Winners are not judged. Everyone else is. The only exception is made for winners. For our truth to prevail — in both the grandest sense (civilizational, philosophical, religious) and the smallest (simple facts like shelling, casualties, invasions, attacks on nuclear facilities) — we must, at the very least, win.
War affects the very nature of existence. It is war that decides what exists and what does not. This is the metaphysical aspect of war — it can erase something from existence or bring it into being. As Heraclitus said, war makes one person a master and another a slave. The winner becomes the master and therefore exists. The loser either ceases to exist or becomes a slave, and being a slave is worse than not existing at all.
That is why it is pointless to be outraged by the behavior of modern Germany or Japan — because they lost World War Two, they are now slaves of the West; they effectively do not exist.
After the Cold War, Russia found itself in the position of a slave — thanks to Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the liberal reformers. And thanks to everyone who supported these traitors and obediently lined up at McDonald’s.
There is a principle in church law: “to treat it as if it had never happened.” This is not a judgment of truth but a judgment of existence. Maybe something existed in some sense, but the church fathers command that it be abolished, reduced to nothing. The fathers, who rule over the present and have triumphed in it, freely and sovereignly, like masters, judge the past, deciding what really happened and what essentially did not.
This is how not only church fathers act, but also any ideology, any power. Orwell did not reveal any “totalitarian” paradox when he said, “who controls the present controls the past.” This is what everyone does, always. If someone wants to challenge a particular verdict on what was or was not, they only need to seize power — that is, to win.
Putin, like a geopolitical Spartacus, has led a rebellion to bring Russia out of non-existence. But Russia will only truly exist when it wins. Existence and victory are synonymous.
Russia is what will come to be.
P.S.: The fate of Ukraine also depends on this war. And it is not just a question of whether it will continue to exist (I hope not), but whether it ever truly existed at all. Existence is not proven by the past; it is determined in the present through the act of creating the future.
(This essay was translated from the Russian.)
