On February 24 the armed forces of the Russian Federation carried out a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Today, the whole world is talking about it. In order to comprehend the events of the last days, we are launching a series of conversations #DialoguesOnWar. Ukrainian and foreign intellectuals talk about the experience of the war and share their own observations.
Speakers of the 12th episode:
– Oleksandr Mykhed, author.
– Witold Szabłowski, journalist, author.
W. S.: Sashko, I am very glad to see you and have this opportunity to talk. I am very happy that PEN International, PEN Ukraine, Ukrainian Studies at Harvard University and my publisher — Stary Lev — provided me with a chance to see you like this. I want to start from the very first moments of the war. How did the war begin for you?
O. M.: Hello, Witold. I am also very grateful to PEN for this chance to talk to you, as I am a great fan of your books. I have learned a lot from them and I am curious to talk to you about all this stuff.
On the very first day, the war started full-scale. My wife and I have… had — I must learn to talk about my house in the past tense — well, we had our house 30 kilometres from Kyiv, in Hostomel. The war started on 24 February. At 8 a.m., we heard the first helicopters and the bombing of Hostomel airport, which became an important spot right on. Around 10 a.m., I called my mom. My parents had an apartment in Bucha. That was 10-minute drive from our townhouse. Her windows were facing Hostomel airport, so from her balcony, she actually saw what was happening there, how they tried to conquer the airport and 13 helicopters that were bombing it.
That was the experience of the first hours. Before the war, we had our plan A, plan B, plan C. We understood that something’s gonna happen and had our emergency bags ready. We had plan A, if they start moving in from Donbas; plan B, if they start moving in from the north; and the worst-case scenario, plan C or plan Z as it might be called now was that they were to appear in Kyiv. Yet, we never expected it on the very first day, that in one day they would just be everywhere. With our emergency bags packed, we left our house at 5 p.m. on 24 February. Our neighbour, our saving angel, helped my wife and me and our dog Lisa to escape, so on the morning of 25 February we were in Chernivtsi.
This story also has another side — the worst one. Or the best one. It is both of them together. Around 40-50 residents of our townhouse complex stayed in this hell for 2-2.5 weeks. They experienced the Kadyrov guys appearing in front of their doors, soldiers pointing guns at them, at the women, making them kneel and thus leave their houses. Who are you to make people leave their houses like this? This was happening over those two weeks.
The worst part is that we did not find the right words to make my parents leave their Bucha apartment. They were ready to stay there as long as it takes. My parents stayed in the hell of Bucha for 16 days, in the improvised bomb shelter. Both of my parents are professors of literature. The first time I talked to my dad after they escaped, he asked me whether I remember the words of Varlam Shalamov. This was a famous soviet writer of ‘Kolyma Tales’ — books about the Gulag. He said that no human is supposed to live through a concentration camp. Dad said that no human should ever experience this bombing, being in the first row of this theatre of war. Obviously, no one is supposed to experience it when they are 70 years old.
Well, my parents escaped after two weeks of bombing. They are in Chernivtsi right now. And everything these two renowned literature scholars have now is an old Ford car. They also had their black cat who died after a month of the war. In my FB feed and Instagram feed, I saw many stories that during the first months of the war, animals started to die. This is something symbolic about this war. This cat had survived the 16 days of bombing and a long journey to Chernivtsi and then could not survive the afterlife. I understand that on the scale of Mariupol, Chernihiv, and all the stories from Bucha and Irpin, the story about the cat is not so strong, but to me, this is a symbol of what has happened to us through this month.
W. S.: And what happened to your parent’s apartment in Bucha?
O. M.: Ukrainian army took it as a position to shoot the enemies. It happened at the very beginning, so for several days my parents stayed with some random people they did not know before. While they were waiting for the bombing in Bucha to subside, a random guy appeared at their doorstep and said something like ‘Why are you here? Come to our place.’
Now we don’t know what is happening to their apartment in Bucha. There is still the Russian army. There are looters. There are barbarians. We saw many pictures from Irpin, from Bucha, from Hostomel, how these Nazi occupants are taking away the most simple, the most common elements of our daily lives. I don’t know, something like Snickers and Nutella, not to mention laptops. There were pictures of them taking carpets away. Who are you supposed to be to put a carpet on a tank? Are you planning to take a carpet with you to your Buryatia or Chechnya? This is what is happening. It is not about the glory of the Russian army, saving Ukrainians and so on. It is about taking our shoes, our pants and underwear. In Ukraine, there is a huge archive of the transcripts of conversations by Russian soldiers and their families. They call their wives and their kids, and they tell them, oh you should see how these Ukrainians live, oh, this was a house with nice repairing done, this family lived well, but I took a coat for you, or even I took vitamins for you. This is the scale of their understanding.
W. S.: This is bewildering. You know, the last book I wrote is ‘Russia Through the Kitchen Door.’ It is a tricky title. It is rather about how Russia is using kitchens and cuisine to build its empire and conquer other countries. There you can read about the Holodomor, Chornobyl, and the war in Afghanistan. What you are telling right now reminds me a lot about the stories from the Afghan war. When the soldiers from the Soviet Union — such a proud country, with so many philosophers and so rich, country number 2 or as they thought country number 1 in the world — went to the peasant country of Afghanistan which they had no respect for. Suddenly they realized that in Afghanistan, you can buy a video set, or you can buy a TV set, or trousers, which you cannot buy in the Soviet Union, in the glorious Soviet Union. They had a cultural shock. All the things they grew up with, all the things they were so sure of, that they are the great country and so on… And now, just like you said, ordinary soldiers, maybe from Chechnya or Buryatia, but also from Russia, understood that they were living in a horrible place. That even a peasant in Afghanistan had a better life than they had. I think, now they have a similar culture shock. Would you agree with this?
O. M.: Absolutely. We can hear this from their phone calls home. They are shocked. After the Maidan, a program of decentralization started in Ukraine. The budget of a community majorly stays in this community. So now small villages are developing more rapidly, they have proper street lights, roads, and sports centres. This was a shock for the occupants. The towns of Irpin and Bucha are just amazing ones with great infrastructure. And they came there and saw it. And those towns became aims for bombing and shelling.
I’d like to ask you about this last book you mentioned. I am interested in cultural activists. What I am trying to see in the international media, and what I try to do with my writing etc., is to say that we need to have a huge cancelling of the Russian culture. We need it for — I don’t know — 80 years, 100 years. We need to cancel it on all levels. Starting with exhibitions, film directors, movie production, translation of the Russian classics… Please, no more Dostoyevsky books until this war stops and we have our reparations paid. What is your idea?
W. S.: I am definitely not prepared to discuss Dostoyevsky. I am not sure. What I am sure about is that to me this process is deeper. After WWII, Germany had the denazification process. When even at school, they had to learn what Germans and Nazis did during WWII. Nothing like this has happened in Russia. Whenever I was in Moscow, and I was there over 20 times, you know, it is such an awkward feeling, when you have a mass murderer and there is his grave in the centre of the country’s capital. What sort of a country can you build on this coffin? What country can you build on top of mass murder? Generally, in Russia, they look at many things with one eye closed but not at Lenin. When you go to his tomb, you have to be damn serious. It’s like going to church.
O. M.: There is the same story with the Stalin museum in Gori. He is a sacred figure there.
W. S.: Exactly. You just have to respect the guy. What sort of a county can you build if you don’t talk honestly about your past? What Russia certainly needs, and when Ukraine wins this war — I am sure of that — and when Putin is in the Hague — I hope they will let him go to the Hague and not poison him before — I think they should have a few decades where in their school programs they have to learn the truth about who Stalin was, who Lenin was, about the Soviet Union, about Putin and all the wars he began and their leaders in general began. If Germans had denazification, Russians should have, what should I say, de-leninization, de-stalinization, de-communization, whatever de-. It should be five de- program at schools with de-putinization in the end.
O. M.: Since we’ve mentioned Putin and his figure, you have researched many dictators like Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Paul Pot in your book ‘How to Feed a Dictator.’ When you look at the figure of Putin. Who is he? Who is Mr Putin? Is he a classical dictator or is there something particular about him?
W. S.: He is classical. At some point, all the dictators lose contact with reality. At first, they eliminate all the people that don’t clap. They are so self-confident, they do everything the best so they don’t like people who don’t agree. Every dictator has done that. It’s the case with Saddam Hussein who killed all his friends and ministers who did not clap during his speeches or did not agree with his decisions. It was the same for Idi Amin. Each dictator has a moment when he has to centralize his power. Until this moment, it is possible to talk to them and even persuade them of something. However, then they have the moment when all the power is in their hands, and that is the most dangerous moment for all the dictators because that is when they start making mistakes.
I believe Putin’s first mistake is that there are no more people who can tell him the truth around him. You see his meetings. By the way, they are so different from what your President is doing when talking to his ministers like to a group of friends. Putin with this absurd long table. There are so many memes about it. Each dictator has this moment when he cuts off all the people. I think Putin is at this moment. That is when mistakes start.
What’s next? Each case is different. It can be a coup d’état, which was the case of Idi Amin. It can be war and hanging, which was the case with Saddam Hussein. It could be the Hague, like with Slobodan Milosevic. In Russia, the favourite way of dealing with people they don’t want to see in power anymore is poisoning. This is what I would expect. So, if I were Putin, the first thing I would check every day is if the guy in the kitchen is the one I know. For example, this is how the war in Afghanistan began. They changed the chefs that were making food for the president of Afghanistan. The guy trusted the Russians so much he did not notice. That was the sign they were planning to poison him. So again, if I were Putin, I would check who is in the kitchen. Secondly, I would check every meal, every cup of tea, and everything I am taking even close to my mouth.
O. M.: That is why you have to have this long table, to be away from everybody.
W. S.: They say it is because of Covid, but I guess he might be afraid that they might attack him with some chemicals. Have you heard the story about the two Ukrainian negotiators and Abramovich? They were poisoned with some chemicals. Do you know more about it?
O. M.: I know the story, but not the details. I am actually shocked that Abramovich is even in this group of negotiators.
W. S.: He was in Poland and rumoured to have a secret meeting with Joe Biden. No one knows what they talked about but he is sort of Putin’s messenger.
O. M.: He could not sell Chelsea Football Club, so why would he participate in such huge war negotiations? It’s somewhat silly.
In terms of dictators, how did they look in the past? The whole ideology of Putin is based on looking at the past. It is not about looking into the future. It’s about the glory of Lenin’s army and zombie state. Is this typical for all dictators? No future for their countries.
W. S.: Sometimes it is like that. Generally, they need to explain to people why the power belongs to them. Usually, they look for some good explanation that could wake emotions up. As a rule, it’s easier to find this sort of thing in history. That is why dictators love history, especially since many people don’t know history well, they just know some facts. You can wrap these facts into your propaganda and sell it to the crowds. A good example would be Paul Pot, the mass murderer from Cambodia. He was trying to resell the ideology of the Great Khmer Empire of the XII-XIII century. It had nothing to do with Cambodia. However, it was a good explanation for people. That there are links between us and the old good Khmers. That’s why we should make a revolution and kill people to make Cambodia great again.
Dictatorships start with renewing things. Dictators cannot just take a country and rule it. You have to make something great again. You have to make Russia great again, to make America great again. Whenever a crazy person comes to power, he is not trying to reform; he is trying to do a revolution. Generally, from a Russian point of view, I really wish they had a leader who could reform the country, who could stop what they have been doing since Peter the Great times. They keep on building the empire. They cannot stop. Their people are starving, they live in horrible conditions, as you see in the Ukrainian war, and they treat people worse than people in the West treat their dogs. They have no respect for their dead soldiers. And yet, they wish to build this empire.
I wish Russia could just one day stop and focus on itself. They have enough territory, enough people, and enough natural resources to be happy and if one day they decide to use this potential not for the oligarchs and KGB mafia and for building the empire but instead for their people it would be such a great thing for the whole world and Russians themselves.
O. M.: This is the point to ask about good Russians. Is there now a place in the world media for the voice of good Russians? What is your opinion about that?
W. S.: Are you asking me about Marina Ovsyannikova?
O. M.: Yeah, she is a bright example of that. You’ve made a piece about her recently for Polish media.
W. S.: Whenever people ask me about good Russians, I tell them now is not the time to judge who is good and who is not in Russia. This is the time to support Ukraine, to support Mariupol; this is the time to talk and record everything about the war crimes of Russia in Ukraine. When the war is over, when Putin is in the Hague or in cemetery, we can talk about this kind of thing. Frankly, from the first day, I did not trust that Marina Ovsyannikova could be real. Though, this is another topic.
Could you tell me a little about what happened to you? Firstly, I know that your house was bombed or… well, what happened to your house? Where did you move to later?
O. M.: We were in Chernivtsi from the second day of the war. Around 4 March we got a message from our neighbour. He sent us a photo of our townhouse. There was this huge mine or something… The house was just smashed like a card house. My neighbour joked that he still had the key from our front door. I said that if the house were like that he did not need it any more and could enter just like that. Now, I am a writer with no archive, with no physical memory. I am a guy with no photos of my childhood or photos of my parents. That’s what happened. I don’t have my library, I don’t have my office where I used to work. It is a typical story for an internally displaced person. And this is also the feeling that everything starts from scratch. As we joke here, war is the best cure for a middle-life crisis. You start everything from the beginning. You are not somewhere in the middle of your career, you are not in the middle of your life. You have to start everything from the beginning. It works with a person of mid-age like me but this is very cruel for people of the age like my parents, for example, who are 70 years old. They had their new apartment, where they lived for like 9 or 10 months, which they really loved. Again, they don’t have their archive, they don’t have their library which they gathered throughout their life. There is another joke about our libraries. We understand that if the house is not under fire or alike, there will be no one interested in those books like Ukrainian poets of the 1950s or Ukrainian novelists of the 1960s, their first published books. I hope, this is not something of interest to Russian or Ukrainian looters who don’t understand the value of such books or the archive. This is how it might be saved. Though no one can be sure.
W. S.: May I ask you, after those 16 days that your parents had spent in Bucha, how did you manage to take them out from there to Chernivtsi? Is it possible to evacuate people from Bucha?
O. M.: That was a long process. I guess that is some kind of a gospel story. As Varlam Shalamov said, no one needs to experience that. Cause everything you see is the devastation and the worst part of human nature. On the other hand, my parent’s experience was meeting just amazing angel-like people who helped them. As I mentioned, there was a family they stayed with for several days. Then, there was this green corridor from Bucha. They tried to escape for two or three days but it was not possible. Occupants were shooting people, and the corridors were closed. One day my parents went to the meeting spot again, but there were too many people so they had to wait for another corridor. Finally, they were lucky to escape by their private car. In Kyiv, there was a guy who sat in their car and served as a driver, and he took my parents in their car through Ukraine to Chernivtsi. It was a chain of lucky moments, of happy moments, and gospel-like help from people. I am telling this because we did it through a protestant community my wife is a part of. It was their part of service to people. This is how it happened and how my parents appeared here.
As a researcher, I have read many books about the worst side of humanity. This is what I try to research in my books as well. Yet, it is very different when you witness it not as a researcher but as an ordinary person. I am not sure that experience is the right word for the events we are now going through. This is something new. My wife and I tell each other that we don’t have any feelings about the destroyed house, we don’t have any feelings about what is happening right now. We know we have to be very concentrated and work as much as possible to be helpful and useful to our country and for victory. I understand that I don’t want to reflect on this so-called experience or what has happened because it is not useful right now. It is a part of our new personalities, of us.
W. S.: What you are saying is very touching. This is amazing, because, I see something similar. Of course here, in Poland, we are in a completely different situation but you know about 2 million or so Ukrainians who came to Poland. Most of them stay in some big halls for only a couple of nights because Polish people take them to their homes. We have similar feelings. We have forgotten the ways we lived before the war started. Now the situation is completely different and people are adjusting.
O. M.: This is what I was thinking about these last days. For each memory that appears in my mind… for example, we had the 5th anniversary with my wife, or I finished the new book, or we had a really nice trip to France… and then to each memory you should add the words ‘and then the war started.’ This is the turning point of your life. It totally changes your view on your past and your memories. I find it hard for me to think about the past. It is not about being in comfort zone, being happy. The thing is that it was a completely different reality. And then the war started. I totally agree with you that for those activists from Poland or Czech Republic or Romania or other countries who participate in providing aid to the refugees, helping them and being on the front line of this refugee crisis, I am sure they have changed their lives.
W. S.: Of course, this is a completely different situation, as we are just trying to help. You literally have the war. You have your house destroyed. It is completely different. Nevertheless, I think in this region we naturally know what war means. You don’t have to explain it to people. For example, my observation as a writer was that I am missing words. I use a lot fewer words. Especially when I talk to my friends from Ukraine. Usually, I am quite talkative and I like jokes and anecdotes but since the war began, I changed my way of talking. It seems that in this region we have something in the DNA, that there is this action-reaction process. The war starts and you naturally know how to behave. We know it’s not just the Ukrainian war. In Poland, we know that Ukraine was the first country to get attacked but it concerns all of us. Putin attacked firstly the former USSR Empire but secondly, he attacked the whole West world.
O. M.: True that. There is also another idea I am thinking over. It is the idea of synchronization, something that people are experiencing at the same time. When the war started in the eastern part of Ukraine in 2014, there was this localized experience, like we try to help, to do our best, to reflect, to research, to talk and be useful but it was a region that experienced that. Now, with the full-scale war, we are experiencing it simultaneously in different parts of Ukraine. This understanding you are talking about — that this is also a war against other countries — is the experience of that. This is about common language, about the common experience we are going through. This is even about having a common vocabulary. In army slang, there is a ‘+’ sign. You got the information and you just put this sign. You should see how many of these pluses we got in our everyday communication over this last month. The language which was previously used in the army is now expanding and is used largely by the population. Again, like you’ve said, trying not to be talkative, put your energy not into talking but into action.
Question from viewers: What do you think about the West evaluating the war, their view on the war, which might differ from the point of view of Ukraine and Poland?
W. S.: I feel that we have a very similar view towards the war with Ukraine. We quite naturally understand what it means when Russia attacks. Obviously, there is something more in the West. The case that we briefly discussed — Marina Ovsyannikova. This is a product for the West, for Western TV, a perfect product of the tale of the good Russians who are against the war, who are protesting, who are hurt by the sanctions, etc. I think the further to the West the fewer people understand what it is like to live in Russia’s shadow.
O. M.: They try to make this frame of dialogue between the artists. I can imagine how for the next 10-20 years they would be putting us on a panel discussion, saying, hey, you are intellectuals, you have to be like the doves of peace, you have to find an intellectual dialogue, without emotions. Frankly, I am already sick and tired of such attempts. There is no possibility for a dialogue when we are in the war, when there is no denazification or as Witold said five de- program that Russians are supposed to go through. It is not the time for dialogue now, and it will be no time for dialogue until that de-process happens to the whole society, to all communities, and at all levels in Russia.
W. S.: When I listen to Sashko, I think that this is the good time to actually end WWII. Thanks to the Ukrainian army, which is doing such a great job, we have a chance to end the second dictatorship that wasn’t ended when WWII ended. Hopefully, now is a good moment. Putin made a horrible mistake. I really hope that his power will fall. I think this is possible. And this will change Russia dramatically and very deeply. I really hope this is going to happen.
Question from viewers: What can intellectuals do to help Ukraine today?
O. M.: I think we should specify whether this is a Ukrainian context or the world context. For the world, now I am speaking in English and trying to reach a wider audience. We understand that you are tired of this war, you have different crises all over the globe and in your countries and there is no space for such a long marathon of empathy for the country that is struggling to win the war against the Russians. Please don’t forget about us. The time when you get tired, please remember this moment I asked you to help us, and be with us. As long as you are sharing information about this war, be it your thoughts, or official position of Ukraine, or ideas of Ukrainian writers and artists, you are helping. Don’t get tired of this. This is a long-long story. We need your support, your help and your empathy, and your readiness to help us. It is the first month that just got over when everybody helped us financially but what will be in 5 months or in 10 months? We will need your financial support, to be on our way to freedom and victory.
W. S.: From the Polish perspective, as a society, we created a safe place for Ukrainian people to come and stay for as long as needed, and I am proud of Poles and Ukrainians. I’ve observed quarrels regarding Polish-Ukrainian massacres during WWII. I observed how Russia tries to make us quarrel about this. And I am proud that we have opened the borders and 2.5 million people came. There are no clashes, no fights. Only Russians throw in information over the internet trying to divide us. We are not letting them do that. We created a safe place for the people escaping the war zone just to make space for the Ukrainian army to fight our common enemy.
As a writer, and as a person who has been to Ukraine dozens of times — fewer times to Russia, though I was there as well — I am trying to explain to people what is happening. Sometimes people don’t understand that certain things in Russian history repeat. Russia doesn’t learn from its mistakes. Knowing the history, you might understand better what is happening, and what might happen. My FB now is my private war newspaper where I explain what’s happening in Ukraine.