The comparison of Maidan and the war with Russia has become a common trope for all who write on political topics. The analogy is obvious and attractive, especially if we want to reassure ourselves and others with discussions about how “the night is always darkest before dawn” and reminders that Yanukovych was, after all, overthrown, despite everything.
However, the war with Russia is not a direct analogy of Maidan. If you want to understand what we are dealing with now in the war with Russia within the framework of an analogy with Maidan, imagine that Yatsenyuk, Tyahnybok, and Klitschko somehow controlled the Maidan. They regulate the delivery of tires, the purchase of gasoline, empty bottles, the extraction of cobblestones, and the production of cocktails. They regulate access to the Maidan and decide who may and may not stand on it. Everyone who disagrees with them is declared a spy or provocateur. Have you imagined it? How long do you think such a Maidan would have lasted, or rather, how quickly would it have dispersed and gone home? This is the situation we have in the war with Russia.
And, actually, the reason for it is simple — the belief that military operations are the domain of exclusively rigid, centralized organizations. But a year ago you were already conducting military operations and achieved victory in them. After all, the Maidan was a victory of self-organization over rigid hierarchy, including a military victory. And as it happens, all attempts to organize the Maidan led to troubles, big and small, or even to tragedy with signs of betrayal, like the massacre of February 18 during the “peaceful march.” Now you have let yourselves be convinced that a small war differs in some essential way from a large war (that is, in the content of the tasks, and not just in their scale) and, speaking metaphorically, you handed over power over the Maidan to Yatsenyuk, Tyahnybok, and Klitschko.
The results were not long in coming. There are two of them. The first is major achievements in organizing cauldrons. Moreover, the Debaltseve cauldron was obvious for a long time, and I don’t know about you, but for the past weeks I have felt as if in a nightmare, when evil inexorably approaches, and you cannot move either hand or foot. The second achievement is the growth in the number of generals. The number of generals speaks not only about the number of generals. It speaks about the complexity of the hierarchical structure. A general is not just a big cap, a belly, and beautiful shoulder straps — a general is the top of some bureaucratic pyramid. A general with his shoulder straps means that below him there are colonels, lieutenant colonels, majors, captains, and other senior lieutenants, as well as serving personnel of the Soviet army. And each lower level, so to speak, is wider and deeper than the higher one. And they all are consuming budgets.
The experience of Maidan and the war indicates that Ukrainians are better at self-organization than hierarchy. One can cite many arguments why self-organizing structures are better than hierarchical organizations and why they are more effective. However, it makes sense to talk about this when there is at least an understanding that every problem always has several solutions. We must understand that our notion of war, as a confrontation of organizations, is only one of the possible notions. The fact that “everyone does it this way” is in no way an argument for why we should do exactly the same. Moreover, our experience directly says that we cannot do it this way.
For a start, simply think about two such questions. The first is the structure of our armed forces — this is a slightly modernized structure of the Soviet army. A structure based on the experience of the Second World War and never once tested in a serious war. The Afghan experience was, rather, negative, if we speak about its effectiveness. Think about the fact that the entire chain of command was simply invented out of someone’s head.
The second question. Think about what war is and what its goals are. “Volunteers won’t buy a tank!” — supporters of regular cauldrons shout at us. But think about why they should buy a tank? The goal of war is to inflict unacceptable damage on the enemy. And there are many other ways to do this, besides buying a tank (by the way, if tanks were really sold in military stores, I have no doubt that volunteers would buy them). In general, if you begin to reflect in this direction, you will see that we can win this war. And you will see how it can be done. And in this sense, as in many others, Maidan was not in vain.