28.10.2024 / Remembering the dissidents

Ten days ago I went to my neighborhood post office with an envelope marked “Election Material.” The woman behind the counter carefully typed in the US address, letter by letter, while I stood and waited.

–How long will delivery take?

–Registered mail? Oh, about three weeks.

–Uh… is there any faster option?

–Well… it’s very expensive.

–If it will arrive in three weeks, I don’t need to mail it at all.

She starts to grasp what this is about and offers me a speedier (i.e., 10-day) service. It cost 821 hryvnias, a little over $20 USD. Looks like I will be counted in CT.

I’ve been writing and translating non-stop for the past month. Plus two book presentations — one in Lviv at their annual book fair (the largest in Eastern Europe) and one in Kyiv at the Museum of the Ukrainian Diaspora. Today I spent the day with the editor of the London Ukrainian Review, finalizing all the essays to be published in the upcoming issue on justice.

Was it irresponsible of me, an American citizen, to throw my full mind and attention into telling the stories of Ukraine’s recent history while my US is fast approaching such a close and consequential presidential election? I’m of two minds.

On the one hand, no matter what happens on Tuesday and in the days and weeks that follow, we got here by a long process over years and decades. This fraught competition — including the far-more-promising-than-half-a-year-ago Democratic ticket — is the result of what you and I — what we — have done. And if we don’t want to lose our world entirely we will have to keep up these efforts far beyond Tuesday — regardless of who wins.

On the other hand, it matters tremendously who takes the White House in 2025. Don’t be fooled by the fact that the US survived four years of Trump presidency. We are approaching a threshold. And so it matters what each one of us does to influence who wins the election. Our efforts matter and — maybe even more fundamentally — so do our ethics.

Last week the wealthy owners of two major US newspapers prevented the editorial boards from publicly endorsing a presidential candidate. The significance of this event—the manifestation of a shift toward russian-style politics that I could smell in the American air last spring — is expressed most clearly by Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. Please read his succinct piece: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/bezos-trump-and-the-failure-of-democracy

Timothy Snyder addressed the event in a video from Oklahoma City. “When democracy dies in darkness, I’m going to enjoy the shadows,” is how he sums up the attitude of Jeff Bezos. It’s the tendency of the wealthy and powerful to act as if they were immune to the future that their own actions are bringing to life.

I also recognize this mode of thinking: it’s the voice of self-preservation — at the expense of the people with whom you share the world.

Snyder is an American historian, speaking from a parking lot. Watching him, I see the Eastern European dissidents (who taught him so much) animated through his urgent appeal. It stirs my conscience.

“Do not obey in advance,” he says straight into the camera, reminding us of the fundamental lesson of the twentieth century’s authoritarian history.

This is sensible advice. Yes, it requires courage, but it is possible to resist. Once you’ve gone down that road, there is no turning back.

What we witnessed with the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times are signs of how far we’ve already gone. There is no path back to the days when power was more evenly distributed. Only forward. Ukraine is our future.

How has Ukraine survived for so long — the subject of empires, its language suppressed, its people murdered, with only short-lived bursts of political independence? Through courageous, spirited individuals, who kept the language and culture and idea of independent Ukraine alive through their actions, undaunted by the potential consequences.

The dissidents gave their voices, their health and some — their lives to resist the totalitarian power of the USSR. Today Ukraine is still here and fighting the evil no longer contained by the Soviet Union.