Ukrainian, Russophone, (Other) Russian. Marco Puleri

of Ukrainian literature. In her introduction entitled On the Language and the Debate (Pro movu i dyskusiiu), Troskot describes this venture as an attempt to understand “the importance of the language criterion for defining the author’s belonging to the national culture”⁷⁷ (Troskot 2013) in light of the urgency of the matter. All the writers taking part in the discussion “write, speak and think in Ukrainian” (Troskot 2013).⁷⁸ If on the one hand the poet and prose writer Marianna Kiianovs’ka (b. 1973, Nesterov—today Zhovkva) argues that the language is only “one of the instruments of spiritual transformation”⁷⁹ (LitAktsent 2013a)—mentioning many artistic personalities who have worked between different languages and cultures throughout history, on the other Taras Prokhas’ko (b. 1968, Ivano-Frankivs’k) considers it as the product of environmental factors that determine a specific type of mentality. For Prokhas’ko, “literature embodies the life of the language” and its possible articulations: it follows that “for one literature” we will have only “one language”⁸⁰ (LitAktsent 2013a). Along the same lines, Liudmyla Taran (b. 1954, Kyiv) attributes to the language a “symbolic power”⁸¹ (LitAktsent 2013b).

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      In contrast, the reflections offered by Volodymyr Dibrova (b. 1951, Donets’k), a Ukrainian prose writer who moved to the United States in the 1990s, reveal a more complex picture. Dibrova identifies three different approaches to the issue. First, for the literary critic it is a question of a theoretical nature: “the writers who write in a language, but consider themselves, or are considered, belonging to another literary system are today a rare case”⁸² (LitAktsent 2013b). Second, for the writer the definition of his identity affiliation is not “a central or significant issue for the purposes of his artistic production”⁸³ (LitAktsent 2013b). The language is an artistic “instrument,” which the writer uses in order to distance himself from his political, ideological and religious convictions (LitAktsent 2013b). Finally, Dibrova argues that it is the perspective of the Ukrainian reader that highlights “the contradiction in terms of the contemporary cultural situation”⁸⁴ (LitAktsent 2013b). This is rooted in the belief that todays’ factor of consolidation in Ukrainian society is not the State, nor the territory or ethnic origins, but the language itself. Following these lines, Tetiana Maliarchuk (b. 1983, Ivano Frankivs’k), Ukrainian-language and—since 2014—German-language prose writer, underlines how the language question gradually made the same actors of the contemporary cultural scene “soldiers” (soldaty) in a “war of words.” According to Maliarchuk the question becomes quite complex when the state identifies itself in “language and culture”:

      Today’s Ukraine is not monocultural. But none of the parties wants to accept it. Among these, the Russian and the Ukrainian sides are the strongest ones […] These two forces can be defined in terms of relationships that I conventionally divide into assimilation, opposition and collaboration. I hope I will never experience the first of these. The last one would be ideal, but for some reason no one supported the example of Switzerland with its four official languages and dozens of dialects.⁸⁵ (LitAktsent 2013c)

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      Serhii Zhadan (b. 1974, Starobil’s’k) then highlights the contradictions of the language criterion for the definition of the national literary canon, “especially in a country like ours where literature is created in two languages”⁸⁶ (LitAktsent 2013c). Zhadan addresses the emblematic case of “the literature written in Russian,” pointing out that it “is automatically recognized as part of the cultural heritage of Russian literature, while the same possibility that this body of texts could belong to the Ukrainian culture is ignored in most of the cases”⁸⁷ (LitAktsent 2013c). The reasons behind this exclusion can be recognized in the identification of the Russophone literary phenomenon with the remains of the imperial legacy, as argued by Petro Tarashchuk (b. 1956, Vinnytsia). According to the Ukrainian translator and journalist, “the insidious discourses on Ukrainian literary bilingualism are an attack on the Ukrainian language”⁸⁸ (LitAktsent 2013d), a new stage of the “linguicide” (lingvotsyd) orchestrated over the centuries by Russia. Along these lines, according to Prokhas’ko, the same concept of “Russophone literature of Ukraine [rosiis’komovna literatura Ukraїny]” is “nonsense”⁸⁹ (nonsens; LitAktsent 2013a). The “pro-Ukrainian beliefs” (proukraїns’ki perekonannia) of a Russophone writer are not enough to make him an integral part of national literature:

      We can talk about a writer who lives in France and writes in German, but we will not consider him part of French literature. In the same way, we will consider as a Ukrainian writer who writes in that language. For this reason, I cannot consider ←76 | 77→the works […] written in Russian as part of Ukrainian literature, although they may reveal another kind of mentality than that typical of the north of Russia, or express pro-Ukrainian or even nationalistic beliefs. It will not be Ukrainian literature.⁹⁰ (LitAktsent 2013a)

      A possible answer to Prokhas’ko’s stance is offered by the poet Natalka Bilotserkivets’ (b. 1954, Kuianivka), who argues for “the distinction between the concept of literature as a purely linguistic phenomenon, and that of national culture as a polyphonic phenomenon”⁹¹ (LitAktsent 2013e). In her opinion, this approach could be useful to free us “from the various speculations about who is to be considered a Ukrainian writer and who is not”⁹² (LitAktsent 2013e). Similarly, according to Ostap Slyvyns’kyi (b. 1978, L’viv), a poet and professor of Polish literature at the Ivan Franko National University of L’viv, such speculations around the “indeterminacy” of Russophone literature arise precisely from the clash between “the institutions of the Ukrainian national literature and the Russian one”⁹³ (instytutsiї ukraїns’koї ta rosiis’koї natsional’nykh literatur; LitAktsent 2013 f).

      Finally, the question about the role and position of Russian writing in contemporary Ukraine is properly raised by Vira Aheieva and Rostyslav Semkiv, literary critics and professors at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, in their articles published in LitAktsent following the writers’ commentaries. In “Can There Be a ‘Russian Literature of Ukraine’?” (“Chy mozhe vidbutysia ←77 | 78→‘rosiis’ka literatura Ukraїny’?”), Aheieva shifts the attention to the role played by the cultural institutions, and in particular to the dynamics of the literary market and cultural policies. Opening her contribution with the assumption that “the home of a writer is his language”⁹⁴ (Aheieva 2013), Aheieva identifies the reasons behind the inconsistency of the Russian literature of Ukraine in the failure of Soviet institutions to develop such a cultural paradigm even under conditions of full support. According to Aheieva, today the problem finds its origins in the lack of a true cultural policy in post-Soviet Ukraine: with “state support for the publication of books and the growth of the national literary market,” the question concerning the role of Russophone literature “would probably not be of great interest to most of our citizens”⁹⁵ (Aheieva 2013).

      In his “The Cold War of Language” (“Kholodna movna viina”), Semkiv then investigates the role of Russophone literature through the lens of the new relational dynamics between the old Russian “metropolis” (metropoliia) and the Ukrainian “former colony” (kolyshnia koloniia). As emphasized in the very title of the article, according to the scholar, today we witness the beginning of a new “cold war” of language: the former “centre” does not renounce its sphere of influence, while in Ukraine the imperial legacy is dangerously tolerated for the sake of “democratic openness” (Semkiv 2013a). Semkiv (2013a) does not deny “the right of a local author to write in the Russian language and to identify himself as a Ukrainian writer,” but excludes room for “institutional recognition”⁹⁶ (instytutsiine vyznannia; Semkiv 2013a): the inclusion of the literary production in Russian in the national canon “cannot take place until the Northern neighbor takes concrete steps of institutional support of our culture within its borders”⁹⁷ (Semkiv 2013a). Eventually, Semkiv recognizes the existence of a contemporary Russophone literature in Ukraine, but emblematically describes it ←78 | 79→as the “quintessence of the colonial/postcolonial condition” (kvintesentsiia kolonial’noï/post kolonial’noï sytuatsiï). The hybridity experienced by the Russophone writer, which is described in the article as a “drama” (drama), is seen by Semkiv as the true motivation