August 15-29, 2022 Iryna Vikyrchak, Volodymyr Yermolenko, Valerii Pekar, Svitlana Stretovych, Anton Tsyvatiy

Flash essays from the collection “Wars. Ukrainians. Humanity” tell about the insights, experiences, and beliefs of Ukrainians, which ignited their society in 2022, when the full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine began.

The Cultural Hub community and curators carefully collected, translated, and illustrated these texts in order to capture the values ​​of Ukrainians — Freedoms, Bravery, Dignity, Responsibility, and Humour. 

A series of publications in partnership with Chytomo introduces this collection to the English-speaking audience. Volume 28 continues to present the series. You can get acquainted with the previous collection here.

Iryna Vikyrchak: Our daily bread. August 15

In Western Ukraine, we are Greek Catholics, and we are very religious. Every Sunday, every church in Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Volyn regions is packed with believers for a morning mass. Easter and Christmas are the most important days of the year, and wherever in the world you are, you have to come back to your parents’ place to share a festive meal — it is an unbreakable rule. 

At the same time, we are very superstitious and follow lots of little everyday magic rituals. For example, when a child gets scared, he or she is taken to an old lady, who would roll a couple of eggs on his forehead or burn some candles in front of them, spilling the wax into a cup of water. Or, if there is a thunderstorm, people take outside a little branch of a willow tree, which is kept inside the house behind an icon on the wall. Touching wood is a must as well as not sweeping the floor while your guests are still on their way home, or taking the trash out after the sunset. 

My grandma, may her soul rest in peace, deeply despised superstitions. But she constantly followed her own set of everyday magic rituals. Many of them were connected to bread. Before starting a new loaf of bread, she would always scratch a cross on it with a knife. If even the smallest piece of bread fell on the floor, she would pick it up quickly and kiss it with respect and make sure we, kids, would do the same. Needless to say, it was considered a great sin to throw away bread. Even if it was no longer good or safe to eat. Even if it was stale bread covered with blue mold. The leftovers of bread and other food were fed to the animals who lived on our little farm in the middle of a small town.  

For me, my grandma represents the quintessence of Ukrainity, as I call it: a total sum of the most representative Ukrainian qualities and values, recognizable within our nation and abroad. Bottomless respect for bread is one of them.

And now, when the russians are deliberately burning our wheat fields, we remember stalin’s artificial famine, Holodomor of 1932–1933, which took millions of lives of innocent Ukrainian people. Protecting the crops has become one of the many fronts of the current war. And even though nowadays you can go to the grocery store and buy a loaf of bread that is already cut (to save you the trouble), every time I start a new loaf, mentally I make a cross on it. Just like my grandma taught me. Because a strong intergenerational connection is another value which is part of Ukrainity.

Iryna Vikyrchak: From Vinnytsia to Capri. August 18

If you have been following the recent chronicles of the russian terrorist attacks on peaceful Ukrainian civilians, you surely have heard of Vinnytsia. But of course, all over the world, people who wouldn’t be able to locate it on the map have learned the geography of Ukraine by heart. There are no more unaffected regions left. I often think of Vinnytsia as the heart of Ukraine — it is situated just in the center of the country, a little to the west, stretching along the banks of the beautiful river Pivdennyi Buh.

So, as you know, on July 14, 2022, three russian missiles hit the city. Its downtown. The heart of the heart. The russians claimed they hit the Officer’s House, some kind of a military headquarters. But in fact, that building has been used solely for cultural purposes. Luckily, the dance collective of fifty people didn’t have their rehearsal there that morning. But more than twenty people lost their lives, and more than 160 were injured. Three little children became angels. The pain will never go away. Think of the morning of 9/11. 

Just a five-minute walk from this site of tragedy, there is another place where I would like to virtually take you. It is a manor-museum of the classic Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi (1864-1913). There is his old house next to the administrative building with a small venue hall and an apple orchard, where he spent a lot of time and even planted some apple trees himself. 

If you asked me to tell you one thing about Vinnytsia, I would be definitely telling you about this writer, the city’s cultural patron, and I’ll quote my favorite short stories of his with great excitement. 

And so, eight years ago, I arrived in Vinnytsia as a total stranger experienced in organizing literary festivals, and I immediately found allies among independent activists and local authorities who agreed to help me organize the Intermezzo Short Story Festival. A year later, we did the first edition on a delightful, sunny weekend in late May. The main stage was located in Kotsiubynskyi’s apple orchard, shady during the day and shimmering with colorful lights in the evening. Emerging and well-established writers read their stories, shared their thoughts, talked to the audience, gave lectures on literature, and ran workshops for children in the courtyard of a library just across the street. There was a mass screening of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, a movie by the legendary Armenian director Sergei Parajanow (an adaptation of the eponymous short story by Kotsiubynskyi) on the main square of Vinnytsia. There were also a couple of extraordinary literary readings onboard a ferry sailing along the waters of Pivdennyi Buh. A real paradise for the lovers of literature, cinema, nature, and being together with like-minded ones. A real escape from the busy life, an intermezzo, as Kotsiubynskyi himself put it in his short story that gave its name to the festival. 

Oh, trust me, this guy knew very well how to enjoy life and indulge himself in its pleasures! Especially he adored the sun, good food, and the beauty of nature. Between 1909 and 1911, Kotsiubyskyi spent a lot of time in Italy, in particular, on the island of Capri. He was vigorously taking notes of all his experiences there. Be it a description of an Italian town devastated by a major earthquake or stunning images from his visit to the Blue Grotto, Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi was a true master of the impressionistic vision. And he was born in Vinnytsia.

Volodymyr Yermolenko: The feeling that your country today is a capacity for the impossible. August 24

Independence is also co-dependence. Non-loneliness. The feeling of a big living network. The feeling that all you do is continue what your fellow citizens do, and that your cause also has support and is continued. The feeling that your country is the depth of the past, the strength of friendship in the present, as well as an indisputable future. That your country will save you because it is strong and powerful — but at the same time that you have to take care of it yourself because it is an infant who needs daily care. An old man, a friend and an infant, three in one. The agonizing pain and indebtedness to those who have left us. Gratitude to those who are defending us. The feeling that your country today is a capacity for the impossible. And that we do not yet know what to expect of ourselves (in a good sense). Thank you all for the fact that we are, have been and will be.

Valerii Pekar: #myindependencetendernomore. August 24

Independence is not an abstract thing.

It has been created by specific people whom we need to thank today:

1. Defenders who keep the sky above the country safe and protect the border around.
2. Volunteers who relentlessly support them.
3. Diplomats and thousands of other people without any official positions who daily promote Ukraine’s interests on the global stage.
4. Artists who cherish the image of Ukraine in our imagination and create senses that fill our lives.
5. Entrepreneurs who sustain the economy, create jobs and hope for the future.
6. Reformers who are trying to repair the burning Ukrainian plane while flying.
7. Activists who keep us from turning into a small russia.
8. Each and every one of you for your faith and devotion.

Nations come from collective imagination. No one has ever seen a nation or touched it with their hands, because nations live in the collective imagination of millions of people — however, they are no less real than a cup of coffee on your table. Collective imagination becomes reality through the faith and actions of each individual. What the Ukrainian prophets had believed became a reality centuries later, and it did not happen by itself — it happened through the efforts, sweat and blood of millions of people of several generations. Our ancestors and we turned the abstract idea of Ukrainian independence into reality. Let’s thank them and ourselves.

Valerii Pekar: That is why Ukraine is independent today. August 24

There is hardly any completely independent country on the planet, except for some sparsely populated island in the Pacific Ocean.

Independence is a fiction in a globalized world where countries are bound by hundreds and thousands of mutual commitments, treaties, restrictions and common rules.

Why then do we call some countries independent and others not?

Why is Ukraine independent whereas Tatarstan is not, although both countries adopted declarations of state sovereignty almost simultaneously?

What is the key attribute of an independent country in an interdependent world?

This attribute is simple: where are the key decisions made about the life of the country — in its capital or in another capital?

I remember the 1990s, when the Kyiv authorities traveled to moscow to take such decisions.

We had a flag, we had a constitution, we had a government, but we had no independence.

After all, tuva also has a flag, a constitution, and a government, but no independence. It, allegedly, had had some until 1944, and then gave it away, or maybe it had never had any?

What makes a country independent?

Linguist Max Weinreich said, “Language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”

This very accurate definition will help us construe what independence is.

It suggests that formal attributes are worthless without deep ones.

The presence of an army and even a navy is an important but not the key attribute: there are countries whose army and navy are controlled by foreign commanders, and there are countries without an army but certainly independent.

What makes a country independent is the presence of society that does not agree with the decision-making in a foreign capital.

The army and navy are only tools to demonstrate this disagreement, as are the government and parliament, independent media and economic actors, civil society organizations and mass movements like the Maidan, as is own language (although there are independent countries speaking languages that are also spoken by others) and culture. These are just tools to express disagreement.

Ukraine has been becoming independent gradually, around 2003–2004, this trend finally became apparent.

It made one more leap in 2013–2014.

And another one in 2022.

We have proved it to ourselves and to the world.

#myindependencetendernomore

Let me repeat it.

What makes a country independent is the presence of society that does not agree with the decision-making in a foreign capital.

That is why Ukraine is independent today.

Volodymyr Yermolenko: “We’ve been through such horrors that we are no longer afraid.” August 28

“We’ve been through such horrors that we are no longer afraid,” says Olena from the village of Lukianivka, 75 km away from Kyiv, which was under occupation for three weeks.

We hear/feel similar statements in different villages and different regions.

Maybe it’s an illusion and a delusion — or maybe it’s true that our people who have been through hell (or purgatory) have become stronger for a few lives ahead.

And they really discover in themselves the capacity for the impossible in various manifestations.

Svitlana Stretovych: “This is no longer a child! No longer a child…” August 29

— The highway was busy there all day long. How many of them were there… And all of them — to Kyiv… 

Chernihiv region was occupied very quickly. russian military machinery, brutally breaching the borders, entered inhabited settlements at the end of February. russian servicemen were occupying Ukrainian territory and arranging their positions in it as comfortably as they could. Some officers even decided to be deployed with local residents.

— Here, three huts from here, they put a tank in the yard.

Local residents were leaving only partially, at their own risk. Most of them failed to. And during the first attempts of independent evacuation, with no green corridor, the first residents willing to leave the inhabited settlement were shot in Nizhyn raion. These were women and children.

Over a month of occupation the residents learnt the schedule of artillery strikes, when, with the last hope to survive, they had to hide in a vault and wait until each following strike was over. 

— Why are you placing machinery near the houses? Are you going to shoot at us? — asked local residents.

— No, we are not. Your guys will shoot at you.

Not each story from the occupation can be shared with mass media since there are so many of those stories that this would mean centuries-long work. But everything said and done will be kept in the memories and talks of those who have seen invaders, who have been left without a place to live, whose relatives and acquaintances perished in the war.

— Here, where they put a tank, at the end of the street, there lives a family. Their girl is 9 years old. The family fled from home in the nighttime, went into the field when there was already a lot of machinery here. Since russian servicemen, when they occupied their yard, were looking at the girl and saying: “this is no longer a child! no longer a child…”

…

The literature used to teach schoolchildren in russia tells them in the words of their classical writer: “Happiness of the whole world is not worth a tear on the cheek of an innocent child”.

Some of these schoolchildren later become servicemen and come to occupy the territories of an independent country, violating international law.

These are no longer children. 

P.S. As of June 22, 2022, morning, more than 916 children have been affected in Ukraine by the full-scale armed aggression of the russian federation. According to official information, provided by juvenile prosecutors, 324 children have perished, and more than 592 have been wounded, as the Prosecutor General’s Office informs.

Svitlana Stretovych: Coffee with donation. August 29

Tasty aromatic coffee used to be the strongest indicator of peaceful life for me.

Coffee that accompanies your morning. Like Ethiopia.

— Cappuccino, please.

Happy people drink coffee and read books. 

Not all of my friends who used to adore books, write them, translate, or publish them have a chance to read books after the launch of the full-scale russia’s military invasion.

Now, instead of a traditional photo with a book for coffee, morning coffee does not go side by side with reading for Ukrainians on Instagram. It goes with the jar. The jar reminds you that you may donate the cost of one more additional drink you have for the needs of the frontline. Sometimes an air alarm signal reminds you about this, not a jar, when you are drinking morning coffee. Some of the acquaintances suggest donating money every time the air alarm signal comes. It gets you back to a sobering thought: victory in this war depends on each of us. What can I do? 

Volunteers buy bulletproof vests, thermal imaging devices, tactical first aid kits, tourniquets, drones and cars for the frontline. If you can drink coffee and feel its taste on this specific morning — every Ukrainian remembers that a large number of soldiers and rear front men are fighting for this simple right on the frontline and across all fronts. That is why you daily minimum is an additional coffee for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Now everything in Ukraine is done with a view to helping with and accelerating victory. Even posters of literary events are marked with the inscription “in support of the AFU”. The inscriptions made by individuals in social media end with the words of gratitude to the armed forces every single time. 

Any activity and profit gaining in Ukraine are partially performed to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine. A street musician is playing near the park. “30% — for the needs of the AFU”, — says the table near the instrument. A publishing house is selling books — it gives part of its profit to the AFU. Readings, concerts, expert consultations are also held with this in view. 

10%

15%

20%

Each of us, having rest or studying, is making a contribution to our victory.

The organization I work for deals with informal education. After February 24 we were forced to stop studies in all directions. And we resumed our work in April and set the goal of giving 10% of our profit for the needs of the frontline, besides regular private donations. Now we keep working with the motivation to help our defenders. 

Over the period of resumed activity the organization has managed to ensure acquisition of a car for soldiers with the help of the volunteer-writer Andriy Liubka. 

Writers in Ukraine are also dealing with provisions for the army. They raise money, make deals for transport purchasing and drive cars to the frontline. They will be writing anti-war novels only after victory.

On the Day of Independence of Ukraine, August 24th, morning coffee starts with an air alarm siren. There are 189 of them in the regions and in the city of Kyiv on that festive day. It comes as one continuous reminder that there is no time to stop donating. 

One coffee in Kyiv costs 40-70 hryvnias. I make my morning post on Instagram, a photo with coffee. Today the photo is accompanied by the question — “Have you already your morning donation?”

Friends mark it with hearts. They know that there can be no help for the frontline that would not matter.

Anton Tsyvatiy: The unique thing about this marathon. August 30

What I can see in today’s media space: people are getting exhausted + used to the war.

I can also see repetition or monotony, but at the same time — systematic and thorough work! Memorable events need preparation and rest. You usually need to recharge afterward, too. So, I can see marathon runners. The goal is to reach the finish line at the fastest speed possible.

It means that we are running and distributing our efforts. The unique thing about this marathon is that we do not know the ultimate distance or the exact route. It’s more like orienteering, with terrain and weather conditions constantly changing.  

What helps: support; willingness to understand others, run at one’s own pace, or walk if you cannot run.

What does not help: despair; arguments; intolerance; bosses instead of leaders.

What does a finish-line rope look like: defeating the enemy and staying human — and understanding that it was only the beginning of a way toward a wonderful life we have just won the opportunity to build!

The editorial “rule of small letters” or the “rule of disrespect for criminals” applies to all the words related to evil, like names and surnames of terrorists, war criminals, rapists, murderers, and torturers. They do not deserve being capitalized but shall be written in italics to stay in the focus of the readers’ attention. 

The programme “Wars. Ukrainians. Humanity” has been created by joint effort and with the financial support of the institution’s members of the Cultural Business Education Hub, the European Cultural Foundation, and BBK — the Regensburg Art and Culture Support Group from the Professional Association of Artists of Lower Bavaria/Upper Palatinate.

Authors: Iryna Vikyrchak, Volodymyr Yermolenko, Valerii Pekar, Svitlana Stretovych, Anton Tsyvatiy 

Translators (from Ukrainian): Halyna Bezukh (Volodymyr Yermolenko & Valerii Pekar’s essays), Halyna Pekhnyk (Svitlana Stretovych’s essays), Hanna Leliv (Anton Tsyvatiy’s essay)

Illustrators: Victoria Boyko (Iryna Vikyrchak, Svitlana Stretovych, and Anton Tsyvatiy’s essays), Nastya Gaydaenko (Volodymyr Yermolenko’s essays) Max Palenko (Valerii Pekar’s essays), and plasticine panel by Olha Protasova

Copyeditors: Hanna Leliv (Iryna Vikyrchak’s essay), Yuliia Moroz, Terra Friedman King

Proofreaders: Iryna Andrieieva, Tetiana Vorobtsova, Terra Friedman King

Content Editors: Maryna Korchaka, Natalia Babalyk

Program Directors: Julia Ovcharenko and Demyan Om Dyakiv-Slavitski