The most Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko talks about her latest novel

A magazine version of the new novel by Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko, “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets,” is being published in Russia. "Ogonyok" talked to...

Oksana Zabuzhko is known to domestic readers primarily for her story “Field Research of Ukrainian Sex,” a frantic national-gender manifesto of the mid-1990s (the book that brought Oksana Zabuzhko fame and brought modern Ukrainian literature to the international level - “O” ). After reading the Russian translation of this book, critic Lev Danilkin called the writer “Solzhenitsyn in a skirt,” defined her prose as “nerve-paralytic,” and predicted that a hundred years later, all of Ukraine would be filled with monuments to Zabuzhko.

After "The Museum of Abandoned Secrets" this prediction looks even more reasonable. The action of the 830-page novel stretches over more than fifty years. Its two main centers of gravity are modernity, the eve of the Orange Revolution, and the mid-1940s, the struggle of Western Ukrainian rebels against invaders - first German, then Soviet.

In Ukraine, the novel was treated ambiguously. Critics noted his unjustified verbosity, emphasized ideology, and excessive sentimentality. The leading Ukrainian socio-political magazine "Correspondent" named "Museum" the best book of 2010, but the prestigious "BBC Book of the Year" award chose "Voroshilovgrad" by Sergei Zhadan over Zabuzhko's novel. Since the time of “Field Research...” Zabuzhko has become neither more tolerant of her opponents, nor more modest in her statements, nor softer in her formulations. The conversation about the novel inevitably turned towards politics: all roads in Kyiv still lead precisely to it.

— Do you supervise the work on the Russian translation of your book?

— Translator Elena Marinicheva has a wonderful linguistic sense. Of course, we cooperate, this is stipulated in the contract, but it is not for me, a native Russian person with Volga roots, to give recommendations on word usage. My language is complex; in Western Slavic studies it is defined as the most complex language in modern Ukrainian literature, so for a translator, “doing Zabuzhko” is a certificate of quality. There’s nothing special to brag about—on the contrary, it complicates my path to the non-Ukrainian reader.

— “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets” will certainly be received ambiguously in Russia. Many there still treat the soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) as enemies.

— The novel is being translated in several countries, it will certainly cause discussions, but in this regard, I am very excited about the Polish reaction. As for Russia, there is an official opinion that is propagated by the media under state control. There is no freedom of speech in Russia, so it will be very difficult to determine the actual attitude of the Russian reader. But what to expect from the Russian authorities if they notice this book is already clear. This is an absolutely predictable reaction, we have been hearing it since 1944. Because from 1942 to 1944, during the period of Hitler’s occupation, the UPA, or Bandera, which, by the way, they never called themselves, was described in German propaganda leaflets as “Stalin’s Judeo-Bolshevik agents.”

- Jewish-Bolshevik? Stalin?

— If you don’t know, I can show you the documents. Even in the Kiev Museum of the Great Patriotic War (which is still called that for some reason, and not the Museum of the Second World War) these leaflets are exhibited. In general, for three years Bandera’s followers were “Stalin’s agents,” and then, for 67 years, they were considered “fascist collaborators”: the NKVD shouted down the Gestapo. So the reaction of the Russian authorities is predictable and uninteresting. The reaction of a living reader is interesting, who is open to understanding not only what the Kremlin dictates to his journalists, who is not zombified by propaganda, who wants to hear and understand the point of view of his closest neighbor on his own history. There is such an audience in Russia. This is the part of Russians who are incredibly hurt for their country and who have looked at Ukraine with hope since 2004. As one of my Moscow friends told me: “If it works out for you, then maybe we can do it too.”

— Did Ukraine really succeed? Russia could see a negative example in the Orange Revolution.

— I wouldn’t say that it didn’t work out, and in general I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry with historical conclusions. This is what I want to say: the public who opens the “Museum” without propaganda prejudices will be able to hear from my book not ideology - there is no ideology there! - and human voices.

— But in the historical part of your novel, the voices of only one side are heard. After all, it was, to some extent, a civil war: the Soviet army consisted of Ukrainians by a third.

— Do you also read the Russian press? This didn't happen! The UPA did not fight with the Soviet army - it fought with the so-called internal troops of the USSR Ministry of State Security to combat banditry, where there were negligible numbers of Ukrainians. Ukrainization, or, as they said then, “indigenization,” of organs began later. But the UPA was precisely an international army: it had units based on national composition, and there were many deserters from the Soviet army. This is a huge chapter of history, which has not yet been systematized or compiled into a compendium. Historians have, by and large, taken up it only in the last decade, when a generation has grown up ready to study it without prejudice and fear. When I started working on the novel, I still didn’t understand what I had gotten myself into: it turned out that systematic work on this topic simply did not exist. I had to do the work of, excuse me, a field historian. I, like you now, sat with a tape recorder in front of dozens of veterans. Moreover, these people still had to be reached - many simply did not want to talk.

— Have you ever read Alexander Terekhov’s novel “Stone Bridge”? There is a similar picture: the veterans with whom the author spoke were afraid to talk about the events of half a century ago. Fear has been ingrained in them for the rest of their lives.

— No, I haven’t read it, but I know that it came out in 2009, just at the same time as “The Museum”... You know, it’s not even fear, but inertia. After 50 years of silence, it is already easier for people to remain silent than to start speaking. There was an interesting episode when my friends and I went to the mountains in winter, to the Black Forest region, where the novel took place, and, when we went down, we discovered a hut with an old woman who had lived there all her 80-year life. She began to tell how as a girl she carried food to the rebels, how “the cows roared during a raid.” I reach into my bag for a voice recorder, and then something happens that is worthy of a Spielberg or von Trier camera: her gaze is caught by this unfortunate device with a flashing red light, and it’s as if a cast-iron grill is falling on her face. We begin to persuade: they say, why be afraid, we have an independent Ukraine. Her frozen face shows an intense struggle with herself; about thirty seconds pass, and she, without raising her eyelids and shaking her head, says: “No. I can’t.”

— For half of Ukraine, the words “UPA” and “Bandera” remain almost curse words.

- Well, not for half!

— If you look at the voting results, all those who elected Yanukovych...

- It's bullshit, what are you saying? Do you really identify voting for Yanukovych with a “pro-Russian” electorate, and voting for Tymoshenko with a “pro-Ukrainian” one? This story didn’t work in the elections either, and today it’s simply ridiculous to seriously refer to it. I know a bunch of people who, swearing, swearing and sobbing big tears, went to vote for Yanukovych with the only argument: “not to give this bitch a single chance,” and on the other hand, ordinary people who were quite friendly to the Russian Federation, who also voted for Tymoshenko - “if only not for a prisoner.” What you are talking about now is a purely political technology development. This is a script not even written by them - they are both too stupid for this.

— You, I remember, actively called for voting against both.

- Yes. The whole country remembers. And this political “third force,” which I voiced on the eve of the second round of elections, that is, those who vote against both, mind you, has grown in a year and a half from 5 to 18-25 percent. Not a single Ukrainian politician has made such a career. A third of the country does not accept both, and the result of the second round was determined by the protest vote. Plebiscite to choose the lesser evil.

— Do you really think that Yanukovych is less evil than Tymoshenko?

— Of course: the scale is smaller. She had a national one (“She is Ukraine”), while the “Donetsk ones” had a “local” one (“Donbass is us”). We all see what comes of this: one group managed to make a scarecrow out of an entire region, impose on it the image of “bandits”, and today no one remembers that Donbass is the birthplace of the great Ukrainian tenor Anatoly Solovyanenko, the great Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus, etc. .d. Yanukovych and company usurped Donbass, forced people to say: “Sorry, I’m from Donetsk.” And now we have a bunch of fools from other regions of the country who dare to say: “Let’s separate this Donbass.”

— Among this “bunch of fools” is your colleague, writer Yuri Andrukhovich.

“The fact that he babbles is not only irresponsible, it’s just stupid, boyish.” Yurin's psychological age is 18 years. There is nothing sadder than aging Soviet 18-year-old boys who never reach the age of social maturity and responsibility.

— Still, it seems to me that Tymoshenko would not curtail democracy the way Yanukovych does.

— Excuse me, have you already forgotten the journalist who was fired for the video “Everything is Lost”? Have you forgotten the decision of the Pechersk court that prohibited criticism of government actions? And after all, she didn’t have all the power then, but what if she did? No, thank you: in terms of freedom of speech under Tymoshenko - three ha-ha.

- If she is imprisoned now, how will you feel about it? After all, she will be perceived as the same victim as Khodorkovsky in Russia.

- Don't think. This is increasingly looking like a farce, on both sides. It takes two to tango, and they found each other. And anyway, why did you decide that she would go to prison? Let's not make hypotheses. The only thing that gives me some vague aesthetic satisfaction is the fact that she is being judged by the same Pechersk court.

— Did you create it yourself, did you receive it yourself?

- Yes. Anyone who knows a lot about composition will appreciate the beauty of the situation. I love stories like this.

— Is the Belarusian option possible in Ukraine? That is, building an authoritarian or even totalitarian state?

- No. We still had the Maidan, which radically changed the relationship between the government and society. “They” are afraid of “us.” The whole question is only in the self-organization of society, in its ability to clearly articulate its “no” and its requests to the authorities. As my neighbor said the other day, bringing me demands for the district administration from a meeting of residents to sign: “If we had started fighting like this six years ago, and not gone home to wait for changes from above, we would already be living in another country.”

Interviewed by Yuri Volodarsky, Kyiv

Servant of all myths

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Oksana Zabuzhko is a Ukrainian writer, literary critic, philosopher, and essayist. Born in Lutsk in 1960. She graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy (1982) and graduate school (1985) from Kyiv University. She was a member of the CPSU and the Writers' Union of the USSR. Candidate of Philosophy, senior researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Author of the monographs "Shevchenko's Myth of Ukraine", "Notre Dame d'Ukraine: Ukrainian Woman in the Conflict of Mythologies", six books of prose, five books of poems, three collections of essays. Zabuzhko's books have been translated into more than ten languages. In 1998, the story “Field Research of Ukrainian Sex” was published in Russian translation. In the July issue of "New World" the publication of a translation of the novel "Museum of Abandoned Secrets" has begun.

"The NKVD shouted down the Gestapo"