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Tag: ukraine

  • After the War Ends

    After the War Ends

    Tetyana Teren on time in London with Victoria Amelina. Translated by Larissa Babij.

    PEN Transmissions is English PEN’s magazine for international and translated voices. PEN’s members are the backbone of our work, helping us to support international literature, campaign for writers at risk, and advocate for the freedom to write and read. If you are able, please consider becoming an English PEN member and joining our community of over 1,000 readers and writers. Join now.

    In January 2024, Tetyana Teren, the Executive Director of PEN Ukraine, undertook a residency with English PEN in London, supported by Goethe-Institut London and Hawthornden Foundation. In April 2023, Teren and Victoria Amelina joined English PEN in London for events at London Book Fair and the British Library. In July 2023, Victoria Amelina died from injuries sustained in a Russian missile attack on a restaurant in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. This piece was written during Teren’s residency in January 2024. It was first published in Ukrainian in Posestry in January 2025.

    ~

    Look, I’ve got a little bottle of champagne and a packet of biscuits from Polish Airlines. Nothing has changed since last year. Springtime London is the same – alternately sunny and overcast. The grey carpeting on the floor is the same, so are the four doors leading to hotel rooms and the fifth leading to the stairwell. One door is marked with my name, as it was then, but there is a different name next to yours. I took it down straight away and could sense you winking conspiratorially at these shenanigans. Champagne usually makes me tipsy rather quickly; this time its bubbles go straight to my head, relieving the stress of the long journey and this return to a place where everything looks exactly the same and where nothing will ever be the same. 

    You pour champagne into the glasses that were standing by the mirror in the bathroom, where I would have put my toothpaste and brush. You were unpacking, toothbrush and toiletries still deep in your bags, when I arrived. You’d just begun hanging up the dresses you brought. ‘They’re all black or navy,’ I remark, ‘of course.’ You once told me that at some point you decided to wear only black or dark clothes until the war ends. ‘But I’m not completely hopeless,’ you reply in your typical manner while reaching into the closet for a white spring shawl. Hanging among the long, dark dresses, it bears an uncanny resemblance to your long blond hair, which always stands out against your clothes. ‘Yeah, sure, that white shawl will change everything,’ I tease. To prove me wrong, you take off your black travel clothes so that you can model a new dress with the white shawl. Watching you from behind, I observe your milky white body, with pronounced ribs and shoulder blades, in black lace underwear, noting the sharp contrast with your light hair and untanned skin. ‘You know, my friend was in an accident once,’ you begin, fastening little buttons all the way up to your chin. ‘When I got to the hospital, she was lying unconscious and I saw her on the stretcher in a black bra and red panties. It suddenly hit me: you never know what will happen to you – or when – and what somebody might think when they see you unconscious in intensive care. So now, as a matter of principle, I always wear matching underwear.’ I admire your white shawl and take a video of you twirling around and stealing glances at the large mirror on the wall. 

    ‘Look, it’s my first smile line,’ I say as we stare at our faces reflected in the mirror. You assure me there is nothing to be seen. Since last year it’s grown more pronounced. I study it every morning and contemplate how my skin will acquire new wrinkles and folds while yours will remain eternally milky and flawless, just like in those photos published by the international media on the day when everything happened. Though, in all honesty, you were never terribly concerned with such ‘girly’ things. 

    Remember that time when I wrote to you – in a different city, in a different life – saying that I desperately needed a pick-me-up, and we went to check out a clothing store I had discovered that morning on Instagram? I grabbed a heap of blouses, skirts and trousers for the fitting room, and you sat down on a nearby chair, saying your job was to appreciate and document the fashion show. Twirling before the mirror and your gaze, I realise that I already have plenty of clothes, but it’s so nice to be here together, trying on every possible thing. I’ll buy one more white blouse that I don’t really need, but right now I look fabulous and it will remind me of our day. This is an important feminine ritual: picking out and trying on different versions of ourselves. We may ultimately end up with yet another black dress or white blouse, but what matters in this moment is believing that you are taking a decisive step toward discovering a new you. As I went off to pay for the new version of me-in-a-white-blouse, you returned to the clothes racks and then came to the till with two black dresses and a long, orange lacquered skirt. ‘Don’t think that I’m completely hopeless,’ you said, as usual, and promised to wear it on some particularly special occasion. I never did see you wearing it, but that’s beside the point: you were always ready for change, even without a trip to the fitting room.

    By this point we’ve each had two glasses of champagne and put on my red MAC lipstick. I need to unpack and get some sleep after two days on the road, and you have a date with your husband – it’s your first time in London together. But here I am sitting on the floor of your room, drinking champagne and nibbling dry biscuits, thinking about this habit of ours – sitting huddled together on the floor, whispering and giggling between sips of alcohol, our bodies emitting sparks. It goes back to the beginning of the full-scale invasion, when we would spend days and evenings in the corridor, sitting on our sleeping bags, waiting for the air-raid alarm to end, sharing a bottle that you had stashed away somewhere. We like sitting on the floor because it provides support; if it’s behind two thick walls, then we even feel safe. Red lipstick is a must: it reminds us that we are alive, you used to say. You reach out to hug me and then slip out the door – adorned in your white shawl and red lipstick – and head down the stairs. 

    The next morning I knock on your door and announce that today is Easter and that we should go to church. Dressed in a short black T-shirt, you look dishevelled. But I know you weren’t sleeping. You were writing, going through your notes and documents until late, and then you couldn’t get to sleep; in the morning, back to work. You say you’re not the church-going type and urge me to go without you, but I insist that I need to spend this holiday with people – that’s just how I was raised. And we shouldn’t dally in getting to church; today we should rise early, overcoming the desire to stay in bed, as our small sacrifice. ‘I could do with a bit less sacrifice,’ you say, ‘but that won’t happen in our generation.’ And you head off to shower and iron one of your black dresses. We haven’t baked traditional paska or made brightly coloured Easter eggs, but I did dash out to the 24-hour supermarket last night to buy a big muffin to serve as our Easter bread. 

    There’s a Catholic church nearby, with very few people at the morning mass, and I miss the jubilant refrain of the traditional hymn: ‘Christ is risen from the dead, trampling death by death!’ Still, I try to recreate the mandatory Easter morning joy. The spring sunlight pours into the nave with its high vaulted ceiling and organ music floods each of my cells, uniting me with the others here. You and I came here together and I’m holding a muffin that’s already crumbling and bears no resemblance to a traditional paska, but I’m glad that it’s performing this important role today. You remind me in a whisper that church is not your thing and suggest we finally go find some coffee. From high above, near the source of the organ music, the priest concludes the service with ‘Our Father, who art in heaven’ and then asks everyone to join in praying for those countries currently experiencing war or conflict. He begins reading their names – some are familiar, others that aren’t yet – and suddenly you grab my hand. I get it: we both fear that he will not utter the name of our country, this bird whose left leg is in peril; that he will forget it while trying not to stumble over all those other places in his list that are also rife with pain and death. We fear he will not notice us – two Ukrainian women who came to a Catholic church on Orthodox Easter for a morsel of hope, as crumbly as a muffin from the supermarket. When the voice from above finally says, ‘And especially please pray for people in Ukraine,’ we can’t hold back our tears. We are moved by how right, how just it is that even God on high, along with the priest and the organ, and grieving Mary, and Jesus who rose from the dead, all still remember us today. 

    ‘What are you going to do after the war ends?’ I’ve managed to tear you away from your work again and entice you into another transgression. We are going to stroll around Hyde Park, soaking up the first sun of the season like ordinary people on an ordinary Sunday in April. We’ve brought chardonnay from the hotel fridge, secured in London Library tumbler cups, and we buy cheap sushi from a kiosk and go to watch the stately, domesticated swans float leisurely towards the shore. A moment later they turn back, scared off by the boisterous dogs and children enjoying their first outing of the year unencumbered by puffy snowsuits. There’s a chill coming from the water, so we wrap ourselves in one big cashmere shawl. This pretty picture with swans, dogs, and kids – especially the kids – stirs up a feeling that is always close at hand: the sense of two parallel realities that never meet. And as we stare into the pool, sunlight glinting off the cold water, I ask, ‘What are you going to do after the war ends?’ I don’t have to explain this abrupt shift from enjoying our sushi and the kids and the swans. You say, ‘I don’t know.’ You used to know – at the beginning. You were sure the end was near, and that everything would return to the way it was before. All the things you loved. All the things that mattered. Like taking your son for a walk around the lake to see the swans. But as the distance between ‘before’ and ‘after’ keeps growing – and the connection between them grows more tenuous – you can hardly remember what it was like before, you’ve lost touch with it; after all, you’ve lost so much. ‘Now I think,’ you start, ‘that we will be this way forever – cracked and crumbling. I can’t imagine future celebrations. I see us crying and hugging each other tightly – whoever of us is still here. And I see us working to preserve our memories, so that we don’t forget what happened, and learning to see past the holes in our buildings and ourselves, like the ones in the walls of the Victoria and Albert Museum that we passed today.’

    On our way out of the park, I take you to a sculpture of a swan. Its base is surrounded by steel plaques that people have engraved with the names of their deceased loved ones and some final words or wishes. Most of them speak of everlasting love or seek forgiveness or name the heartbroken family members or express gratitude for ‘being by my side through sunshine and rain’. You say this is a wonderful tradition and urge me to take note of it: ‘We will need lots of ideas and spaces to commemorate every name.’ 

    ‘When I was a child,’ I say, after hearing your thoughts about life after the war is over, ‘I dreamt of having a special flying carpet that could hold everyone that I love. As long as they were on that flying carpet, nothing could ever happen to them. No burning sun or devastating floods. No war, no death. You know, I still think about this flying carpet and all the people I want it to carry, who will live forever. For ever and ever. Amen.’

    On our last day in London, I leave before you. I know that you stayed up late again, working, but that you took something to help you fall asleep. The walls between our hotel rooms are thin, and I try not to make any loud noises that might wake you. Checking the fridge, I find one small bottle of champagne and half of our Easter muffin. I leave them beside your door on the way to the lift and slip a note into the name holder: ‘Love & hugs, sweet Bird’.

    I’ve just put a note with the same message next to your closed door. The champagne has washed over me, leaving glimmers of warmth and sorrow. I shake off the tears and biscuit crumbs, which cling like grains of sand to my fingers and red lips.

    London, January 2024.

    Tetyana Teren is a Ukrainian journalist, cultural manager, and executive director of PEN Ukraine. She has worked as a TV presenter, editor, and journalist for many Ukrainian media platforms. She has cooperated, as a curator, with Ukrainian cultural institutions and festivals, and she is the author of five books of interviews with Ukrainian writers and artists. In 2017–2018, she was the head of the Ukrainian Book Institute.

    Larissa Babij is a Ukrainian-American writer, translator, and dancer based in Kyiv, Ukraine, since 2005. She holds a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University and an MA in Cultural Studies from the National University ‘Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’ in Ukraine. She is also a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education. Her writing has appeared in the Evergreen Review, Arrowsmith Journal, the Odessa Review, Springerin, and other publications. Her book A Kind of Refugee, based on her dispatches from wartime Ukraine on Substack, was published by ibidem Press in 2024. 

  • PEN Atlas Q&A: Ihor Pavlyuk and Steve Komarnyckyj

    Ihor, what was the inspiration for the poems in A Flight Over the Black Sea? What inspires your writing in general?

    IP: A pure nostalgia for Ukraine when I was roaming in other countries of the world or soaring in aircraft over the Black Sea and over the oceans. I love the skies, it’s in my blood, and I love the sea. There is a wider social meaning encoded in the title of this book that could refer to spiritual flights over Ukraine, which underwent two Maidans. The Black Sea has become a symbol of geopolitical events that are significant both for Ukraine and for the world. Love in general inspires me, along with the cosmos and love of one’s homeland in all its dimensions, from my native Volyn to the planet Earth.

    Steve, how did you come to translate A Flight Over the Black Sea?

    SK: I was introduced to Ihor’s work by a colleague, Dmytro Drozdovsky, from Ukraine. I was immediately captivated by the pagan spirit of the poetry, by the fact that Ihor had created a world, based on Ukraine admittedly but a Ukraine which had been transmuted into myth, an open space of the imagination roamed by wolves, and anarchists, and the pagan gods of Ukraine.

    Ihor, does your writing speak to a broader Ukrainian literary tradition? If so, how?

    IP: Yes. I draw the material for my creativity from the prima, fresh impressions of colours, smells, sounds, touches and the songs and tales of my early childhood until I was about five years old. I lived with my grandparents and great-grandparents then. My great-grandmother, Hanna, told stories marvellously and sang folk songs, ancient and deep as artesian wells. Then, when music was born in my soul, I began to describe it in words and that’s what poetry is for me – it’s music, written in words… I learned how to create the content and form of text and the text of my life from the great poets of Ukraine and the world – they taught me how to live and how to write. It is impossible to be a greater poet than, let us say Byron or Virgil, or our Ukrainian philosopher Hrihorii Skovoroda and poet Taras Shevchenko … but it’s possible to continue their traditions and become a significant poet of one’s own time. I try to tread this difficult but felicitous path.

    A Flight Over the Black Sea has been translated into several languages. What is gained by translating poetry?

    SK: Poetry is the voice which speaks from the soul of every person, from the heart of every person. It is an affirmation of our common humanity. When we read a poem which touches us, we realise that someone else, another person, often far away, has been in love, has been afraid, has been hurt, has been injured, and experienced the same sensations that we have. Or we are shown a world in a new light, and our own world is reinvented. So poetry affirms our common humanity. It affirms the power of the imagination to reinvent the world. It is an incantation against barbarism, against sectarianism and against everything that would divide humanity. This is precisely why it’s so feared by tyrants and authoritarian regimes.

    Ihor, how do you see your writing developing in response to the war in East Ukraine?

    IP: In war, when you are in the trenches, you will not really write a great novel. There the human heart needs prayers and songs. I am glad therefore that some of my poems have become songs that are sung in the war zone. The renowned Ukrainian director Serhii Arkhypchuk took a selection of my verses to read to those on the front line. My son-in-law is a Ukrainian army officer. I myself have signed up as a volunteer… I feel personally the huge, apocalyptic scope of this conflict. A war is being waged now in the soul of each individual and every country, a war which I am also involved in. Therefore I have started writing about this theme in my verse novel Palomnyk and other works.

    Steve, if you were stuck on a desert island, what one book (in translation!) would you take with you?

    SK: I would take A Song Out of Darkness, which is the translations of Tarashevchenko by Vera Rich. Vera Rich was an English literary translator who devoted her life to translating Ukrainian and Belarussian poetry into English. She is one of the most professional and one of the most passionate translators that you could wish to meet, and her translations approach the ideal of being a transparent membrane through which you glimpse the original. She was so closely in tune with Tarashevchenko that she wished to be interred near his grave, and her wish was granted. I think that shows the degree of commitment that she brought to her literary translation, and she’s a person to be admired and emulated, and should be more widely known.

    And finally! Ihor, if you were stuck on a desert island, what one book would you take with you?

    IP: I know my favourite books by heart, so I would take a packet of blank paper and a pencil – so as to write a new book in the solitude and contemplation of a desert island, a book that would ennoble and save humanity from… humanity…

    Steve Komarnyckyj is a poet and translator who was born in Yorkshire in 1963 but maintains strong links with his ancestral Ukraine. His literary translations and poems have appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review, The North, and Modern Poetry in Translation. His book of translations from the Ukrainian poet Pavlo Tychyna, The Raspberry’s Eyelash (Poetry Salzburg, 2011), was described as a ‘revelation’ by Sean Street. His translation of Vasyl Shkliar’s novel Raven was published in April 2013. He runs Kalyna Language Press with his partner Susie and three domestic cats.

    This interview is also available as a video on our YouTube channel, together with clips of Ihor and Steve reading extracts from the book.

    Read a previous PEN Atlas piece by Steve Komarnyckyj about free speech and the Euromaidan movement.

    Find out more about A Flight Over the Black Sea on the World Bookshelf.

  • 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 .

  • Maidan: one year on

    Andrey Kurkov, author of ‘Death and the Penguin’ and Vice-President of Ukrainian PEN, reports back on his country’s revolution and counter-revolution, and how despite diplomatic stalemate and all-out war, the people do not regret attempting to take their fate into their own hands

    Translated from the Russian by Amanda Love Darragh

    The first anniversary of the Maidan protests fell shortly after the declaration of the ‘second’ Minsk ceasefire, on 12 February. This ceasefire, like the previous one, was ushered in to the roar of exploding missiles. Not along the entire frontline this time, admittedly, but at certain points where the separatists had planned their advance. President Poroshenko made a brief but significant appearance on a dark, damp evening in Kiev – on Institutskaya Street, which is still closed to traffic, and which not so long ago ran with the blood of protestors killed by snipers – and then a symphony orchestra played Mozart’s Requiem. The whole country seemed to be standing still, with tears running down her face.

    A year has passed. Those who were killed during the Maidan protest became Heroes of Ukraine (posthumously). Many of those who survived went to Donbass as volunteers, to defend the country’s territorial integrity. Many are still fighting. During the course of the conflict some even decided to become professional soldiers or police officers. Just as military operations began in Eastern Ukraine the country began to implement a programme of reforms, starting with the police force. The police reforms are being spearheaded by a young Georgian woman, Eka Zguladze, who has been appointed First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. She is the one credited with successfully tackling corruption in the Georgian police force at the beginning of Mikheil Saakashvili’s presidency. Saakashvili, now the former President of Georgia, is also here in Ukraine, tasked with overseeing reforms. But progress is slow and subtle, while the ‘eastern front’ endures continual military operations day and night, with scant regard for the ceasefire. The fighting, the bombing raids and the funerals of those killed in the conflict make it all but impossible for many Ukrainians who took part in Maidan or sympathised with protestors to look back and see things clearly: how far has Ukraine come this past year? What has been achieved?

    If you ask people during the course of a conversation what they think about Maidan now, it usually takes them a while to reply. ‘Maidan’ is history. It has been ‘pushed back’ – first by the annexation of Crimea, then by the unsuccessful attempt to incite armed uprisings against the government in Kiev throughout the south-east of the country, from Donetsk to Odessa and Pridnestrovie, and finally by the gradual deterioration of the situation in Donbass to a state of war – a war that wouldn’t be happening were it not for the tens of thousands of tons of Russian missiles and mines making their way into Ukraine, were it not for the volunteers, the mercenaries, the regular and reserve army officers, coming from all over Russia to fight in Ukraine.

    It’s impossible to predict how and when Putin’s war against Ukraine will end. Every now and then European leaders promise not to ‘abandon’ Ukraine, but they don’t want to ‘abandon’ Russia either; they are already suffering from the economic sanctions they themselves have imposed. At the same time European politicians understand that if Putin manages to destroy Ukraine – both economically and politically – he won’t stop there.

    Today, when I ask people in Kiev if they would have gone to Maidan in 2013 if they had known where it would lead, they pause before answering, but most of them say yes. ‘We had no alternative!’ they explain. ‘Yanukovych had already sold Ukraine to Putin, and that’s why he turned his back on Europe! Yanukovych used the threat of rapprochement with Europe to blackmail Putin. If Maidan hadn’t happened, then we would no longer have an independent Ukraine.’

    I have my own vivid memories of Euromaidan. Not of the tragedy it became and on account of which it ultimately succeeded, but rather of the spirit of the Ukrainian people, their desire to influence the fate of their own country and their readiness to take action.

    Now the word ‘Maidan’ has acquired new relevance – there have been calls for a third Maidan protest, with the aim of overthrowing the new government. Next there will be calls to take direct action against the war, against mobilisation, against everything that the new President and Cabinet of Ministers are doing. The new government is responding to this threat by attempting to introduce internet censorship and stricter control over the content of political talk shows on TV. But even Yanukovych was unable to subject Ukraine to the Russian model of total control over society through censorship and the judicial system. The majority of Ukrainians know perfectly well who stands to benefit most from a third Maidan; on this basis a third Maidan seems considerably less likely than a third ‘Minsk ceasefire’.

    The fact of the matter is that a third ‘Minsk ceasefire’, which will be possible only after the second ceasefire is officially acknowledged to be defunct and the country suffers several more months of bloody and devastating warfare, will say less about Ukraine than about her Western comrades-in-arms – the European Union and the United States. It will be a verdict on their indecision, on their reluctance to take more effective economic, financial and diplomatic steps to stop the Russian Federation sending arms, men and machinery to Donbass, without which military operations would never have begun.

    Andrey Kurkov’s book Ukraine Diaries, translated by Sam Taylor, is available to buy through our bookseller partner Foyles.

    Amanda Love Darragh’s translation of The Diary of Lena Mukhina is also available through Foyles.

  • Memory and Responsibility

    Having won the 2014 Jan Michalski Prize for Road to Donbass, Serhiy Zhadan writes for PEN Atlas about growing up in eastern Ukraine, a region now at war, and how love and attentiveness are the lessons of literature in a world of silence and oblivion.

    Translated from the Ukranian by Boris Dralyuk.

    Four years ago I wrote a book about the places where I was born and grew up, about my homeland. I wanted to talk about two things that are of great importance to me and to many of my compatriots: memory and responsibility. The Road to Donbass is, after all, about precisely this – memory and responsibility. And, of course, about all the other things associated with them.

    What does our memory give rise to? Our understanding of the past, our relationship with history, our awareness of our homeland. Responsibility, on the other hand, indicates a readiness to defend all this – our past, our history, our homeland. Something of this kind occupies the hero of my book – as he sinks deeper into his own memory, he discovers things that are at once simple and very important. After trying to recall everything once and put it in its proper place in the past, he comes to terms with his own future, with how he can go on, with what he can hold onto. And it is responsibility, in this case, that is the principle – sufficient and significant – which motivates the hero, lending logic and consistency to his actions. Responsibility to his family, to his friends, to shared secrets, to those who have left, and, most importantly, to those who have stayed and who rely on him. This responsibility is what makes one an adult, since it has a bearing on extremely serious things – like love and hate, or life and death.

    But this isn’t a matter of abstract concepts and categories. Thousands of wonderful books have been written about life, and even more about death. And the same goes for memory and responsibility. For me, the novel isn’t just a fictional story with conventional characters and fantastic situations. No, for me it’s associated with real landscapes and a very tangible geography. These landscapes really do exist – they stretch along the Ukrainian-Russian border, and they are now beset by fighting. You can see the locations described in my book on the news; the same gas stations where ‘more or less rotten’ fellows stood around squabbling are now encircled by Ukrainian ‘Grads’, Donbass’s system of defense against potential aggression.

    Reality has shown itself to be far more ruthless and unpredictable than any fantasy. After all, who could have imagined a year ago that columns of Ukrainian prisoners would be led down the streets of Donetsk, that the morgues of Ukrainian towns would be filled with torn bodies. Today, war, death, pain, loss and danger are part of our everyday reality. And reality itself has somehow wound up in the spotlight. People are talking about Ukraine, arguing about Ukraine – everyone must take a position. In Western Europe, which seems to have recovered and found peace after the impossibly bloody twentieth century, it suddenly became apparent that the threat of a new massacre, a new general war, is still quite real, that history marches on in the streets and in the trenches, and that subtle diplomacy and multibillion-euro contracts cannot protect civilians from the madness and paranoia of a single man, if that man happens to have a high domestic approval rating and a well-equipped army. Ukraine cannot be ignored. It is increasingly difficult to pretend that the war raging on its territory is an internal conflict, increasingly difficult to deny the presence of Russian tanks in the mining towns. The attempts of European leaders to flirt with the aggressor, to maintain a civilized conversation with a man who coolly wipes out hundreds of his own citizens and those of neighboring countries appear ever more dubious and equivocal. To be sure, for Europe, this is merely a nightmare unfolding at a safe distance. The nightmare must be reckoned with, it is impossible to circumvent, but, by and large, it remains at a relatively safe distance, at least for now.

    It’s a great shame that the world only remembered our country when it began to bleed. It’s a great shame that the news about Ukraine always presents bombed-out houses and the dead. It’s extremely painful to know that, even in this situation, Ukrainians have to convince many Westerners of their right to freedom and independence – ultimately, of their right to memory and responsibility. But it’s good that you’re listening to us, that you’re forced to listen, that you don’t pretend that nothing is happening, and that sometimes you even try to understand what’s really going on – in the East, beyond the realms of your comfort and security, beyond the realms of your experience and established notions. It may be precisely in this situation that literature, and culture in general, can be of some use. It may be that today literature provides the only real opportunity, however dubious, to explain something – without agitprop.

    Many among us in the East still believe that literature should educate, should teach. To me, however, this idea about the nature of writing always seemed rather false and frivolous; I’d always thought (and think even now) that literature can only teach love and attentiveness. Moreover, in many cases, these are one and the same thing. In this book, this novel, I also spoke about love and attentiveness. I was lucky to be born and to grow up in eastern Ukraine, yet I was always troubled by the absence of this region, of these landscapes, of these people from the surrounding text – I missed the presence of this air in literature, the presence of this geography in the pages of books. I wanted to write about all of this with love and attentiveness. I wanted to capture countless details and moments that seemed important and decisive. I wanted to understand what makes this region special, unlike any other place in the world.

    Today I realize that most of the things I described remain in the past. And there’s no chance of bringing them back. And there’s no sense in trying. Everything has changed. Even if these landscapes, fields, and valleys will be just as sunny, and the rivers just as warm, war has changed everything anyway, stripping us of many illusions. But, at the same time, it has stripped many of us of fear, of uncertainty, and of indecisiveness. It has left us our memory. And our responsibility.

    It so happened that we, the residents of eastern Ukraine, have now found ourselves in a warzone. The towns where we grew up, the streets and buildings in which we lived, are now the sites of battle or are near them. For many of us the war is a personal matter, even though the majority are not involved in the fighting. But one way or another, we are all now living this war, are all affected by it, all think and talk about it. Sometimes we’re short of interlocutors – people quickly tire of talking about bad, unpleasant things. Sometimes we’re short of words. All the same, one way or another, we must talk. And we must listen. What is said forms memory. And what is heard forms responsibility. Silence leads to death and oblivion. That is why today it is especially important to talk to one another, listen to one another. Listen, even if you don’t agree with what you hear. Listen, even if you know how this story ends.

    You can buy Voroshilovograd by Serhiy Zhadan through our book partner Foyles.

    Find out more about the 2014  Jan Michalski Prize.

    Serhiy Zhadan was profiled in The New Yorker and the BBC.

    His novel Mesopotamia was featured in an article on the unrest in the Ukraine for the London Review of Books.

    See Serhiy Zhadan’s profile at the Suhrkamp site.

    World Literature Today features Serhiy Zhadan and Lyubko Deresh in an essay on the Orange Revolution to the Euromaidan.

  • Soldier No. 9

    This article is part of the English PEN Between EU and Me project, supported by the European Commission

    Translated from the Ukrainian by Amanda Love Daragh

    On 26 August, on the day when Petro Poroshenko met with Vladimir Putin in Minsk, the capital of Belarus,  Ukrainian forces captured an armoured personnel carrier and ten Russian paratroopers. The Russian government, which has been denying the presence of Russian soldiers in Ukrainian territory on a daily basis, was slow to respond but eventually came up with an explanation: they had taken a wrong turning. The paratroopers were captured 20 km from the Russian-Ukrainian border. In a televised interview the paratroopers themselves said that they had been given orders to advance 70 km into Ukraine territory, which is precisely what they were doing when they were apprehended by Ukrainian armed forces. These paratroopers are lucky, really. They are still alive.

    Other Russian paratroopers are being buried in secret – in the village of Vybuty near Pskov, in Bashkiria and in other towns and cities across the Russian Federation. No official information about these burials has been released, but Russian journalists arriving in Vybuty to find out more were met by men in civilian clothing, who attacked them and damaged their car. The journalists were told to leave the Pskov area immediately, or they would end up in one of the local marshes and their bodies would never be found.

    Russians are gradually coming to realise that it is not only local separatist rebels fighting in Donbass, but also a great many Russian citizens, including conscripts, who have been sent there by military command. The mothers of dead and missing Russian soldiers have compiled a list of 400 names and are demanding answers from the authorities regarding the whereabouts of their sons, who only joined the army in the first place because they had no choice.

    But while the Russian government is trying to find answers – or rather, choosing to remain silent – Ukrainian troops are finding more and more mass and unmarked individual graves in territory reclaimed from separatists. One of the latest burial sites was discovered by Ukrainian guardsmen in the middle of a field in the Luhansk Oblast. There were around twenty graves marked with little signs saying ‘Soldier No.7’, ‘Soldier No.9’ and so on. These signs bore no names, no dates of birth or death, because the Russian soldiers and officers lying in these graves are officially still alive and on active duty at various military bases within Russia. Nothing will be done to investigate these graves while the conflict is still ongoing, which means that those who are buried there might remain on the list of ‘missing’ residents of south-east Ukraine and Russia indefinitely. Incidentally, the list of missing Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers is also growing.

    Several days ago I went with my wife and children to our country house, in a village 90 km outside Kiev. We were filled in on the local news as soon as we arrived, and it was not good. A report had come through from the anti-terrorist operation zone that three local men had died after being drafted into the conflict zone, but only two bodies had been sent home for burial. The wife and relatives of the third dead man had simply been told that he had died during an artillery raid and his remains could not be moved.

    At the same time people there seem to somehow accept what is happening. My old friend Viktor, who used to be the local telephone engineer and lives on the street next to ours, said that he is expecting to be called up to fight any day now, so he wants to finish sorting out the heating at home. We have a cold winter ahead of us. Chances are that it will be a winter without Russian gas. Many people living in rural areas are converting their boilers to run on peat and firewood as well as gas. Viktor has already converted his boiler and is currently insulating his single-storey brick house with foam rubber. He would ideally like to brick up one of the windows before winter too, because it is particularly draughty. Viktor has two children, and his priority at the moment is to provide them and his wife with a decent environment in which to spend the winter.

    I heard from another neighbour that some villagers have already stocked up on antifreeze. Yet there is no sense of panic. Everyone is calm. People are digging up potatoes from their allotments, drying them out and storing them in their cellars. Everyone is thinking and talking about the immediate future, about winter, about the gas supply, which is bound to be cut off or at least severely restricted. Hardly anyone in the Ukrainian countryside even mentions Europe or the prospect of a European future for Ukraine. Right now the prospect of the coming winter is more tangible and significant.

    Another date has recently been occupying the attention of a large sector of the Ukrainian population: 1 September. Apart from updates on the military situation in Donbass and Russia’s latest incursions into Ukrainian territory, the subject most discussed on the radio lately has been the start of the new school year. Due to a combination of the military situation and the economic crisis, which has itself been exacerbated by the military situation, the cost of school uniforms, textbooks, exercise books and other school essentials has increased by as much as 30-50%. Salaries, however, remain the same and in some cases have even decreased. But the parents interviewed on the Ukrainian radio and television try not to complain about their predicament. It would be inappropriate to complain about personal problems when their country – Ukraine – is facing such serious problems of her own. Refugee families in towns and cities across Ukraine spent the month of August frantically filling in school paperwork, trying to secure places for their children. Seventeen new children have already joined School No.92 in Kiev. In total, over a thousand children from the Donbass region started school in Kiev on 1 September. Most are children of the regional elite, whose parents can afford the higher cost of living in the Ukrainian capital. Establishing relationships with their new classmates may present a particular challenge for Kiev’s schoolchildren, since many of the Donbass refugees hold Kiev and its inhabitants to blame for the tragedy currently unfolding in eastern Ukraine.

    The militarisation of life in any country also militarises the way people think, and this applies especially to children. The first lesson of the year in all Ukrainian schools was devoted to patriotism and the territorial integrity of the state . Which meant that the school day began on 1 September with a discussion about war, about a war that, for the immediate and foreseeable future, is going to be part of our lives, day and night.

    Ukraine Diaries by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Sam Taylor, is available to buy through our book partners Foyles.

    You can read more about the book at the Random House website.

  • Kiev’s Militant Spring

    This article is part of the English PEN Between EU and Me project, supported by the European Commission

    Translated from the Russian by Anne Marie Jackson

    In Kiev it’s warm, and this year the chestnuts and lilacs have come into bloom ten days early. Kiev is especially beautiful in May and at this time of year the city brims with tourists. At the moment there are fewer people around than usual; the tourists are wary, concerned about their safety. After all, the east of the country is at war. And although Russian tanks have not crossed the Ukrainian border, the events in Donetsk, Luhansk and to some extent Kharkiv constitute war in every sense, crippling the country’s economy and damaging the people’s psyche.

    The physical consequences of war can be effaced: fortifications dismantled, minefields cleared, cities and industry restored. But the psychological wounds take generations to heal and even then will never completely disappear. The 23 years of Ukraine’s independence were a peaceful time, the break-up of the Soviet Union occurring here without armed conflict. Throughout these years Russia was fighting in the Caucasus – Chechnya, Dagestan and Georgia – and its troops were deployed in civil confrontations in Central Asia and Transnistria. Independent Ukraine is short on war in its history; however it’s also short an army.

    In the early 90s, Ukraine’s army was 700,000 strong; its armaments included 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 2,600 tactical nuclear weapons. By surrendering its nuclear arsenal, Ukraine gained guarantees of its territorial integrity from the United States, Great Britain and Russia. What need does a country have of powerful armed forces when its security is guaranteed by the three biggest nuclear powers in the world? Who would even think of attacking such a country? Over the course of two decades, Ukraine reduced the size of its army nearly tenfold. Its combat-ready weaponry was used chiefly for UN peacekeeping operations in Africa. No one could have imagined that one of its guarantor states would turn into an aggressor and annex part of Ukraine’s territory.

    Ukraine can now confidently be described as a state without an army. The Berkut special police force and Ukrainian security service might have been up to the task of easing the tensions in the country’s eastern provinces. While dismantling the army, the Yanukovych regime had taken care to build up the special services as its mainstay and defence should the country experience an outbreak of discontent. It was the Berkut that Yanukovych sent to put down the Maidan protest during the winter of 2014. But after protesters were fired upon on 18-20 February, after hundreds were killed and thousands injured, the Berkut was disbanded and the remaining services completely demoralised. Consequently, today’s Ukraine is a state without an army and without a police force.

    There may be no forces of law and order in the country, but neither is there chaos. On the outside, Kievans’ daily lives look about the same as usual. The annual marathon was run in late April. Just a few days earlier, Russian PEN and the Khodorkovsky Foundation held a conference that was attended by writers, journalists and human rights activists from both Russia and Ukraine. And there is a major poetry festival coming up in the middle of May – the Kiev Lavry, or Laurels. In the evenings, jazz can be heard on the streets and every seat in the street cafés is taken, even if the café in question is located between the first and second lines of the Maidan barricades. The Maidan could disperse, now that it has achieved its primary objective – the removal of Yanukovych from office – but it hasn’t dispersed. The people aren’t too sure about the new Government; they’re unhappy with its actions in Donetsk and Luhansk. The Maidan, noticeably less peopled, stands as a reminder of whose will the Ukrainian authorities must answer to.

    The warm Kiev evenings and lyrical jazz melodies of the street musicians create an almost perfect illusion of peaceful life. But however much the war may recede into the back of our minds, we’re never completely free of it. It’s always with us. And it’s not just the bad news that comes each day from the east. Putin’s quiet war is depriving each of us of a part of our past. We can no longer go back to the Crimea that used to be, that we are all connected to in some way; and Crimea will never again be what it was. Widespread violence has radically transformed the small towns in the north of Donetsk province, destroying the people’s accustomed way of life and blurring the boundary between the thinkable and the unthinkable. Like a slowly moving conflagration, the war is creeping from east to west, turning to ash the peaceful life of a great people. The war is distancing us from the past, emphasising its unattainability, and making the future insubstantial and surreal. Is it even worth thinking about the future when at any moment it could all disappear? The war leaves us only with the present – the laidback moments of these warm spring evenings and the fluid jazz on the Kiev streets. The evenings linger slow and unhurried, yet passing by swiftly and for ever.

  • 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.