June 20-29, 2022 Volodymyr Yermolenko, Valerii Pekar, Olena Stiazhkina, Mychailo Wynnyckyj, Svitlana Stretovych

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 22 continues to present the series. You can get acquainted with the previous collection here.

Volodymyr Yermolenko: People are coming back. June 20

People are coming back to their villages and towns. They return home, even though they often no longer have one. Their homes turned into skeletons. A few walls and a pile of ash several centimeters high — it’s all that remains from their apartments. Everything burned down to the ground, and you never know how much of this ash is furniture, clothes, and toys, and how much — human flesh.

People are coming back, even though schools are ruined, and nurseries closed. Even though their cars are rotting in car graveyards. Even though roadsides are dotted with signs warning, “Danger! Mines!” Your street is still empty, but every day you come across someone you know who is also back. Most shops are still closed, but some display signs saying: “We’re with you again.” People are coming back.

They return to Rusaniv, just outside Kyiv, which used to be a frontline village where the streets on both sides of the river were bombed. They return to Saltivka, a residential neighborhood in Kharkiv, where every single building in Nataliya Uzhviy Street turned from white to black. They return to Borodianka, where children are playing at a playground next to the wounded Shevchenko and nine-story apartment blocks destroyed by Russian air strikes. There is a pond behind the playground where they splash, laughing loudly. Death was here, but life is advancing on it again. It pushes death out of its dominion. It pierces the frontline with children’s laughter.

Some of the returnees live in modular towns. They leave for their vegetable patches in the morning only to return in the evening. Vegetable patches are continuations of their bodies — neat, plowed land plots next to the destroyed houses. Green shoots are already peeking out of the ground — yet another advance on death. Life hides deep down, in the darkness of Ukrainian black soil, in the shadows of Ukrainian trees. It will always find a way up.

People are coming back, even though there are no jobs. The stores where they used to work were bombed. The factories where their parents ‘worked’ were looted. They can’t walk through the woods or fields because they have not been cleared of mines yet. You feel like you return to nowhere, but this ‘nowhere’ has its name, its history, its smell. You grew up in it; you wish to die here someday. You feel like a trunk without branches since everything you’ve become overgrown with over the years was burned or taken away. People are coming back, anyway.

The bigger distance from the wounds, the harder it is. The farther from the frontline, the larger your inner front. Sometimes, it feels more peaceful right next to the war. Peace must be the norm of human life, but when war is raging around you, peace becomes an anomaly. Laughter, smiles, jokes, joy — they all become symptoms of a disease. You look at happy, carefree people as if they were terminally ill. You feel sorry for them. A healthy person cannot be happy after anything like that.

It’s not that it was terrible out there that you’re coming back. It’s not that you weren’t accepted. It’s not that you have no prospects. You are coming back because you just can’t live without these places. You can’t walk down other streets. You can’t learn other names and toponyms. You can’t swim in other rivers. You can’t drink other H2О. When someone takes away your home, you feel like a part of you has been amputated.

People are coming back, even though they risk losing their lives here. But the risk of losing their lives-here, in their home country is bigger. Life gets intertwined with a particular place; it takes root in it.

People are coming back because they feel like cells of one blood system, like red blood cells. They have hated their neighbors secretly their whole lives, only to realize they won’t survive a single day without them. And so they move like little ferries from one neighbor to the next, carrying bags of things people need at the other end of their street, their town, their country. They become part of a larger whole and thus rediscover themselves. Their faces mirror back millions of others. Thousands of names shine in their eyes.

People are coming back because we are plants, too. Because our motherland is the garden of divine songs. We fear strangers more than death. We fear losing our roots more than losing our arms or legs.

After all, we know they are always waiting for us here. Our soil is waiting for us. Its smell, its firmness, its uncompromising attitude. And if there are people and soil, there will always be a garden — the garden of songs, divine and human.*

* (The Ukrainian version of the text was written for the Ukrainian weekly magazine “Krayina”, translated into English for the “Wars. Ukrainians. Humanity” programme and published with the consent of the author. – Editor’s note)

Valerii Pekar: We have to become a full-fledged Ukraine — modern and future. 20 June

“Institutional culture’” is an expression that comes from an open report by British intelligence pouring honey into my ears.

“russia’s air force… has failed to develop the institutional culture,” it says (as quoted by Ukrainska Pravda).

That’s what I’ve been explaining in business schools for years. You can teach your people some facts or skills, but nothing will come of it if you teach individuals rather than organizations. To teach an organization is to change its culture. By underdeveloped culture, British intelligence officers here imply (to quote from the same source): “For years, much of russia’s air combat training has highly likely been heavily scripted and designed to impress senior officials, rather than to develop dynamic initiative amongst aircrews.” That is, showing off, eyewashing, bootlicking, and lack of initiative.

The same is true of russia’s land forces. That’s why, by the way, so many generals die — they keep coming to the frontline to control everything and give orders.

To move as far away from russia as possible is not only about the Ukrainian language and culture but also about the prohibition of smuggled books and russian underworld chanson. It is primarily about a change in institutional culture — in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Government, in political parties and local councils, in ministries and the police, in tax and customs offices. If we go on being a small russia with the Ukrainian language, with songs and embroidered shirts, but post-soviet institutions — we are doomed. We must become a full-fledged Ukraine — not a soviet or post-soviet one, but modern and future-oriented.

Olena Stiazhkina: Kyiv. June 21

“Instead of saying his first words, our little one copies the sound of the air raid siren. He copies it exactly as it is, note for note. Quiet, then louder, then again quiet, and again louder. After the war, I’ll send him to music school. I can see his talent. No, I can hear it.”

***

“Yesterday, I was rummaging in our go bag searching for medical records when I saw a big pack of crackers on the top. “Who put it there?” I asked. “We did!” my children replied in unison. “Why? We got everything we need,” I said. “People in Irpin also had everything they needed on February 23, but it vanished somewhere.”

My boys, nine and seven, spent only four days in the basement. I thought they didn’t even have time to get scared.”  

***

He is five. She is five, too. They’re playing a couple in love. She asks him, “Will you give your most precious things to me?” “You act like a russian,” he says. “I don’t want to play with you anymore.”

Volodymyr Yermolenko: Ukraine is a candidate for accession to the EU, but also perhaps a doctor in the field of european values. June 23

After the EU candidate status, will we have to receive EU doctor status too?

Jokes aside, what happened today is momentous.

At the same time, Ukrainians seem to be sobering up concerning Europe. Europe is no longer an Eldorado, somewhere out there, which we dream to “join”. Europe is something within us. What’s more: Europe is something that to a large extent exists in us and thanks to us. It is the value of dignity. And now, increasingly, Ukrainians are showing other Europeans an example of dignity. Dignity is something that has no price. Which is not sold or exchanged.

In some respects we are students, in other respects we are teachers. Yes, we are striving for the great European civilization, but to some extent it is being revived right here. Reborn.

The French philosopher Rémi Brague argues that the European idea is fundamentally “eccentric,” in that it persistently reaches for a center outside itself, beyond the established geography. That is, Europe keeps finding itself in another geography. In some ways, it continues the original idea, and in some ways it brings about its renaissance. For instance, the European idea was passed over from the Greeks to the Romans, from the Romans to the Germans, from the Germans to the Slavs, etc.

Ukraine is a candidate for accession to the EU, but also perhaps a doctor in the field of European values. In the old sense, the word “doctor” means a teacher. Wisdom-keeper. He who can continue the tradition.

Olena Stiazhkina: Kyiv. June 25

There are ‘stranded’ messages on my phone. ‘Frozen’ questions: “How are you?” Once in ten days, I send them again. Then again. And again.

Sometimes, they come alive as a call or text message. But most of them are still frozen. Sending another message feels like jumping off the cliff without knowing what’s down under — rocks or water.

Today, I texted “How are you?” to a friend of mine in the Zhytomyr region. Since 4 am, the region was under missile attack from the territory of a “brotherly” republic of belarus.

“Ow!” the phone beeped. “Everything’s good! Check your email.”

I checked my email, and this is what he said: “Hooray! The missile hit my apartment. No window, no kitchen wall, no furniture, no dishes, no door (to the toilet and bathroom, too. I was planning to combine them, anyway). We were hiding in the shelter. But yes, I am saying, “Hooray.” Don’t worry — I wasn’t hit in my head. Just as I said, I was staying in a shelter. I went up only at noon. There’s gas. There’s water. “But why ‘hooray,’” you must be wondering. Because it did not hit its target! And it targeted the military base and the depot, where our people and foreign weapons were. But it did not hit it! Imagine that! Everything is intact. Everyone’s alive. Only my kitchen was destroyed. See what I mean? And how are you doing?”  

Olena Stiazhkina: Kyiv. June 26

Coolly jumped onto the bed, pulled the blanket, and, biting my daughter’s leg, dragged her to the corridor. The dog’s hind legs were trembling separately from her front ones. Her head was spinning on her outstretched neck. Coolly led our entire family into the corridor and then went to the bathroom and lay down on the floor under the sink, quietly waiting until the airstrike warning was lifted.  

It happened in the morning when four missiles fell half a kilometer away from our house. Coolly is a dog from Bucha. She knows how to hide properly, how long to wait, and when to go out.

Given how vigorously she was trying to save us, Coolly must have accepted that we are her new family now.

Mychailo Wynnyckyj: Thoughts from Kyiv. June 26

Sitting with three of our kids and the dog in the hallway of our apartment in Kyiv — listening to an air raid siren is far from what I would call a “restful Sunday.”

This morning’s rocket hit about 4km from us. A father is dead. His wife and daughter are seriously wounded.

I’m trying to understand the russians’ motive. The war in the east was eclipsed in the western media this week by the SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Ukrainian Armed Forces retreated from Severodonetsk, and so some semblance of kremlin success could have been spun to a domestic russian audience. Why return the world’s attention by firing on Kyiv?

The simple answer was voiced a week ago by lavrov during his interview with the BBC; “I don’t care what the West thinks of russia!” That seems to be a true statement.

But western leaders still care what putin thinks of the West. That is the only explanation one can find for the constant “don’t provoke putin” rhetoric emanating from western capitals: don’t give the Ukrainians long-range HIMARS, don’t give them F15’s and F16’s (notwithstanding their technological outdatedness), etc. Don’t put NATO boots on the ground because “it would provoke russia».

Well here’s the truth: to provoke a response, the target needs to care what you think; russia does not care what the West thinks. It seeks to destroy Ukraine and Ukrainians. And as long as it holds the West hostage to its (idle) threats, it will continue to threaten the world (idly) and destroy (locally).

Air raid warning is over. Not the last one tonight I suspect.

#ThoughtsfromKyiv

Svitlana Stretovych: Not a movie. Not a book. Not a song. June 28

War is not a movie.

Not a book.

Not a song.

Liubov Ivanivna, my grandma, is 83 years old. She has spent the past 123 days under russian occupation. Again. 

Grandma does not like talking about her experience in World War II. Only once did I get her to talk about her earliest childhood memories.

“My mother, my brother, and I were running away. It was an evacuation… There were railway tracks close by. Shooting all around us,” she says.  

I write it down. The word “evacuation” catches my eye — I saw it in my textbooks. I do not know what it is and how it works, even though I saw photos and read about it in books. I know a story of one famous woman who took her own life, having fled the war in 1941. She escaped from hell but did not want to keep on living.

Evacuation. I can imagine only how anxious the people running from explosions are and how fast they run.

“Before setting off for the battlefield, my father sat me down on his knee, and my brother — on his other knee. He did not return home,” grandma says, continuing her story.  

In the history of war, the statistical reports about dead soldiers often included this phrase: “missing in action.” Those who went to war and never came back.

Grandma’s memories have not become petrified, but she does not like to bring them back. Wistfully, she sings Ukrainian songs about separation and love. Her voice modulates as if her singing conceals many facts she silences.   

I remember one phrase from my childhood very well. Liubov Ivanivna repeated it over and over: “If only there was no war… If only there was no war.”

I thought that war was something out of the modern history textbooks, biographies with the photos of hitler and stalin on the cover, or antiwar novels.   

I thought it was something that happened a long time ago. 

It will never happen again.

Never again.

In our country, the war broke out in 2014. The events in Donbas, hundreds of kilometers away from the capital. Only the anxious movement of people that could be identified by car plates, only the graves with blue-and-yellow flags on the graveyards along the Ukrainian roads reminded us that war was closer than we imagined. Here it is trying to remind us of its existence. It wants to reach all of us with its bony fingers, foreign intelligence warned us.

On February 24, 2022, the world broke down.

The early-morning shelling of Ukrainian cities pushed families to grab their suitcases and leave immediately. 

Run away.

Search for places where they didn’t shoot.

The word “evacuation” was heard on all news channels. It was pronounced by politicians and military commandment.

The word out of the textbook came to life.

The men I knew — politicians, writers, athletes, publishers, and journalists — put on the combat uniform. Every day now, we collect stories about those who died a heroic death, and these are the stories about people we knew and loved.

Liubov Ivanivna is sitting in front of the TV. 

The part of Ukraine where she lives is occupied. It is impossible to contact her by phone. It is unreal to go there. It turns out that she is reliving a story that no textbook can ever tell fully.

War is not far away.  

Not tomorrow.

Not with someone else.

Svitlana Stretovych: A library in a suitcase. June 28

William Shakespeare.

Kurt Vonnegut.

John Tolkien.

Taras Shevchenko.

Lesya Ukrainka.

Serhiy Zhadan.

Tove Jansson.

Astrid Lindgren.

Roald Dahl.

An ordinary bookshelf somewhere in Ukraine. 

Judging by the book spines, the resident of this apartment is the most ordinary person interested in literature. If the books are lined up on the bookshelves in orderly rows, curated by subjects, it means that person loves books. And if the books are beautiful, and there are many of them in this ordinary apartment, they are clearly much valued here.  

The emergency grab bags that Ukrainians have packed since February 24 contained various things. Often, there were books in those bags. Old books passed down from generation to generation. Thick novels and poetry collections. All kinds of books.  

I spend a long time drawing up a list of contemporary books, must-haves for every Ukrainian library. I make a poll on Instagram Stories among my followers and add new titles to the list. Who knows how many books one needs to make up for their previous life? 

Since the big war broke out, libraries with Ukrainian books have opened across countries. “Hi,” a friend of mine texts me. “Could you please send me a list of books that Ukrainians find important? I need it for a library opening in the Netherlands.” She is a writer with a novel to her name. 

“Hello,” another friend of mine emails me. “A Ukrainian library is scheduled to open in Luxembourg.” He is a publisher and a curator of the parliamentary book club.   

Ukrainian book is packing a suitcase. A long journey lies ahead. 

Meanwhile, reports are coming from Ukraine: 101 libraries have lost part of their collections; 21 libraries lost their entire collections. Missile strikes have destroyed books from home libraries that will never be included in the official statistics of destroyed bookshelves.  

My dear friend is now living in Amsterdam. She is a children’s author and a publisher. The books she has written in Ukraine have already been delivered to her new place abroad. She feels uncomfortable without her books. 

I am standing in front of my home library in Kyiv. It is large. 

A mobile app sends me an air raid alert. 123 days of full-scale war. I wonder about the size of a suitcase that could fit all our books signed by contemporary Ukrainian writers. It should be bottomless, I guess. 

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, 121 public libraries in Ukraine have been damaged. The number of destroyed bookshelves in private apartments is still unknown. 

Olena Stiazhkina: Kyiv. June 29

There are old and new notices pasted on the entrance door of our apartment block in Obolon neighborhood. The new ones include water delivery and seedlings for sale flyers, missing persons hotline, reminders to pay for the intercom service, and a warning saying that hot water supply will be suspended (as scheduled). One of the old ones says, “Door slamming sounds like an explosion.”

It could be the opening line of a poem. Perhaps, it was a poem. I just don’t know what the second line would have been: “Door slamming sounds like an explosion. Don’t be frightened.” Or “Door slamming sounds like an explosion. Don’t panic when you hear it. We are home.”

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: Volodymyr Yermolenko, Valerii Pekar, Olena Stiazhkina, Mychailo Wynnyckyj, Svitlana Stretovych

Translators (from Ukrainian): Hanna Leliv (Olena Stiazhkina & Svitlana Stretovych’s essays, Volodymyr Yermolenko’s essay on June 20), Halyna Bezukh (Valerii Pekar’s essay, and Volodymyr Yermolenko’s essays on June 23)

Illustrators: Nastya Gaydaenko (Volodymyr Yermolenko’s essays), Max Palenko (Valerii Pekar’s essay), Victoria Boyko (Olena Stiazhkina, Mychailo Wynnycky & Svitlana Stretovych’s essays), and plasticine panel by Olha Protasova

Copyeditors: 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