51
Ten years later, however, the iron curtain fell, in spite of all our predictions
over. And the sooner we recognise this, the better. Otherwise, Jean Raspail’s dys-
and expectations, and I met my friend – first in Kyiv, where he came for a medi-
topia will fully materialise, and the only alternative to it (rejected by the French
cal congress, and then in the States where I stood as a Fulbrighter. The friend
author but not necessarily by real life) might become a bunch of suprematist, rac-
looked fine. After a few hard years, he re-approved his diploma, got a job at a state
ist and overtly fascist regimes claiming to be rescuing the beleaguered First World
psychiatric hospital, bought a house, discovered the pleasure of skiing, traveled
from “barbarians.”
around the world, flavoured his Ukrainian with an American accent and added an exotic “-ff” to his quite ordinary Ukrainian surname Hunko. He left no relatives in Ukraine, and had little reason for either real or imaginary comeback. He seemed a bit surprised that none of our mutual friends had followed in
2.
his footsteps – even though the iron curtain fell and everybody could easily accom-
Jean Raspail does not overtly take any side in his novel but the very way he depicts
plish his or her dream. I tried to explain to him that the very fall of the curtain, of
the encounter reveals, volens-nolens, his pro-European bias and typically “oriental-
communism, of the repressive political system, made our immigration unneces-
ising” view of the aliens. None of them has any individuality, any conceivable past,
sary. Some people, I knew, moved to the West for career, for education, for a bet-
any place he or she was attached to, any projects and dreams besides the proverbial
ter salary, for adventures and out of sheer curiosity. But most remained at home,
“streams of milk and honey” pouring on them from the Western TV advertise-
for better or worse, in a “middle-income country” where “middle” referred rather
ments and fancy magazines.
to the average income of your co-citizens than to your own. And where the word
Perhaps my greatest impression from Dispossession – the Polish-German-
“transition” was as nebulous and convoluted as the phenomenon it defined: every-
Ukrainian exhibition at the 56 Biennale in Venice – comes from a sudden recog-
body knew where we were transiting from and nobody knew where to.
th
nition that any immigration, exile, dispossession is very personal. It has a name,
Most people usually feel no need to look for a better life elsewhere as long as
a story, a color and form, a sound and smell. You can touch it and listen to it, open
they have a chance to make it at home, or perhaps to keep it just bearable. And our
the door and look inside, discover a dozen of useless things and obsolete words
life, indeed, became much freer and open to multiple opportunities than it had
that make up somebody’s life and protect it from anonymity and dissolution in
ever been. We could finally speak out what we thought and think as we wished;
sheer figures.
we were no longer expelled from universities for unauthorised publications nor
I have never met refugees in my life even though quite a few of my friends
imprisoned for political statements, inappropriate contacts or merely reading the
would have been happy to find refuge in the West if the Soviet borders had been
wrong books. Nobody actually cared about us, and this was far better than the
open. Actually only one of them managed to sneak out in the late 1970s, as he mar-
daily care of the omnipresent and omnipotent state – with the entire party-cum-
ried a Jewish girl and was allowed to leave the communist paradise with a crowd
KGB network. But you couldn’t spread freedom on bread, quite a few people said. And their
the empty platform as very few people dared to show up under police surveillance;
nostalgia for a careful “father” herding the post-Soviet flock soon materialised in
I remember my friend in a huge fur-coat and fur-cap – he never wore stuff like this
a comeback of paternalistic regimes – first in Belarus, then in Russia. And then
even in winter, let alone now, in a quite warm April, he looked slightly grotesque as at a film shooting, but I knew that the immigrants were allowed to bring only personal items – no money, no valuables – they should have been just grateful that the socialist state let them off rather than packed to Siberia, as they definitely deserved. “Ну, по вагонам, товарищи беженцы!” (“Take your cars, comrades refugees!”), the conductor commanded. He apparently meant some irony when he put together Soviet-style “comrades” and anti-Soviet “refugees”. But it only made the scene even more grotesque. Nobody joked, nobody smiled. It was like a funeral. They left forever and everything we could expect in the future were occasional letters – a dreamlike messages from an extraterrestrial world.
Mykola Riab chuk
of fellow-repatriates to Israel. I remember the special train from Lviv to Vienna –
came Ukraine’s turn. But here, nobody had a critical mass to push the country in
DI S P O S S E S S ION
50
benefit variously from today’s global disparity. But the neocolonial status quo is
thousand lives, and half a million displaced people from the war-torn and occupied
either direction. One group had an advantage in numbers, the other in dedication. In 2004, we managed to defend our freedom peacefully. In 2014, a hundred lives were lost. And then the “little green men” came from Russia – first in Crimea, then in Donbas. At some point we managed to stop them, but it cost us additional six regions. This is how I met refugees for the first time in my life, in a place I never expected – in my own country. My colleague Vladimir Rafeyenko, a talented poet and prose writer, came from Donetsk. He had a difficult choice between Kyiv, where his political loyalty