‘We cannot lose because we will be erased’: Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta In Dialogue With Dan Ariely

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On December 8, 2022, Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, general director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal National Arts and Culture Museum Complex in Kyiv, held a conversation with Dan Ariely, an Israeli-American professor of psychology and behavioural economics. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Olesia-Ostrovska-Liuta and Dan Ariely

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Photo: Maksym Potapenko/Unsplash

Dan Ariely: I am very curious about what is happening on the ground. The New York Times is my main source of information about Ukraine. How do you see your psychology and that of people around you? What is happening to resilience, hope, and comradery in Ukraine?

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: Thank you for this question. My main concern at the moment is having electricity. Because of the Russian missile strikes that have been happening since October, we are experiencing severe electricity shortages. Our life right now is taking place in between the blackouts. So quite a lot of organisational effort was put into ensuring that our conversation could happen.

Dan Ariely: When I got injured, I stayed at the hospital for a very long time, about three years. In the beginning, I had no thoughts about the future. 

The Canadian psychologist Ronald Melzack coined the term pain people. It means that at a certain level of need, in this case, pain, people do not think about anything else. For them, there is no future. They focus solely on the challenges of the moment. Just like the situation with frequent blackouts you described, it is so occupying that it becomes the centre of your existence.

People experience two types of stress. The first one, which is, for example, stress caused by work, does not affect us that badly – it is still under our control. The other type of stress makes us feel helpless, and that is much worse. It is coming from conditions where things are out of our control. It also negatively impacts the immune system.

When one experiences stress caused by the unpredictability of the world, one tries to explain things to oneself by looking for a story in order to describe what has been going on. This opens the doors for conspiracy theories or misinformation because living with ambiguity is very hard.

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: I guess in Ukraine we did come up with an explanation, and a rather positive one. It is about our resilience and resistance. It is not the feeling of helplessness that you have living in Ukraine. On the contrary, people are very busy here, arranging their living conditions as best as they can.

Dan Ariely: This is exactly what we would prescribe against the feeling of helplessness. Whenever something is out of our control, the best solution is to try and regain at least some of it. 

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: Civilians in Ukraine are very much connected to the Ukrainian army. We all have many friends fighting there, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine are very much a part of our society. And they are winning, which means they are taking control, and this contributes to our collective resilience. There is also a significant level of pride manifesting itself in many jokes on social media. Humour helps us cope.

This March, during the battle for Kyiv, when Russian troops were around the capital, I noticed an interesting effect. I suddenly realised that I have many recollections from my past. They were very vivid and colourful, sometimes I even could remember smells. Because I could not imagine the future, all my energy went to imagining the past. 

Dan Ariely: That is a very interesting theory. For me, resilience is kind of like an insurance policy.

Imagine a parent who goes with their kid to a playground. The parent sends the child off to play, the kid goes, plays, and comes back twenty minutes later. It means that the child has a secure attachment. On the other hand, when your kid turns around every couple of minutes to see if you are still around, you have not achieved that. Secure attachment is living with a sense that if something bad happens, somebody will catch you. We get it from our parents and the people around us.

Being in a state of war can create conditions for people to realise with greater intensity that others are there to help. When inequality increases in the country or  the neighbourhood, resilience goes down because people are less likely to ask each other for assistance. They feel more alone. From this perspective, what is happening to resilience in Ukraine?

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: The volunteer movement in Ukraine is probably the most significant social phenomenon right now. Everyone is doing something to contribute to our victory.

During the battle for Kyiv, when we suspended all our work at the Art Arsenal, we still had to be there and try to protect it in any way we could. Some of my colleagues felt the need to act, to care for others, so they started volunteering. Others remained physically in the museum night and day because they felt it was their duty to protect it.

This is probably the new norm in Ukraine at the moment. Many people are linked in millions of networks to help refugees and the army, and to make Ukrainian voices heard abroad. There is this feeling of secure attachment in our society. When the full-scale Russian invasion began on February 24th, many people fled to the western regions. Many Ukrainians invited complete strangers into their homes and shared everything they had with them. In my opinion, it helped people feel that we can overcome any difficulty and win this war together.

Dan Ariely: It is sad to think about how humanity sometimes shows its best face when we are in trouble. It is a beautiful thing that it happens in times of need but it is such a shame that it does not in different circumstances.

This war has been going on for quite a while now. Even though right now you are focusing only on the present, what is your prognosis for the future?

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: The war had been going on for eight years when the full-scale invasion happened. People, however, are still hugely determined. They will resist as long as it takes. The Ukrainian cultural community fears that what happened to Volodymyr Vakulenko, the Ukrainian writer abducted and killed by the Russian occupants, might happen to any cultural figure and anyone socially or politically active. We cannot lose because we will be erased.

At the same time, there is a discussion in Ukraine on the failure of international charity bodies. Unlike local volunteering networks, they are often unable to help. I found an explanation for that in your book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. Someone who gets paid for doing good things does not go the same lengths as someone who does it as an act of social service. Is that correct?

Dan Ariely: Yes. Extrinsic and intrinsic motivations are very different. Imagine that someone asked you to help them change a tire. How likely would it be for you to help? Imagine another scenario in which someone is asking you to change a tire for three dollars. What is very apparent is that people are very happy to help for free, but they are not happy to do it for three dollars. The moment money comes into a situation, we start framing it as work. The moment we frame it as work, the boundaries become more clear. Furthermore, as bureaucracies are increasing, a person, even an extremely committed one, may be restricted by the organisation they work for. The more procedural it becomes, the less likely you are to look further than your job description. The management needs to give autonomy to people to do what they think is right.

I want to talk about the erasure of culture. A very important elusive sense is hidden here. Imagine a world in which everything about us is erased upon our death. If things worked like that, people would have much less motivation. Human psychology is not just about the moment, it is also about our legacy. The moment someone is threatening to eliminate it, the stakes become much higher. There is something much more intense about this idea of annihilating everything connected to legacy.

After having seen what you have seen about the importance of art and culture, you can re-envision it and think about what it will look like ten years from now. Is there something you would do differently?

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: This year I learned that for an organisation under enormous stress such as war, it is important to focus on its mission and on understanding why it exists. This is the role of leadership. The team needs to have the freedom to act freely depending on unpredictable circumstances. You need to trust people, and in order to do so, you need to follow your mission.

Culture adds to the resilience of society. It serves as a place where people can get together and share their experiences. It is hugely important. As we have mentioned before, thinking about the future is difficult while you are in pain. However, culture helps you imagine.

Dan Ariely: What do you think about the amount of support Ukraine gets? Do you feel alone?

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: Well, there can never be too much support.

This is the first time in a century when we, as a society, have allies and partners, and our voice is heard. This has never happened before on such a scale.

The pattern of the Russian invasion is familiar to every Ukrainian – it has already happened more than once throughout the 20th century. The majority of Ukrainian writers who worked a hundred years ago were executed in the 1930s. There were almost no authors on our cultural scene. The entire art phenomena of the 1920s was also erased then. Members of a very important Neo-Byzantine movement called Boychukism were executed and their works, huge murals, were destroyed. When the full-scale Russian invasion started, this memory was very alive. The circle of destruction was very familiar and expected. I guess this brings us to the question of legacy again. 

Dan Ariely: Do you think people are feeling more heard and supported?

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: Yes, much more. The German parliament has just adopted a resolution recognising Holodomor, a man-made famine committed by the Soviet regime, as an act of genocide. We could not have imagined it ten or even five years ago. It is a huge change in international politics and a sign of being heard much better than before. There is strong progress in our ability to speak for ourselves, and this is something we all feel now. 

When the full-scale Russian invasion started, Poland opened its borders for the Ukrainian citizens to flee the country. You could do that without a passport or any document, with your cats and dogs. This was an unprecedented sign of solidarity, and we appreciate it very much. 

Of course, we need much more military support. There is a strong consensus in Ukrainian society on that. About a month ago, politicians in Germany asked me what Ukrainian culture needed to get better protection. 

We need air defence systems so that missiles do not hit our heritage sites.

Photo: Mikhail Volkov/Unsplash