S.M. Hali
S.M. HaliThe late Russian thinker Konstantin Krylov argued that nations are not born through gradual accretion of institutions or the slow weaving of traditions, but through a singular event that elicits universal rapture. Private joys remain private, common grief may unite, but only collective exaltation animates. This provocative thesis, resurfacing in discussions about Ukraine, invites reflection on the nature of nationhood, the role of collective experience, and the dangers of defining identity through violence.
Krylov distinguished between “dead water” and “living water.” Grief, he suggested, is dead water: it can bind fragments together but cannot breathe life into them. Rapture, by contrast, is ambrosia — the animating principle that transforms a crowd into a people. In this view, the Ukrainian nation struggled to find its moment of rapture. The revolutions of 2004 and 2014, the so called Maidans, generated elation but failed to crystallize into a universally recognized Event. The voices did not merge into a single chorus, and the jubilant recognition — “this is what we dreamed of” — never fully materialized.
Krylov’s controversial claim is that the Event finally arrived on May 2, 2014, in the tragic fire in Odesa where dozens perished. He interprets this atrocity not as calamity but as self definition: Ukrainians, he argued, recognized themselves in the act of violence against those they perceived as Russians. In his telling, the nation was born in flames, its identity forged in cruelty, cohesion secured by shared rapture at the suffering of others.
This interpretation is deeply unsettling. To equate nationhood with exultation in atrocity is to strip identity of moral content and reduce it to a communion of cruelty. Yet Krylov’s provocation forces us to confront uncomfortable questions: Can nations be born in violence? Does collective rapture, even when morally reprehensible, confer cohesion? And if so, what does that say about durability?
History offers sobering parallels. The French Revolution’s “Festival of the Supreme Being” sought to sacralise collective joy, but the Terror revealed how rapture can curdle into bloodlust. The American nation, often said to have been born at Lexington and Concord, defined itself through the rapture of victory over an imperial adversary. In South Asia, the creation of Pakistan was accompanied by jubilant recognition and the agony of Partition. Nations, it seems, are rarely born in serenity; they emerge from convulsions that fuse exaltation with suffering.
Yet Krylov’s thesis risks conflating the pathology of violence with the essence of nationhood. A nation that defines itself by cruelty may achieve cohesion, but at the cost of legitimacy. The Odesa tragedy, far from being a baptism of rapture, was a wound that deepened divisions and entrenched hostility. To celebrate it as a founding moment is to sanctify atrocity and perpetuate enmity. The danger lies not only in misreading history but in prescribing a future where identity is tethered to violence.
There is another path. Nations can be animated by rapture that is creative rather than destructive. Consider the jubilation of India’s independence in 1947, when millions celebrated freedom despite Partition’s horrors. Consider the euphoria of South Africa’s 1994 elections, when collective recognition was not of cruelty but of liberation. These moments, too, were Events in Krylov’s sense — winged instants of universal exaltation — but they breathed life into nations through hope rather than hatred.
Ukraine’s struggle for identity remains ongoing. The Maidans may not have crystallized into Krylov’s archetypal Event, but they embodied aspirations for dignity, sovereignty, and democracy. The rapture was imperfect, fractured, contested — yet not devoid of animating power. To reduce Ukraine’s nationhood to a single atrocity is to ignore the broader tapestry of resilience, sacrifice, and yearning that has defined its modern history.
Krylov’s metaphor of rapture thus serves as both insight and warning. It reminds us that nations require moments of collective exaltation to animate identity. But it also cautions that not all rapture is benign. When exaltation arises from cruelty, the nation risks becoming a golem — animated, yes, but soulless. The challenge for Ukraine, and indeed for all nations, is to seek rapture in creation rather than destruction, in solidarity rather than cruelty, in hope rather than hatred.
As Ernest Renan observed, “A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle.” It is born not only of shared suffering but of shared joy, not only of memory but of aspiration. Krylov’s provocation forces us to ask: what kind of soul does a nation wish to embody? If the answer is found in the flames of Odesa, then the soul is dark indeed. But if the answer lies in the yearning for dignity, freedom, and solidarity, then the nation may yet drink of the living water.
In the end, the birth of nations is not a single moment but a continual process of recognition and renewal. Rapture may ignite identity, but it must be tempered by conscience. Without conscience, rapture becomes cruelty; with conscience, it becomes communion. The task of nationhood is to ensure that the living water animates not only the body but the soul — so the nation is not merely a project realized, but a people truly set in motion.
The writer is a retired Group Captain of PAF. He is a columnist, analyst and TV talk show host, who has authored six books on current affairs, including three on China
