Blair A. Ruble
THE ARTS OF WAR Ukrainian Artists Confront Russia Year One
Blair A. Ruble
THE ARTS OF WAR Ukrainian Artists Confront Russia Year One
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Cover picture: © copyright 2022 by Alex Zakletsky
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Table of Contents Author’s Note......................................................................................... 9 1:
Heroic Arts: The Remarkable Story of Ukrainian Artists Confronting Russia ...................................................................... 11
2:
Ode to Odesa ................................................................................ 15
3:
The Power of Ukrainian Song .................................................... 19
4:
Who Gave Us the Right to Peace and Quiet? .......................... 23
5:
The Musicality of Kyiv ................................................................ 27
6:
Dancing from Armageddon ....................................................... 31
7:
Reclaiming Ukrainian Streets through Art .............................. 35
8:
Donbasrock ................................................................................... 37
9:
Puppets, People, and War .......................................................... 41
10: Opera in a Ukrainian Embroidered Shirt ................................. 45 11: Chernivtsi Philharmonic in Shelter ........................................... 49 12: Kyiv’s DakhaBrakha in New Orleans For Cities, Diversity Counts ........................................................................................... 53 13: Ukraine, Eurasian Theater’s New Leader ................................ 57 14: Exchanging Camouflage for Tutus in Lviv .............................. 61 15: Chernihiv Artist Reporting War Atrocities on TikTok ........... 65 16: Uzhhorod Songs .......................................................................... 69 17: In Kyiv’s Podil .............................................................................. 71 18: Odesan Writers on War .............................................................. 75 19: Renaissance at the Lesya Ukrainka Theater ............................. 77 20: Mozart in Wartime Lviv ............................................................. 81 21: Kharkiv Sketches ......................................................................... 85 22: Finding a “European Way” Kharkiv’s East Opera ................. 89 23: The Healing Potential of Community Theater as Seen in Ukraine’s Lutsk ............................................................................ 93 24: Taking Out the Trash in a Time of War .................................... 97 25: The Artists of Kyiv....................................................................... 99 5
26: Jazzy Nights in Kyiv.................................................................. 101 27: Providing Humanitarian and Creative Sanctuary for Artists in Ivano-Frankivsk ........................................................ 103 28: Ukrainian and Polish Dancers Respond to the Pain of War 105 29: Maestro Earle and Ukrainian Music at the Berliner Musikfest...................................................................... 109 30: What’s Up with Ukrainian Rap? ............................................. 113 31: Folk Art ....................................................................................... 115 32: Ukrainian Odyssey .................................................................... 119 33: Turning to (Street) Art for Meaning ........................................ 123 34: Battle-Worn Ballerina ................................................................ 125 35: The 100th Heroic Season of the Mykolaiv Theater............... 129 36: Pulling Strings to Life Spirits ................................................... 131 37: The Sound of Resilience ............................................................ 133 38: Artist Soldiers ............................................................................. 135 39: Hong Kong Celebrates Wartime Ukrainian Theater ........... 139 40: The Lviv National Opera’s Remarkable Wartime Season, Exhibiting Life “Full-Face” ...................................................... 143 41: A Portrait of Artistic Defiance in Kherson ............................. 147 42: Amplifying Opera in a Time of War ....................................... 151 43: A Twelve-Year-Old Ukrainian Girl’s Wartime Diary to Appear......................................................................................... 155 44: A Musical Homage for Izium’s Ancient Stone Figures and Recent Lost Souls ....................................................................... 159 45: Kyiv’s Puppet Company Provides New Year’s Cheer ........ 161 46: Ukrainian Women Artists Set Their Own Paths in a Time of War ............................................................................. 165 47: Coming to Terms with Putin Requires a “Process”, Not Just a “Trial” ....................................................................... 169 48: Returning Home: The Odesa Philharmonic Celebrates a New Year in its Old Home ................................ 173 49: Acting Out Wartime Emotions ................................................ 177 50: Whack-a-Mole Culture.............................................................. 181 6
Acknowledgments............................................................................. 185 About the author ............................................................................... 187 Index .................................................................................................... 189
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Author’s Note These essays all appeared in the Woodrow Wilson Center Kennan Institute’s Ukraine Focus blog (https://www.wilsoncenter.org/collection/arts-war-ukrainianartists-confront-russia) over the course of the year beginning with the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The series grew from my need to respond to the horrendous events unfolding before me. Previous work relating the arts to social and political developments in Ukraine and Russia led me to turn to the work of Ukraine’s artistic creators to better understand what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen. I, like many, have been astonished by the steadfastness of Ukrainians in the defense of their country. The stories presented here highlight the ways in which they have long explored the meaning of their country and culture through the arts, and the manner in which the arts and their creators have empowered Ukrainians to confront the Russian invaders. They also offer intriguing clues about the culture, society, and politics of a postwar Ukraine. These essays represent my attempt to provide Ukrainian artists a place where they can speak for themselves. I have been fortunate in being able to collaborate in the preparation of these articles with several of the artists mentioned here. Aside from the introductory and concluding essays, I have striven to keep my own voice in the background. I purposefully follow a variety of performance and visual artistic endeavors in a range of regional settings to capture the expanse of Ukrainian creativity. The fifty pieces here follow the course of the war’s first year, with initial shock giving way to a search for comprehension, followed by a profound resistance to the invasion. By the end of the year, the tales reveal a deep reinvention of various art forms as a distinctive Ukrainian artistic voice consolidates. The essays may be read chronologically, or by artistic genre: music, dance, theater, video, the visual arts, etc. Readers may turn first to those set in specific locations: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Odesa, etc. Alternatively, readers may direct their attention to the multiple 9
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connections, financial and creative, that have emerged between Ukrainian artists and the international community. Or search out the many moments when Ukrainian civilian and military authorities have endorsed the performing arts as a means of advancing their country’s fortunes. However approached, I am confident that even the most informed readers will discover a depth and creativity to the Ukrainian artistic scene that they hardly suspected existed prior to the Russian invasion. Blair A. Ruble Washington, DC February 24, 2023
1: Heroic Arts: The Remarkable Story of Ukrainian Artists Confronting Russia November 4, 2022 Today’s Ukraine, like all states, is a product of history, economics, geography, demographics, and culture. As is often the case with large countries, Ukraine has at times fractured along these lines. As is also often true with large countries, such divisions do not necessarily destroy the state. Heroically, Ukrainians have demonstrated a steadfast commitment to Ukraine despite all the factors that may distinguish them one from another, and they have not left their country’s fate to the actions of others. They have put their lives on the line multiple times for a Ukraine that embraces a pathway westward. For many analysts, Ukraine prior to 2022 appeared to be a “failed” state. Divisions of language, ethnicity, religion, economic viability, political ideology, and generation—amplified by rampant corruption—seemed at times to render Ukraine hopeless. Political parties came and went seemingly overnight. Major civil unrest brought down governments in the Orange Revolution (2004–2005) and the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity (2014–2015). Breakaway provinces in the east and the Russian annexation of Crimea initiated a protracted war with Russia in 2014. These events seem to track a fundamental historic division along what was once the eastern border of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1385–1795). As powerful as these events seemed, none explain the past year in Ukraine. No matter what Vladimir Putin and his armed forces have done, Ukrainians have remained united and unwavering in their commitment to their country. We must look beyond politics to the arts to appreciate how and why this is so. Over the past thirty years, young Ukrainians have grown up with no memory of the Soviet Union, secure in the notion that Russia is a different—and unattractive—country; fluent in the Ukrainian language even if they speak Russian, Tatar, or some other language at home; and drawn to the economic well-being and values 11
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of Europe. They have created a vibrant, new Ukrainian culture and identity. The effervescent Ukrainian pop music and hip-hop scene, accompanied by sassy media and dynamic art, reflect a population that has charted a fresh path following independence. This is the Ukraine that coalesced to withstand Putin’s misguided efforts to fold the country back into his “Russian World”. (Multiple “Russias” exist within the Russian Federation as well, but that is a topic for a different essay.) Russian apologists have pointed to electoral maps from the 2000s and 2010s to demonstrate that Ukraine is a divided state. In so doing, they have ignored the country’s foundational map showing the results of the 1991 referendum on independence, in which over 91 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots for independence, with landslide results in every region. More telling is the 2019 presidential election map, which shows Volodymyr Zelensky sweeping to victory throughout the country. Analysts disparaged Zelensky’s remarkable triumph, comparing it with the elections of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Donald Trump in the United States. Like his Italian and American counterparts, they argued, Zelensky won because of the name recognition garnered through his starring role in a popular television show, Servant of the People. Perhaps this was so, but the show’s popularity throughout the country reveals the emergence of a single Ukrainian media space that enabled Zelensky to win fans across Ukraine. The essays which follow highlight the ways in which Ukrainians have long explored the meaning of their country and culture through the arts, and the manner in which the arts and their creators have empowered Ukrainians to confront the Russian invaders. This shared post-independence cultural exploration nurtured the foundation of a successful, rather than a failed, state. The essays grew organically out of the response to the war itself. They show Ukraine’s creative community leading the way towards a united Ukrainian culture consisting of diverse elements. They reflect the wide variety of cultural forms and the regional variance that mark the country itself. Three major themes run through the stories that follow:
HEROIC ARTS 1.
2.
3.
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Russia is not Ukraine. Almost immediately following the arrival of the Russian occupation forces, the distinctively Ukrainian letter “Ï” (“ee”, as in “Kиїв”) assumed an expanded meaning. The Cyrillic letter “Ï” exists in the Ukrainian, but not the Russian, alphabet. The letter became a potent symbol of resistance in Russian-occupied territories, easily splashed on walls, sidewalks, and official signage, as its existence denies the notion that Ukraine is nothing more than a subset of Russia. The Ukrainian and Russian alphabets share many letters, but are not identical. Similarly, their languages and cultures share a considerable history. Russian influence on Ukraine—some of it welcomed, much of it not—can neither be denied nor “cancelled”. Yet that influence was filtered through experiences distinct to Ukraine and Russia. The result was differing experiences, values, and conceptions of the human condition. Ukraine and its culture cannot be subsumed under a grandiose and false concept of a “Russian World.” As the essays presented here reveal, Ukraine is not Russia. Ukrainians appreciate their difference, embrace it, and, through artistic expression, have sought to strengthen it. Youth culture matters. Over the past three decades, young Ukrainians have created a lively and distinctive popular culture through music—including their own brand of hiphop—and social media. Ukrainian youth culture has triumphed over internal differences across the country. Ukrainian is the language of that culture. Whether cultivated by official and commercial outlets—The Simpsons appeared in Ukrainian rather than Russian translation—or homegrown social media-produced formats—this new culture has remained, first and foremost, fun.
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4.
Several of the essays presented here demonstrate how a distinct Ukrainian youth culture extends throughout the country, reshaping society and its culture. As some Russian-language rappers from Eastern Ukraine came to realize, the Russian scene was considerably less relevant and compelling than what was happening in the rest of Ukraine. They switched to relying on Ukrainian for self-expression because it better communicated their emotions and worldview, rather than out of any sort of political agenda. Art endures; politics is fleeting. Renowned tango historian Robert Farris Thompson once observed that culture is forever; it is politics and ego that fade. The search for an understanding of the human condition, for shared identity and values, and creative expression evident in all of the stories presented here points to a contemporary Ukraine poised to resist and sustain itself in the face of the Russian onslaught. Ukrainians have created their own particular society and culture. That culture’s individual components may at first appear modest, but combined, they emerge as heroic. The arts have reshaped the course of Ukrainian history and will frame the country’s future as well.
The Ukrainian response to the 2022 Russian invasion has inspired a new appreciation for the country, both within and outside Ukraine. The steadfastness of Ukrainians in the defense of their country has surprised many. The stories presented here highlight the ways in which Ukrainians have long explored the meaning of their country and culture through the arts. They show the way the arts and their creators have empowered Ukrainians to confront the Russian invaders.
2: Ode to Odesa March 2, 2022 On Saturday evening, February 12, 2022, with Russian troops poised to pounce not all that far away, hundreds of Odesans gathered at a concert of the Odesa Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of its longtime conductor, Venezuelan-American Hobart Earle. As the concert wound down, Maestro Earle raised his baton for a surprise encore: a rousing rendition of the overture to Mykola Lysenko’s opera Taras Bulba. The audience rose to its feet in patriotic fervor. No one in that hall doubted what country was home: Ukraine. Odesans’ embrace of Ukrainian independence had remained ambiguous until recently. The city’s unique history and character have from the beginning transcended nation. Odesa demonstrated an exceptional embrace of freedom, albeit at times anarchic. Traveling throughout my adult life to that part of the world once known as the Soviet Union opened up a multitude of wondrous opportunities. The region is full of natural beauty, exciting cities, and large personalities. Yet even in the carnivalesque wreckage of the region’s collapsed political system, nothing quite compares to the city of Odesa. Odesa is not just a place, of course. It is more a state of mind— or, at the very least, a virtual Odesa, appearing on websites, that exists in the imaginations of the thousands of former residents who have moved to places as varied as Moscow, Tel Aviv, Sydney, Toronto, and Brooklyn. This Odesa cannot be conquered by tanks and rockets. The “real” Odesa exists as much in the ironic short stories in Odessa Stories by Isaac Babel, who was arrested and shot by Stalin’s NKVD, as it does in the compelling stage productions of Babel’s grandson, Andrei Maleev-Babel, who teaches acting in Florida. Odesa, in other words, is not just a city with a promenade and a famous set of steps overlooking the Black Sea. Psychically, it extends from Siberia to Sarasota. It does so because, throughout its 15
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brief yet extravagantly tawdry history, Odesa has inspired people to create. Odesa was officially established in 1794, and Catherine the Great’s frontier settlement and Black Sea port quickly displayed a vibrant mixture of nationalities and cultures. This has remained. The city took shape in the mind of a Neapolitan soldier of fortune, José Pascual Domingo de Ribas y Boyons (Osip Mikhailovich Deribas), before it assumed a physical presence. De Ribas was the child of a Spanish consul and his aristocratic Irish wife. Following the final Russian victory over the Ottomans, De Ribas convinced Catherine that a patch of land near the mouths of four major European rivers—the Danube, Dniester, Dnieper, and Bug—would make an excellent location for a city. Following the Russian practice with settlements in the empire’s recently acquired lands in the south, an area that became known as New Russia (on the pattern of New England, New France, and New Spain), De Ribas’s town was to be named after a classical Greek hero. In this case, the name of Odysseus was feminized to Odesa to honor the empress. De Ribas set out to create a newer and more orderly version of his hometown, Naples. However, Odesa’s sketchy origins—relying on a multitude of fortune hunters and adventurers coming from all corners of the late eighteenth-century world—made coherence difficult to achieve. In some ways he succeeded, as the city grew outward along a logical grid. Nonetheless, there was nothing well-ordered about the people who filled it. The new city’s residents came from a variety of backgrounds, drawn together by the imagined opportunity to get rich quickly. Catherine’s grandson, Alexander I, replaced De Ribas as Odesa’s “city chief” (gradonachal’nik), along with a French aristocrat, the duc de Richelieu (a great-nephew of the famous Cardinal Richelieu). De Richelieu was on the lam at the time, fleeing revolutionaries in Paris. As the governor of New Russia, he transformed Odesa into the city of Russia’s least respected “estate” (soslovia, social class), the petit bourgeoisie (meshchane). Semiskilled workers, tradesmen, shopkeepers, former serfs, Jews, and outcasts came seeking a new life, and they found it. Mark Twain, on visiting the
ODE TO ODESA
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city in 1867, declared that he had come home to America after tramping across Europe. I felt this same sensation a century and a half later. The twentieth century was not as kind to Odesa as the nineteenth had been, with often tragic consequences: revolution, the brutal Romanian occupation during World War II marked by horrific ethnic cleansing, and massive Jewish emigration during the Brezhnev years all took their toll. Throughout its history, Odesa as a place—as a city—has juxtaposed different historical, cultural, and political fragments of past and present. Like its Mississippi doppelganger New Orleans, Odesa absorbed influences from everywhere to create a unique urban culture. And like other similar mixing bowls of culture, Odesa cultivated a vivid literary scene in several languages. By the midtwentieth century, Odesa had established a vibrant cinema scene, home to one of the Soviet Union’s major film studios. Italian musical culture joined with Jewish musical traditions to create a distinct musical sound. Stalin’s propagandists claimed that Odesa, not New Orleans, had given birth to jazz. Hyperbole aside, homeboy Leonid Utyosov became the Soviet Union’s first major jazz star. David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein, and many others drew on the same aural sources to develop a world-renowned school of violin playing. Odesa prompts its residents to seek new meaning in endless layers of cultural, religious, ethnic, political, and class differences. The city encourages melding, reconciliation, and reciprocal borrowing of diverse cultural expressions and traditions to produce ever-new amalgams. Over the past three decades, that fusion has added an independent Ukrainian identity. As the wild applause for the Odesa Philharmonic’s encore began to fade last February, a bass voice boomed out over the crowd, shouting “spasibo!” Odesa is a city where most residents speak Russian. Freedom, however, knows no linguistic boundaries.
3: The Power of Ukrainian Song March 14, 2022 The world was moved by images of a young Ukrainian girl singing “Let It Go” in a basement bomb shelter; by newly arriving Ukrainian refugees sitting down at a piano outside a Polish train station to play “It’s a Wonderful World”; and by gatherings of Ukrainian heroes belting out their national anthem. Music provides solace and courage in a world turned upside down. These responses to the chaos of war are powerfully human. As Ukrainians have long understood, music and the arts declare who we are. Readers who looked at a powerful new wave of post-independence Ukrainian literature—written in Ukrainian, Russian, and other languages—appreciated the depth of a new Ukrainian identity that was finding expression on the printed page. Enthusiastic concertgoers turned to local symphony orchestras and opera houses for emotional grounding. Ukrainian hip-hop provided the soundtrack to Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2013–14 Euromaidan uprising. TV melodramas and comedy series uncovered new national leaders. Researchers and artists associated with the Ukrainian Academy of Arts’ Contemporary Art Research Institute set out to redefine the arts in accordance with what was happening elsewhere. Much more than Ukraine’s often fractious political system, the arts quietly and profoundly defined a new Ukrainian nation. I witnessed the power of the arts to proclaim Ukrainian national identity firsthand nearly a decade ago, when a night at the ballet turned into a lesson in Ukrainian self-assertion. On April 13, 2013, rhythmic hip-hop-like chants of protest exploded just as the final curtain came down on the flower-laden ballet dancers and the musicians who had performed with them. Within seconds, the bright lights of the TV crews who had forced their way into the orchestra seats overwhelmed the still dim house lights. Suddenly—as if on a cue from a cameraman—four white banners unfurled from the fourth-tier balcony, enveloping the hall below. 19
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To ever louder chants of “Hanba! Hanba! Hanba!” (“Shame! Shame! Shame!”), streamers cascading from the upper balcony demanded that the National Ballet of Ukraine retain the company’s artistic director, Denys Matvienko. The sumptuous Kyiv Opera House exploded into chaos after a stunning performance. The political decision to replace Matvienko remained. However, the temper of the times had changed. The National Ballet of Ukraine managed to remain a national treasure despite all the political, financial, and artistic upheavals of the past three decades. Like many other Soviet companies, the Kyiv ballet needed a dusting off once the country fell apart and cultural institutions long dependent on state munificence were tossed into the international arts marketplace. The company’s ballet school continued to produce a steady stream of world-class performers—especially male dancers—who headed out across the globe. Often, they signed with international companies. New York’s American Ballet Theater hired numerous Kyiv-trained soloists and corps members of note. Kyiv dancers nonetheless returned home whenever their schedules permitted them to take time away from leading companies in Moscow, St. Petersburg, London, and New York. The company became, as former US ambassador to Ukraine William Green Miller once quipped, “the best company money can’t buy”. Denys Matvienko was among those who chose to return. A native of Dnipro, Matvienko spent his career dancing in Kyiv, while serving as a leading soloist in Moscow, St. Petersburg, New York, Tokyo, and Milan. Approaching his mid-30s, he was lured back to Kyiv in November 2011 to serve as the company’s artistic director and to perform whenever possible. Matvienko set about introducing contemporary ballets into the company’s repertoire. He added verve to the standard repertoire. For example, he replaced Marius Petipa’s worn choreography for Ludwig Minkus’s La Bayadère with a more modern and energetic 1980s version choreographed by Natalia Makarova for London and New York audiences. Simultaneously, Matvienko invited innovative contemporary artists to bring their work to Kyiv, including Edward Clug, a Romanian dancer whose striking choreography made
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the Slovene National Theater one of the most exciting companies of its size anywhere. Matvienko’s leadership symbolized everything that post-independence Kyiv youth wanted for their country: something fresh, high-energy, edgy, and internationally appreciated, especially in the West. They welcomed his regime as the symbol of a new Ukraine that would be in their grasp if only their country’s boorish, traditional-in-a-Soviet-sort-of-way, and corrupt leaders would just get out of their way. A couple of days before the April 13 eruption inside the Kyiv Opera House, the leadership of the theater and their masters at the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture—run by particularly distasteful cronies of the country’s convicted criminal turned president, Viktor Yanukovych—“fired” Matvienko as the company’s artistic director. Citing artistic and personal differences, the Opera Theater’s management revealed, in a bizarre announcement, that Matvienko had never been “hired.” Evidently, once Matvienko signed his contract in November 2011, management sent his employment documents to superiors, who never bothered to countersign. The raucous upper balcony protestors in Kyiv that evening, and their sympathetic supporters in the lower tiers, went far beyond showing support for their dismissed idol. They were proclaiming their collective disgust with the incompetent and corrupt state officials who forced him to leave. After happening to witness this visceral rejection of a pro-Russian Ukrainian regime by attending the ballet that evening, I was not at all surprised when that regime crumbled a few months later. I am also unsurprised by today’s brave resistance to Russian invaders. I now understand, better than ever before, that the arts give voice to our deepest emotions, often revealing them to ourselves and to others before they find formal expression through more purposeful words and deeds. Perhaps hard-nosed observers consider music little more than white noise, or a human interest side note to reporting on a brutal war. But they miss the much larger story of social and political change. The performing arts, as communal and social activities, bring humans together, in all their agreements and disagreements.
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They express some of the deepest human emotions and, in response, our innermost passions intensify. What happens when performers and their audiences meet signals how we see ourselves and our future; and whether we like what we see, or not. The Russian army, more than many political commentators, recognizes this truth. Russian rockets have targeted the Kharkiv Opera House; the defenders of Odesa understand that their historic and internationally renowned Opera House may be next. A night at the theater, the concert hall, or a nightclub is always more than an entertaining backdrop to the political and economic forces that really matter. As Robert Farris Thompson tells us in his masterful Tango: The Art History of Love: “First, culture is forever. It is politics and ego that fades.” A lesson Putin’s Russia needs to learn.
4: Who Gave Us the Right to Peace and Quiet? March 23, 2022 Yelena Astasyeva’s namesake character Yelena, in her new play A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War, muses that “it’s like finding myself in a film about war, it’s a nightmare. You go to bed, and you fear your home will be bombed that night. There’s nowhere to buy food or medicine. And when you write about all of this, your Russian friends answer that it’s fake news. What do you think, how do I feel?” Astasyeva is one of more than three dozen Ukrainian writers and playwrights participating in an international initiative to bear witness to the horrors of Putin’s war on Ukraine through theater. Originating with the Ukrainian component of the Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings project, formed in 2020 in solidarity with the beleaguered Belarus theater community, the project presents works which bring to light the corruption and brutality of authoritarian regimes. Theater critic John Freedman, curator of the Ukrainian component, moved quickly at the outset of the Russian invasion to bring new Ukrainian dramatic works to global audiences. Working with Philip Arnoult at Baltimore’s Center for International Theater Development, Maksym Kurochkin at Kyiv’s Theater of Playwrights, Noah Birksted-Breen at London’s Sputnik Theatre, and others, the project arranged 70 pledged readings and fundraisers in fifteen countries and in twelve languages. Events have already taken place in Hong Kong, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Germany, and Austria. Like Astasyeva, several of the authors express initial disbelief that war was really happening. Many of the writers try to capture the unreality of the war by exploring the initial search for food and safe shelter. Oksana Gritsenko recalls in The Peed-Upon Armored Personnel Carrier: “The
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