In her keynote address at the 2022 BASEES Annual Conference, Dr. Olesya Khromeychuk said: “The historical knowledge of Russian imperialism-and resistance to it-possessed by Ukrainians and others in the region <…> if taken seriously, could have prepared the twenty-first century Europe for Russia’s war better. Maybe it could have prevented it altogether.” The subalterns, she said, know the Empire better than the Empire knows itself.
Back when yours truly formulated a very similar argument, there was no war. Yet. Others, Oksana Zabuzhko among them, have articulated it too, with heart-breaking emotional impact. Zabuzhko’s essay on Brodsky, still untranslated into English, dates back to 1998. And yet, we seem to be having to make the same points repeatedly.
I looked up my old essay just to see if it still seemed relevant. Here’s an excerpt- from Lessons from Ukraine: What Happens When Post-Colonial Poetics Goes East.
Dr. Olesya Khromeychuk, Director of the Ukrainian Institute London, delivered the keynote address at this year’s annual conference of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies.
The title of the address is ‘Where is Ukraine on the mental map of the academic community?’
I strongly encourage our readers to watch and share this video. The Q&A that follows the talk is especially illuminating.
Photo from the author’s archive. The picture shows Yuriy (on the right) and Igor Belov, a poet, literary translator and journalist from Kaliningrad.
What doomed Putin’s blitzkrieg and continues to make his war against Ukraine absurd is a strategic mistake which I believe to be socio-linguistic in nature.
Let me recall the literary festival held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in November 2021, long before the Bloody January in Kazakhstan (which now feels like it was years ago—time has expanded). The festival was the second collaboration between the SEIP Foundation (Russian Federation) and our Open Literary School Almaty (OLSA, Kazakhstan) in the last ten years. The program of the festival, with its prose and poetry workshops for Kazakhstani writers and meetings with Natalia Ivanova, Maxim Amelin, Vitaliy Nayshul and other established Russian authors and editors, was designed around the theme of “A Single Cultural Space. Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan: From a Dialogue of Cultures toward a Single Cultural Space.” You can find the recordings of the panel discussions on OLSA’s Facebook page.
I clearly remember being disappointed by both the speakers and the content of the discussions (except those who skipped the topic and focused on literature, as, for example Natalia Ivanova, Evgenia Jane Baranova and Anna Markina). Not a single speaker—all of whom, I believed, aspired to the ideals of a liberal and multicultural society—could clearly articulate the idea they mentioned several times, that of the “Russian World.” Speakers evoked a range of ideas whose relevance was not easy to grasp, from the economic reforms of the nineteen-nineties to conspiracy theories. Perhaps the most honest thing I heard from a Russian colleague was, “Folks, to be frank, I really don’t know what to tell you.” I wondered why our discussions felt tense and the talks of my Russian colleagues so unfocused. The only answer I have is that the original idea behind their lectures—that the use and promotion of the Russian language beyond Russia self-evidently meant also the promotion of Russian culture and ideas—was unsustainable. It had bankrupted them just as it had failed Putin.
Kharkiv and Kyiv, the two biggest Ukrainian cities Russia attacked first, are both predominantly Russian-speaking. I have no doubts (in fact, I recognize the sentiment that informed this delusion) that the Russian troops had expected to be greeted with flowers by people thanking them in Russian. Instead, they faced a ferocious resistance from the local forces whose ranks included just as many speakers of Russian as of Ukrainian. In the same vein, in Poland, a country dealing with an enormous influx of displaced Ukrainians, the demand for interpreters from/to Russian is as critical as the one for those working to/from Ukrainian.
It grieves me to say this, but in one way, Putin’s ideological plan has succeeded. Now is probably not the right time to talk about any of this war’s victims other than Ukrainian civilians. However, I am compelled to name one more casualty: the Russian language. The global urge to ‘cancel’ anything describable by the adjective “Russian” is real, understandable, and damaging. Damaging because something ‘Russian’ might have as little relationship to the Russian Federation as something ‘English’ to the actions of England—yet the aversion to all things ‘Russian’ feeds the Kremlin’s narrative of grievance. Old fears and political instruments they had spawned are familiar and therefore easy to use. The disappointed voices of Russophone people on social media are a song of alarm, confusion, and upheaval as Kremlin’s propaganda hooks sink into individual linguistic identities.
Getting back to Kazakhstan again, I anticipate that the status of the Russian language will be revised in the near future in line with the decolonization effort to revise the available history of the Kazakhstan famine and the persecution of Kazakh leaders after 1917. I believe the status of the Russian language in Kazakhstan needs to be officially reconfirmed. Along with Kazakh as the national language, Russian remains a critical language of inter-ethnic communication. Kazakhstan has the third largest Russian-speaking population in the world, after RF and Ukraine, and it has fallen to our country to navigate this linguistic relationship now.
Yuriy Serebriansky is a Kazakhstani author of Polish origin and cultural researcher. His prose, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in Kazakh, Russian, and American literary journals, and been translated into several languages. Editor-in-Chief of Esquire Kazakhstan from 2016 to 2018, he is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Kazakhstani Polish diaspora magazine Ałmatyński Kurier Polonijny and the prose editor of the Russian-language literary magazine Literatura. He is an alumnus of the International Writing Program and served as an instructor in the IWP’s Between-the-Lines 2019 session.
The letter, circulated by Anne Fisher, Russian translator, President of ALTA, and Senior Lecturer in the U. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Translation and Interpreting Studies program, has more than 60 signatures so far. Please see here.
The executive council of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages condemns the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine as a direct violation of international law. As scholars of this region, we are appalled by the distortions of the situation circulated on Russian state media. We grieve for the victims of the ongoing attacks and for those killed over the past eight years. We stand with all those in Russia, Ukraine, and beyond who oppose this war.
Виконавча рада Американської асоціації викладачів слов’янських та східноєвропейських мов засуджує непровоковане російське вторгнення в Україну як пряме порушення міжнародного права. Як дослідники цього реґіону, ми в жаху від викривлень ситуації, що циркулюють в російських державних медіях. Ми сумуємо за жертвами атак, що тривають, і за загиблими впродовж останніх восьми років. Ми стоїмо разом з тими в Росії, Україні та решті світу, хто проти цієї війни.
Исполнительный комитет Американской ассоциации преподавателей славянских и восточноевропейских языков осуждает неспровоцированное вторжение России в Украину и рассматривает этот акт как прямое нарушение международного права. Как исследователи этого региона, мы возмущены искажением в освещении кризиса со стороны российских государственных СМИ. Мы скорбим о жертвах продолжающихся военных действий и чтим память погибших в конфликте за последние восемь лет. Мы поддерживаем всех тех в России, в Украине и за их пределами, кто выступает против этой войны.
The Alma Review 