How war changes people

Not a single person on earth who once faced directly or indirectly with a war can ever remain the same. War, like a litmus test, will reveal hidden feelings and instincts, a real attitude towards people, to a stranger’s personality, will reveal the level of development and stability of the psyche.

Instruction manual

In wartime, the psyche of thousands and millions of people, one way or another involved in the war, is daily negatively affected: the war a priori puts the human psyche in a borderline state. The negative impact is not able to pass like a sneeze by itself. To get out of it requires psychological rehabilitation. As a rule, it is rare, almost never provided. Thus, the disease is driven inside.

In combination with massive, aggressive media propaganda, mostly aimed at marginalized segments of the population, but affecting other sections of society that are not able to resist it, the borderline state extends to the level of total latent psychosis, which can negatively affect subsequent generations. There are many examples in history: from the state of German society after the First World War to the defeat of the Soviet Army in the Afghan war, combined with the defeat of the USSR in the Cold War. The defeated, as a rule, almost always seek revenge, thereby unleashing new wars.

Regardless of where the person is during the war - on the front line, in the rear at the front line or the deep rear, acute feelings and suppressed instincts awaken in him. And the instinct of self-preservation, of course, often contradicts moral postulates instilled in civilian life, comes first.

However, the higher the level of a person’s mental development, the more capable of self-sacrifice, the stronger the need for him to realize moral principles instilled in society. War by universal pain tests people for strength and weakness, for humanity and atrocities, pulls destructive or creating instincts from the most hidden corners of the brain. It is impossible to predict what may emerge in an unforeseen situation from the depths of consciousness in each individual.

Recent wars have presented many examples of this. For example, Arkady Babchenko, who served as a mercenary, writes about this in his book, who became a war journalist precisely after the last Chechen war:"

Why did your war donated brothers die? Why did they kill people? Why did they shoot good, justice, faith, love? Why did they crush the children? Bombed women? Why did the world need that girl with a broken head, and nearby, in zinc from under the cartridges, her brain? What for? But no one is telling. /

/ Tell me how they died at the surrounded checkpoints in August ninety-six! Tell how boyish bodies twitch when a bullet hits them. Tell me! You survived only because we died - you owe us! They must know! No one will die until he finds out what war is! ”- and the lines with blood go one by one, and the vodka is muffled in liters, and death and madness sit with you in an embrace and tweak the pen."

Currently, in Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk and other cities of Ukraine - a country where military operations are imposed from the outside - people are daily at the border of relations with each other, with the war and its consequences. Some of them, from ordinary ones, who may not even be the most moral in civilian life, have become a glorified warrior: one of those who rallies the nation. In someone, such as blogger Olena Stepova, the war aroused a writer's gift. Many find personal moral satisfaction in volunteer work, including in hospitals: young, mature, elderly, but not indifferent, every day, after their main service, they come to hospitals and wash the floors, wash bedridden wounded, talk, feed, and soothe relatives near the intensive care wards, support wounded young and mature boys with their creativity, as Ukrainian artist Aleksey Gorbunov does.

But there are others - those on the other side: after them, disfigured bodies without heads, legs and genitals are pulled out of the pits. They are happy to pose against the backdrop of torn bodies and brains scattered on asphalt. After them remains not only scorched earth and disfigured bodies, but also crippled souls. But it is precisely their propaganda, engaged by those who, out of personal interests and mental deviations, unleashed the fratricidal massacre, call them heroes and millions believe in this - the circle closes again: moral is replaced by a corrupted excuse of evil. And this means that the problems are intentionally driven in and future generations of the warring parties are not immune from a new war.

Therefore, despite the fact that almost a hundred years have passed, the conclusions of Academician Pavlov made by him in the Nobel lecture "On the Russian Mind" did not cease to be relevant: "Since the achievement of truth is fraught with great difficulty and torment, it is clear that the person at the end of the end, he constantly lives in obedience to the truth, learns deep humility, for he knows what the truth is. Do we have this? We don’t have this, we have the other way around. I’ll directly turn to major examples. Take your Slavophiles. What is Russia at that time? made for the culture? What samples did she show the world? And because people believed that Russia would wipe the eyes of the rotten West. Where did this pride and confidence come from? And you think that life has changed our views? Not at all! Do we now read almost every day that we are the vanguard of mankind! And does this not testify "to what extent we do not know reality, to what extent we live fantastically!"