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Tag: euromaidan

  • An Affirming Flame; the voice of Kyiv

    May I like them composed
    Of Eros and of dust
    Show an affirming flame

    W. H. Auden

    After the Soviet Union collapsed some of the busts of Lenin, which had loomed over parks and squares in Crimea, were lowered into the sea off the peninsula. Tourists could scuba dive and swim past his vacant gaze. The act was an assertion of freedom rather than an ideological statement. However, liberty in Ukraine was always only provisional.

    When I stayed in Kyiv to present a book of translated poetry in 2012 I met a rather imposing man. He was implicated in the death of a Ukrainian dissident some years previously. The notion that the security services were taking an interest in a lowly, literary translator seemed laughable. Yet autocratic regimes have their own logic and, curiously, it is words that terrify them most. I knew that during my trip to Kyiv I was being watched by shadowy figures. It was like being a goldfish peering at distorted human faces through its bowl.

    Although notionally democratic, Ukraine, under presidents Yanukovych and Kuchma, was a place where ‘inconvenient’ people died. Ukrainian journalist Heorhiy Honhadze was assassinated on 17 September 2000. The regime in Ukraine echoed its Russian parent. Anna Politkovskaya, a crusading Russian journalist of Ukrainian descent, was murdered on 7 October 2006. Her death, with eerie synchronicity, fell upon President Putin’s birthday. The revolution that swept Ukraine in late 2013 was a revolt against autocracy, which always suppresses the freedom to speak. Ukrainians had looked to the association agreement with the European Union to bring them transparency and fair elections. When Yanukovych refused to sign the agreement in November 2013 people understood that unless they demonstrated, they would be utterly subjugated. Ukraine would remain a country where journalists could be murdered and dumped in the forests. The Revolution of Dignity in February 2014 brought a measure of liberty to Ukraine. Yet, less than a month after Yanukovych fled, Russia seized Crimea on 18 March. In the aftermath of Ukraine’s revolution, freedom remains problematic and conditional.

    However, Ukrainians themselves have shown an extraordinary capacity to organise, to create a society out of the post-autocratic vacuum. Numerous civic news sites and organisations such the Ukrainian Crisis Media Centre emerged. Ukrainians understood that they had to create and fight for the freedom and the Europe they aspired to join. I asked four Ukrainian activists and authors to assess the prospects for Ukraine to retain its precious and fragile liberty.

    Alya Shandra runs one of the most important multilingual sites about Ukraine, Euromaidan Press. The site has become a vital, independent voice on Ukraine free of oligarchic control. She noted that: ‘Ukraine’s entrenched corruption is a product of 70 years of totalitarian rule… during the Soviet Union, where the individual was a mere cog in the machine. Ukraine’s generation Euromaidan is facing an extraordinary task of battling a system that is resilient to change and used to abusing justice.’ She noted that extremism remains marginal in Ukraine, with only 5% of the population supporting the extreme right.

    Vyacheslav Huk grew up in the Russian-speaking area of Saki in Crimea, but moved to Kyiv and became a leading Ukrainian writer. He could only watch as Russia seized his homeland, the peninsula. Subsequently, Ukrainian was banned from schools and Tatar and Ukrainian books were burned. However, Ukraine had come to symbolise a European aspiration for Vyacheslav and many younger Crimean Ukrainians. Their Europe was, for Vyacheslav, not a geographical terrain but an area defined by ‘the rule of law and where legislation protected the individual’. He dreams of a Crimea where all enjoy the freedom other Ukrainians possess, to read, write and speak as they choose.

    However, Teodozia Zarivna, a poet and literary editor, noted that freedom of expression in Ukraine was limited by media ownership. While there ‘was no problem with freedom of speech’ she noted that: ‘there is a problem with the lack of a tribune. And without a tribune you are dumb.’

    Ukrainian novelist Liubov Holota noted that Ukrainians were free to speak ‘truth to power and were not afraid of the consequences’. However, the Ukrainian media space ‘through which we can speak to power is not under our control. Most media resources are owned by oligarchs.’ She added that: ‘the fear of repression still hangs over us…’ The Holodomor of 1932 to 1933 still casts its shadow on Ukraine. The ‘Leninopad’, which followed the revolution of February 2014, saw Ukrainians tearing down statues of Lenin across the country. They were exorcising the spectre of repression from their country’s visual iconography.

    Ukrainians have acquired a measure of freedom that remains under threat from an autocratic regime. The fault line in the country runs not solely between crumbling factories, burned out tanks and hastily buried soldiers. It is a border between an open and a closed society, between an engaged community and a regime where news channels churn out scripts written under the spires of the Kremlin. The war may seem remote compared to WW1 when the explosions at Messines were heard in London. But it is part of a global war to determine the society within which we will all live. Let us hope its outcome is a future where no one pays with their life for freedom.

  • An Affirming Flame: the voice of Kyiv

    May I like them composed
    Of Eros and of dust
    Show an affirming flame

    W. H. Auden

    After the Soviet Union collapsed, some of the busts of Lenin, which had loomed over parks and squares in Crimea, were lowered into the sea off the peninsula. Tourists could scuba dive and swim past his vacant gaze. The act was an assertion of freedom rather than an ideological statement. However, liberty in Ukraine was always only provisional.

    When I stayed in Kyiv to present a book of translated poetry in 2012 I met a rather imposing man. He was implicated in the death of a Ukrainian dissident some years previously. The notion that the security services were taking an interest in a lowly, literary translator seemed laughable. Yet autocratic regimes have their own logic and, curiously, it is words that terrify them most. I knew that during my trip to Kyiv I was being watched by shadowy figures. It was like being a goldfish peering at distorted human faces through its bowl.

    Although notionally democratic, Ukraine, under presidents Yanukovych and Kuchma, was a place where ‘inconvenient’ people died. Ukrainian journalist Heorhiy Honhadze was assassinated on 17 September 2000. The regime in Ukraine echoed its Russian parent. Anna Politkovskaya, a crusading Russian journalist of Ukrainian descent, was murdered on 7 October 2006. Her death, with eerie synchronicity, fell upon President Putin’s birthday. The revolution that swept Ukraine in late 2013 was a revolt against autocracy, which always suppresses the freedom to speak. Ukrainians had looked to the association agreement with the European Union to bring them transparency and fair elections. When Yanukovych refused to sign the agreement in November 2013 people understood that unless they demonstrated, they would be utterly subjugated. Ukraine would remain a country where journalists could be murdered and dumped in the forests. The Revolution of Dignity in February 2014 brought a measure of liberty to Ukraine. Yet, less than a month after Yanukovych fled, Russia seized Crimea on 18 March. In the aftermath of Ukraine’s revolution, freedom remains problematic and conditional.

    However, Ukrainians themselves have shown an extraordinary capacity to organise, to create a society out of the post-autocratic vacuum. Numerous civic news sites and organisations such the Ukrainian Crisis Media Centre emerged. Ukrainians understood that they had to create and fight for the freedom and the Europe they aspired to join. I asked four Ukrainian activists and authors to assess the prospects for Ukraine to retain its precious and fragile liberty.

    Alya Shandra runs one of the most important multilingual sites about Ukraine, Euromaidan Press. The site has become a vital, independent voice on Ukraine free of oligarchic control. She noted that: ‘Ukraine’s entrenched corruption is a product of 70 years of totalitarian rule… during the Soviet Union, where the individual was a mere cog in the machine. Ukraine’s generation Euromaidan is facing an extraordinary task of battling a system that is resilient to change and used to abusing justice.’ She noted that extremism remains marginal in Ukraine, with only 5% of the population supporting the extreme right.

    Vyacheslav Huk grew up in the Russian-speaking area of Saki in Crimea, but moved to Kyiv and became a leading Ukrainian writer. He could only watch as Russia seized his homeland, the peninsula. Subsequently, Ukrainian was banned from schools and Tatar and Ukrainian books were burned. However, Ukraine had come to symbolise a European aspiration for Vyacheslav and many younger Crimean Ukrainians. Their Europe was, for Vyacheslav, not a geographical terrain but an area defined by ‘the rule of law and where legislation protected the individual’. He dreams of a Crimea where all enjoy the freedom other Ukrainians possess, to read, write and speak as they choose.

    However, Teodozia Zarivna, a poet and literary editor, noted that freedom of expression in Ukraine was limited by media ownership. While there ‘was no problem with freedom of speech’ she noted that: ‘there is a problem with the lack of a tribune. And without a tribune you are dumb.’

    Ukrainian novelist Liubov Holota noted that Ukrainians were free to speak ‘truth to power and were not afraid of the consequences’. However, the Ukrainian media space ‘through which we can speak to power is not under our control. Most media resources are owned by oligarchs.’ She added that: ‘the fear of repression still hangs over us…’ The Holodomor of 1932 to 1933 still casts its shadow on Ukraine. The ‘Leninopad’, which followed the revolution of February 2014, saw Ukrainians tearing down statues of Lenin across the country. They were exorcising the spectre of repression from their country’s visual iconography.

    Ukrainians have acquired a measure of freedom that remains under threat from an autocratic regime. The fault line in the country runs not solely between crumbling factories, burned out tanks and hastily buried soldiers. It is a border between an open and a closed society, between an engaged community and a regime where news channels churn out scripts written under the spires of the Kremlin. The war may seem remote compared to WW1 when the explosions at Messines were heard in London. But it is part of a global war to determine the society within which we will all live. Let us hope its outcome is a future where no one pays with their life for freedom.

    Steve Komarnyckyj is a poet and PEN award winning translator and Byline journalist. He runs .

  • The apricot border with Russia, or separatism on Skype

    With the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, poet and dramatist Liubov Iakymchuk writes for PEN Atlas in an exclusive dispatch about saboteurs, families divided, Russia’s exporting of fear, and the new resolve of the people.

    Translated from the Ukrainian by Steve Komarnyckyj

    Here, in Ukraine, we follow the latest forecasts of the provocations from Russia as closely as we used to follow the weather reports. We’ve given up watching TV series and just look at the news, which has become like a dystopian novel. Every day here feels like a year, but we are getting smarter as well as older. We have learned to be vigilant and all our attention is focused on the border. At last we have realised that the boundary between us and Russia exists.

    There is one weird thing in all of this. If you cross the Eastern border of Ukraine, which is brimming with plantations of apricot trees, and enter Russia, you notice that there are far fewer apricot trees in the country that you are entering. The apricot trees define the territory more clearly than any border guards or crossing points, separating our own from foreign ground. It is as if they show us that this border takes us to another world, where there is only a weak connection between people and reality. Where people believe the television when it says that everyone loves Putin. However, in Angela Merkel’s words, the Russian President has lost his grip on reality.

    They don’t let every Ukrainian across this ‘apricot’ border now, especially not journalists. At best, those rash and brave enough to cross might be interrogated for five hours or more and then released, like in the case of the journalists from the Ukrainian TV station 5 Kanal. In the worst case scenario, those who make this crossing might simply disappear. At least that’s the fear spreading throughout these border areas.

    On the other side, where there are no apricots, the Russians have established military encampments and field hospitals, 50 km from the border. A huge Russian military force is gathered there; they reconfigure them occasionally and the numbers of personnel vary, but not by much. There are no exact figures but it’s rumoured that there are hundreds of thousands.

    Ukrainian citizens live on this side of the border with its abundance of budding apricot trees. People are compelled to live with the daily fear of the ‘contagion’ of military personnel on the border, this abscess which grows daily, which might push through the boundary and turn into war. All normal people here want to avoid this, of course. Even here in Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk, where there was always a low level of civic activism, people go to anti-war protests in bigger numbers than during the Euromaidan. The common enemy has compelled a usually passive population to rise up and we probably need to thank our foe for that.

    My mother’s cousin, who lives near the Russian side of the border, asked my parents, who live close to the border on the Ukrainian side, ‘Isn’t it time you fled Ukraine?’ My parents found these words laughable, a consequence of the hatred for Ukrainians that is preached in Russia. The result of this cultivated antipathy is that three quarters of Russians would support the Kremlin in the event of a war breaking out with Ukraine. Perhaps our Russian relatives are ready to support this war too, perhaps they will be delighted when bombs drop on Ukraine where they were born. This cultivated fear is meant to divert the attention of Ukrainians and allow Russia to send troupes of provocateurs into the east of Ukraine. These people arrange skirmishes, support their own self-proclaimed governors, and ultimately try to amputate this part of Ukraine. The Russian army is massing by the border and the men in green who may be Russian intelligence troops or local militia have begun appearing in the streets of east Ukrainian towns.

    A war with Ukraine is supported by 74% of the people in Russia. The awareness of such a statistic is enough to drive you mad, and many people have gone mad, including those on the Ukrainian side, and their symptoms are distinctly Putinesque. The Donetsk separatists, who are instructed by the leading Kremlin political scientist, Aleksandr Dugin, have already noted down what they need to do to make sure Donbass becomes Russian. The key points of their plan are as follows: don’t go to work, disrupt the Ukrainian presidential elections, take up arms, seize power locally, and open the eastern borders. This is so Russians can ‘save’ Ukrainians from themselves and restore the dictator Yanukovych to power. So the Kremlin trains separatists via Skype and, I suspect, terrorists as well. Neither European nor American sanctions will affect the pace of events; they will only reinforce the creation of an image within Russia of America and Europe as foes.

    One of the worst things about this is that family relationships are being ruined on different sides of the ‘apricot’ border. This may be endured and healed over in time. The worst aspect of the situation is that the Russian aggressor, who has for long enough held their fellow citizens in fear, is managing to extend this terror to Ukrainians. Fear and terror, the satellites of the Russian empire, grow like tumours, longing to occupy all the space that can be occupied, and transform everything into a cancerous growth. The most pervasive fears on the Ukrainian border within the Russian-speaking population are the fear that the Russian language may be prohibited, the fear of the mythical ‘banderites’ (Ukrainian nationalists who form a fictitious internal enemy) and the fear that there may be a Maidan tax (but no one really knows what this might be). These fears are ruining people’s ability to consider things right.

    However, fear can affect other people differently, sometimes even positively. It summons up a feeling of unity with one’s people against an external enemy. Even though the east of Ukraine has been relatively passive in the past, it is not without hope and action now. The fear of war provokes not only the usual chat in the kitchen but also draws people out to demonstrate in city streets and squares, becoming visible like the blossoming apricot trees on the Ukrainian border.

     

    .

    Liubov Iakymchuk is a Ukrainian poet and dramatist who was born in Pervomaysk, Luhansk Province in 1985. After graduating from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy she worked as a radio broadcaster, screenwriter, and independent journalist. She is the author of such collections of poetry as U Chotyrokh Stinakh (Within Four Walls) and ​Yak MODA (How FASHION). She has won several poetry prizes notably the international Slovyanska poetychna premiya (Slavic poetry prize). The Anglo-Ukrainian music project Afrodita was created on the basis of her verses: http://www.olesyazdorovetska.com/index.php/ensembles/78-aphrodite

     

  • World War III: a dress rehearsal

    In another exclusive dispatch from Ukraine, Andrey Kurkov describes the atmosphere of tension and surreality in Kiev and Crimea, the schizophrenia of the political situation, and the ominous absence of birds before the arrival of war 

    At five o’clock on the morning of Tuesday 4 March, I was expecting the start of World War III. Five o’clock was the time that Putin had scheduled for the storming of Ukrainian military units in Crimea. The Ukrainian troops were given a choice: the surrender of their weapons and themselves or the start of military action. I am proud that Ukraine’s soldiers and officers didn’t surrender. In fact, like the participants in EuroMaidan, they were prepared to die. But there’s always one traitor and this one was the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Navy, who had gone over to the Russian Army on the very day he was appointed. There’s no need to worry about him. He’ll get a Russian passport and pursue his career in the Russian Army. He may even become a State Duma deputy or a member of Russia’s upper house Federation Council. Russia needs people like this. Ukraine does not.A little later that same day, at around ten in the morning, there was a report that Yanukovych had died of a heart attack. The report has not been confirmed and so Russia now has two high-ranking traitors: Rear Admiral Berezovskiy and ex-President Yanukovych, who has asked Putin to conquer the Ukraine that kicked him out. For all my love of fantasy and surrealism, I feel helpless in the face of Europe’s most recent history.Meanwhile, it was foggy outside. A thick, milky fog. At seven in the morning, a man of around sixty, too lightly dressed for the weather, entered the little square on the opposite side of the road. He crumbled a bread roll on the edge of the square where there are always dozens of pigeons. This time, he sprinkled the crumbs onto empty ground. There wasn’t a single pigeon anywhere around. I was astonished, checked out the surrounding area from the window and was satisfied there were no pigeons. Just for a moment, I thought this was a very bad sign. After all, I still didn’t know that the war hadn’t started. Another ten minutes, however, and the pigeons turned up, and a normal, peaceful morning in Kiev got under way.I still can’t believe all the troubles are over. And this despite the fact that I’ve always been an optimist. I’m still trying to understand what’s been happening over the past few weeks and is still happening now. I have no questions about anything to do with EuroMaidan. The present reality of Russian-Ukrainian relations, however, is a sad conundrum. While Russian troops were smashing navigation equipment at the Ukrainian airbases they had seized and blockading Ukrainian military units, the Ukrainian government, its legitimacy not recognised by Russia, was transferring payments for gas to Gazprom almost every day. Ukrainian goods passed unimpeded through Russian customs even though, before the start of military action in Crimea, every day had brought new problems for Ukrainian exports to Russia. Perhaps the permutations of politics sometimes resemble both schizophrenia and a sophisticated mind-game at one and the same time. So far, I haven’t a clue. Although, the simplest explanation of what’s happening could be a highly rational and dispassionate policy on the part of Ukraine’s new leaders, carrying on ‘as normal’ while preparing for the worst-case scenario.Still, while the political experts write about politics and politicians, writers write about life. And it’s the little things that make up life. The other day, en route to see my Kiev publisher, who lives, like me, in the centre of Kiev, I noticed two state traffic police cars and several police officers armed with AK assault rifles at a crossroads near Kiev University. And this ‘little thing’ lifted my mood. I’ve only seen police officers in central Kiev a few times in recent days. They were patrolling the streets with People’s Self Defence representatives. No, Kiev has not descended into chaos. Life seems entirely normal and only the appearance of the occasional passerby in a flak jacket suggests that getting back to normal is still some way off.One evening recently, on March 3, I visited my publisher at home. We were eating, drinking and trying to talk but the conversation was constantly being interrupted and a deadly silence would ensue. The publisher, Petr Khazin, kept trying to put the TV on so that we could follow the news but his wife and I wouldn’t let him. The black box of the disconnected TV set psyched us out too. We already knew about the Russian troops’ ultimatum to Ukraine’s military units. We knew about the assault set for five in the morning. That must have been why all our attempts to talk about peaceful topics were doomed to failure. When I took the same route home past Kiev University, the armed police officers and their patrol cars had gone. The streets were dark, damp and quiet. I went to bed at two in the morning and woke again at six to find out whether the war had started. As it turned out, it hadn’t. I rushed to give my children the good news but they already knew. They’d been up earlier than me – to find out whether they had any future in Ukraine.

    About the author

    Andrey Kurkov, Ukrainian writer and novelist was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the cult bestseller Death and the Penguin. His latest novel, The Gardener from Ochakov was published by Harvill Secker last year.

    About the translator

    Melanie Moore has been translating Russian in all its forms for more than 25 years. Her translation of The Little Man by Liza Alexandrova Zorina was published by Glas earlier this month. She also translates from French.

    Additional information

    To find out more about the situation in Ukraine, and the poetry and literature of the country, English PEN, the Dash Cafe, the British Ukrainian Society present the work of Ukrainian poet Ihor Pavlyuk. Ihor’s work paints an extraordinary and complex picture of Ukraine and we will use it as inspiration to begin a conversation about the country today. Featuring the haunting and soulful music of Olesya Zdorovetska and a panel chaired by Dash Artistic Director Josephine Burton with Journalist Annabelle Chapman, translator Steve Komanyckyj and Ihor himself, this will be a celebration of Ukrainian voices that can gives us a unique perspective on the current political situation.