“Why don’t you ask us questions?” It is 2:53:53 p.m. on the large digital time display in the Xplanatorium Herrenhausen in Hanover when the award-winning translator from the Ukrainian Claudia Dathe finishes this sentence. It is February 24th, 2023, the last day of the theme week “War in the Ukraine – Perspectives of Science”, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. And: An anniversary of the war, which the majority in Europe – politicians, civil society, real and supposed experts – did not think was possible. And the longer it lasts, the more evidence come to light that he had been prepared for a long time and that his aims were unequivocal.
All Ukrainians in the room are probably not thinking so much about the goals of the “special operation” at this moment, but rather about its consequences. The interrogative sentence is the final line of a poem by the Ukrainian poet Kateryna Kalytko, which I will recite in Ukrainian and Claudia Dathe will then recite in German. The poem begins with the words that millions of Christian believers say every day: “Our Father”. But the text in prayer form was written on September 18, 2022, and although it is addressed to God, it is not an expression of hope and confidence.
It is an attempt to talk about what was revealed to us in Bucha, Irpin, Izyum after the “liberators” left them – “the sound of the crunching vertebrae, the cracking of the broken kneecaps, the cut tendons”. It’s a longing for earthly justice, not one that might happen sometime in the afterlife: “Our army shall come. Men in white uniforms shall come. International lawyers shall come.”
And it’s a plea for non-forgiveness, because we who survived are ready to live on with a debt: “And don’t forgive us anything, even if you wanted to – because we don’t forgive our debtors either.” Perhaps you would like to ask us something, Lord, which you do not understand in view of this catastrophe of civilization? Have the (in)human actions explained to you?
We don’t want to go back into the monster’s brotherly embrace
I stare at the big numbers on the digital clock as the last sentence, “Why don’t you ask us questions?” faded away in the silence of the room. Then there is a minute’s silence. I try to hold back the tears and understand from the quiet noises in the room that I’m not the only one.
Another phrase comes to mind, which is actually a book title – by the great author Tanya Malyarchuk, with which there was a reading as part of the event: “The story will continue in a moment, we just breathe out”. In fact, it feels like the whole world’s history pauses for a moment before moving on. But when we look back at Ukrainian history at this moment, our breath catches and an exhalation is not easy.
Not when we think of 1169, when Andrey Bogolyubsky sacked Kiev. In 1659, when Hetman Ivan Vyhowskyj with the Crimean Tatars defeated the Muscovy army at Konotop. In 1708, when the troops of Prince Alexander Menzhikov drowned the capital of the hetman Ivan Mazepa in blood. In 1918, when the troops of the notorious officer Mikhail Muravyov stormed Kiev and massacred 27 Ukrainian students. To all the epochs in the history of Tsarist Russia and the USSR, when Ukraine was only allowed to exist in its “Little Russian” folkloric form, and millions of Ukrainians who didn’t agree with that, in Siberia or beyond the Arctic Circle were “reeducated”.
In the here and now, when literally every minute people are dying because we don’t want to go back into the “fraternal embrace” of the megalomaniac monster. But we exhale and go back to our reality, where each of us depends on how our story continues.
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