Andriy Lyubka: After the victory, we will become one of the centers of influence of the new Europe

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Andriy Lyubka, a Ukrainian writer, translator, essayist, and author of more than a dozen prose and poetry books and as many translated books, has written a single literary text. It was an essay about Uzhhorod for a French publication about Ukrainian cities and regions. With the exception of a few columns in Ukrainian and foreign publications, Lyubka does not write or translate anything, he has practically stopped answering letters, and he communicates only through audio messages on messengers. Most of his time is spent volunteering. When we recorded the interview with him, he had purchased 48 vehicles for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. At the time of publishing the translation of the interview, there are 145 of them.

For the special project Words and Bullets, implemented by Chytomo and PEN Ukraine, we talked to Andriy about volunteering as a writer and absurd stories, about the unity of Ukrainians and our quarrelsome nature, about the patriotization of Transcarpathia and the European future of Ukraine.

– You wrote about the eve of February 24 for Culture.pl as follows: “We went to bed as successful people, middle-class people, with plans planned months in advance, we were citizens of a normal European country.” Who do you feel like now?

– Paradoxically, I think I feel even better now. The text that I wrote in the last days of February, which was aimed primarily at a foreign audience, was intended to explain what was happening to us, to symbolize the fear that seized us in the first days of the war: a sense of great anxiety for the country, for our future.

Today, when we have been at war for eight months, this fear is much weaker. We have witnessed how the state has survived, how the Armed Forces have performed a miracle and defended most of our territories and even launched a counteroffensive. That’s why, until February 24, we felt like residents of a normal European country, but not completely. We knew that we were, relatively speaking, a third-world country that was not allowed to join the EU, that had problems with corruption, government stability, and so on.

Now we have a sense of pride for our country, a sense that we are not just a candidate for EU membership or just some Eastern European country, but that we are a great country. Now, when you say that you are from Ukraine or show your Ukrainian passport somewhere abroad, everyone looks at you as a hero, as a representative of a nation that has achieved a lot and is now setting an example for everyone. Everyone is shocked by us, in a positive way. We have earned a name for ourselves, we have earned our place on the map, we have earned the right to exist.

– How long will this admiration and interest in Ukraine last? How can we preserve international interest in our country after the war is over?

– This interest is very high now. I have a million invitations to performances, open festivals, keynote speeches, and I just don’t have time to respond to them. For every festival, every important event or institution, it is prestigious to have someone Ukrainian in the program. It’s a kind of “tribute to fashion,” no matter how cynical it may sound. It shows that you are on the top of the trend, and this is to our advantage. This will continue in the future. If we properly support interest in Ukraine at the state level, we will be able to raise a whole generation of people who are in love with Ukraine. For example, if we subsequently provide scholarships and pay for several courses in the world’s leading universities to study Ukrainian studies and the Ukrainian language, we will have a whole wonderful generation of people who became interested in Ukraine on this wave of curiosity and trend, entered the Ukrainian studies program and then became translators, cultural ambassadors and our good agents.

This surge will certainly continue. Balkan literature, after all, proves this. After the war, they were actively translated for another ten years, and were guests of the largest book fairs. But, you know, I wish we could live in a country from which there is no news. I wish we lived somewhere like Denmark. There is no surge of interest in Denmark, it’s just a good place to live. And I would like us to live like in Denmark. So that we don’t have such outbursts of attention related to revolutions and wars. So that we could just do our job well, engage in cultural diplomacy, invest money in it, and have a good result.

– How do your Balkan colleagues react to the events in Ukraine? Can this war bring our peoples closer together?

– My Balkan colleagues mostly react to the war in the right way, naturally, reasonably. After all, I have never translated writers who were some kind of idiots or moral monsters. That’s why they assess the current situation quite well. The Bosnian writer Faruk Šehić supports us very passionately. He is one of those who follows the war and all the news non-stop, almost like a Ukrainian. For him, these events resonate with the Bosnian experience, in fact, with the experience of genocide: the fact that someone is not just trying to kill someone or take away some part of the territory, but wants to destroy everyone. Miljenko Jergović is traditionally on the Ukrainian side. Slobodan Šnajder is a very passionate supporter of Ukraine. Many of them wrote me letters. For example, Dubravka Ugrešić wrote a very nice literary letter on the first or second day of the war.

Our Serbian colleagues also support us, even though Serbia is traditionally considered pro-Russian. For example, Vladimir Arsenijevic, whose novel In the Hold I translated three years ago, collected humanitarian aid for us in Belgrade, in rather hostile circumstances. Then he came to Ukraine himself, and we went with him to Kharkiv to deliver this aid to the children’s hospital. On the way, I showed him Bucha, Borodyanka, Irpin, and the shelling in Kharkiv. So he was able to see it all with his own eyes.

In general, the support is significant, and I am very pleased with what I have done and whom I have chosen for cooperation, translations, and cultural dialogue. These people came to Ukraine for presentations and saw what kind of country we are, what kind of people we are. Then they returned to their countries and became our advocates and ambassadors. In the end, this is how cultural diplomacy works.

Read also: Dmytro Krapyvenko: it is important to talk about the losses in order not to get delusional and think that there are some immortals fighting on our side

– A few days after the full-scale invasion, you started volunteering. What does it mean to you?

– This is a simple, adequate, understandable way for me to be useful to my country while I am not at the front, because no one knows how long this war will last and when it will be necessary to replace those who are at the front now. This was my reaction to what happened: to leave my own plans, work, writing, translation, and career building in order to join the ranks and do something like everyone else. Now I’m more useful doing this. Later, perhaps, this will change, and I will have to change my activity profile. But now I am a volunteer, that is, a volunteer writer. It is important to emphasize this, because the fact that I am able to raise these funds (and this is a huge amount for me) became possible because people knew me as a writer. Therefore, this is a writer’s volunteerism, my readers are the donors. This is a great honor and a great level of trust for me.

90% of the people who donate to my accounts are Ukrainians or the Ukrainian diaspora. Often, this is not the first generation of the diaspora: people who were born there but still feel connected to Ukraine. The first donation I received on PayPal, when I was collecting money for the first car, was from my friend Julita and her husband Stefan. Julita was born in Poland to Ukrainian immigrants. Stefan is the son of a divisional officer, born in London. Now they live in Canada as a Ukrainian couple of people not born in Ukraine.

In the context of volunteering, it is important for me that the state clarifies the difference between humanitarian and volunteer help. I recently bought the 50th car for the army at the expense of Ukrainians, and I would really like it to be recorded in the state databases. What we are importing from abroad is not humanitarian aid provided by someone for free, but something that Ukrainians themselves have bought by investing in the defense of their country. Because if you look closely, it may well turn out that the United States will be in the first place among those who help us, both militarily and financially, and the Ukrainian people will be in the second place. Despite the fact that the war has been going on for eight months, many Ukrainians, each within their means, are contributing to support the army.

– Around this time, you were supposed to be at a six-month residency in Krakow working on a historical novel. Instead, it was only in June that you wrote your first literary text after February 24. Was there anything after it? When will you be able to start writing again, and what kind of texts will they be?

– Yes, back in June, I wrote the first text that would not be partly journalistic, but was a real literary essay and dealt with a given topic. This happened only because I had signed a contract earlier and it was supposed to be a big book published in France, by one of the coolest publishing houses. I couldn’t refuse, so I did it. But after that, I still don’t write anything, I don’t translate anything, and I’ve reached the point where I don’t actually answer emails, and I only communicate in messengers with audio messages because I’m mostly driving. This is very unusual for me, but I feel that this is exactly what I need to do now, that this is the right way.

I hope that over time I will return to my original self and become a writer again. But for now, I need to put aside my ambitions and do what I can to help. We’ll see if it will be useful for me as a writer later. Now I’m like a sponge: I watch, absorb some facts, ideas, details. Of course, this will become literature in one way or another later, but I don’t know whether I will write about the war. Eventually, you can write about Tchaikovsky and the 19th century, and our war will be recognized there. After all, war has been the same since ancient times. And it always opens up a person, reveals a person. So we will see. To be honest, now I am a little disappointed in words, in persuasion, columns, interviews. Now I need to defend myself, my country. I don’t want to be a Ukrainian writer in exile, in emigration, a member of a New York group, or something like that. I want to be a Ukrainian writer in Ukraine. And that’s what I’m fighting for.

– You once said that if you wrote a book about your trips to the east, it would be a very absurd book. What were some of the funniest situations that happened to you there?

– It would be an absurd story because I love humor. It always helps me fight stress and fear. I’m always looking for some positive moments to laugh at, to defuse some tense situations. It would be an absurd book, perhaps in the style of Švejk.

I started my work with cars as a volunteer when the unit in which my friends serve went to the front in Donbass. They were given a school bus by the military enlistment office, and had no other vehicles. So they traveled to the front by school bus across Ukraine. Near Pavlohrad, the bus broke down, they stopped at a gas station, and they were stuck there all day. They were not given any other vehicles, so they had no choice but to take a taxi. That’s how they got to the front in a taxi with their own money. I don’t know if it’s a funny situation, but it’s definitely amusing. It is possible only in Ukraine and it says a lot about us. Instead of saying, “We’re not going because they didn’t give us something,” people took the initiative and did it: they went there and they are still fighting today. And so are we.

A German journalist once asked me: “Why don’t you write a letter to the Ministry of Defense saying that there are not enough cars? It is the Ministry of Defense that is supposed to supply them.” Yes, but I don’t write letters. When I see a problem, I try to solve it, to help right now, not write letters and start a correspondence for two or three years. This is our country, our army. I see no difference between it and us, the Ukrainian people. The whole nation is at war. We are trying to help in any way we can. And this is not the time to look for someone who should do it. If you see a task, do it yourself.

– In fact, something unprecedented has happened here: everyone, without exception, has united against an external enemy. Do you think we will be able to maintain this unity in the future, when we have to rebuild the country after the war?

– I really hope and believe that we will not have this general unity in some stupid sense. We are united now in the face of an external enemy, but we must remember that Ukraine should be a democratic polyphonic state in terms of opinions and positions. I would not want us to continue to have a single telethon, to have bans on broadcasts of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament)… We are fighting, among other things, for democracy. And I really hope that we will have political disputes, competition between ideas, programs, and political parties. That it will not be a monoparty, mono-power and mono-majority. We will have many heroes, we will know many faces and names of those who forged this victory. This is important.

I hope that this traditional Ukrainian quarrelsomeness, this Kaidash family (novel by Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi, a classic of Ukrainian literature, about the conflicts within the family), will return to us, because it is ours. And I don’t see anything wrong with it. It has helped and saved us many times throughout history. All of our revolutions happened precisely because of this: that we stand up for our opinions, that we are ready to quarrel and argue. It’s a great thing.

As for unity, I have no doubt that we will have a European direction. I think everyone understands that in a generation Ukraine will be Ukrainian-speaking and the tale about Russified cities will no longer be relevant. There will be unity in this, no doubt. In everything else, I would like us to be a democracy.

– Your native land, Transcarpathia, could theoretically become one of our problematic regions. Last summer, Russian special services tried to destabilize the situation there as well. How did you manage to avoid provocations during the full-scale invasion? Are there any changes now that will lead to the final Ukrainization of the region?

– To be honest, I don’t think that Zakarpattia could have become one of the hotbeds or problem areas on the map of Ukraine. All this was an exaggeration. People in Zakarpattia have a very calm, peaceful mentality, and it is very difficult to stir up any enmity here. Even when there are conflicts between Ukraine and Hungary, Budapest and Kyiv, it does not mean that there are problems between local Hungarians and Ukrainians. Because local Hungarians are also Transcarpathians, they have Ukrainian passports, and many of them are fighting at the front. Therefore, there is no tension within the region.

I must admit that the regional authorities acted very professionally, and all possible flashpoints were immediately extinguished. Everyone was provided with maximum support. The authorities acted wisely, it was a good job. In addition, it was not just calm that was organized, a lot of help as well: millions of people moved through Zakarpattia as refugees, hundreds of thousands stayed with us for a while or still live here. Hundreds or even thousands of enterprises have been relocated and continue their business here. A large proportion of the population has been mobilized and is fighting in Donbas. The counteroffensive in the southern direction is being carried out by the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, with its center in Mukachevo. Since this is a small region with a population of only 1.2 million people, a third of which have long lived abroad, working, every family has a friend, brother, son, husband, or godfather fighting at the front. Therefore, this war has become a very personal point of catharsis for Transcarpathians.

Today, Zakarpattia is a model patriotic Ukrainian region, and for the first time in my life, I am proud of it. There were times when Yanukovych won the presidential election in the second round, but the war helped us go through this transformation, and go through it quickly. The way Zakarpattia has become patriotic shows that the process of creating and uniting the Ukrainian political nation has actually been completed. Now we are one family.

For us, it makes no difference what territory is being fought over. Our people are fighting both for Kherson and Bakhmut – they are just defending their land. I liked what one of my Transcarpathian friends said: “We came here to fight to prevent the war from coming to Zakarpattia. We are here, near Bakhmut, defending Zakarpattia.” And this is very correct. This is a very healthy approach to the perception of one’s land, one’s state.

– You wrote that “Russia is fighting for its own version of the past, and we are fighting for our own vision of the future.” How do you see our future after the victory?

– There is only one answer here: Ukraine will be a European country. We will not be very rich, but we will have a decent standard of living. Many of our people will not return to live in Ukraine, many will stay abroad, and we will have a powerful diaspora in different countries. But we will become one of the centers of influence of the new Europe, in fact, a leader in Eastern Europe, a kind of outpost. We will never play a secondary role again.

But this does not mean that we will quickly become some kind of “France”. Reconstruction is not about miracles, it’s about work. After the war, we will first have to clear the debris, design new buildings, and rebuild everything. It will take years, it will take our lives. We will actually be building the country not for us, but for the next generation.

– Will we finally be able to say goodbye to the Russian world?

– Yes, of course, we will break this connection, this chain, because we were tied to this “Russian world” by a chain – by force. But we shouldn’t expect quick changes, I keep emphasizing this. So that later, after the war, there will be no big disappointments that something is not changing.

We need to get ready for a marathon run. We have big, ambitious tasks ahead of us that will take decades to complete. Not years, not months, not weeks. And saying goodbye to the Russian world and Russian language will take generations, not years or electoral cadences. We need to stop thinking in terms of power or electoral cadences. We, as statesmen, must see the future, including for centuries.

We, the cultural infrastructure, artists, and managers, need to prepare for the fact that we have a lot of work to do. In fact, we are facing a plan to create a great replacement for this “Russian world.” It cannot be left in an empty space, something has to come up. Therefore, we need to create our culture on a huge scale: from tearful novels to modernist texts. And actively disseminate it, first of all, within the country. We have a lot of work to do, but in the end we will win. This is a natural historical process that will just take a long time.

Read also: Ihor Mitrov: A bohemian poet at war turns into an ordinary soldier

Words and Bullets is the special project by Chytomo and PEN Ukraine about Ukrainian writers and journalists that joined the army or started volunteering when Russia invaded Ukraine in February this year. The name of the media project symbolizes the weapon used by the heroes and heroines of the project before Feb. 24, which they were forced to take up after the outbreak of a full-scale war with Russia. The special project is being implemented with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Translated by Maria Bragan

Edited by Jared Goyette