Ukrainian traditions, decolonization, and reporting from Bakhmut: An Interview with Myroslav Laiuk
Myroslav Lauk is a poet, novelist, and journalist. He is a winner of the Smoloskyp Literary Award (Ukraine), the Kovaliv Fund Award (USA), the Oles Honchar Prize (Germany and Ukraine), and the Litakcent Literary Award (Ukraine.) His first novel Babornia was a finalist for the 2016 BBC Book of the Year Award in Ukraine. Myroslav’s work has been translated into eleven languages, and his poetry has been set to music by two Kyiv-based music groups of international repute: Dakh Daughters and Oy Sound System. He holds a Ph.D. in Literary Studies from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, where he also teaches. Apofenie contributor Olena Lysenko spoke to Myroslav about the added importance of Ukrainian traditions during wartime, the challenges of detangling Ukrainian culture from Russian influence, his reportages from the frontline, and more. Since this interview took place, Myroslav has made additional trips to Bakhmut for his reporting.
You spent the Christmas and New Year’s holidays on the frontlines. Could you describe what motivated you to go and what you saw there?
Throughout its history – even in ancient times – Ukraine has been one of Europe's agricultural centers, feeding not only its own population but those of other countries. This became clearly visible when, a few months ago, Russia began to block the export of Ukrainian grain, and the world started to talk about famine. Ukrainians have a very close connection with the land and temporal cyclicity–that is why holidays and traditions are so important to us. Not in the sense of patriarchy, but traditions as tender childhood memories. It's more about the beauty of national patterns, the meaning of holiday greetings, a repetition of the dishes that one's grandmother cooked. I was curious about the people closely tied to these customs but could not go through the rites and rituals held every year, without exception, this year due to war.
In Hulyaipole, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, we chose to go during Christmas to show what was left of that year's holiday, how soldiers adapt to new conditions, what values they hold onto, and what did not pass the test of fire.
Christmas is the main holiday to which my earliest and brightest childhood memories are connected. My great-grandfather was a carol leader who would conduct rehearsals and go door-to-door with a group of carolers on Christmas holidays. I have a notebook with his handwritten carols. And these texts are based not only on religious motives but also pre-Christian ones.
Amid today's uncertain times, we seek stability and security. Christmas traditions are a steadfast pillar for us, unfaltering even amidst the world's chaos. In Hulyaipole, soldiers at the frontline have managed to maintain the traditional observance of the 12 lenten dishes and even went caroling from unit to unit, despite the ongoing threat of enemy helicopters and the constant sound of gunfire. They also penned their own Christmas carol, bringing to mind the Ukrainian rebels' famous "Sad Holy Evening in the 46th Year." That carol was written during a time when the punitive battalions of the NKVD were attempting to stamp out Ukrainian identity and culture, punishing or exiling the most prominent members of Ukrainian society.
Returning to traditions is currently the only possibility for Ukrainians to preserve themselves physically, to survive.
When people understand their heritage and what holds value, they possess a clear sense of self and purpose. A solid cultural memory is essential in this realization. The ongoing struggle against the Russian Empire marks our cultural memory. These soldiers at the frontline are fighting to be with their loved ones during next year's Christmas. This can only be achieved if Russia is defeated. A soldier who goes by the callsign "Forest" from a village in the Carpathian Mountains, located 1,000 kilometers from Hulyaipole, stated: “I hope this will be the last sorrowful Christmas. I truly hope it is.”
You were also in Bakhmut, right?
The photographer Danylo Pavlov, with whom I collaborate on reportages, organized a trip to Bakhmut through the State Emergency Service. He told me an incredible story about the last rescue team left in this city, which is now mostly destroyed and is a genuine fortress and symbol of Ukrainian indomitability. Intelligence sources indicated that the Russian military had been directed to capture Bakhmut by January 1, which is why we chose to visit during that time of year-end transitions and military unease.
Although the State Emergency Service rescuers were technically instructed to evacuate the city, they decided to stay behind because there are still people, mostly elderly and the vulnerable, who have chosen not to evacuate and this poses a significant humanitarian challenge. These 70-year-old grandmothers, abandoned or fearful of leaving their homes, often refuse to budge, insisting that they will stay put as it's their homeland.
The rescue team has been trying to assist these people, despite having lost their homes to the disaster. Their families have since moved to cities on the "rear" of the frontline, like Kropyvnytskyi and Dnipro, which people in the West often mistake as “normally” functioning. In reality, every city in Ukraine is under constant threat of Russian missile attacks.
The rescue team leader, Dmytro, has only seen his child twice–when she was born in the Dnipro during the summer and when she was baptized.
Despite the difficult situation, the rescuers tried their best to create a festive mood, with the unit leader secretly putting up a Christmas tree in Bakhmut's central square. However, the head of the unit warned us not to post it on the internet immediately, as the Russians would likely bomb it.
The city has been almost entirely destroyed, with fields and roads reduced to rubble. The constant blowing wind and multiple ravines only add to the desolation, yet one adapts.
However, it's alarming to see how quickly one can get used to such a dire situation. In contrast, cities like Kyiv, where I reside, continue to function normally even when there are no air alarms. The theaters are screening excellent premieres, and the coffee shops serve various types of coffee from Ethiopia and Kenya. In contrast, Bakhmut has been without water, light, or heat for months.
Understandably, foreigners get concerned when they learn I'm in Kyiv, while I worry more about the people living in Bakhmut.
Where did you go after Bakhmut?
I went to my parents in the Carpathians because I hadn't been there in a long time and needed to emotionally recharge. The village of Kryvorivnya, which is near my hometown, is special. It was there, at the end of the nineteenth- and beginning of the twentieth-century when Ukraine was torn apart by empires, that intelligentsia from Eastern Ukraine would come and understand that despite the thousands of kilometers between them, we are one people. In Kryvorivnya, there is a very special caroling tradition. The Orthodox church usually celebrates Christmas on January 7. However, the local priest was the first in Ukraine to decide to celebrate it with the West, not with Russia, on December 25. Father Ivan always stood out with his revolutionary approaches; this time, he led a whole movement to refuse to celebrate Christmas with the Russians. Kryvorivnya has several dozen hamlets, each with its own group of carolers. One group consists of approximately 20 men who sing carols, blow trumpets and go from house to house. And on Epiphany, all the groups gather together near the church. There were fewer of them this year – some carolers died in the war, and some are currently fighting on the frontline. But the caroling, despite everything, took place. And a new calendar cycle has begun.
While reading your reportages, I couldn’t help but think of the stubborn old grandmothers who continue to live near the frontline and refuse to leave. It reminded me of a moment from the film The Road to Home by Ukrainian director Dmytro Avdeyev when an elderly woman returns in 2017 from the safety of Kyiv to a village in Donbas and justifies it by saying: “If we all leave from there, there will be no Ukraine left.” It seems that, quite paradoxically, the closer one is to the frontline, the less fear they experience.
This is a critical psychological moment, as our brain does everything possible to prevent us from going insane. Under such conditions, people start to choose new roles for themselves and seek out a new comfort zone. It would be much easier for volunteers if they could easily persuade these people to leave, as those who try to bring food and water to them are killed every day under shelling. In Bakhmut, people have grown accustomed to sleeping in houses with broken windows, simply covering themselves with a few blankets. These are the harsh realities that currently have no solution.
The unfortunate truth of our current reality is that people can become accustomed to living in a war zone.
What was it like when you switched from celebrating Christmas on January 7 to December 25? Did you feel tempted to celebrate twice? Or did you regret losing the childhood memories of celebrating Christmas in January?
I deeply love holidays, and the more, the merrier. I do not associate them with the church. Here in the Carpathians, these celebrations are very special and accompanied by many traditions that interest me aesthetically and anthropologically. The atmosphere of entertainment has been around for hundreds of years.
This year, I celebrated two Christmases, but it felt strange. Next year, I will likely only celebrate it on the twenty-fifth of December. For me, the importance of this gesture lies in the ability to disconnect oneself from the "Russian world" because its influence is dangerous. Even if we defeat the "Russian world" on the battlefield, its seeds can continue to grow elsewhere. Russian imperialism is a unique threat, as it has managed to deceive people and infiltrate the liberal twenty-first century.
Ukraine must become entirely free of Russian influence, eliminating all metastases to prevent history from repeating itself in the future.
Currently, the tectonic plates of consciousness are shifting among Ukrainians. People I never expected to change are beginning to come around to the gravity of the situation. Even those who were Russian-speaking only yesterday are now among the most fervent advocates of speaking Ukrainian, and their strange complexes towards the "great Russian literature" are disappearing. Unlike Ukrainian literature, which has significant medieval, Renaissance, and baroque works, Russian literature lacked these genres. Regardless, when it comes to culture, language, and religion, I am firmly against forcing people to do something. The most important thing now is Ukraine's military victory on the battlefield. Then, we can figure out how to move forward.
Some people suggest that Ukraine should transition to the Latin alphabet and switch to celebrating Christmas on December 25 according to the Gregorian calendar. They argue that the Cyrillic alphabet ties us to Russia. What do you think about the possibility of such a transition?
It's an idea without much substance, in my opinion. The Cyrillic alphabet was used for a thousand years, long before Moscow existed. There are hundreds of different writing systems around the world. We need to implement fundamental reforms, drive out corrupt judges, fight against corruption, promote social initiatives, and create conditions for small businesses. Whether we use Latin or Cyrillic is not the issue we should be focusing on.
Our priority should be our survival as a nation and as individuals. Therefore, we must work hard to maintain our spirit, obtain weapons, and destroy false Russian narratives with the plain truth rather than creating artificial problems.
What do you think about the current trend of popularizing and actively embracing Ukrainian traditions? Why do you think this trend is happening? It seems that this year, more than ever, we have remembered our traditions, songs, embroidery, and our own identity. Do you think this trend will continue to develop? Or will it fade away after our victory against Russia?
It's all interconnected: speaking Ukrainian, reading Ukrainian books, and learning our history. We have a language, culture, and traditions, meaning we have something to defend and to avenge. Someone might have tried kutya for the first time this year because Russian policies aimed to denationalize and eradicate these small traditions. In Bakhmut, people spoke to me in Ukrainian, even though there's a widespread stereotype that only Russian is spoken in the East. We forget that Kharkiv was entirely Ukrainian-speaking until the 1930s or that the great twentieth-century poets Vasyl Stus and Volodymyr Sosiura were born in the East. Following the 1932-33 famine, Russians were relocated into the homes of Ukrainians, and Russian culture was imposed on the surviving population. There were also periods where Russian authorities banned the Ukrainian language, and Ukraine's cultural elite was murdered, the most famous example of this being the Executed Renaissance. These days, Ukrainians are rediscovering themselves. All this was already here, but somewhere deep down. The general we talked to in Bakhmut was from Volnovakha in Donetsk Oblast, a town that embodies Russified industrial grayness in the consciousness of most Ukrainians. The town is now under Russian occupation and practically destroyed. The general talked about his family's courtyard with a garden of 30 apple trees and a nearby house. Every time he returned home at night from the military academy in Kharkiv, he smelled the scent of apples. He still can't forget that smell. Russian artillery fire has destroyed the apple trees, but the scent will remain with him forever.
I remember the flood of articles at the start of the full-scale invasion from Europe saying that Ukrainians should give up, but I'm terrified to imagine what it would have been like if Ukraine had not stood up against Russian aggression and surrendered.
The world underestimated us and their own cherished values. However, it was at that moment that Ukraine took on the responsibility of stopping an exceptional evil that was creeping into Europe.
Significant amounts of money from Russia have been flowing into Europe for a long time. When we talk about faculties or institutes of Slavic studies, it is pure fiction. There are no Slavic studies now, only Russia-centric studies in American and European universities, albeit under a different name. This policy of Russia worked even during the time of Simon Petliura when Russian agents blocked the performances of the Shchedryk choir in Paris in the early 1920s. Russia has bought many European thinkers and influenced the direction of research in the humanities. Today we see that Russia has funded both movements on the extreme left and right, research, publications, and professors. It has many sympathetic useful idiots among professors and ministers. Russia has always sold Tolstoy or Tchaikovsky not as artists but as advertisements for its way of life – deceptively false but nonetheless attractive. But the situation is starting to change. The more Russia reveals its wildness, the more ridiculous its propaganda sounds, and the more it devours people, the more the world understands Ukrainians.
At the beginning of the war, editors grabbed whatever material they could. In my articles, I did my best to convey the truth about events that took place in Ukrainian culture during the times of the USSR and the Russian Empire. For example, I wrote an article about the Executed Renaissance and four poets Russia killed in the last century – Yevhen Pluzhnyk, Vasyl Stus, Volodymyr Svidzinsky, and Pavlo Tychyna, for one American publication. It's difficult for most Western readers to understand that the NKVD locked up Volodymyr Svidzinsky, one of the most important twentieth-century Ukrainian writers, and burned him alive in a barn. It is an uncomfortable truth that out of 259 active writers from 1930-1940 when Russia was hunting down Ukraine's cultural elite, only 36 of them were not killed. The article about poets took a day and a half for the fact-checkers to complete. There is little information about it in English because the "great Russian culture" spent decades trying to block as much information about Ukrainian culture as possible. I appreciate the level of subjectivity that Ukraine is finally receiving. We have something to say, and it looks like we're beginning to be understood.
This year we celebrated the 300th anniversary of Hryhorii Skovoroda. Tell me about your radio project about him and your trip to the village of Skovorodynivka. Do you find it symbolic that the monument to the philosopher stood and survived after his museum was targeted in a Russian missile strike?
At the beginning of May 2022, a Russian rocket hit the Skovoroda Museum, where his tomb is located. The surrounding villages were not shelled, so we can assume that it was the main target. A month later, a rocket hit the Skovoroda Pedagogical University in Kharkiv. In both cases, the buildings were destroyed, but the monuments to Skovoroda survived.
Hryhoriy Skovoroda is the most prominent philosopher of the Baroque era in Eastern Europe. He studied at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and is the foundation of the Ukrainian philosophical tradition. Russia, which almost did not have its own Baroque tradition, quickly began to call him a Russian philosopher. However, it was difficult for them to appropriate his works because if we look at Skovoroda's main ideas – a love for humanity, forgiveness, self-knowledge, and sensitivity – we realize that they do not align with Russian values, especially those they demonstrate today. Russia is waging not only a war against our military and infrastructure but against our culture.
I wrote a script for a two-part film about Hryhoriy Skovoroda to commemorate the 300th anniversary of his birth. I found it interesting to write about him because, as Eliot says, we must constantly communicate with our greatest classics.
Skovoroda was born in 1722, a dark turning point in the history of Ukraine. In 1721, Peter I declared the Russian Empire, and the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the most important educational institution in Eastern Europe, was forcibly transitioned to the Russian language. The Zaporizhzhian Sich was destroyed, the church became controlled by Moscow, and brutal serfdom was instituted.
Using Skovoroda as an example, my goal was to illustrate the emergence of the most despicable aspects of the empire that crushed millions of people's lives. I aimed to shed light on Catherine II who is often portrayed grandly in Western TV shows even though she is the one who inflicted slavery upon Ukrainians. I also wanted to showcase how science and culture were destroyed at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and how Skovoroda's beliefs demonstrate that Ukrainian and Russian people, both then and now, are fundamentally different.
The academic voice of our film was the actress Ada Rohovtseva, while Serhiy Zhadan performed the voice of Skovoroda. He did a great job reading Skovoroda's poems in the original, old language, which sounded very organic. While writing the script, I went to the places Skovoroda frequented, which are only 20 km from Russia, wrote a report, and talked to the head of the Ukrainian Studies Department, who described the moment when a Russian missile destroyed the university. Afterward, I headed to Skovorodynivka and talked to the museum staff, who managed to save many items.
I want to say a few words about your novel Iron Water because my acquaintance with your work began with it. The central image of this story is Lesya Ukrainka, or rather her journey through the Carpathians. Why her?
Lesya Ukrainka remains one of Ukraine's most influential writers, renowned for her powerful ideas and exceptional writing style. She is the foremost writer of the modernist era and was ahead of her time, establishing a precedent for translating world classics into Ukrainian and defending her fellow modernists from critical attacks. Russian propaganda often perpetuates the stereotype of associating the Ukrainian people solely with peasants, yet Lesya, a hereditary aristocrat, holds a special fondness for them. I was intrigued to see how she shaped the characters' lives in my novel and how she brought them together.
In the novel, I tell the story of her journey from Vyzhnytsya (a town near the Carpathian Mountains) to the village of Burkut (deep in the Carpathians). The road that Lesya Ukrainka traveled is the same road that I walked for the first 17 years of my life.
To what extent has the perception of Ukrainian culture changed due to all-out war? How much have we grown? Is there a threat of being pushed back to the margins?
I would have given a completely different answer had I been asked about this question a year ago. Now I am satisfied with how Ukrainian artists react to our current reality. We are all very united now; everyone is holding the front in their own sphere.
In practical terms, modern culture involves interdisciplinary and collaborative projects that demand substantial funding. More than simply having talented screenwriters, directors, and actors is required to produce high-quality movies. It requires significant financial investment.
Despite limited resources, Ukrainians have shown a remarkable ability to create something extraordinary out of very little. However, this seems more like a miraculous feat than a typical outcome of cultural production.
Ukraine has become a hub for producing some of the most significant cultural content of the modern era.
The primary lesson that Ukraine imparts to the contemporary world is this: freedom cannot be taken for granted, nor can it be deferred if one does not fight for it. At times, when confronted with age-old malevolent imperialism, it can only be defended through bloodshed. Those who have grown comfortable with the comforts of civilization in recent years still cling to the notion of negotiating for peace and resolving the issue peacefully, thereby enabling Russia to inch closer to the West. However, in today's world, the language of defending freedom is the language of weapons, and Ukraine speaks this language with clarity and proficiency.
Interview conducted by Olena Lysenko
Photo by Bohdana Neborak