“Today, February 24, 2022, a war has begun. I always thought that my generation, born during the Second World War, was lucky, we would live on without war. Until our death, which we always pray for as Orthodox Christians, may be “peaceful, painless and not embarrassing”. But nothing seems to come of it. It is not yet clear how the events of that dramatic day will play out.
The madness of one man and his devoted henchmen determines the fate of the country. We can only guess what will be written about it in the history books in fifty years. Pain, fear and shame – these are the feelings today.
Pain, because war affects all living things – grass, trees, animals, people and their children.
Fear, because our biological instinct is to preserve our lives and the lives of our descendants.
Shame, because it is obvious that the government of our country is responsible for this situation that could bring great misfortune to all humanity.
But the responsibility for what is happening today is also borne by all of us, the witnesses of these dramatic events, because we were not able to foresee and prevent them. We must stop this escalating war and oppose the propagandistic lies that are being poured on our people through the official media.” – Lyudmila Ulitskaya
Russia’s Inconvenient Conscience
“The terraced mountains had once been covered in vineyards that remained only at the top. Behind them lay the table mountains – pale and covered with a scattering of grazing sheep. And even higher and further away, an ancient massif with tufts of woods at the foot.” Excerpt from Medea and her Children (1996) Lyudmila Ulitskaya is wearing a loose, off-white shirt. Surrounded by light green foliage that’s just bursting into leaf, the Russian author is discussing her book Medea and her Children and the Crimea, which plays a major role in it. Crimea is the place where she wrote it, her debut novel.
Lyudmila is one of Russia’s most important contemporary authors and has achieved considerable fame, especially in the West. Her books have been translated into 30 languages and she has been nominated for the Nobel Prize several times. In Russia, she has won every literary prize going. But she has never been a favourite of the government. In the late 1960s, she was fired from her job, then as a geneticist at a scientific institute, for transcribing and distributing illegal literature known as samizdat (literally, ‘self-publishing’). She switched roles, becoming literary consultant at the Jewish Chamber Music Theatre until she was able to establish herself as an author.
“If I could have chosen my birthplace, it would have been in the south, without a doubt. Most likely Crimea.” That’s what Lyudmila says in her film portrait Berühmt und Unbequem (‘Famous and Inconvenient’) a 2022 documentary by French-German broadcaster Arte about Ukraine’s southern peninsula, located between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
Although Lyudmila grew up in Moscow, she has always felt more at home in that region. And that’s why the author also wrote her first novel there. Her youth served as inspiration for her dramatic debut novel exploring the family history of a whole century during the Soviet period, including the Crimea, where Lyudmila was living at the time, consigning her sensitive words to paper as she listened to the sounds of the sea. Her melancholy gaze ranged across the landscape of the peninsula as she wrote about how Crimea was a comforting vision for a woman from Moscow.
That was then.
This place of treasured solitude still features in her novels. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 changed not only this former place of idyllic holidays, but also the author’s public attitude towards Russian state power. In Berühmt und Unbequem, Lyudmila says that, while she couldn’t remember liking the Russian government at any point in her life, she became publicly critical of her home nation after it took Crimea and began stationing troops in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Lyudmila then became a public critic of Putin. Even though her internationally famous and multi-award-winning works have no political intent, she is today recognised as well as Russia’s inconvenient conscience. In contrast, her novels are about the entanglement of past and present in which she describes love, friendship and sexuality, as well as tragic life stories throwing the social issues that plagued the Soviet Union into sharp relief. The history, culture and politics of the USSR and Russia blend with her personal narratives and become one – a complicated country with a long history that raises difficult questions. But her Russian soul can be felt on every page; a Russian woman, who gave her heart to a country several thousands miles south of where she grew up.
Although her stories deal with tales of tragic lives, they are always complemented with nimble language and Lyudmila’s typically subtle sense of humour. That’s what makes the author so special: she combines so many elements with ease, elements that don’t really belong together. Feelings, politics, humour, tragedy, her love of Russia and dislike of the Russian government.
For Lyudmila Ulitskaya, intense criticism of Putin goes without saying: “It’s normal for a Russian intellectual to dislike the power of the Russian state,” she says drily, having been asked about her attitude towards the Kremlin. In 2012, she took part in protests against Putin, and today she views the war in Ukraine with a sense of horror: “The madness of one man and his loyal henchmen is determining the fate of the country. We can only guess what the history books will say about this in fifty years’ time. Pain, fear and shame – that’s what I feel today.”
As featured in SLEEK 73 – PASSION. Available in print and digital here.