Over the last few days, the well-known theatre actor Oksana Shvets and Artem Datsyshyn, soloist of the national opera-ballet, have been buried in Kyiv. These performers died when ballistic missiles hit Kyiv.
At the same time, a Russian bomber was “carefully” dropping a half-tonne bomb on the Mariupol drama theatre; inside, more than 1,000 citizens, including children and elderly people, were sheltering from the air raids.
The total war that Putin has declared on Ukraine implies that the aim is to make sure that Ukraine ceases to exist – along with its culture, history and language.
On 17 March, a meeting between Russian functionaries and Russian cultural figures took place in Moscow. The statement released after the meeting states that Russian cultural figures fully support Russia’s “special operation” against Ukraine and will act together on the side of the Kremlin on the “cultural front”.
The Russian “cultural front” is already open and making inroads into Europe. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, announced that only Putin is fighting against Ukraine and that the rest of the country is not to blame. So the Russian writers and poets who signed an open letter of support for Putin, published in the Literaturnaya Gazeta on 4 March, are not to blame.
Meanwhile, the German PEN Centre opposed the boycott of Russian cultural products. Elsewhere, Ukrainian writers and musicians who have advocated a boycott of Russian culture have been accused of radicalism and hate speech. Ukrainian writers are being encouraged to sit next to Russian cultural figures on stages in Paris and Berlin and talk about reconciliation.
The more bombs and rockets that fall on Ukrainian cities, the more radically Ukrainian writers and cultural figures will respond to these requests. Not everyone will respond, it is true – only those who are still alive. Among the latest victims of the war is the professor of Kyiv’s Theological Academy, Alexander Kislyuk, a famous translator from ancient Greek, Latin, ancient Slavonic, English and French. Thanks to him, books by Aristotle, Tacitus, Thomas Aquinas and many other ancient philosophers and scientists have appeared in Ukrainian translation. He can no longer take part in discussions about reconciliation with his Russian colleagues. He was shot on 5 March near his house in the village of Bucha, near Kyiv.
In a basement in the village of Klavdievo, not far from Bucha, the refugee writer Vladimir Rafeenko is hiding with his wife from incessant bombing raids. They have tried to escape from Klavdievo to Kyiv but the constant shelling and bombing of the suburbs of Kyiv has made it impossible. He was given shelter in Kladievo at the summer cottage of the Ukrainian writer Andriy Bondar. Now half of the village of Klavdievo is destroyed.
At the very beginning of the war, a Russian bomb fell on the museum dedicated to Maria Pryimachenko – the most famous “naive” Ukrainian artist – in the town of Ivankov, to the north of Kyiv. Braving the flames, local residents carried the paintings out of the museum and have hidden them away so that, after the war, when a new museum is built, the collection can be displayed once more.
In the first week of the war, Kyiv’s museums received instructions from the Ministry of Culture to evacuate their collections to western Ukraine. Some museums simply hid their collections in basements; some managed to pack everything in boxes and now are waiting for transportation out of the city. But transport is in short supply – the evacuation of people and the delivery of humanitarian supplies have been prioritised. The protection of our cultural heritage has had to take second place.
Universities, libraries and schools have been destroyed throughout eastern, south-eastern and central Ukraine. Educational institutions have no strategic value, but they are indeed used as humanitarian centres, aid depots and refugee centres. Russian troops are simply out to destroy any public infrastructure, regardless of the number or nature of the victims.
Nevertheless, classes in schools and universities are due to recommence all over Ukraine from 1 April. Lectures, lessons and seminars will be online, both for the safety of students and teachers, and as a result of the physical destruction of university and school buildings.
A decline in the quality of education is an inevitable consequence of this war, and it comes on top of two years of falling standards owing to the pandemic. But along with bitterness and pain, students may also feel a new surge of motivation to study better and to educate themselves at a time when education has become a secondary occupation. After all, right now the primary task of all citizens of Ukraine is to survive the war.
A separate victim of Russian aggression is Russian culture itself. Ukrainians are rejecting it wholesale, in a spontaneous reaction that did not require any parliamentary decisions. In fact, the Ukrainian parliament has adopted a law prohibiting the importation of Russian books and publications for sale. In the occupied territories, of course, there will be no Ukrainian books until they have been liberated. For the time being, everything there will be Russian. Ukrainian radio and television have been cut off and you can only get Russian channels that broadcast Kremlin propaganda. There are still Ukrainian writers, journalists and scientists in the occupied territories, but their fate is uncertain. Many of them have not been in contact with the outside world for several days.
Already, two weeks ago, Russian FSB agents started walking the streets of occupied Melitopol, in the south-east, with lists of names and addresses in their hands. They were looking for Ukrainian intellectuals, journalists and activists to take for interrogation. Mobile phones, computers and any other means of communication have been confiscated from detained Ukrainians and their family members, leaving these people completely isolated. We have no way of predicting what will happen to them next.
In Kyiv, the chief concern is now the safety of the main shrine of Kyivan Rus: the Saint Sophia monastery and cathedral. The ensemble, whose oldest structures date back to the 12th century, stands on top of one of Kyiv’s hills very close to the headquarters of the Ukrainian security service, the headquarters of the border guards and the Kyiv city police department. These three buildings must sooner or later become targets for Russian missiles – and any attacks on them are bound to damage, if not destroy, Saint Sophia.
The Ministry of Culture is keeping a record of destroyed historical and cultural sites. Dozens of new items are added to the list every day. But Ukrainian culture cannot be destroyed by bombs and missiles. It will survive, just as the Ukrainian language has survived, despite it being banned by more than 40 tzarist decrees during the 19th century, despite the Soviet policy of Russification of Ukraine, despite Russia’s current and violent hatred of everything Ukrainian.
Andrey Kurkov, a Ukrainian novelist, is the author of Death and the Penguin
Voices of Ukraine: writers including Ian McEwan and Karl Ove Knausgaard will read work by Ukrainian authors at a Guardian Live event in London 0n Monday 11 April. The event will also be livestreamed and all profits will be donated to the DEC Ukraine appeal. Book here
