2024-02-11 09:46:09
Readers of La Croix L’Hebdo already know Artem Chapeye. For the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in February 2023, we asked this 40-year-old Ukrainian writer, a pacifist before the eternal, to tell us in a long first-person story the choice that he had decided to join the army to defend his country. An intimate and moving text, written on the spot, entirely built around the Sartrean question of commitment: could I still look at myself in the mirror if I didn’t do it?
A year later, Bayard editions, “Récits” collection (from the Bayard group, which also depends The cross) publish the book that Artem Chapeye wrote on the basis of this first story published in our pages. Ordinary people don’t carry machine guns picks up the thread of this text, and deepens its first idea, a sensitive reflection on the way people react when their normality shifts into horror. Some are hiding. Others, like the author, join the recruitment office in their neighborhood, with the meager hope of being able to resist, even if only for a few days or a few weeks, the Russian invader, whom everyone considers victorious. But something unexpected, prodigious, is happening: Ukraine is holding on. “It is because this existential choice was made by hundreds of thousands of people that Ukraine did not fall. »
A sharing of emotions and moods
Since then, two years have passed. There was no shortage of moments of despondency. Artem Chapeye hides nothing of the emotions and moods he has gone through. It is all the richness of this story to show both the barracks and the inner life of a soldier, the way in which the men of his unit feed themselves, but also support each other, the materiality and sensitivity of the war experience in Europe in the 21st century. With the Internet, soldiers are constantly connected to social networks and news sites, make video calls to their children, consult psychologists remotely, kill time by learning a language on Duolingo…
But this permanent link with the rear also deepens the feeling of discrepancy with those who have not made the same choice. And the initial refusal to judge turns into something more bitter, as the war lasts, and comrades die on the front. “When you see a friend on social media looking for an apartment for himself, his wife and children in your favorite neighborhood, you find yourself feeling acute animosity. As if this man was going to live your life behind your back. »
Artem Chapeye says he writes to show those among the Ukrainians who held the line, and those who supported them. He is exasperated by the privileges, but also illustrates how all layers of society have been mobilized in the service of this existential struggle. Today, the Ukrainian army has more than 800,000 soldiers. The figure has something overhanging and opaque. Artem Chapeye reminds us that each of them has their story, and that it is unique. By mixing touching personal reflections with a great talent for capturing the scenes he observes, he manages, better than any report, to recount the condition of these people like you and me who would have preferred never to have to carry machine gun.
Ordinary people don’t carry machine guns, Ed. Bayard, coll. “Stories”, 128 p., €17
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