Andrei Kurkov (Saint Petersburg, 1961) is the best-known Ukrainian writer outside the country. His novel Death of a Penguin entered the bestseller list. Translated into 40 languages. His latest work is Diary of an Invasion (Discussion, 2022)He tells the first months of the war that ravaged Ukraine day by day. Kurkov tells us that he is preparing a second installment. He works by videoconference from Stanford University (California), where he teaches post-Soviet Russian literature on an ad hoc basis for EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA of the Prensa Ibérica group. Once the course is over, he plans to return to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, which was re-bombed with high-powered missiles this week. Their children live there.
Question: On February 23, you wrote in An Invasion Diary that war seemed highly unlikely. It started only a few hours later… Answer: Yes, I didn’t expect that. The level of escalation and the all-out attack on all Ukrainian regions surprised me. I thought maybe there would be an increase in attacks in Donbass, but there would be no invasion of the whole country. Maybe I let myself be influenced by the president Volodymyr Zelensky, repeating every day that there will be no war.
Q: You mention in your book that the day before the invasion began, the Lebanese restaurant under your house in Kiev prepared a summer terrace. What happened to that restaurant? A: Keep going, but the terrace did not open in the end. Of course people prefer to eat inside. [ríe].
Q: Some Ukrainian writers like you who used to write in Russian have decided to switch to Ukrainian. For example, Volodymyr Rafeienko or Iya Kiva. Are you planning to do the same? A: No. The Russian language in Ukraine should not be controlled by Moscow. That’s a separate issue. Russian is one of the languages of Ukraine, like Tatar in Crimea or Hungarian in Transcarpathia. It is now considered the language of the enemy, and I know that because of the war, its use will decline and it will become less important in Ukrainian culture. Before the war I was writing in Ukrainian, for example children’s books and I will continue to write. But I will continue to speak Russian for my prose and fiction. I will not change language. This is because I do not believe that the Russian language belongs to Putin, and after the war there will still be a large proportion of Russian speakers, both in the east and south of the country.
Q: Are your Russian books sold in Ukraine? A: No, in Ukraine I no longer publish my books in Russian, but I publish translations for two reasons: ideological, because at the moment it is probably unethical to promote any culture in Russian; and because bookstores in Ukraine no longer want to sell books written in Russian.
Q: Will you continue to write about the war? A: I am now writing the second part of Diary of an Invasion. I’m taking half. Almost everything I’ve written lately consists of articles and essays. For example, I am writing a series of books about the civil war in Kiev in 1919. These are linked to the current war. A hundred years ago it was an attempt by the Bolsheviks to invade Ukraine. The civil war in Ukraine lasted for four years, from 1917 to 1921. The Bolsheviks came to occupy Kiev four times, but did not succeed in occupying all of Ukraine until 1921 and turning it into a Soviet republic. There is also a novel I have to finish about the occupied Kiev of 1919.
Q: There has been a lot of diplomatic pressure from Ukraine, here also from Spain, to stop using the Russian place names kyiv and Kharkiv and start using the Ukrainian version of Kyiv and Kharkiv. Do you think it should be changed? A: At first, when the movement to ask other countries to change, I was reluctant. But now I think it makes sense. “Kiev” comes from the times when Ukraine belonged to the Russian empire. Now the only official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian. It makes sense to change the Russian transliteration to Ukrainian for the names of cities. If you use Russian, you acknowledge its Russian imperial and cultural origin.
Q: Do you think this politicization of language use constitutes discrimination against the Russian-speaking Ukrainian population? A: I don’t believe it. Before 2014, 20% of Ukrainians, especially Russian speakers, voted for pro-Russian parties. Now some of these people, probably half, went to Russia. The remaining Russian speakers are no longer pro-Russian but pro-Ukrainian. In addition, among other things, all young people are now bilingual, as Ukrainian is more present in popular culture than Russian. This was not the case before the 2014 invasion, at that time Russian youtubers were much more popular in Ukraine than Ukrainian youtubers. After the atrocities in Bucha or Irpin, the young people stopped following them.
Q: Will there be a boom in Ukrainian literature after the war? A: There is already a revival in Ukrainian literature. Not just because it’s fashionable, but because young writers and poets feel they can influence language with their writing: they invent new words because they know these new words can make their way into dictionaries. They write passionately in Ukrainian. Russian writers do not have this feeling. They use language only as a tool.
Q: Speaking of the relationship between culture and war, what do you think about the boycott of Russian artists at international exhibitions or Russian athletes at world competitions? A: As regards the athletes, it should be noted that they compete to raise their flag at the end. They represent the Russian empire and Vladimir Putin. This is not a sports issue, it is a political issue. Regarding artists or writers, from my point of view, those who are against Putin and defend democracy should not be banned, they should be encouraged.
Q: What about the Russian classics, long-dead artists? A: It depends on how this culture was instrumentalized by Putin. For example, Alexander Pushkin somehow became a soldier in Putin’s current Army. Because Russian propaganda uses Pushkin. At the beginning of the war, Russian booksellers received a letter from the Ministry of Culture asking them to organize activities in support of the Armed Forces’ mission in Ukraine. And most often they used the image of Pushkin. During the occupation of Kherson, the occupation authorities hung posters explaining that the region was a great part of the Russian empire, quoting from Pushkin’s letters. This does not mean that Pushkin should be banned. You can continue to love by buying from Ukrainian bookstores. But do not forget how Russian political forces use culture to support their own greatness and superiority.
Q: I understand you’re suggesting that this be reviewed on a case-by-case basis… A: Exactly the same. For example, consider Vladimir Sorokin. A Russian writer whose books were burned in Red Square 20 years ago and now lives in Berlin. He defends Ukraine in this war. People like him are the best living Russian writers, but they have nothing to do with Putin. You cannot hold them responsible for what Putin did in Ukraine.
Q: As a writer and journalist, what role do you think you should play in this war? A: I’m fighting on the knowledge front and the cultural front. I am a witness. I believe that writers must produce testimonies of this war and recreate their images, not only for future generations, but also for the courts of today. After the Bucha massacre, some writers went there to document the persecution. My Lviv writer friend Victoria Amelina went to Izyum to find out what happened to children’s story writer Volodymyr Vakulenko after she was released. It turned out that he was executed by the Russians in early March of last year. His lifeless body was found at the end of 2022.