Partisans go cyber: the hacker ethic and partisans’ legacy

Noteworthy, swamp is one of the recurring motives in Bykov's late works. Swamp is the title of one of his stories describing the situation of uncertainty where a group of Soviet soldiers find themselves after being inserted behind enemy lines in order to meet the local partisans. However, it soon turns out that they had been deployed in the wrong place and throughout the whole story they are feeling uncertain as to their whereabouts and the people they meet (the group commander orders the soldiers to kill the local boy who showed them the way to the partisans' camp lest the boy should disclose their presence to the enemy) as well as to their own identity and relationships with each other (as the story unfolds, quite a few details from the characters' complex and, sometimes, compromising pasts are revealed). The story ends on a tragic note as the group come under friendly fire from the partisans. “Whatever one sees at night is weird and false. At night every shrub seems mysterious, every spot from afar bears a suspicious sign. At night the sense of hearing sharpens but it may often be deceptive by making the imagined seem real” [57]. This philosophically charged description underscores the complexity of partisan experience: being a partisan makes one doubt the things which used to seem obvious in civilian life, including moral values. It becomes problematic to justify one's actions by using these norms or official instructions. In the absence of solid ground or support, the partisan has to overcome his fear and take the risk of traversing a metaphorical bog. The soft, quaggy surface of the bog may be used to metaphorically signify the absence of the principles and rules that apply in peace time and in regular warfare. All of the above shifts the accent to the individual choices made by the participants of the partisan struggle. This specificity of the partisan ethic comes to the fore in Vasil Bykov's works, foregrounding the moral and existential problematique, individual moral experience, and personal choices made in existential or morally ambiguous situations. Thus, in order to conceptualize partisan warfare in the situation of uncertainty and the ethical dilemmas such uncertainty entails, it would be productive to consider the metaphor nomos of the swamp, elaborating on Schmitt's terminology. hacker hybrid conflict

Conclusion

My findings can be summarized as follows. Hackers and hacktivists play an active role in modern hybrid conflicts. Hacktivism may take “localized” forms as is illustrated by the case of the Cyber Partisans. The study shows the significance of the partisan movement for modern Belarusian identity and historical memory and discusses the attempts of appropriation of this topic by various political actors. The comparison between hacktivism and partisan warfare holds a certain heuristic potential, making it possible to build conceptual categories for the analysis of the hacktivists' practices and their ethical norms. Parallels may be drawn between the partisans (along with more common analogies with the pirates and “social bandits”) and hackers to shed a new light on the problem of historical predecessors and ideological roots of the hacker ethic. One of the most famous interpretations of the concept of partisan belongs to Carl Schmitt, whose approach accentuates the partisan's connection to the local territory (the telluric nature of the partisan). An interesting way to compare the hacker and partisan ethic is to look at both of them from the game- related perspective. For example, the situations described in the `partisan' literature have much in common with the prisoner's dilemma -- a popular game theory paradox. These situations of moral choice foster a particular kind of subjectivity which is closely entwined with keeping true and remaining loyal, a subjectivity that is apt to handle certain information with discretion and care. Another important aspect that could be used to draw parallels between the partisan and hacker ethic is based on the concept of nomos. The proposed notion nomos of the swamp develops Schmitt's ideas and can be applied to shed light on the partisan activity in Belarus and to gain a better understanding of partisanship in connection to the historical and modern forms of `partisan' hacktivism.

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