The programme of "Ukrainian Story Comes Out of the Shadows. Oksana Zabuzhko in Lodz" (7-8 October 2022) was arranged around the notion of visibility, which is all the more relevant when the writer addresses the issues of existence, history and self-determination of Ukraine as a state.
Highlights of the visit included:
- Dean's lecture "Cognition and self-discovery as a safety issue" at the Faculty of Economics and Sociology, University of Lodz under the patronage of the Faculty Dean, Prof. Rafał Matera
- open meeting "One Hundred Years of Our Solitude" at Teatr Nowy
- narrative workshop at the Lodz Film School
The presence of the Ukrainian community representatives at the events shows that Zabuzhko's arrival was also important to them. The writer's visit was sponsored by the "Kalejdoskop Kultury", a cultural and scientific journal co-produced by the universities
Identification and security
The lecture delivered by Oksana Zabuzhko began by describing the process of breaking the Russian narrative, which, since Putin's rise to power, has created the impression that Ukraine was and is a country that has never existed and thus, it will be no great loss if it disappears from the maps.
Referring to Peter Pomerantsev's April article in “The Economist” and its reference to the writer's 1990s novel “Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex”, whose protagonist (a Ukrainian intellectual), teaching literature in the US, wishes that the West would finally notice Ukrainians was a meaningful fragment of the lecture. Exclamation: "We are here! You will hear us!" was firstly interpreted by Pomerantsev as the voice of the newly formed state, and the dream of being seen as an expression of the identification problem, but after Bucha and Irpin it dawned on him: it is not about identification, but about security.
Being recognised by the rest of the world is the only guarantee that we will exist. Because the world protects, defends and cares for the existence and survival of those cultures, countries, nations that it already knows something about, that it knows
– Zabuzhko said, while recalling destruction of Buddha statues in the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan in 2001.
This was possible because Buddha statues do not belong to the internal European cultural canon to the same extent that, for example, Paris, the Louvre etc.do. Meanwhile, within seven months since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Russia has destroyed or damaged more than 464 historical and cultural mementos and cultural infrastructure sites, including those on the UNESCO Heritage List – medieval temples from the Chernihiv region, the constructivist architecture of Kharkiv city centre, now destroyed by Russian missiles.
A story supported by the army
Zabuzhko reminded us that Putin has been trying to harness Ukraine for 20 years, but encountering constant resistance, he has launched the most brutal scenario – a full-scale attack. In 2014, he did not manage to divide the country under false pretences of civil war. Now he is taking revenge for the fact that the regions decided to defend their identity.
This supposedly pro-Russian, but in fact mostly only Russian-speaking part of Ukraine went to war because it did not want to be Russia. The world's attention, which Ukraine has been lacking for the past 30 years, is finally focused on the humanist sphere. However, only because the Ukrainian army proved stronger than the Russian army. We live in times where cultures only become visible when the military is their promoter and defender.
– said Zabuzhko.
This is evidenced by Zabuzhko's long-standing efforts to make theatres stage Lesa Ukrainka's "Cassandra" – a play about the fall of Troy described from a woman's perspective that shows the eternal drama of the intellectual in a world tainted by populism.
At last! Thanks to the Ukrainian army, London's Omnibus Theatre will host the world premiere of "Cassandra" in English. It would not have happened if it had not been for the fact that Ukraine had denied the "Putin story" with its deeds and its blood.
– concluded Oksana Zabuzhko.
The distant harvest of the Great Famine
While speaking of what closed Ukraine's mouth, hindered self-discovery and deprived it of the chance to tell its 'story' to the world, Zabuzhko pointed out, among other things, the trauma of the Great Famine, which could not be talked about for three generations:
... a satanic idea to stage a genocide by starvation in a place with two-thirds of the most fertile land on the planet, to people who trusted their land implicitly.
The blow, i.e. the Holodomor, united the aristocratic strata with the social lowlands. To this day, it is also unclear how many people died of starvation at that time: three and a half million or 10 million? Moreover, the Great Famine has been imprinted in the consciousness of silent generations as fear to have something or to succeed. However, the moment has finally come when millions of Ukrainians are in the West and, according to Zabuzhko, have a real impact on the perception of her nation.
Modernisation? Only through Russia
Self-discovery was also hampered by a complex that Zabuzhko describes as “bademski”. In 1876, Tsar Alexander II signed a decree banning Ukrainian language. In fact, it was a tool to attack the nation's main civilisational resources (Ukrainian-speaking institutions, education, publishing offices and the press). A course of cultural purge has been taken.
Until the declaration of independence in 1918, the erasure of Ukraine from the world map took place over the 40 years of the decree. When Europe was rapidly modernising, creating its myth, which is still alive today, within Ukraine any advances in civilisation were to be made only through Russia.
Due to backwardness and anti-modernisation, Ukraine was not socially prepared to show itself as a political nation in 1918. In 1919 we lost, there was no good alliance with the Poles
– said Zabuzhko.
In her opinion, these events have slowed down Ukraine's realisation that it has an unbroken continuity of political existence for 150 years. She referred to the words of the poet Yevhen Malanyuk, who said that the most important task of Ukrainians as a society is and will be to get to know themselves.
Therefore, as the last problem, which is of a moral-psychological nature, she pointed out the exit from the role of a victim, which is always difficult and will require a special effort from Ukraine. The next step would be to recognise that it is also Ukraine's part of the responsibility for how the last three hundred years of world history were shaped, including its involuntary participation in the co-creation of the Russian Empire.
According to Zabuzhko, Ukrainian society is not quite ready for this, but "with further victories by the army and the removal of Russian army from the territory of the country, there will be an increase in the intellectual boldness for self-discovery and, as a result, sorting out Ukrainian history".
There is no single East
The visit to Lodz was concluded with a meeting entitled "One Hundred Years of Our Solitude" at Teatr Nowy, where the conversation was led by Anna Lazar – a long-standing director of the Polish Institutes in Kiev and St Petersburg. Anna Lazar is a publicist, curator of numerous cultural projects related to Eastern European countries, and currently the author of the Ukrainian-Belarusian programme in the Gdańsk City of Literature. Excerpts from Oksana Zabuzhko's texts read by theatre actors Jolanta Jackowska and Damian Sosnowski constituted the introduction to the three main themes.
A large part of the audience of nearly 150 people was made up of the Ukrainian community representatives in Lodz.
It is time to take a fresh look at the Soviet period, which is seen as something homogeneous, while it consists of several different stories that are not the same. For years, the West has spoken of a "Soviet Soyuz", so now too, by awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to democratic activists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, everyone has been treated equally. This kind of thinking makes it easier for Putin to do what he does, which is to make claims against "post-Soviet" countries
– said Zabuzhko and she continued:
What we can see now in Ukraine is like an illustration to my diagnosis from the introduction to the translation of Svetlana Aleksievich's "Chernobyl Prayer". How is Russia different from Ukraine? In our country, it is said in the context of the first years of the Donbass war that on the Ukrainian side the area is planted with peach trees, while on the Russian side there is emptiness. This is also what Russia is like. Territorially it is large but uninhabited, unattended. There is only a predatory approach to the resources.
The unofficial part of her stay allowed Zabuzhko to get to know the city, meet artists, cultural organisers and intellectuals. Thanks to the openness of the director of the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź, Aneta Dalbiak, a visit to the vernissage of the 17th International Textile Triennial and a guided tour of the exhibition (filled with Ukrainian accents) took place. During the tour the writer was accompanied by, among others, dr hab. Artur Chrzanowski, Vice-Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź.
The full transcript of the Dean's lecture and conversation with Oksana Zabuzhko will be published in the next issue of "Kalejdoskop Kultury"
Source: Łukasz Kaczyński (Kalejdoskop Kultury) / Jolanta Sławińska-Ryszka (Promotion Centre, University of Lodz)
Edit: Bartosz Kałużny (Promotion Centre, University of Lodz)
Photos: Bartosz Kałużny (Promotion Centre, University of Lodz) / Joanna Głodek (Teatr Nowy)