The Imperative to Survive: How Ukraine Turned Necessity Into a Method
There is a temptation, when a country under invasion keeps doing impossible things, to call it a national character. The Ukrainians are resourceful, we say, as if resourcefulness were a temperament that some peoples are born with and others lack. It is a flattering explanation, and it is the wrong one, because it removes from the story the one part that can be learned. Ukraine is not resourceful because Ukrainians are a certain kind of people. Ukraine is resourceful because it was given no alternative, and the resourcefulness is the shape that this particular necessity took. When the penalty for failing is national extinction, a society reorganizes itself around not failing, and the inventiveness that follows is not a miracle. It is a method, improvised under load, and it is worth describing plainly because the mechanism is transferable and the sentiment is not. ...