Is it possible for Ukrainians to continue writing in Russian? Authors of the female perspective are pushing back against Moscow's attempts to appropriate their language.
On the 22nd of February, 2022, an open letter was published in the Russian literary weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta. This letter was published only one day before the war started. The article was written by Russian authors and states that they completely support a special military operation to preserve the peace in Donbas and eastern Ukraine. It was written in a tone that was hysterically pitiful, and one of the things it stated was, "So who wants victims? Our [Russian] forces, who to this day have not purposefully caused the death of a single civilian? Or those who are engaged in a continuous information war against the Russian consciousness and a linguistic war against the Russian language?"
According to the people who sent the letter, the response was quite clear: "the West" is to blame for everything, and "the West" is aligning itself with Ukrainian "Nazis" against Russia's allies. The authors state that as of the beginning of March, there had been a total of 500 Russian authors sign the letter. Even if one searches in vain for famous writers among the signatures, it is immediately obvious that Russian culture workers are being tethered to the Kremlin's wagon here. They use the excuse of protecting Russian language and culture both inside Russia and abroad as a justification for the impending war against Ukraine. The battle is expected to take place in Ukraine.
The point has been made before: Russia has repeatedly instigated military escalations under the guise of safeguarding Russians and Russian speakers, whether in Georgia in 2008 or in Ukraine since 2014. The most recent example of this can be seen in Ukraine. It is also necessary to be aware of the fact that Russia claims a degree of sovereignty over the Russian language. This is expressed in a manner that is crystal obvious nowhere else save at the Russkij Mir state cultural foundation ("Russian World"). The following statement was made in 2021 on the German website of the foundation, which was established in 2007 by a decree signed by Vladimir Putin but is no longer accessible: "The basic goals of the foundation are the popularization of the Russian language, which is the national property of Russia and the important part of Russian and world culture, and supporting Russian-learning programs in the Russian Federation and abroad."
As the following quote demonstrates, the concept of the Russian world encompasses a wide range of people: "'Russkiy Mir' does not just include Russians, not only Residents of Russia, not only our compatriots in countries far and near abroad, emigrants, and emigrants from Russia and their descendants. These are individuals from other countries who are really interested in Russia and enthusiastic about its future. They speak Russian, are learning Russian, and are teaching Russian. This expansive claim of representation, which was expressed by the foundation and has been implemented in Kremlin policy for years, is seen as a threat by a significant number of people who speak Russian. Because there is a significant minority of Russian speakers, both within and outside of Russia, who have no interest in seeing their country taken over by the Kremlin.
Writers, whose language is their most significant instrument, are particularly impacted in a unique manner by this claim that Russia has to representation. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that authors who write in Russian are the ones who, at the latest since 2014, have been leading discussions about how one ought to position themselves in relation to the Russian language, the use of the Russian language in literary works, and Russia itself. These conversations have taken place and are now taking place in a particularly in-depth manner in Ukraine, where there is a significant population of Russian speakers. After 2014, a number of writers who had previously written in Russian made the decision to switch to writing mostly or totally in Ukrainian. These authors include the poet Ija Kiva and the poet Boris Chersonsky. Obviously, since since the conflict started, this pattern has been much more prevalent. This is exemplified by the fact that it can be observed on the platform "Poetry of the Free is a website that was established in March by the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture to collect poems about the war for the purpose of preserving them for future generations. The vast majority of the over 20,000 texts that anyone can upload there are written in Ukrainian.
On the other hand, not all people who speak Russian are eager to cede control of their language to the Kremlin. In 2017, Ukrainian poet Alexander Kabanov published a book titled "In the language of the enemy." Poetry about War and Peace is the title of a collection of poems written by him and published in Russian. These poems are his reflections on the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The primary argument that is made throughout this book is that individuals, not language, are ultimately to blame for the state of politics in the world today. Even more explicitly, Kabanov said the following in an interview that took place on May 16, 2022: "Russia does not have a monopoly on the Russian language." If we gave Putin control of our Ukrainian Russian, it would be the same as giving Hitler control of German. For my part, I have absolutely no intention of teaching my language to anybody else."
This pattern is also observable in other nations, such as Kazakhstan, for instance. The biggest country in Central Asia is also home to a sizeable population that is fluent in Russian thirty years after the nation gained its independence. In addition to those of Russian ethnicity, many people of Kazakh ethnicity and members of other ethnic minorities also use Russian as their primary language. There is a thriving literary and artistic scene in the Russophone community. The Russian language appears to be under pressure from two sides: while the Kremlin wants to monopolize Kazakhstan's Russian speakers, Kazakh nationalists want to limit the influence of the Russian language in Kazakhstan. The people who live there have been thinking for years about how to preserve the Russian language, which appears to be under pressure from both sides. Already in his 2019 essay titled The Russian Language – That Is Kazakhstan, Yuri Serebriansky, who is considered to be one of the leading representatives of the so-called Young Russian Literature in Kazakhstan, pondered whether or not discussions regarding the use of the Russian language in Kazakhstan would not relax if the Russian language was understood as something that belonged to the Russian-speaking citizens of Kazakhstan and not to Russia.
Following the outbreak of hostilities, the youthful Russophone literary movement in Kazakhstan demonstrated their support for the Ukrainian community. This sense of solidarity is expressed not only in people's attendance at relevant events and in the remarks they make on social media platforms, but also in the writings of those involved. The March edition of the Kazakhstan literary journal Daktil was dedicated to "the people of Ukraine and all those who are passing through tough times." Additionally, it said, "We are for peace all around the globe. No to going to war! A political statement has been made at a time when, at least in Russia, there can be no official mention of war. What may seem like a cliché is really a political statement. In addition, it demonstrates that Russian-speaking Kazakh women have no intention of submitting to the Kremlin's dictation over the Kazakh language.
ROAR, which stands for Russian Oppositional Arts Review and is an internet platform, is a worldwide cultural initiative that gathers the perspectives of individuals who speak Russophone and makes them available to the general public. ROAR is a platform for Russian and Russian-speaking artists who see themselves and their art as being in opposition to Russian culture, which serves the "current criminal political regime in Russia." ROAR was initiated by the Israeli author Linor Goralik, who was born in Dnepropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine. ROAR sees itself as a platform for Russian and Russian-speaking artists. ROAR, which may also mean roar in English, gives them the opportunity to speak out against the war and demonstrate that they, the Russian people and Russian speakers, will not let themselves to be taken over by Putin. ROAR can also be pronounced as roar. ROAR is an excellent illustration of the fact that neither the Russian language nor the Russian culture can be considered to be the property of a single nation. ROAR was created by a decentralized worldwide volunteer collective. How many more projects does it display altogether?