The War Seen From the "Grey Zone": Andrey Kurkov / Writer

Direct Talk

Andrey Kurkov
Writer

My life changed completely
at 5 a.m. on February 24

when three Russian missiles

exploded outside the window of
our apartment in the center of Kyiv.

Feb. 2022
Kyiv, Ukraine

On February 24, 2022,
Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

Shells also struck the capital, Kyiv.

It aims to protect people who have been bullied and
subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.

Vladimir Putin
Russian President

For that, we will strive for the de-militarization
and de-Nazification of Ukraine.

There is no end in sight for
Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

And attacks on the
two eastern states are intensifying.

Andrey Kurkov is a
Ukrainian writer of Russian origin.

The war turned his life upside down.

He has published around 20 novels

that touch on the complicated history
between Ukraine and Russia.

"DEATH AND THE PENGUIN" (1996)

His well-known work, "Death and the Penguin,"

has been translated into nearly 40 languages.

"GREY BEES" (2018)

Four years ago he published "Grey Bees,"

a novel set in the "grey zone"
between Russia and Ukraine.

This work foresaw the current war.

We spoke to Andrey Kurkov,

a writer caught between Russia and Ukraine.

The War Seen From the "Grey Zone"

I am very glad that
my parents did not live to see this war.

They died three years ago,
already at an advanced age.

I myself am an ethnic Russian.

Russian is my native language

and I write my novels in Russian.

This war is a double tragedy
for Russian-speaking Ukrainians

and Ukrainians of Russian ethnicity
such as myself.

Eastern Ukraine and southern Ukraine

are suffering the most
from Russian bombing and aggression.

These territories are populated mostly by

Russian-speaking people and ethnic Russians.

Psychologically

it is very hard for me
to live through this situation.

For me, the question of my native language
is a question of human rights.

It is my right to write
in my native language.

No one has forced me to switch to Ukrainian.

Some have suggested I switch to Ukrainian.

I speak Ukrainian without an accent

and can write articles and documentary prose,

but fiction prose requires
a finer sense of language,

something that's almost genetic.

And a person can only know
their native language,

the one they were born with, at such a level.

I feel nothing but shame for Russia

and feel ashamed to speak loudly in Russian.

I will most likely not publish my books
in Russian until the end of the war,

and maybe I won't publish them
afterwards either.

Andrey Kurkov
1961 Born in Leningrad (now St.Petersburg)

Andrey Kurkov was born in 1961

to Russian parents
in the Soviet city of Leningrad.

When he was three, they moved to Kyiv,

the location for his future life
and literary career.

Andrey Kurkov
1961 Born in Leningrad (now St.Petersburg)
1963 Moved to Kyiv

He loved studying foreign languages,

which he felt were
his only window to the wider world.

Andrey Kurkov
1961 Born in Leningrad (now St.Petersburg)
1963 Moved to Kyiv
1983 Graduated Kiev State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages

In 1991, when Kurkov was 30,

the Soviet Union collapsed

and Ukraine became an independent nation.

His writing brings to light
both Ukraine's pride as a sovereign state,

as well as its warped and
turbulent relationship with Russia.

A parallel can probably be drawn
between my fate and the fate of Ukraine.

Right now, I am 61 years old.

I spent half of my life
in the Soviet Union and half in Ukraine.

And before my eyes Ukraine was
learning to be free and democratic.

I myself was also learning...

learning to be free and democratic.

Even during Soviet times,
I considered myself...

well, not an active dissident,

but a person who
laughed at the Soviet ideology.

I thought I was free

But, in fact, I was learning to be free,

in the European sense of the word, only after
Ukraine became an independent country.

Because freedom also
means certain obligations,

and respect for the opinion
with which you disagree.

And further, the ability to
live in a pluralistic society

in which there are so many different opinions

and everyone defends the right
to their own opinion.

And I learned tolerance from Ukraine

because in Soviet times I was not radical,

but I stood up strongly for my opinion,

and I always thought I was right,

if I believed I was right.

In fact, I have changed a lot in
30 years of living in independent Ukraine.

And it makes me happy,

because I want to,

first of all, know the opinion of
the person I'm talking to,

before I tell them my opinion.

Kurkov feels he and Ukraine
share a destiny,

and now has an even stronger
sense of mission as a writer.

My wife and I, we woke up

and we spent the first day
and the next night still in Kyiv.

But after that we got in a car
and drove to western Ukraine,

primarily to pick up our three children and
their friends from the city of Lviv.

They happened to be there on vacation.

We haven't lived at home since then.

It is very important for me
as a writer to stay in Ukraine.

And I think it is very important for Ukraine

that people who are known in society,

like writers, philosophers, and politicians,
stay in the country

and show that they are not afraid

that the country could be occupied
by Russian aggressors.

So I will always go back to Ukraine.

Another one of my tasks is
to answer questions,

including those from journalists,

about the narratives
Russia is spreading about Ukraine.

Russia never tires of repeating
that Ukraine is a Nazi state,

that anti-Semitism is
very widespread in Ukraine.

Now, this question of anti-Semitism

is very easy to answer.

The fact that 73% of the voters
chose a Jewish man,

Volodymyr Zelensky,
as their president in the last election

demonstrates that Ukraine
has no problems with anti-Semitism.

So basically, Ukrainian writers
have to answer a lot of questions

because every day Russia
spreads lies about Ukrainian society,

about Ukrainian history,

and about Ukrainian politics.

Le Point(France) March 10, 2022

Kurkov believes a writer's mission
is to tell the truth.

He writes articles from his base in Ukraine

and gives talks around the world.

May 2022
Detroit, USA

In May 2022, he visited the US.

He spoke at Michigan State University.

What I was doing in the last 6 weeks

out of practically 9 weeks of the war,

I was traveling in Europe

trying to explain what is happening to people

who still think Russians
and Ukrainians are the same.

He was also asked to speak
at a symposium in Washington, DC.

First of all, because this war
has not only a military aspect,

the Russian invasion,
it has a cultural aspect.

And the cultural invasion of Ukraine started
much earlier than the military invasion.

Already 15 years ago,

actually, Russian culture was
trying to replace Ukrainian culture

in the eastern territories of Ukraine,
in Bessarabia, and in Crimea.

The Donbas region in eastern Ukraine,

where Kurkov says
the cultural invasion had already begun,

was given as the reason for the current war.

The People's Republic of Donbass asked Russia for help.
I decided to conduct a special military operation.

The region is located on
the Ukraine-Russia border

and includes the "grey zone" –

land that was controlled by neither country

with many pro-Russian residents.

In 2018, Kurkov set his novel "Grey Bees" here,

where Russian and Ukrainian forces
were in a stand-off.

The mood is unsettled
and potentially explosive.

Sergey, a beekeeper,

wants to take his bees
somewhere warm in the spring

so they can search for pollen,
and heads for Crimea.

When his time in Crimea is up,

Sergey has the option to live somewhere safe

but he chooses to return to the grey zone,

a place lacking pleasure or hope.

This grey zone stretches over 430 km,

along the entire length of the front line.

Between the positions of the two armies -

the separatists and the Russians on one side
and the Ukrainians on the other -

there were dozens of villages that were left
without stores, electricity, or medical care,

and many inhabitants were left behind.

My characters are representatives
of this civilian population,

who ended up in no man's land.

In fact, people in Donbas,

many of them didn't understand that
they were living in independent Ukraine.

I will illustrate with one example.

I once asked a local man
if he travels abroad,

if he travels around the world.

He told me, "I sometimes go to Moscow,
but I do not go abroad."

So for him, Moscow was not "abroad."

I do understand the mentality
and psychology of Donbas residents

who didn't run away from Donbas
when the war started,

but stayed to live in their homes.

I think many of them believed

that they could learn to live
in wartime conditions.

They lived under the Soviet regime,

they lived under the total control of
local mafia and local oligarchs.

Ukrainians learned to survive
in the most difficult conditions.

Not only the grey zone of war,

but also the grey zone
that is inside people's heads.

For me, grey was the primary color
of Donbas before this war.

I traveled through Donbas
several times before this war.

And it surprised me

how people didn't want to paint
their fences in bright colors,

that is, everyone wanted to remain invisible,

as inconspicuous as possible.

This is left over from the Soviet era.

It is also a sign of the
Soviet collective mentality,

when one does not want to stand out,

when it is safer to be invisible,

to blend in with the crowd.

They want to remain invisible,
unnoticed like bees.

In fact, yes,
the workers of Donbas and the miners,

they all worked like bees,

not expecting any special reward.

They were used to
this quiet and invisible life.

They are good, ordinary people.

But...because they were not
interested in politics,

they were not interested in their own future.

And in this, too,
there is an element of grey color.

That is, their future
also remained grey and dim.

Maybe predictable, but definitely not joyful.

I told somebody that I had to find money

and buy tons of green, red, and blue paint

to give to people for free,

so they could paint houses,
paint roofs, and paint fences.

That way they would feel happier
and more comfortable,

at least psychologically.

Because they have to understand
that a person is an individual.

When you're an individualist,

and you have your own personality,

and you defend your thoughts
and your interests,

life becomes much more
interesting and brighter.

And I thought maybe
it would be possible to start with

replacing the traditional Donbas
grey color with brighter colors.

What words have supported Kurkov,

a writer whose fate is
intertwined with that of Ukraine?

Don't trust anybody,

don't be afraid,

and don't beg.

It was a principle of survival
in the Soviet gulag camps.

I read this phrase in 1976 or 1977,

when my dissident brother
brought home "The Gulag Archipelago,"

the banned book
written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

A.I.Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
Russian novelist, historian
Nobel Prize in Literature, 1970

And that phrase meant

that you shouldn't believe
anyone who offers you anything.

Don't be afraid when you are threatened.

And don't beg for help or mercy from...

those who might later turn around
and charge you for it.

This was a principle of survival
in Soviet camps.

For me, the phrase became
not a symbol of survival,

but of achieving one's goal on one's own.

I can't predict right now
what the outcome of this war will be.

I am an optimist

and I believe that Ukraine
will be able to retain its independence

and take back the control
of Ukrainian territories,

including Crimea.

Don't trust anybody,
don't be afraid, and don't beg.