because not all humans are prone to this irrational behavior.
People don’t want to fight; people want to live. They always have and always will. Our grandfathers and grandmothers wanted it just as much, even though they lived without grocery delivery services. We think they were a bit less alive. But no, they had sex, they had death, and they had love.
The army is a time machine. It transports you to the nineteenth century. To the times of pantaloons, suffragettes, wood-burning stoves, hair on the pubis and underarms, simple tools for work and hunting. That’s why people who grew up in villages were highly valued in our unit. We were a battalion made up of Kyiv residents, so we didn’t know how to answer numerous important questions. How do you light a stove with wet wood? How do you clean a well so that water appears? What do you do with a horse that roams the village, neighing and biting? Seriously, there are many non-obvious problems when you are transported back two centuries.For instance, we often lived in abandoned houses near the front line. And one autumn, mice invaded our house. It wasn’t that two cute, furry mice showed up and stole some cheese, no. Dozens of mice gnawed at the walls of the old rural hut at night. I lay by the light of a kerosene lamp, thinking that they would eat the whole house and then me.
War is a different, quite shitty world. People don’t want to be there. People want safety in Warsaw.
Before the full-scale invasion, I had a colleague, Vitalik. He had spotless white sneakers that always seemed too big for his feet, spent his evenings at the gym, and often repeated, “A real man belongs to all women, not just one”. Though I don’t recall anyone asking his opinion about the men.
After it started, I didn’t hear from him for a year. Then one day, he messaged me from his new apartment in Warsaw:
“How are you holding up mentally? What helps? Because I’m really struggling here.”
I wrote to him from my damp basement near the city of Bakhmut:
“I’m not holding up at all. In the first week in the army, I should have gone insane, just stood up straight in the middle of a frontline village and screamed, screamed, screamed. Then they would have taken me to an asylum. There, I would also scream. In the breaks between lunch and dinner, four hours a day, until death. But somehow I endured, learned to breathe with half the volume of my lungs and believe in a quarter of a dream. I was too ashamed to go to the psychiatric hospital while others were holding on.”
Vitalik:
“Ummm… You’re saying something incomprehensible.”
Me:
“Okay, sorry. The ashes of heroes knock at my heart!”
Vitalik:
“Ah, I see. You’re doing great, iron lady, I couldn’t do that.”
Me:
“Hey, how did you keep your sneakers looking so clean and white?”
“Huh?”
“Sneakers. Yours always looked brand new.”
“Oh, I used Domestos. Just pour it on a toothbrush and scrub the sole. But never the leather, only the sole. You should try it.”
“I’ll try,” I say, looking down at my dusty, coyote-brown boots.
I think Vitalik could fight. Anyone could. There’s nothing so ingenious about having a shower with cold water from a barrel, hand-washing socks in a basin, taking an automatic rifle and going in a pickup truck to stand guard in a dugout while a Russian tries to kill you with all kinds of weapons. You don’t need much strength for this; even old men manage. You just need to forget everything you know about Harry Potter, Netflix, and ecology. Throw this knowledge into the Styx, so to speak. At the crossing near the stele with the inscription “Donetsk region.”
Vitalik is doing great in Poland, but he feels embarrassed to talk to me for some reason. Gradually, most people who are not fighting start to consider the boys in the army a bit more like heroes and a bit less like humans. They don’t want to live as much; they are military. They are different; their motives are different, and they have almost no desires. We can’t perceive that; we couldn’t do that. They are no longer people but functions. That’s what people think about the military. Some start to hate the girls there.
“What are you looking for there among brutal men? You were always a bit cuckoo,” – Vitalik tells me and suspects that I’m here for a good husband.
Why? Because I committed the great sin of being born a woman.
A guy in the army. Everyone:
“Got drunk and slept through the departure to the position? Well, it happens, he’s tired, we’ll give him a warning and feel sorry for him.”
“Can’t find coordinates on the map? Well, because it’s complicated, there was little training, not everyone is capable.”
“Drove up to 200 kilometers per hour on the highway just for fun and flipped over onto the roof? That’s our kind of guy, a risk-taking Cossack!”
A girl in the army. Everyone:
“Until she passes assembly, disassembly, and theory—we won’t give her a weapon!”
“Don’t let her into the trenches; the commander forbade it. Well, of course, these women are useless, not sitting in the trench with everyone.”
“What do you mean you don’t understand military documents? Sit down and learn; you’ll replace the deputy commander when he’s on leave. If you have boobs—it means you have attentiveness and a knack for clerical work.”
“The vehicle was hit by shrapnel in three places and won’t start? Well, of course, it’s a girl; who even let her behind the wheel.”
Around every warrior wanders a myth and whispers tales of crusaders, Valhalla, and free Cossacks into his ear. There’s nothing around a girl. Emptiness. There’s only the people’s whisper; she’s looking for a husband, cuckoo, a bad mother, unfulfilled, spoiled, greedy for a wage.
For sure, a role model for a woman can be a famous military woman from Instagram. Call-to-arms banners might have women in uniform too. But none of these modern constructs replace thousands of years of human pursuit for an answer to the simple soldier’s question, “Why me?” tailored for a man. Unpacking this question can reveal an entire universe. However, fully unpacking it is only possible in a dugout. There, you can spend months enumerating your losses.
“Why did I lose my family, and my wife found someone else in Germany?”
“Why did I lose my career while my colleagues live as they did and go to the pub on Fridays?”
“Why did I lose years of my life?”
And so on, up to the main question:
“Why is it me who has to die?”
Here the myth steps in; it lulls the soldier like a caring nanny:
“Because you are a warrior.”
“Because you are a predator in your pack.”
“The god of warfare awaits you in heavenly halls.”
“This is the evolution of your masculinity and authenticity.”
The myth compares the soldier and says: “You’re not a woman. Men who stayed in civilian life are not men. And you are obliged by your nature to protect women and children.”
According to myth, who is a twenty-year-old sniper Olesya supposed to protect? Why her? Will they even let her into Valhalla? I’m almost sure it will be just like in the army and Odin will say: “Never seen women in battle. Besides, we don’t take women into battle. You’d have been better off staying at home”. The myth denies her a place among warriors because of breasts. It offers her no explanations, no comforting dreams, no hope. So, women look for strength in stories of witches, healers, and prophets. But it’s not enough, and women fight on without support, without being nurtured.
In the end, it’s just a way to numb the pain. The war goes on, it’s too soon to analyze it. Yet, none of this matters much. In the nineteenth century and in the twenty-first, during war, the same things are important—to get warm, eat well, live another day, and love someone at the same time. The search for meaning creates an illusion, as if there’s any sense to be found.
Ladies and gentlemen, do not seek meaning in war. Literature has thrown around many possibilities. Especially Remarque. All of them are temporary, uncertain. Possibilities fears blood like microbes fear bleach.
In the search for meaning in war, you might accidentally shoot yourself. Then your comrades will put a bulletproof vest and helmet on your dead body, and the commander will write “direct hit by an enemy sniper” so that your mother receives death benefits and a shiny, beautiful medal. Why? Because they love you. Because in the army, you are a big, though strange, family.
While searching for meaning in the rear, you might accidentally betray your husband, your family, your country, and even yourself. You might become pompous and hollow, like a child’s toy. Or you might get lost in the meanings and drown in strong spirits.
Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, do not search for meaning; search for love. Love exists. In blood, it only grows faster, like a golden staph bacillus. There’s plenty of love; there will be enough for you and more to spare.
We all have nothing left but to love.
The views of the author do not necessarily reflect the position of the members of the organisation.