In a project of Suspilne Culture – “No brotherhood – there wasn't one, isn't and will never be” people from across Ukraine's creative and cultural industries explain in their columns, how Russia has been trying to destroy Ukrainian identity for years (or even centuries).
All materials will be published in both Ukrainian and English. Russia's informational aggression has been a part of the daily discourse in Ukraine for a long time, especially after Maidan in 2014. Now we need to make this context available abroad to show that we've been fighting this war for way more than just a month.
Tetiana Kalytenko, a literary critic, tells about images formed within Russian literature and how they raised the society responsible for the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian version is available here.
Translated from Ukrainian by Ivan Korniienko.
Trigger warnings: Russia, Russian literature and Dostoievskyi. So be advised: this content may anger you, make you sad or nervous. To be honest, I was angered, saddened and made nervous several times while writing this. But I have some thoughts just itching to be voiced, so let's begin.
Whether we like it or not, Dostoievskyi`s creative backlog is an integrated element of the western world, because his fiction works, "Notes from Underground" in particular, were the progenitor of existentialism, while his novels are the basis for a number of philosophy and literary works from the XX century. It's no wonder, really, because the texts are huge, there are a lot of them, and life in Russia couldn't help but reek of existentialism back when nobody even heard of it. Jokes aside, this is true. Sadly, we can't change the scientific and artistic discourses of an entire century and are still doomed to be triggered by numerous Myshkins (The protagonist of Fedir Dostoievskyi's novel “The Idiot” – Editor`s Note) and Raskolnikovs (The protagonist of the novel “Crime and Punishment” by Fedir Dostoievskyi – Editor`s Note). Yet we can (and must!) offer our Chipka (The protagonist of Panas Myrnyi`s novel “Do oxen low when mangers are full?” – Editor`s Note) and Radchenko (The protagonist of Valerian Pidmogylnyi`s novel “The city” – Editor`s Note), make people familiar with our literature that has developed in spite of imperial pressure. Now is the time when our cultural activists and scientists must speak out loud and be visible. We have no right to waste it.
That's a whole other conversation, so let's get back to today's topic and back in history a bit, to events that are a bit hazy in our memory (because of how monstrous the other events were). On February 17th, a few days before the full-scale invasion, a kindergarten was shelled in Stanytsia Luhanska by the rashists. Ukraine Meme Forces were quick to respond and painted the famous Russian classic into the hole in the wall. As a Dostoievskyi expert (fortunately, never realized) , I was fascinated, because it's harder to find a more perfect match than Fiodor Mikhailovich. I think that he was the author to pin down a number of Russian characters just the way they are (and not in a positively pathetic way). His books are the essence of Russian-ness. The same Russian-ness that shoots rockets at homes, hospitals, private houses, the same that rapes, kills, steals and eats dogs.
Let me take a quick detour to explain my desire to be an expert on Dostoievskyi (more to myself than to the reader). It just so happened that my interest in sciences came about because of Fiodor Mikhailovich's works. I was lucky enough to never meet a single teacher who would speak of his works in an exultant tone (as is customary for the Great Russian Culture™). Au contraire, I only met supremely professional lecturers who loved the source material and inspired you to want to read and analyze. There were a few quirks, though: a) why in hell would Ukrainian philology bachelors from Pedagogical Dragomanov University need Russian literature at all and b) lectures were exclusively in Russian. But back before 2013, many things weren't questioned. And if they were, not many people did.
It's a period of my life that I can't really evaluate quality-wise. I was a 19-year old student, enraptured with thick and hard-to-read books. I still feel I am nostalgic but not for the texts I've read but for my own self back then. More than that, I was planning to re-read "The Idiot" or "The Brothers Karamazov" with my brand new eyes before February 24th, but now just that thought makes me sick.
On the other hand, my so-so knowledge of Russian literature has allowed me to understand the so-called mysterious Russian soul. Want to know my findings? Most of the exemplary works of Russian literature portray Russians not as unknowable high-morality mysterious creatures but as lazy and slacking gutless drunks and rapists, murderers, etc. Take Ivan Honcharov's Oblomov. Nothing happens for the first 250 pages. Why is that? Because the main character is busy sleeping or slacking off in his bed and calling for Zakhar, his servant. Later on, something finally goes down, but the book ends with protagonist dozing off sleep (albeit a pre-stroke one). Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin", another famous work is literally a text about a young party animal and drunkard who can't find himself a place in this world. "Bednaia Liza" by Nikolai Karamzin is just a Russian variant of Shevchenko's "O lovely maidens, fall in love, But not with Muscovites". Basically... Don't make love to Russians, even if you're Russian yourself. To put it differently: Russians, don't procreate, at all. Turgieniev's "Mumu": a janitor with hearing loss carries out an order by his lady-lord and drowns a dog he loves wholeheartedly.
It gets more interesting with the dawn of the XX century. The genre of antiutopia is born, which, to be honest, is best done by Russians who actually live in its tyrannical reality. "Us" by Evgenii Zamiatin is way scarier than George Orwell's "1984", despite all my respect for the Englishman. "Kotlovan" by Andrei Platonov, a story of a great building project is another one that caused an existential drama for me and a huge desire to leave philology. The main characters are digging a hole (kotlovan) that's supposed to become the basis for "common proletarian building", god forbid. There's no building in the text – everyone's busy digging a huge hole, waiting out the winter and digging again, and then burying Nastia, a girl, who died of a disease, everyone's favorite kid, embodying the hopes of the group. "The Void" by Leonid Andrieiev is a novel about a gang rape, in which her boyfriend participates, taking an opportunity when she's unconscious.
So it goes.
Did you happen to notice that all loved ones of a Russian person either die or become victims of violent crimes? Isn't that comedic?
So-called Russian fleurs du mal are the representation of the true inner Russian self: a bunch of authors from the late XX century, picked by Viktor Ierofieiev in self-titled ontology; a bunch who show evil as the main virtue in their texts. The writer and literary expert say that "classic Russian literature teaches one how to remain human in inhuman conditions", but it only serves to show that Russians don't know their own literature. Eating a soup made of one's own pimples, like the character does in the novel “Wander Bears” by Iurii Mamlieiev or killing a child in the womb while having sex is an act of macabre evolution; basically, this is what you get when you remove descriptions of horses and the first ball of Natasha Rostova from "War and Peace" which has since become a prime example of Russian kitsch.
To be frank, seeing Russians mizer over their literature is weird: they're not portrayed in the best light there. To be even more frank, they're portrayed as utterly disgusting. They could have looked in this crooked mirror and asked themselves "What's wrong? What can we change?". Still, they are content with this reflection, enjoying it, pointing it out as an exemplary piece of the Mysterious Russian Soul, all the while forgetting to say that the answer to that mystery is that it is criminal and evil. "Notes from Underground" aren't just autocharacteristical, but also a laconic resume of many other Russian literary heroes:
"I'm a sick man... I'm an evil man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. To be frank, I don't know the first thing about my illness and can't tell for sure where I hurt exactly. I'm not receiving treatment and never have, even though I respect medicine and the doctors".
Dostoievskyi's works speak volumes while portraying Russian national characters. All we see now, during a full-scale invasion, we've seen before. I'm not even saying history is a flat circle, but also that manuscripts don't burn and, kurwa, they come alive and burn your country the f*ck down. It just so happened that a boring old epileptic has written the method guide that Russian people live and act by. I realized that someday after the invasion began, while I was washing my head. I waited for the right moment between the air raid sirens and dunked my head into the bath to rinse. And once blood rushed to my brain, it was quick to process everything it saw during the last few days. And what it saw was pure Dostoyievskyi, "The Brothers Karamazov", a march of Karamazov earth force on our free soil.
This last novel became a triumph of the author's works, summing up everything he worked on and absorbing all previous stories, characters and problems. It's an almost detective story of how a stupid sickly bastard kills his father, reeking of a lot of ideological bullshit, just the way Dostoyievskyi happens to be.
So, there's a family of Karamazov, living in a town called Skotopryhonievskliterally "Place-you-herd-cattle-to" – Translator. Fiodor Karamazov, the father, has three sons: Dmitrii, Ivan and Aliosha. Both his wives died, giving him some free time and place for debauchery (not that being in wedlock has impeded him in any way). He's also got a bastard: a lackey Pavel Smerdiakov, son of Lizavetta Smierdiaschia, a mentally ill woman who was raped by him once when he was drunk. Now that's some good Russian vibes, right?
Still, the three of his "official" sons are of interest too. The oldest one, Dmitrii, is a soldier in retirement. He's a not-too-smart gambler, drunk and Grushenka enjoyer. Basically, he's not too bad a person, but toxic Russian masculinity prevails in his character, crossing out his few virtues. After spending his mother's inheritance, he starts terrorizing his dad, slapping the man to give him some cash. This is when Dmitrii raises his hand wielding a metal hammer, striking not his dad but Grigorii the servant (who was his close friend).
Ivan is an atheistic sociophobe, willing to riot and looking for sources of virtues and vices in his spare time. While dad was alive, he liked to talk about how there's no God at the dinner table, influencing Smerdiakov, who was always loitering here or there.
Liosha, the youngest of the brothers, is everyone's shoulder to cry on. All characters trust him, and pour their souls onto him. He could have been the light-bearing and positive character, save for the fact that Dostoievskyi had no skill for portraying those, so he's rather questionable at his best too.
Since it's a novel about patricide, it's obvious that Fiodor Karamazov gets killed in the end by one of the brothers. Who killed ̶L̶a̶u̶r̶a̶ ̶P̶a̶l̶m̶e̶r̶ Karamazov the Father is the basic question here and is solved as follows: Dmitriy takes the punishment, even though Smerdiakov is the murderer. But all four brothers are murderers since the lackey got his head full of "there's no God so everything's allowed". Ivan is the one who inspired everything. Dmitrii is the one escalating the tensions. Alyosha, seemingly innocent, is guilty of inaction, covered up by his "holiness". As the one who reaches the truth, he is incapable to help the technically innocent brother, so sometimes he basically disappears, hanging out with the adolescent Kolia Krasotkin.
What's Ukraine got to do with this, you ask? Well, all of these heroes represent the types of Russians we face now. Dmitrii is a typical jarhead, not too smart, breaking bottles over his head on the day of VDVParatrooper forces of Russia – Translator, going away to kill Ukrainians because they're guilty of something and once he gets captured, he mumbles something about training. Ivan is an ideological nihilist, someone who suffered a lot in the name of "child's cries" and has moved to Turkey, renounced god and the Russian passport but in fact, just wants to eat his McFlurry in McDonald's. Lyosha is the holy-head who understands everything all too well and knows this: he's against war and for peace but he won't do a thing, allowing crimes to happen again and again. And Smerdiakov is the creature whose brain can be impregnated by any idea, which will then be twisted by his sick mind and will proceed to kill. Because he's a lackey. A lackluster and disgusting character, sure of his impunity.
All four brothers have blood on their hands by either inspiring the murderer or allowing the crime to happen. All of them are riders of the forces Karamazov: a wild, orphaned force, a force cared for not even by God, a force that can only destroy. And if you ask whether a typical hero of Dostoievskyi gets any repentance in the end – try to recall "Crime and Punishment", where killing the old woman begets a punishment, but no repentance. Our problem is that our neighbors are Karamazovs and Raskolnikovs who can never really fathom their guilt; while Sonia Marmeladov's and Myshkin's will realize it but will never be able to do anything either because they're disturbed or because they're unwilling.
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Suspilne Culture.
Further reading
- How Russia stole Ukrainian movies – explained by Oleksandr Teliuk
- A brief history of Russian propaganda
- Is "Russian world" heresy or neo-nazism? Explained by Kostiantyn Doroshenko
- Music is outside of politics? Tell that to the dead in Bucha
- Is Russia possible without a tzar – Oleh Kryshtopa explains
- Keep your “the” away from my country. And learn some history
