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by Andriana Velianyk
A postmark dedicated to drowning the 'Moskva' cruiser | Ukrposhta
As Ukraine fights a war, people still try to make each other laugh. Memes have become full-fledged symbols of war, which are remembered no worse than crucial events on the battlefield. We can recognize the drowning of the cruiser ‘Moskva’, a flagman of the Russian Navy, not by a certain date or type of weapon used but by a phrase of the Ukrainian military “Russian warship, go f*ck yourself”.
In 2022 Ukraine gained the most attention in its history. People all around the world saw pictures and videos of explosions, destruction, and pain. A lot of pain. Now there is a ninth year of war and the second year of a full-scale invasion. Ukraine is still fighting and has unoccupied Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, and parts of the Kharkiv and Kherson regions. It wouldn't be possible if people were in a constant state of stress and fear. And one of the elements of coping is humor.
Words “I laughed, in order not to cry” written by one of Ukrainian literature's foremost writers Lesya Ukrainka became a motto in the last two years. But cultural researcher Mariam Naiem assures that this is only part of the author's idea which is often interpreted as displacing the feeling of pain and replacing it with humor. "Laughter is a tool of struggle, not a way to suppress pain. This is one of the ways to overcome difficulties, but by no means ignore feelings," says Naiem.
On March 19, 2022, three Stand-Up comedians performed in a bomb shelter in a northeastern city of Ukraine located nearly 30 kilometers from the border with Russia. At the beginning of the invasion Russian troops were trying to circle Sumy, and the battlefield was right at the city's outskirts. People who didn’t evacuate needed to take a fresh breath and distract themselves. There were no fresh air in the shelter, but Felix Redka, Illya Glushchenko, and Kostyantyn Yatsenko say it was the most crucial contest in their life.
"We chose the path of least resistance and stupidly laughed at the Russians. This is what people need, " Ilya Glushchenko told The Village. He said It felt like people gave them an absolute carte blanche and let them joke about anything. “Clearly, times are hard. But people who suffered and lost their relatives and homes, simply would not come to a humorous concert, " Glushchenko assumed.
Ukrainian officials now use humor in their public communications putting diplomatic messages behind the jokes. Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations Serhii Kyslytsya attended a meeting of the Security Council on March 29, 2022, holding up a small book “What’s Wrong with Diplomacy?”. He was reading it as Russia’s ambassador was speaking at the UN Security Council.
Source: Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Ukrainian authorities mostly don’t comment on fires in Russian warehouses or factories. In September last year, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy advised Russians to be more careful when they are smoking and to choose places where there were no accidents yet.
The context of the war is superimposed on all the events taking place in Ukraine, but this is not a reason to stop joking. In April 2022 a falling cosmic body called a bolide or a meteor exploded and burned in the upper atmosphere over Kyiv. Thousands of Ukraine’s capital residents saw a bright glow and were confused about it. The reaction was hundreds of memes on social sites.
There was a funny one from a Twitter user with the nickname @iamgodoftheatheist:
— Hey, friends Ukrainians. There are Patriot air defense systems. You can use them.
— Listen. Can we use them to shoot down satellites?
— No. Why do you ask?
—
One of the most famous Stand-Up comedians in Ukraine is Vasyl Baydak who used to perform in an absurd genre of humor telling non-existent situations with parts of psychedelic trips, where the viewer lost the line between comedy and reality. After the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022 he said that Russians stole an absurd from him. The negative and the positive mixed, and the actions of the Russians in the 21st century were considered as an absurdity.
Baydak has 139 thousand followers on Instagram and uses this popularity to promote fundraising campaigns. To attract an audience, he comes up with creative campaigns like creating video clips with covers of popular songs. In that way, the comedian interpreted “Just the Two of Us” by Bill Withers as “Just send a donate”. In three hours he gathered half a million hryvnias, which is nearly 13.5 thousand dollars, to buy an anti-drone weapon for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Vasyl Baydak,
Ukrainian Stand-Up comedian
“Just send a donate”
"Need a bus for AFU"
Launch of a charity merch
"For me, it was a new experience that in such a tragedy you can find a place for laughter, and with the help of humor to collect money for a weapon,” Baydak says.
When I ask him how much money he has already managed to raise, Vasyl jokes that he doesn’t go into politics, so he doesn’t count. For him, all campaigns were successful, because all goals were achieved.
Mariam Naiem was exploring the history and the phenomenon of Ukrainian humor. She told Svidomi media that Ukrainian humor can be traced back to the time of the Cossacks. In particular, an example is the choice of a new surname for a man who joined the army. This was mostly done by other Cossacks, so Skachystrybailo ("Jumper"), Neizhborshch ("Don't Eat Borshch"), and Pechyborshch ("Cook Borshch"), Zaderykhvist ("Rise The Tail"), and Krutykhvist ("Twist The Tail") were common in Sich. A short Cossack could ironically be nicknamed Makhyna ("Big"), and a tall one could be nicknamed Maliuta ("Small").
Humor also manifested during the national liberation movement of the 1940s-1960s. Caricatures, political jokes, cartoons, and poems were published in satirical magazines, or, as they were called, in the humourous press. The most famous example was the magazine "Ukrainian Pepper," which ridiculed Stalin, Hitler, and the government and life in the USSR at the time in general.
Dr. Arnie Cann, professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina Charlotte in his Research on the Role of Humor in Well-Being and Health states that humor not only could counteract the negative emotions associated with stress and depression, but also the sharing of humor contributes to building relationships.
It sounds weird to people from other countries that Ukrainians have such a sense of humor now. "Before the film presentation, I sometimes told foreigners that it was legal to laugh when you watch a Ukrainian movie," says director Antonio Lukich. His drama-comedy is about twin brothers trying to find their long-lost father ill in Luxembourg. The film was presented at the Venice International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and Monte-Carlo Film Festival.
Humor, as well as patriotic elation to fight the enemy, helped to unite Ukrainians, who throughout the nation felt fear and went through stress due to the war.
The official account of Ukraine in X (formerly Twitter)
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