What is responsibility, and how is a feeling of responsibility connected to recognizing a person as a free citizen rather than a serf or a slave? Why do some Russians acknowledge collective responsibility for the war, while others are outraged that responsibility for crimes of the regime – crimes in which they were not personally involved – is being attributed to them? To answer these questions, Nikolai Karpitsky, in another article of the “Dictionary of War” on PostPravda.Info, explains how personal and collective responsibility manifests itself.
Responsibility
Responsibility is manifested in a readiness to answer for one’s inaction, one’s actions, and their consequences, even if those consequences are shaped by circumstances beyond a person’s control. Guilt is a moral or legal evaluation of a person’s actions, implying moral condemnation or legal punishment. Responsibility, by contrast, is a person’s obligation to determine their attitude toward their past actions or toward circumstances that require certain actions in the future. Thus, guilt is possible only in relation to actions already committed, whereas responsibility can relate not only to the past but also to the future. For example, if an adult encounters a lost child, they become responsible for that child’s immediate future.
Since people tend to evade responsibility for their guilt, society has developed legal mechanisms to compel accountability.
Responsibility for factual guilt in the past is realized in a readiness to answer for the consequences; responsibility for the future is realized in actions; responsibility for others’ crimes, in which a person has become involuntarily implicated by virtue of place of residence or citizenship, is realized in expressing one’s attitude toward these crimes and their consequences. Therefore, ignoring a war of aggression unleashed by one’s own state is a manifestation of irresponsibility, for which a person bears personal guilt.
Only free and legally capable individuals can be aware of responsibility; therefore, to demand responsibility from a person is to recognize them as free and legally capable. Responsibility for the crimes of the state can be recognized only by specific individuals who represent it; if they refuse this responsibility, they lose the right to speak on behalf of the state. The demand that Russians take responsibility for Russia’s war of aggression and war crimes presupposes treating them not as slaves or serfs, but as citizens endowed with agency and free will. Refusal to take responsibility for the crimes of one’s own state means the loss of agency. Since this demand applies to all legally capable citizens of Russia, it presupposes the collective responsibility of Russians for the war.
Collective Responsibility
Collective responsibility for a war of aggression is the obligation to embody one’s attitude toward an aggressive war and its consequences in concrete actions. If personal responsibility is determined by a person’s own actions or by their involvement in the actions of others, then collective responsibility is determined by the situation and circumstances – in particular, whether a person is a citizen of the aggressor state, whether they live on its territory, and so on.
Involvement in the actions of others may be direct – when these are conscious actions aimed at supporting the war – or indirect, when a person goes about their own life, pays taxes, and may even, according to their convictions, oppose the war. However, through his daily activities, he unwittingly supports the state that is waging war. In both cases, responsibility is personal in nature, since it depends on the degree of a particular individual’s involvement in supporting the war. Thus, the degree of involvement of employees of military enterprises differs from that of pensioners, and so forth.
Collective responsibility is determined by circumstances – in this case, by the fact that Russia is waging war in the name of all Russians. Therefore, all Russians, including those who have left Russia and are not involved in the actions of the Russian authorities, nevertheless bear collective responsibility for the actions of the state. This responsibility may have moral, legal, political, and existential dimensions.
Collective moral responsibility obliges each citizen to define their moral attitude toward their own actions or inaction. If a person continues to live as though the war has nothing to do with them, the lived experience of those who have survived the war is devalued in their everyday life, which undermines the very possibility of communication with them. For this reason, many Ukrainians do not wish to communicate with Russians.
Collective political responsibility for the war extends to all citizens of the aggressor state, since they failed to stop their government from unleashing an aggressive war. This responsibility is manifested in consent to political punishment for the war: reparations, restrictions on the right to independently determine the fate of one’s country, partial or complete loss of state sovereignty, up to the dismantling of the state.
Collective legal responsibility for the war does not imply recognition of collective guilt and is manifested in the obligation of any citizen of the aggressor state to give an account of their own actions or inaction during the period of war for the purpose of legal assessment. Only if involvement in war crimes is established – for example, if a person programmed missile launches or conducted propaganda activities among schoolchildren – is the court obliged to determine the degree of their personal guilt and to assign punishment.
Collective existential responsibility for the war arises on the basis of identity and manifests itself in the form of shame for one’s country and community.
The Subjective Experience of Collective Responsibility
For some, collective responsibility evokes a feeling of shame; for others, a feeling of injustice because it extends to them as well. Many in Russia, including among those who support Ukraine, ask the question: “Why should I bear responsibility for the actions of Putin, whom I hate and who has ruined my life?” Some perceive collective responsibility as equating victims and executioners and ask: “Do the victims of Stalin’s Gulag bear the same collective responsibility for the crimes of the USSR as the executioners from the NKVD?” However, Russia’s war against Ukraine is not being waged by isolated criminals but by the entire state system, which encompasses all citizens, including those who oppose the war. This causes people who do not support the war to feel shame for their country and for the crimes committed in their name. It is precisely this feeling of shame that leads to the awareness of collective responsibility.
Read too: The Ideological Concept of Russian Culture Amid the War: What Should We Do with It?
