DONBAS: Shift of myths or shift of worldview paradigm

DONBAS S

Shift of myths or shift of worldview paradigm

#DanteAlighieri#ThomasAquinas#Š arūnasBartas#MstislavChernov#Ann aCohen-Yanay#FriedrichEngels#John ScotusEriugena#EmmaGoldman#Eric Hobsbawm#JimJarmusch#BohdanKh melnytsky#SergeiLoznitsa#RosaLuxe mburg#YevgenyMaloletka#KarlMarx #RobertMusil#VanessaParadis#Volod ymyrRafeienko#JohnRoscellinus#Rob ertoRossellini#NicolaSacco#TarasShe vchenko#HryhoriiSkovoroda#Vasilisa Stepanenko#Bartolomeo Vanzetti#PubliusVergiliusMaro #SerhiyZhadan#...

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yaroslav vasiutkevych

DONBAS

Shift of myths or shift of worldview paradigm

CUNEBUS.ORG

2018-2024

Series: Culture and Film Studies

Book cover photo: Destroyed Palace of Culture in the village of Dianivka (Kirovske), 2008

Frontispiece photo: Donetsk, Gorky Mine, 2000

This anthology was prepared for publication in the late 2010s. It was a response to the events that occurred in my country, Ukraine, following the Ukrainian revolution known as the "Euromaidan" when, in 2014, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens took to the streets of their cities in protest against the actions of the government and President V. Yanukovych. At that time, the Ukrainian authorities rejected further integration with Europe and advocated for closer ties with Russia. The result of these events was Yanukovych fleeing to Russia, as well as the annexation of Crimea by Putin's Russia and military actions on the Donbas region. The outcome of these events was the creation of puppet quasi-republics under Russia's control.

Two years prior, in 2012, Ukraine hosted the UEFA European Football Championship, and European fans roamed Donetsk. Two years later, they were replaced by Russian military personnel, and eight years later, full-scale war began.

For many years and decades, Russia (Empire, Soviet Union, Russian Federation) skillfully conducted propaganda on the Donbas region, using old myths of "unity" and the "native language" to deceive the local population with unattainable expectations. Instead of myths of "a good life," war, death, and destroyed cities arrived. Today, in the conditions of total war, we observe a shift in milestones, paradigms, and myths. Whether due to or despite the war and occupation, a new Ukrainian perspective on the Donbas and its history has emerged in Ukrainian society. It has been shaped, in part, thanks to the work of modern Ukrainian writers, directors, musicians, etc., whose works we have attempted to analyze in this collection of essays.

© 2018-2024, Author: Yaroslav Vasiutkevych

©

2024, Layout design: Yarr Zabratski

© 2024, Publisher: CINEBUS.ORG.cinebus.org

©

1999-2024, Photo: Yaroslav Vasiutkevych

#DanteAlighieri#ThomasA quinas#ŠarūnasBartas#Ms tislavChernov#AnnaCohenYanay#FriedrichEngels#Joh nScotusEriugena#EmmaGo ldman#EricHobsbawm#Jim Jarmusch#BohdanKhmelny tsky#SergeiLoznitsa#RosaL uxemburg#YevgenyMalolet ka#KarlMarx#RobertMusil# VanessaParadis#Volodymyr Rafeienko#JohnRoscellinus #RobertoRossellini#NicolaS acco#TarasShevchenko#Hr yhoriiSkovoroda#VasilisaSt epanenko#BartolomeoVanz etti#PubliusVergiliusMaro# SerhiyZhadan# and etc.

SIDEA A

This anthology was prepared for publication in the late 2010s in response to the events that occurred in my country, Ukraine, following the Ukrainian revolution known as the "Euromaidan." During this time, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens took to the streets of their cities to protest against the actions of the government and President V. Yanukovych. The Ukrainian authorities rejected further integration with Europe and instead advocated for closer ties with Russia. The outcome of these events was Yanukovych fleeing to Russia, as well as the Putinled Russia's annexation of Crimea and military actions in the Donbas region. The result was the creation of puppet quasi-states under control of Russia.

As a resident of Donetsk at that time, I had the opportunity to witness many events firsthand. There were protests, crowds seizing administrative and governmental buildings, banks, and television stations. I saw buses arriving in the city filled with people from Russia pretending to be Ukrainian citizens, as well as the appearance of separatists armed with rifles and grenades. It was heartbreaking for us, supporters of the European path, to witness how the residents of Donetsk, Luhansk, and other cities were coerced into the new boundaries of a totalitarian entity through the use of weapons and force. This new entity lacked the rule of law and could be likened to a new Gulag. For those of us who fought against and exposed the myths of Russian propaganda, which claimed that Donbas was the territory of the Russian Empire and its inhabitants were "other" Russians, slightly different from the rest of Russia's population, it was painful to see how the Russian authorities openly shifted from ideological battles to military and violent actions.

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Two years before these tragic events in Donetsk, the European Football Championship took place. Football fans from all over Europe roamed the city. There were supporters from Poland, England, Spain, Sweden, and other countries. Flags of European states and the European Union were hung around the city. A new airport was built to accommodate guests from all over the world. But in a short time, everything changed. The dream of a European future was shattered by brute force, coercion under arms, and intolerance toward dissenting opinions. In their own city, Ukrainians became strangers. And it became fashionable to hate everything European.

The first three articles, "Others Don't Walk Here," "Donbas in the Mist" (about Serhiy Zhadan's novel "The Orphanage"), and "Longitude of days" by Volodymyr Rafeienko, were written during the initial phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The next three articles, namely "Do Russians Want Peace?" "20 Days That Changed the World" (about Mstislav Chernov's film "20 Days in Mariupol"), and "Eastern-Western Divan: Allies and Ukraine," reflect on the aftermath of the full-scale Russian onslaught against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022. And this war is far from over.

It will soon be two years since Russia started the war against Ukraine—an independent European state. However, rereading articles written several years ago, I am convinced that they have not become outdated. The main task of the collection was and remains an attempt to debunk the myth of Donbas as a territory of Russia.

And if in the preface of 2018, I wrote that the old myth was coming to an end, then now, after the atrocities of Russian troops in Bucha, after the destruction of the city of Mariupol by the Russian army with a population of 450 thousand people, provocations at nuclear power plants, and much more, it can be boldly stated that the old myth has come to an end.

The collection considers a small part of works by Ukrainian authors. The number of created works in different types of art and genres that have appeared since 2014 and up to the current moment is so great that it is not possible that the whole corpus of works could be included in one anthology.

(Shift of myths or shift of worldview paradigm) Preface 2018

The term "Donbass", as well as the term "Dikoe pole" (Wild Field) has always caused rejection and kept a certain pejorative connotation. The territory of the Donetsk steppe has never been empty.

For the inhabitants of marshy and forested areas, it appeared as the "Wild Field." For these residents, the open spaces of the steppe were always hostile and posed a danger. The term "Donbass," which emerged in the first quarter of the 19th century, reflected the colonial fervor and aggressive policies of the Russian Empire, for which this territory was and remained until the end of the Soviet period a source of raw materials, as well as a protective territorial buffer zone.

The foundations of the Russian-Soviet myths, which fed the local heterogeneous population, have persisted over time. For newcomers from other provinces of the empire, especially for subsequent generations, hooks or magnets were needed. Fathers came for work, but they remained strangers here, newcomers. And already for the second generation, the sons, in order to take root, needed their own myth, tale, their version, with their variations and forgeries, a myth about a special character. This continued in independent Ukraine for a quarter of a century, with politicians, historians, artists, and others exploiting old myths. The new Ukrainian politics could not determine the "vector" of its development until D-day arrived. Russian aggression began, relying on myths, and according to the plans of Moscow strategists, it was supposed to breathe new life into outdated structures of lies. However, everything turned out the other way around. Today, it can be said that we are witnessing a shift in milestones, a paradigm shift, a change in myths. Whether thanks to or despite the war and occupation, a new perspective on the Donbas and its history is forming in Ukrainian society. The war, the airport, Debaltseve, the "cyborgs"

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(soldiers who defended the Donetsk airport for many months), the retreat from Ilovaisk, the battle for Saur-Mogila, and reports from the western front are uprooting the old coordinate system of the RussianSoviet Donbas. The myth comes to an end.

One way or another, these processes are reflected in the works of contemporary Ukrainian authors, artists whose creations, firstly, attempt to understand, "reinterpret" the new situation, the painful and negative experience, and, secondly, lay the foundation for a new, already Ukrainian myth about the Wild Field. This is the subject of the first issue of our journal.

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#DonBas#DonBas#DonBas #DonBas#DonBas#DonBas #DonBas#DonBas#DonBas #DonBas#DonBas#DonBas #DonBas#DonBas#DonBas #DonBas#DonBas#DonBas #DonBas#DonBas#DonBas #DonBas#DonBas#DonBas

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Others don't go here

(When the future was like “In the Fog” by Sergei Loznitsa)

The material we are publishing emerged after watching the film "In the Fog" (2012) by director Sergei Loznitsa. Recent events in Ukraine and in the world, and the emergence in the public consciousness of such concepts as "little green men" and "polite soldiers," associated with the annexation of Crimea by Russia, have prompted a different perspective on the old text. In other words, readers are offered the opportunity to view Loznitsa's film not only as an object of art historical and, in particular, film-critical analysis, but also from a socio-political standpoint.

Maybe it's not the right time to write about this... Or maybe it is. In the spring of 2015, this director was awarded a prize in Nuremberg for his latest documentary film.1 Perhaps, based on the political and military realities that we have been trying to endure for over a year now, it would be quite timely to revisit the latest feature film by director Sergei Loznitsa, in order to, amidst the chaos and on the brink of rupture between one side and the other, the division between left and right, discover the Other, the Stranger, the Outsider not somewhere else, but within ourselves, dividing us into unequal, torn halves of the whole. We'll be talking about the film "In the Fog" from 2012.2

The film depicts events from 1942. Belarusian partisans are fighting in the forests against Hitler's Nazi army. Two partisans capture a third,

1 The documentary film “Maidan” was awarded at the International Human Rights Film Festival in Nuremberg.

2 Shortly after the start of the full-scale war in February 2022, Sergei Loznitsa made accusatory statements against the Russian authorities and condemned the war. However, just a few months later, the director Sergei Loznitsa faced obstruction from his Ukrainian colleagues. Loznitsa tried to distinguish between Russian aggression and Russian filmmakers. He opposed the idea of banning Russian cultural figures from European and global film festivals and other cultural events. For taking this stance, the director faced obstruction from his Ukrainian colleagues and was excluded from the Ukrainian Film Academy.

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who survived interrogation by the Gestapo. The fact that he survived in the Gestapo raises suspicions and leads them to see him as a traitor. He initially hides behind the backs of the two main partisan heroes, linked by a shared past: their place of residence, childhood, common circle of acquaintances, moral norms, rules, and behavior. They have their own architecture of relationships, which neither the communists since their rise to power in 1917 nor the Nazis during their two-year occupation (1941-1942) were able to break. In general, the relationship between the two main characters is not a choice between the Reds and the Whites, the Communists and the Fascists, but an attempt to understand how to live on for a single organism once divided by a civil war that ended without reconciliation and words of forgiveness. Even the police officers (hilfspolizei) in the film, for the two main characters (who together form one protagonist), are not terrifying traitors but rather funny old men whom you can give a punch. How could it be otherwise if the police officers themselves are bound by the same set of rules, territory of residence, patriarchal norms of morality and ethics as the protagonists? This cannot be said about the inconspicuous Third, or the Other and the Stranger, the Alien (the antagonist) – these are more fitting words. For him, betrayal and treachery carry no meaningful or moral burden at all; he only recognizes power, driven solely by fear and some algorithm given to him from "above," from the "higher-ups," in the "big land." Power and fear are the true victors in that war. The relationships are not built on traditional foundations but solely on fear and the resulting lawlessness. Fear breaks all the bases of traditions of communication and coexistence; from now on, it dictates the conditions of behavior, and violence merely executes the villainy.

The Other, the Stranger, the Newcomer has no past, and the future is only possible for descendants. But even that future is in question. Therefore, one can kill the fathers and mothers of these descendants, in the name of... But what exactly? There is no answer to this question. Exactly this semantic and moral deadlock triggers the mechanism of falsehood, giving rise to myths that justify cruelty in the past and in the future.

But the Other, the Stranger, the Newcomer lacks honor in the mind and faith in the heart; there is only orders and expediency. With the advent of modern times, the sense of unity, of all-humanity, responsible

for each other, disappears, and the moral foundations of personal existence and coexistence in society vanish. Freedom is regarded as a meaningless form of license. Such freedom can only be restrained by external force, not by the internal moral mechanisms of humanity, but by totalitarian states with their inhumane laws.

In such conditions of existence without freedom, but under the laws of evil and violence, "third" people emerge - Others, Strangers, Newcomer, for whom questions of honor, betrayal, and truth simply do not exist, but are replaced by a piece of paper, a nondisclosure agreement.

A "law" is established, a quasi-legality that serves as a formal pretext for robbery and violence (legally permitted) by the passive majority. Legality based on fear and submission leads to the emergence of "Councils," "Unions," and other "republics."

Donbas in the Mist

(On the Novel “The Orphanage” by Serhiy Zhadan)

The military road movie begins with the exploration of space and hidden threats. Just by opening the book and reading a few paragraphs and pages, the reader finds themselves captured by a territory where there is no time, which we will discuss further in this collection. Thus, the reader also finds themselves ensnared by war, which has not yet been named and does not have a stable phraseology not only in history textbooks but also in the consciousness of readers and inhabitants.

Suspense

The border mark, the territory of Desht-i-Kypchak (Cumania), the conditional “Wild Field” (Dikoe pole), has always been a dividing barrier between the West and the East, between war and peace, between logos and thanatos. Desperate people and tribes settled here, lived for a short or long time, but still dissolved in history like mist over the river Kalmius (we'll talk about the mist later).

Zhadan begins his novel1 by creating an atmosphere of tension, with a latent intimidation of those who dare to step into seemingly familiar but poorly understood territories. From the very first lines, there is an unconscious alarm and a sense of suspension: the situations, time, space, and people inhabit not the pages of the novel, but a misty landscape deliberately left unnamed by Serhiy Zhadan.

"The snow in the yard is pink-blue, reflecting the setting sun and the evening sky, darkening with its deep pores. Sharp to the touch, driven away by the March water, it covers the sticky black soil, so no forecasts are needed: winter will last long enough for everyone to get used to, suffer, and adapt."

1 In Ukraine, the novel was published in 2016 by Meridian Czernowitz. The Englishlanguage version was published in 2021: Zhadan, Serhiy. The Orphanage: A Novel. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021.

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This is the first alarm: snow, winter that never ends. It's not the bright-frosty, New Year's feeling of winter, joyful, bringing renewal. Not "Western European," summarizing the commercial balances of the year and planning new steps and strategy on the professional field of the European layman after the holidays, no. It's the eternal state of anxiety and fear that always lurked in the remote corners of consciousness, ready to sprout poisonous grains at a convenient moment.

The second alarm: a fire that burned down half of the house.

"Fifteen years ago, when everyone still lived together, a railroad worker set fire to his half. They managed to put it out. But the railroad worker didn't want to rebuild – he went to the station, got on a train heading east, and disappeared from their lives forever."

15 years before the onset, war peered through the window, and the wise or intuitive people gathered and departed towards the east.

"The streets are empty, no one anywhere, only at the station from time to time the cars couple up, metal against metal, as if someone is rearranging iron furniture. And since midday, from the city side, all day long, from morning, heavy single explosions — sometimes more intense, sometimes scattered."

Space exploration: The house, the street near the railway station,

workshops, the streets are empty, there's no work. An actively negative background pushes the characters to the forefront and even further to the front line, and even further! beyond the boundaries of the novel and life. Then the same thing repeats itself already in the orphanage itself. "Pasha sits down, takes a cup with unfinished coffee, thinks where to pour it, finally waves his hand, sprinkles black tea there, and pours it with boiling water."

The dirty cup, the lack of water - characteristics of limited space, the shrinking of life.

The explosions - this is the third alarm, but already not on the level of intuition or suspense, but a fully realized threat. Explosions in the absence of work, in empty streets or in a half-burned house - this is already danger!

And now the threats take on clear outlines. People on tanks under an unclear, barely visible flag, and after that, familiar places from childhood turn into unfamiliar and even hostile spaces, where everything familiar harbors dangers and death.

"It's silly to think they have nothing to fear anyway, that they don't belong here, that they don't support anyone..."

This is a foolish thought that everything will be fine, that we are on our own and the war will take its course. No.

Fear

It eats away at the soul, it blurs the lines between reality and convention. Fear subjugates a person and begins to govern. I remember a conversation one of my acquaintances had with history professors at Donetsk National University. The conversation took place in the summer of 2014, when the city was being seized by "polite people," separatists supported by Russia. The professors were 50-60 years old, my friend was 30. They studied the history of the "Great Patriotic War," were well-versed in the causes and origins of the war, applied various methods to study their favorite subject, traveled back to the Soviet era in the CMEA countries, lectured, laid flowers at the monuments to Soviet soldiers who died in Eastern Europe... In short, they knew everything about the war. They shouted at my friend, saying that he, we (the youth), didn't understand what it was. War! There will be a lot of blood, a lot of blood! They were right, we knew nothing about war, we

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only saw it on TV screens, from the perspective of Soviet propaganda films about war. There, brave soviet soldiers and courageous partisans always defeated the foolish and cowardly soldiers of the Wehrmacht. And they were right again, there is a lot of blood spilled! But my friend was not afraid to say who he was and whose side he was on.

This fear lived in many, and with such fear, teacher Pasha encounters at the boarding school. He sees it in the eyes of the little girls forgotten by everyone in the world in this provincial boarding school. Forgotten by parents, guardians, but not forgotten by two people - the educator Nina and the physical education instructor Valera.2

"But looking at them, looking at the paint under their eyes, at the fear they try to cover with this paint, he understands that no, it's not about that, their fear is too deep, constant, they live with it...

Because, Nina says, the thing is not about clothes, the thing is about dignity. And absence of fear. Well, she doesn't say it exactly like that, but Pasha understands it just like that. And it's true, he thinks, everything is right: the thing is not about clothes, the thing is not about what you wear. We are all here, if you think about it, living like in an orphanage. Abandoned by everyone, but painted over. We wear whatever we get..."

The physical education instructor refuses to believe that the past, in the fallen soviet empire, was bad, while the teacher Nina insists on the opposite. This is an exemplary dialogue. Those who are stuck in the past refuse to see it as bad. The unprocessed historical past distorts the perspective of the present day. Those who live in the present and are focused on the future, on the contrary, remember the bad in the past, and this memory helps them to process and survive.

"Do not hum, " Nina continues speaking calmly and indistinctly, as if confessing mortal sins and already knowing what awaits her. "Of course, no one died of hunger, as you can see, but I cannot recall anything good about my, as you say, childhood. You know, Valeriy Petrovich, what they called me in school? You, as a gym teacher, might find it interesting. Sportswoman."

"Why?" Pasha wonders.

"Because I always wore sneakers. In summer and winter. Someone from the neighbors gave them to me. I didn't have a dad, I won't tell you what my mom was doing. But whatever she was doing, it didn't bring her any money. And she, by the way, didn't have a dad either. And she also spent

2 Pasha, the educator Nina, and the physical education instructor Valera are characters in the novel.

5

all her childhood in other people's clothes. And she also didn't recall anything good about her childhood. And about your country the same. And you were not afraid not because your country was so wonderful, but because someone always covered you: if not your parents, then the Komsomol district committee. But no one covered me. And them," she points behind her, at the painted blue walls. "No one will cover them either."

In the dialogues, the characters become more subjective, unlike the narrative, where the hero merges with the author and disappears altogether.

The Mist

Another important characteristic of the Donbas is its mist. Those who have experienced the autumn fog in the steppe cities of Donetsk, Horlivka, Stakhanov, and other towns, mining settlements, and villages of the "black triangle" during autumn (October-November) and winter (during thaws) know what it's like. They know the thick mist that blankets the streets, enveloping everything in its midst. In this sense, these Donbas, Cuman cities resemble London, Milan, or

other Lombardian cities during autumn. But this mist is not just mist; it's a counterpoint, a pause from which one can emerge differently or elsewhere, at another time.

"The fog instantly envelops the black coat, the blue plastic. Pasha walks towards the sound of empty bottles clinking together, echoing hollowly. Like a shepherd who doesn't graze his cattle so much as he holds onto them, afraid of getting lost in the thick, compressed air."

In the misty accumulation, barely discernible against the majestic backdrop, but captured, mixed, compressed into a unified palimpsest, are layers spanning epochs from the cries of nomads, the fires on the steppe, silent and humiliated burial mounds, through rhymed terricones, strikes of the pickaxe against the luminous layer of oily anthracite, to industrially-pixelated fragments of reality, revealing the entire history starting from the Paleolithic. Whether the fog shapes archaic consciousness or, conversely, consciousness influences

the weather, is unknown. However, Zhadan manages to grasp this industrially-archaic consciousness and describe it in just one sentence.

"The sweet smell of gas in the morning kitchen, the rustle of rain outside the window, like the distant work of the ocean: in March, he felt this strange stretch every time, as if a spring was pressing into his heart."

If you've ever had to get up early for work, stoke a coal stove, pack food in your lunchbox ('tormozok') or grab it from the fridge prepared by your loved ones, if you've ever stepped out onto the street covered in ash from burnt coal ('zhuzhelka'), then you're familiar with those internal movements in the chest area that awaken and act with the first scents of spring.

Those who haven't experienced spring in the muddy March, who haven't kneaded the gray-yellow mixture of snow, clay, and ash ('zhuzhelka'), won't be able to understand me. Vaguely, it resembles furniture left out in the rain during a big move, when furniture and other items are taken out onto the street and not yet loaded into the car.

"Torn from its usual space, exposed to the rain, dusted with ash — all this filling immediately lost any value, and clothes smell of poverty and neglect, and the dishes gleam in the light of the headlights with unwashed grease, and the furniture resembles skeletons unearthed from the wet January ground. And this smell permeates everything around, so there's no way to wash it off now, no way to clean it up."

Ours-Others

"Talking and talking, but he himself thinks: who am I talking to? Who are they? What are they doing in the station duty master's office?"

The main question of this war.3 To answer it, you first need to answer another: who are we, who am I? And such markers as a teacher, from the station, local - no longer fit. They too can be teachers, tractor drivers, and even locals.

"Nobody is fighting against me," Pasha retorted dryly, as the conversation began to appeal to him less and less. "I'm not for anyone."

To make a choice independently. Without orders. After all, even the "Soviet motherland" was defended out of necessity, by order. Just try not to show up at the military enlistment office. But the residents of the foggy territories never had a choice without orders and pressure. And

3 In this context, the term "war" refers to the events of 2014-2015 that preceded the fullscale war initiated by Russia against Ukraine. The full-scale war began on February 24, 2022.

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they have become so accustomed to this "absence" that they accept it as voluntary expression of will.

The Exodus of Egypt. And what does it turn out to be? Foreign, cold land? They walked, lived on it for a while, and that's enough, heading west? Like the smart owner of the burnt half of the house who headed east.

"Did you at least not lose your passport?" the boy asks. "If they ask for registration?"

"Do you think it will help?" Pasha asks himself.

"Maybe it will, maybe it won't," the boy calmly adds.

Once again, uncertainty. Both sides could shoot us! Who are we, on whose land? State flags are torn down, and others cannot be taken seriously, with too much of them being filled with "office design" and gamer tricks. Virtual tank battles, only this time the "tanks" with flags are maximally real. Until we work through our collective past, as we use the following phrases at home, in the office, in taxis: "What a country we've lost!" or "Sure, Stalin went too far, but the idea was good." or "If they arrested him, there must have been a reason. Innocent people aren't jailed here." or "But I spent my entire childhood in pioneer camps and sausage was 2.20." or "We had stability. Maybe not everything was available, but I looked to the future with confidence." or "Nobody loved our country, but everyone was afraid of it!", until this "future" will evade us, appearing before us with bloody stigmata of an unhealed but not yet passed past. But the wounds of the past will endlessly give birth to the madness of reason and chimeras and monsters, produced by a diseased mind.

The key scene, in my opinion, is the encounter between the main character, the village teacher Pasha, and the elderly soldier referred to as "Metalhead" by the author of the novel. In this scene, Metalhead presents Pasha with a piece of coal containing the imprint of a fern leaf from millions of years ago. The specimen is museum-grade, but the museum no longer exists, and the elderly soldier suggests that Pasha take the coal to the school.

"Fern," the soldier shouts. "This is a fern."

Coal, that's the holder, and nobody else. As long as you're mining it, you're a local. But if not, sorry, "get out of here." Because locals were

last seen here when that fern imprinted on the coal was growing and blooming. Therefore, the main task after liberation is to change the paradigm. Either we need to dispel the myth of "you can't put us on our knees" and transform all the mines into art spaces, or new tanks with new designer flags on their towers will arrive through the interval.

Alien War

There's a constant sense that this isn't our war, that it's not even our standoff with the northern enemy and that it's all happening neither here nor with us. It's another war, a foreign war, once left unresolved on mainland soil, now constantly exported to the nearby borderlands where shots from cannons, mortars, and BUKs (missile system) can reach. Not ours, someone else's civil conflicts, an unhealed conflict by time, society, or the cunning actions of politicians, spread from the center to the periphery, igniting bloody conflicts. Only others pay with their blood, those who were drawn into the vortex first by the process of creation, and then by the collapse of the rotten empire.

Buryat tractor drivers4, Moscow reenactors5, and just Russian dropouts, pushed out by Putin's reality, are leaving (the smart ones to Europe, and the rest) to Ukraine, thinking it's like going on safari, they believe. They try to find themselves through bloodshed, not realizing that it's their internal and personal conflict, a conflict within Russian society and a conflict of individuals with the Russian authorities, who still manage to manipulate people's consciousness, creating a strange political monster and a system that combines capitalist values (personal property, visibility under the law, constitution) with Soviet lawlessness, with the ideal of a tough guy from a St. Petersburg backyard.

2018

4 During the military conflict in Donbas in 2014-2015, among the Russian tank crews, there were many residents of Buryatia who referred to themselves as "peaceful tractor drivers."

5 Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, was indeed involved in the seizure of the city of Sloviansk and the initiation of military actions in Donbas. Apart from his service in the Russian intelligence, he was also interested in historical reenactment.

«Longitude of days» of Volodymyr Rafeienko

This small essay, most likely, resembles not so much a literary or cultural analysis of the novel, but rather a kind of journey "back into the past" using the method developed by Volodymyr Rafeienko in the pages of his novel, where the length of days smoothly transitions into the infinite duration of existence.

PART 1. THE CITY THAT DOESN'T EXIST

The new novel by Volodymyr Rafeienko1 is an attempt to make sense of the cruel reality that alienates you from reality, as reality takes a different path, and you, like an eternal outcast, wander along a different trail. It is an attempt to refresh the old dominants of your consciousness and worldview, to which you are accustomed, which have survived as atavism from Soviet times (for example, the idea that we have one homeland and the capital is Moscow, even though we live in another country, with the capital in Kyiv). This is a painful journey, for some a return to lost and forgotten origins, for others a path of constructing new value baggage and consciousness. There are also elements of propaganda according to the laws of wartime, which the reader accepts as a forced measure, a measure of self-defense, firstly, and, secondly, as a measure that is more effective in conditions of exile and war.

In the first part, before delving into the depths of the novel's plot twists, I would like to pause and reflect on those moments that have shaped and continue to shape the so-called local mentality, the myths that govern the consciousness of the residents, distorting reality and influencing the future, which eternally frightens, unlike the past, which, fueled by nostalgia and distorted history, is perceived by the Donbas as a "golden age". Despite encompassing the Red and White Terrors

1 All quotes in the article are sourced from the following edition: Volodymyr Rafeienko. "Longitude of Days" Kyiv: Fabula, 2017.

of the Civil War, the absorption of territories by the Soviet Empire, the quasi-industrialization at the expense of citizens, the events of 1937, the Second World War, forced labor for the restoration of mines, the Brezhnev era, known now as the "stagnation" period, the turbulent 1990s, the unprofitability of mines, and the decline of the coal industry since the late 1960s, the paradigm of the stereotype of consciousness, known as the "miner's character," persists even in the absence of its representatives (due to the thinning of the layer of those working in the coal industry) and so forth. In other words, the reality that spawned certain myths has long since faded away, yet the myths continued to dominate in the mass consciousness of the citizens.

In this regard, the stylistic elements of the novel serve as a kind of compensation for the subsequent relatively comfortable existence of consciousness and body in the local Donbas reservation. This compensation, which even today, when war and explosions push thoughts of the future to the sidelines, clings to the salvational and comfortable notion of "oh, how good it used to be!". The war has divided those who are capable of freeing themselves from the captivity

of "Soviet" coercive illusions and those who are unable to do so. However, the path to liberation lies in metaphysical realms rather than simply being paved with asphalt on the wide roads in the directions of Mariupol, Horlivka, Kostiantynivka, and others in the Donetsk region.

Volodymyr Rafeienko, like a true alchemist and master, will show the path he himself has walked and which everyone must traverse in order to find new meanings and strengths to live, create, and continue the world after themselves. This path involves death/transition, for to become a Christian, one must kill the Hellene and the Jew within oneself. Similarly, in our case, to become a citizen, one must slay the slave within oneself, and to become Ukrainian, one must extinguish the "Soviet" person within.

The Omens of the City of Z 1980s.

The first time I visited Donetsk was in the early 1980s. I was a little boy who didn't understand much yet and was getting ready for school, for the first grade, in a completely different city of the Soviet Empire.

Culture & Cinema Studies

yaroslav vasiutkevych

DONBAS

Shift of myths or shift of worldview paradigm

Collection of essays

Layout design, editing Yarr Zabratski

CUNEBUS.ORG 2018-2024

Having entered the world cinema not through the front gates of genre or commercial cinema, the Mexican director has been a favorite at international A-list film festivals for 20 years. Despite his success and awards, Carlos Reygadas has remained the enfant terrible of world cinema, remaining on the margins of not only Hollywood but also arthouse cinema. Touching on acute contemporary themes in his films: post-past, gender, colonial problems of society, the search and destruction of Home, the collapse of Time, family betrayal and death, Reygadas walks through them like a razor blade, approaching "slowly" to the boundaries of Limbo, to the transcendental, realizing by means of cinematography the persistent search for a New Time. This book on the work of C. Reygadas is the first comprehensive work to be published for the first time in Europe and in the world.

the new book has been published:

#MEMORY #GENDER #SEX #PRESENT DAY RELIGIOSITY #COLONIAL WOUND

#TRANSCENDENTALISM #CUCOLD #MODERNITY #TELESITY #CHRONOTOPE #PRE-HISTORY #POST-PAST #DIEGESIS

#MINIMALISM #SLOW CINEMA

#WHITE FATHERS' BURDEN

#WONDER #VERTICALTIME #SKINGAZE