Reviews and Comments

Цікава справа: на початку минулого десятиріччя Жадан активно жирував із темою анархізму, але писав отакі твори, де за правилами нескінченних статевих ігор слабу стать не можна аніяк зрозуміти, а відхилення від гендерної норми є кульмінація громадського лиха. За десять років український гомонаціонализм покріпшав, тому жирувати з деякими (але не з усіма — сапфічне кохання безпечніше) образами стало принадніше, а анархізм навпаки поблякнув, бо нам же ж потрібні міцні кордони, менти, держава тощо. І це не перезування — Жадан завжди був консервативним, але в суспільстві завжди вистачало занадто більше консервативних персонажів, на їх тлі це виглядає нормою. Дуже втомлює оцей ворох «гарячих входжень» во все, що рушиться, тому важко знайти сили зосередитися на якихось інших темах. Відповідь на головне питання роману, — «Що ми тут всі робимо?» — дуже дзен (ми тут бо ми тут), вона ж вторить висновкам щодо умов існування в цьому «тут»: «вдячність та відповідальність» складаються як самобезперечна реальність. Шкода автора через це, та шкода, що я стратив на все це час.

Being unoriginal is not the problem (as it rarely is), yet I mention it to emphasize how fundamental the theme of the book is. The problem’s with the rendition of this theme, of course. There are thematic chapters that bring different stories together, but it progresses from being connected by a question (or two) to more and more elaborate free rants. “Populism? Here’s everything I associate with populism in our perishing context!” I understand that storytelling can be a good way of communicating ideas—but it’s not the sole one. Pomeranstev is right in his method: not any single story could explain the complexity of the post-Truth landscape, so there’s no point in telling them thoroughly (as he decided to end the very first storyline—by directly telling readers to go see what it resolved into), but in telling them that poorly (as with the tragedy of Syrian civil war told in such broad strokes)—this do a disservice to the whole enterprise. This could be a lot more theoretic, and it’s not.

Most interesting takes on national literature always come from outsiders—like Kulbak’s “Raysn,” both silly and convincing, or Gogol’s “Mirgorod.”

Rafeyenko also has that complex background which lets him synthesise different worlds. Not he’s only a writer with seven Russian-language novels, but also a literary critic. In 2014 he was displaced from Donetsk to Kyiv (I have little understanding what chunk of life he had lost then, and it’s a bad habit to draw conclusions from person’s literary alter egos). A year ago, I’ve read his second-to-last book, “Length of Days,” about the presence of the war in Donetsk and Kyiv, about “national unity” that struggles to be born.

It’s pretty common to see national myths using women as substitute for Homeland, giving them roles to play in the national order: of a mother, of a lover, so one may seek her valorously, or loose her tragically. Rafeyenko too uses such a trope, putting the name of his Lady Vitchyzna in the title, of one who was misinterpreted to be real.

Rafeyenko’s protagonist, Haba admits his relationship with women is complicated—he lost his love on the account of Russian invasion to the City of Z (Donetsk’s doppelgänger) with both his home and his language. As a displaced person in Kyiv, he tries to be an ideal Ukrainian, so he craves new normality—and he eventually finds it in a family, with his woman (the one that in reality never abandoned him) and his ancestors as his children. Along the way he renounces his role as a consumer in a complexity of Kyiv’s life, written in a form of a shopping mall, then of a cinema.

The field of opportunities which Rafeyenko depicts his characters in is sad and claustrophobic, yet the language he uses is spectacular. I’ve read it in Ukrainian and cannot imagine how much even a skilled translator can discard and adapt and how many footnotes they should provide for the reader to understand all Rafeyenko’s puns, his slips into Russian and regional lore. Though it was translated into English last year, so give it a try.

Charles Clover’s Black Wind, White Snow is of course a good example how liberals are in owe of fascisms, but hey, it’s also poor researched!

Clover says he interviewed a lot of Nazbols, it seems like they instilled their ideas of Russian history in him (deterministic and stripped of reasoning). It overlaps with him trying to fit rich Amerikkan political lore over Russia, regardless of the era: “deep state”, “culture wars”, and “orthodox Marxism” (meaning some unified Soviet ideology) are regularly mentioned.

Book promises to explain phenomenon of “Russkiy mir” through the stories of political activism of Russian émigrés, Liev Gumilyov (one “spontaneous anarchist”!), and Alexandr Dugin. They all happen to be vewy cuwious chawactews, vewy talented, but twoubled intewectchuals, who fall for bigotwy and antisemitism by mewe accident. Also, they are all like Dostoyevsky in one way or another (it’s hard to portray Nikita Tikhonov as Dostoevsky, but Clover solves the situation by saying he’s like Raskolnikov!)