"Identity". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 17.11.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/what-is-identity/

One of the mistakes made by the Russian authorities, who expected to gain the support of the local population after invading Ukraine, stems from their failure to understand Ukrainian identity and the fact that identity cannot be imposed as an ideological construct. What identity is and how Ukrainian identity differs from Russian identity is explained by Nikolai Karpitsky in the latest article from the “Dictionary of War” series on PostPravda.Info.

Identity

Identity is a sense of unity or sameness with something – an element of self-awareness as a person, based on one’s understanding of oneself and one’s relation to others. Different levels of identity coexist within self-consciousness:

– Personal identity – an answer to the question “Who am I?”; an awareness of oneself and one’s place in the world, formed through life experience and inner self-determination as an individual.

– Social identity – an awareness of belonging or connection to a community, culture, or tradition; it can be cultural, religious, professional, ideological, ethnic, national, civic, etc.

With the rise of nationalism in the 20th century, ideological appeals to ethnic and national identity were used to justify political claims that led to World War II and many other armed conflicts, including the Russo-Ukrainian war that began in 2014.

Civic and Archaic Social Identity

An archaic form of social identity is identifying oneself with a community of relatives, friends, or fellow villagers – that is, with the circle of people one can personally interact with. Based on this, different types of local identities are formed, connected to real communities – one’s village, one’s local community. These communities are “real” in the sense that people within them can directly interact with each other, unlike “imagined communities” (in the terminology of Benedict Anderson), in which people only mentally perceive themselves as part of one group but never actually meet each other. Such communities exist only in people’s consciousness, and to recognize identity with them, people need some marker of commonality – a shared religion, language, culture, nation, citizenship, social class, territory, customs, ethics, and so on.

In earlier times, belonging to a social class or religion was more important than ethnic affiliation, so nations and territories played a minor role in social identity. The formation of civic identity began when a sense of responsibility for one’s city or country became more important than loyalty to one’s class, lord, or king. The feeling of responsibility for one’s country as a whole led to the emergence of new civic nations. However, the process of their formation differs from country to country – in some, they are already established, while in others, they are only beginning to emerge.

The Soviet People – An Ideological Construct

Among the largely uneducated population of Tsarist Russia, local identity predominated. For most people, it was only important that those around them spoke a familiar language, followed familiar customs, and practiced the same religion. Identification with Russia as a whole was understood in an imperial context – as identification with the territory controlled by the Tsar’s authority.

For the Communists, the foundation of the state was territory and power, and it was no longer important which nations inhabited those territories. This defined the project of creating a new community – the Soviet people – united only by territory and state power. The collapse of the Soviet Union showed that identification with the Soviet people was based on ideology rather than genuine identity, and that the Soviet people were merely an ideological construct.

The Difference Between Identity and Ideology

Social self-identification can take either an ideological or a personal form – and only in the latter case does it become the foundation of true identity. Unlike ideology, identity always has a personal character. Ideology creates a system of ideas that motivate people to act in the interests of power or a group seeking power. An ideological framework requires a person to accept these ideas as their own, regardless of personal life experience or self-determination. A person who refuses to accept or critically reinterprets these ideas is perceived as a hostile element toward that ideology.

In contrast, identity is formed on the basis of one’s own life experience, with ideas serving as a means of understanding that experience. Therefore, there is no requirement to accept a fixed set of ideas as mandatory. On the contrary, one can constantly reinterpret them to gain a deeper understanding of oneself. For this reason, national or religious identity fosters personal development and creative self-realization, while national or religious ideology, on the contrary, suppresses individuality.

Since ideological self-identification is externally imposed and coercive, people usually abandon it easily when the political situation changes, and such rejection has no fundamental impact on their personality. A historical example of this is the abandonment of identification with the Soviet people. However, one cannot abandon one's own identity without a complete transformation of the self.

The Ideological Understanding of National Identity

The collapse of the Soviet Union marked the beginning of the formation of new civic nations in Russia and Ukraine. However, the establishment of a dictatorship in Russia interrupted this process. The current regime in Russia imposes on its citizens a contradictory identification with their country, which combines two distinct ideological orientations.

First, it presents Russia not as a state with historically defined borders, but as any territory that is or has ever been governed by central Russian authority. Second, it promotes an aggressive nationalist myth of a “triune people” sharing a single root – implying that Ukrainians and Belarusians have no right to exist independently of Russia. The first ideological stance is internationalist, while the second is nationalist and chauvinistic. This duality allows Russian propaganda to attract people with opposing ideological beliefs.

In line with the nationalist orientation, the Russian leadership seeks to impose a Russian identity on Ukrainians – declared as one of the goals of the military invasion of Ukraine, under the slogan of “denazification.” Some residents of the occupied territories of Ukraine declare support for Russia from the opposite ideological position: they identify not with Russians as a people, but with the territory controlled by Moscow. However, this ideological identification has failed to create a genuine Russian identity among them – neither during the Soviet period nor now.

The Russian propaganda system projects its own ideological understanding of national identity onto Ukrainian public consciousness. According to this view, Ukrainian identity is an ideological construct imposed by the West to set Ukraine against Russia. In reality, Ukraine is united by a shared cultural and historical experience – including a negative colonial past – which precludes any acceptance of a Russian identity.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion, the process of identity formation based on a new Ukrainian civic nation accelerated. However, it remains uneven, and in many regions – particularly in eastern Ukraine – an archaic local identity persists alongside Ukrainian identity, rooted in attachment to one’s city or village rather than to the country as a whole. This circumstance has also been used to sustain the false myth that residents of eastern Ukraine predominantly possess a Russian identity.

Nikolai Karpitsky. No peace agreement is possible, nor is life under occupation

Excerpt from the publication: 

Arden Arkman. “This isn’t the Middle Ages, and we aren’t serfs”: Locals in Ukrainian-controlled parts of the Donbas react to Putin’s territorial demands. The Insider. 12.11.2025. https://theins.press/en/confession/286742

(The content of the conversation with Nikolai Karpitsky was recorded for the article by Arden Arkman)

I’m from Tomsk, Siberia, where I graduated from the university’s philosophy department, taught there, and defended the rights of believers persecuted by the state. I often traveled to Ukraine, studying local religious communities. In 2014, I condemned Russia’s military actions — I said so openly in Tomsk media.

Because of that stance and my trips to Ukraine, the university refused to renew my contract, and there was no reason to stay in Russia. So in 2015, I moved to Kharkiv, where the local Krishna community helped me find a teaching job at Luhansk National University, which had relocated because of the war.

I traveled along the front line in Donbas, writing about how Christians lived amid the fighting. In Avdiivka, I helped deliver food to pensioners by bicycle with other volunteers. Among both us and the locals were people with pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian views, but there was no conflict.

Only once did my Russian citizenship cause problems. In 2015, I was stopped at a checkpoint outside Avdiivka — at the time the military had orders to detain anyone with a Russian passport. An anti-terrorist unit took me away for questioning about my views, which, as a teacher, I even found interesting. They eventually said, ‘Don’t tease the soldiers anymore,’ and let me go. After that, I passed that checkpoint freely.

Sloviansk emptied out in 2014, as everyone who could do so fled the war-torn Ukrainian cities. People feared both shelling and reprisals. The husband of a friend of mine, a deacon, was taken by pro-Russian fighters under the command of Igor Girkin. He was tortured and executed. Residents began returning in 2015, but out of 110,000 people, about half remain today.

I moved to Sloviansk in 2020, bought a small house with help from a local Christian community, and received permanent residency in Ukraine. Until the full-scale invasion, life was quiet, maybe [there was] one explosion a week somewhere. Until drones appeared, even eight kilometers from the front line it felt peaceful, like the rear. Since 2022, the front has drawn much closer — both in reality and in feeling.

Now, when the explosions hit, no one goes to the shelters — it’s pointless. Air raid alerts happen five times a day, but the strikes rarely coincide [with it] because it’s impossible to track them all. Yesterday drones were flying over; today I read that one local was killed. Living through this is terrifying, but you get used to it with time.

A few months ago, there was an explosion 500 or 800 meters from me, the house was completely destroyed. I was walking to the market, and people around me barely reacted. They kept walking the streets, working, and buying food. There’s a big difference between systematic and sporadic shelling.

Now Kostiantynivka is being struck systematically: there’s no power, water or gas, drones and missiles are destroying homes one by one. When utilities and repair crews can’t even work — that’s systematic destruction. In Sloviansk, they fix things quickly after strikes, and people have accepted that any of them could be next. It’s a kind of Russian roulette. I’ve decided to stay until the very last moment, but if things get really bad, I’ll go to Kramatorsk.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, prices have risen two to four times depending on the product. The variety of goods has decreased, but there will never be hunger here because Ukraine is a breadbasket. Even if a major war breaks out across the entire country, people will live on porridge, but they will live.

My citizenship or nationality has never mattered here, even after the start of the full-scale war. No one looks at your passport; they look at your beliefs. Everyone knows that Ukrainians curse Russians, but among themselves, they argue even more fiercely.

Because of the war, a sharp political culture has taken shape: any question is seen as a matter of life and death. Even in religious communities — among Hare Krishnas and Christians — there are debates over whether to take a pacifist or radically patriotic stance, whether to support the front or withdraw and focus on spiritual matters, whether to speak out actively or maintain neutrality. But everyone is united in a pro-Ukrainian position. No one holds a pro-Russian one. Even the traditional pacifism of the Hare Krishnas here is pro-Ukrainian: everyone wants Ukraine to win and criticizes Russian Krishnas for their different, pro-Russian “pacifism.”

It is natural that most of the blame is placed on Russians — they are the ones bombing us. But sometimes frustration is also projected onto the local authorities: why they didn’t prepare better, why there aren’t enough shelters, whether there is corruption, and so on. Russia is seen as the aggressor, and everyone understands that the Russians want to kill them. Therefore, no peace agreements are possible, nor is life under occupation.

Even communication with antiwar Russians isn’t working out for Ukrainians right now. I myself take part in some discussions, but only as an equal participant — like any other Ukrainian — and in both Ukrainian and Russian without any problem. And I can hear that no one here believes in dialogue or cooperation with Russians.

In 2022, Ukrainians naively thought it was possible to explain to Russians what was happening here, that they would understand and show support. But it soon became clear that no one could be convinced. And that was it, “dead means dead.” Even I have lost communication with like-minded people in Russia.

Some Russians say, “I support Ukraine. Ukrainians are our allies. We’ll stand together and try to convince other Russians not to go to the front. Let’s find common ground...” And Ukrainians reply: “That’s your problem. We live under bombs here, defending our country, and you want us to take part in your activities? The internal fight against Putin is your responsibility. We are fighting for survival.”

It also depends on the person. If someone speaks on behalf of Russians and takes responsibility for everything Russia is doing — or speaks only for themselves — they’ll be listened to. But when someone speaks on behalf of hypothetical “Russians who are against Putin,” that’s an immediate goodbye.

The idea of transferring our lands through any kind of agreement is completely unrealistic, even unimaginable. I myself will not live under occupation, and no one else will want to either. This isn’t the Middle Ages, when people could be handed over from one state to another like serfs.

First of all, there is a misconception in both Ukraine and Russia that the east is entirely pro-Russian and the west entirely pro-Ukrainian. That’s not true. It’s true that many in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions used to vote for pro-Russian parties. But there is no genuine Russian identity here, only Ukrainian or post-Soviet.

People here considered themselves locals because the idea of Ukraine had not yet fully formed — but it is taking shape now. Those who voted for the Party of Regions did not want to join Russia or see themselves as Russians; they wanted compromise, peace, and open borders, like in their Soviet past.

And in Donbas, more than half of the population felt that way. Pro-Russian politicians exploited these dreams and misrepresented them as genuine pro-Russian sentiment. It’s important to understand that Ukraine has no centralized propaganda like Russia does, so there’s complete anarchy in terms of information, and politics are hard to navigate. Every blogger, every party, every leader is their own propagandist. People were used to voting for local politicians without thinking about their “pro-Russian” stance.

In general, Russian propaganda is full of nostalgia for the Soviet Union. It even affects some young people who never lived in Soviet times but idealize it because they’ve been shown a picture of it as a paradise. Still, even they don’t want to be part of modern Russia.

Some people are politically illiterate. In Avdiivka, volunteers once brought food to an elderly woman whose apartment had been hit directly by a Grad rocket. The flat was burned out, but [Orthodox] icons still stood there — and among them, a portrait of [Viktor] Yanukovych. The woman said that under him, things were calm and life was good. Another man was hiding from mobilization, convinced that when the Russians arrived, they would give him an apartment in Donetsk and a job. In another building, an elderly man said he “didn’t know who was shooting at us.”

These people are not organized and cannot act as a political force demanding independence. But more and more people in Sloviansk now see themselves as Ukrainians, especially the young — and they know Ukrainian perfectly, unlike the older generation. Even the elderly now realize they live in Ukraine and that this is not just their local territory, but part of the Ukrainian state.

In 2015, half of the residents said, “We don’t care who’s in power, we’ll live under anyone.” But now no one here would agree to give up any territory under any circumstances. If you asked, “Would you agree to join Russia if these regions were transferred to it?” — the overwhelming majority would say, “Absolutely not,” even in exchange for peace.

When the referendum was held in Donbas, many people did come out to vote. It was a psychological reaction. People felt utterly helpless: they saw what was happening, couldn’t control it, and feared for the future. The referendum created the illusion that by voting, they could somehow influence events. It was a coping mechanism.

I believe that in the future, both sides’ use of artificial intelligence will affect the course of hostilities. The front will freeze, and we will lose the concept of the rear: the entire territory of both Russia and Ukraine will become a war zone. Because of drones, there will be no safe places anywhere, unfortunately. But without the drone revolution, the situation here would be much worse. The war had turned into one of attrition and was leading to Ukraine’s defeat. Now the odds have evened out. Technology is developing symmetrically: what we see in Sloviansk and in Kyiv will soon be happening across all of Russia. No one, in either Ukraine or Russia, will feel safe.

"Myth". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 06.11.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/aggressive-political-myth-of-the-kremlin/

The aggressive political myth used to justify war – not only against Ukraine but against the entire Western civilization – penetrates much deeper into the public consciousness than Kremlin propaganda, disinformation, or fake news. In the latest article for The Dictionary of War on PostPravda.Info, Nikolai Karpitsky explains why such a myth must be distinguished from ordinary historical myths inherent to any cultural consciousness.

Myth

A myth is an irrational way of understanding reality that, unlike rational knowledge, does not raise questions or invite critical reflection – instead, it eliminates them. A myth unites different events and phenomena into a coherent worldview, giving them new meaning even when no real connection exists between them. Myth complements rational understanding and allows people to perceive life as a whole. However, it can transform into an aggressive form when it comes into conflict with reality and forces people to deny obvious facts.

Example. If the lives of two people in love acquire new meaning through the myth of eternal love or destiny, that myth reveals the true essence of happiness – while critical thinking would only disrupt it. The happiness of the lovers becomes the criterion of the myth’s truth.

But if a person, blinded by love, begins to pursue another violently, their mythological perception of love collides with reality.

The most common form of aggressive social myth is the “conspiracy theory”: a conspiracy of doctors who allegedly invented the coronavirus, or of a secret world government that supposedly started the war between Russia and Ukraine, and so on. Such myths can be used by various political forces to justify power grabs, dictatorship, repression, and military aggression.

Because public consciousness often follows mythological logic, pseudoscientific and pseudo-historical myths circulate within it – this is natural and not necessarily negative. For example, the belief that one’s native language and culture are the oldest in the world. However, when subjected to ideological manipulation, such myths can take on an aggressive political form.

The Difference Between an Aggressive Political Myth and Fake News or Disinformation

A fake is a forgery meant to deceive – for example, a falsified news story, image, or source of information.

When fakes are spread deliberately, they become disinformation. Generally, disinformation can be exposed through data and source analysis or, at the very least, shown to be unsubstantiated. A political myth, by contrast, not only feeds on propaganda fakes – it can also generate them on its own, even without the direct participation of propaganda.

Unlike fake news or disinformation, an aggressive political myth does more than simply mislead people about facts or events – it constructs an alternative worldview that makes mutual understanding with those who perceive reality adequately impossible. A worldview determines the meaning and likelihood of events: phenomena that seem improbable or impossible from a realistic perspective become natural and inevitable within the alternative worldview – and vice versa.

An aggressive political myth cannot be treated as just another mistaken hypothesis, because even erroneous hypotheses can be tested rationally for their correspondence to reality. In contrast, such a myth is tested only against its own internal worldview through arbitrary interpretations and generalizations.

Therefore, no rational argument or reference to facts can persuade a person who believes in such a myth.

Example. In the autumn of 1999, an imperial myth prevailed in Russia – the belief that foreign forces sought to destroy the country, and that a new leader must restore it. When a series of apartment bombings occurred in Russia, serving as the pretext for the Second Chechen War, Moscow’s FSB was caught red-handed while preparing another bombing in Ryazan. Despite this, Russians voted for Putin in the next election. The myth proved stronger than the facts.

Aggressive Political Myths of the Kremlin

Historical consciousness in Russia has been shaped by unscientific historical myths – such as the myth of the “triune people” of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, allegedly descended from a single root. In reality, the territory of Kyivan Rus’ was inhabited by many different Slavic and non-Slavic tribes, and it is inaccurate to draw a direct line from them to modern nations. It doesn’t have any relevance to contemporary Russia and Ukraine, does it? Nevertheless, the Russian government has turned this myth into an ideology that justifies war and the destruction of Ukrainian identity.

The worldview of supporters of the current Russian regime includes several aggressive political myths that have fostered the spread of the ideology and practice of Russian fascism – “rashism.” Russians who accept this worldview are convinced that the West and Ukraine are hostile toward them, and that Russia is forced to wage war against them. Such people are almost impossible to persuade with facts or rational arguments.

Among these myths are the following:

– Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are one people; therefore, Ukraine has no right to independence.

– Ukrainian identity does not exist, and Ukraine is an Austro-Hungarian project created to destroy Russia.

– In 2014, the United States organized a coup in Ukraine and, against the will of the people, brought to power the “Kyiv junta,” which supposedly established a Nazi dictatorship and carries out repressions against Russians.

– The residents of eastern Ukraine have a Russian identity; therefore, they have always wanted to become part of Russia.

– The “Kyiv junta” bombed the Donbas for eight years, while Ukrainians dreamed that Russia would liberate them from the “Nazi regime.”

All these myths have nothing to do with reality. However, based on them, the Kremlin made the decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, expecting it to be supported by the local population.

War is a Reality That Cannot Be Ignored

Historical myths are an integral part of a nation’s cultural consciousness, and cultural creativity based on myth affirms its inner truth. Myth and science are alternative ways of understanding reality, so it is meaningless to disprove myth from the standpoint of science or science from the standpoint of myth. A myth can be called false only when it comes into conflict with reality. An additional sign of the falsity of such myths is their ability to generate new fakes – for example, fabricated stories about “Nazi atrocities” that arise in the public mind independently of official propaganda.

In peacetime, people often replace reality with myths, allowing themselves to overlook contradictions. But war is a reality that cannot be ignored. Putin believed that Ukrainians would support the Russian invasion – but his myth collided with reality. Many Russians believe in the myth of “Nazis persecuting Russians in Ukraine,” and because of this they lose connection with their own relatives and friends, perceiving them not as living people but as images from propaganda. Thus, they enter into conflict with the reality of their loved ones. This gives reason to claim that not all, but specifically Russian political myths are false.