On Russia’s phantom pains 

Politics also has phantom pains and phantom hopes. Political bodies, feeling that a part of them has been "amputated," live for a long time as if it were here, as if it were a part of you. And these phantoms can last for decades, centuries, millennia. The phantom pain of the Roman Empire, numerous fantasies about its reincarnation, lasted for a millennium and a half, until Nazism and fascism.

Whether or not the Russian Federation disintegrates, it will long feel like an empire and will seek to attach the territories it considers its own by force and blood. History never ends, and it will continue even after we regain our lost lands. Most likely, after that, the fantasies of empire and the phantom pains of empire will not disappear, but will only intensify. And we will need to protect our res publica in the presence of this crippled monster, which perceives the world around it as a collection of its severed limbs. And since Kyiv in Moscow's fantasy is not just a limb, but a head, and without Ukraine, the Russian Federation is like akephaloi (mythical headless men - ed.), a headless horseman, the phantom pain will continue for a long time. Today we are dealing with a headless dragon that does not think, but this does not make it less bloodthirsty. Rather, it becomes more so. Because thoughts, conscience, and morality no longer restrain him.

“Today we are dealing with a headless dragon that does not think, but this does not make it less bloodthirsty. Rather, it becomes more so. Because thoughts, conscience, and morality no longer restrain him”

We should think about how our res publica can exist alongside this monster for a long time. This requires a balance between the ethos of the warrior and the ethos of the bourgeois. We need not only to fight, but also to be successful economically. Like, say, Venice was in the Middle Ages. Venice was able to turn its threatened geography, thrown into the sea, into a source of power and compete with the great empires.

There are two laws in history:

- it never ends as long as people live;

- it is always more cunning than we are.

That is why we must be prepared to live in a maze, where the unknown is around every corner, and not in an open space where everything is visible.

Source

About the author. Volodymyr Yermolenko, writer, head of PEN Ukraine

The editors do not always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.