Dialogues on War. Sofia Cheliak and Margaret MacMillan

Margaret MacMillan: I am very conscious, as I look at Sofia, that I am sitting comfortably in Oxford, my lights are on, I expect them to remain on, I can go to the shops, I can live my life as I normally live it. You are living in Lviv, in a very different world, where there is much more uncertainty. What is that world like? How did it change on the 24th of February last year?

Sofia Cheliak: My world has changed greatly and very fast. On the day missiles hit Lviv for the first time, I was on my way back home with a huge package of books, ready to be shipped to the London Book Fair. I was quite scared, but a dark joke ran through my mind: It would be very easy to identify my body because of all the books lying around.

Living in war is quite uncomfortable, especially since the blackouts have started. But we do not even think about that anymore. Our friends in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who are fighting for us now, are experiencing much worse conditions day after day, night after night. Our life now is all about scheduling, trying to catch moments when the light is on, and squeezing some work in those time frames. 

The war has taught me to be closer to people. I opened my home for those escaping from the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine, as well as the Kyiv Region. The people who were staying at my home were extremely kind and polite; they tried to help me as much as they could. 

We started sharing our emotions openly because we knew that anything could happen in the following moment. Without hesitation, we started letting people know that we love them and care about them. On the contrary, we have developed great hate and disgust towards our enemy. In my opinion, this feeling is very natural, and we just cannot stop this anger, however hard we try. Living under constant attacks, undoubtedly, changes your behaviour. Staying in Ukraine can be uncomfortable right now, but I suppose this is still the best time of my life. I am seeing the best in people. I am feeling their love. Knowing that everyone is ready to help anyone at any given moment is priceless. 

Margaret MacMillan: It strikes me very much what you are saying about the ways in which war based on brutality, violence, and death can bring out the best side in human nature, just as it can bring out the worst side. Maybe it is too soon to tell, but can you see how Ukrainian society has changed?

Sofia Cheliak: Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, I had a feeling that the whole country shared the same mood we all had during the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. We believed in what we were doing. Our common aspirations for our future empowered us and brought us together. The unity we have right now is unique.

Many Ukrainians are currently engaged in volunteer work. People are raising money for expensive things, such as drones or cars for the Ukrainian army. They are trusting strangers with their own money, and volunteers use donations to buy the necessary stuff and post photos as proof. Something like this could not have happened twenty years ago. Right now, we believe each other. All of us became a part of a big network.

How did you feel on the 24th of February?

Margaret MacMillan: I spent my life studying international relations, and I spent a lot of time studying war, so you would think I’d be more prepared. I think I had gotten used to the idea that Europe was never going to have a major war again. Most of us had. We thought that Putin was bluffing. We should have noticed, of course, what he had already done in Georgia, Chechnya, Syria, and parts of Ukraine. It reminded me very much of the attitude of Europeans in 1914, right before World War One. They felt that Europe had made extraordinary progress in the 19th century, became so prosperous and powerful, and largely peaceful. It cannot be happening – this was my feeling last February.

We are approaching a one-year anniversary of the full-scale war breaking out, and I think we have gotten used to the idea. It has been a real shock, much more so for Ukraine, but also for the international system, for Europeans, and for people in different parts of the world.

You are involved in literature and the arts. How important has it been in terms of uniting Ukraine and enduring the war?

Sofia Cheliak: Books about our history are currently the most popular in Ukraine. For years, we had lived under Russian propaganda and were told legends about Ukrainian history. Right now, people are looking for real answers in history books and 20th-century literature.

When the blackouts began, Ukrainians started to read more. Soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are asking us for books, mostly Ukrainian novels, history, and philosophy. We are regularly collecting and shipping books to the frontline.

Ukrainians are very much involved, emotionally and physically, in the war. Oftentimes we do not have the opportunity to read. However, we are trying our best. We understand how little time we have, and we turn to literature.

I would like to go back to what you said for a moment. My question is about the crisis of international treaties and institutions in general. The world was trying so hard to learn the lessons taught by World War One and World War Two. Why did it not notice the new evil being born?

Margaret MacMillan: History never repeats itself completely, but there are very striking parallels. What happened in Russia, I think, is what happened in Germany and other parts of Central Europe after World War One. And that is a breakdown of the old order of society.

Hitler’s, Mussolini’s, and Stalin’s regimes relied on keeping people quiet. They also looked for enemies at home more often than abroad because it was a way of mobilising people. Putin has tried to blame the pro-democracy movements in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia itself on the Western influence because he assumed that they were unnatural to these countries and stirred up by the Americans or by evil forces. He promised the Russians, and this is often what the dictators or authoritarian leaders would do, glory; to become powerful again, to rebuild the Russian Empire, to gather back the lands which were ruled over in the past by Peter I and Catherine II. He thought it would help to keep himself in power. And he thought that it would be easy, and this is often the mistake dictators make. If you become the dictator, nobody tells you the truth anymore. Dictators often end by making terrible mistakes because they no longer have the capacity to make judgements.

Putin thought he would take over Ukraine easily. He had already taken Crimea, and the West had not done much about it. He had tried to detach eastern parts of Ukraine, and he had gotten away with it. The Russians assumed they would have a puppet government in Kyiv about a week after the invasion. What Putin failed to recognise is that over the years, a very strong sense of Ukrainian nationhood has been growing. Ukrainians want to determine their own fate.

About a month ago, Ukrainian writer Andriy Kurkov gave a speech in Oxford. He said that he did not want to write in Russian anymore. How common is this now? What has the war done to Ukrainians’ attitude towards the Russian writers? 

Sofia Cheliak: I was born after Ukraine regained its independence. I come from the western part of Ukraine, and I have been speaking Ukrainian all my life. It is quite easy for me to speak English with you now, but I can hardly speak Russian. And I am not the only one. After the beginning of the full-scale invasion, lots of people finally understood that Putin was correct in saying that Russia ends wherever the Russian language ends. He used this narrative to justify the occupation of Crimea, parts of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions, claiming that he was protecting the Russian speakers there. Many people thought that language was not a political issue, but in reality, it is.

The same applies to Russian literature. We were taught it in school, and many Ukrainians are familiar with more than just one or two of the most famous pieces. For years we were told that Russian literature was the best in the world. Ukrainian literature, on the other hand, was presented as something rather depressing and primitive. All these years, Russia was using culture as its weapon to engage people in their propaganda narratives.

A lot of Ukrainians right now support the ban on Russian culture, as well as the termination of any contact with cultural workers in Russia. Even watching movies dubbed in Russian, hearing the Russian accent is traumatising us over and over again. Russian culture is a trigger for us. 

Margaret MacMillan: In World War One, British and French orchestras refused to play any German music because for them it symbolised the enemy, and the Germans did much the same. In World War Two, people did not want to listen to the music of Wagner, which was used by the Nazis as a symbol of German culture. For a very long time, it was impossible to play any of it in Israel because the memories were so bitter. I suspect that at least for a generation there is going to be an aversion to Russian culture in Ukraine.

From all the reports that are coming from Ukraine, I see a very systematic attempt on the part of Russia to eradicate Ukrainian culture. Museums are being looted, libraries destroyed, and history rewritten in occupied areas. How serious is this? What impact does it have on Ukrainian culture? 

Sofia Cheliak: We must understand that Ukrainian culture was colonised by Russia for years. For centuries, Moscow was making it very hard to write, read, and listen in Ukrainian. Maybe now is the time to use this radicalism to give our culture a chance to flourish again, and for Ukrainians to learn about it. The best Ukrainian writers were censored by Russia. For example, Vasyl Stus, who was well-known abroad, was forbidden to publish in Ukraine. He died in the Gulag in 1985, a few years before Ukraine regained independence. This is how Russian culture was influencing Ukraine – instead of Vasyl Stus, people were reading Brodsky.

Right now, Russia is attacking Ukrainian culture too. Before the full-scale invasion, we were notified that a lot of Ukrainians involved in cultural work were put on the list to be targeted. In November, we found out that Volodymyr Vakulenko, a Ukrainian writer known for his very proactive patriotic stance, was kidnapped and killed in Izium. He was tortured just for being a Ukrainian and a writer. Russian occupiers have destroyed a lot of museums, libraries, and theatres, and taken the lives of many Ukrainian people of culture. A Ukrainian conductor Yurii Kerpatenko was killed this September in Kherson for his refusal to collaborate with Russians.
Just recently we saw a photo of the Mariupol Drama Theatre, destroyed during the Russian airstrike in March. Hundreds of people who were hiding there were killed. To cover the ruins, the occupiers installed a banner portraying Russian writers. This is a clear illustration of how their culture acts as a protector of the regime. Russia is using culture to hide their crimes.

When the full-scale invasion happened, we understood that the world does not know a lot about Ukrainian history, especially about the dynamics of our relationship with Russia. It is largely unaware, in particular, of the extremely bloody 20th century, during which the Holodomor genocide took place. It was organised by the Stalin regime to exterminate Ukrainians. This is just one of Russia's many crimes. 

Nazis were condemned during the Nuremberg tribunal. The Soviets were not, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In your opinion, could that be one of the reasons why Russia started all the following wars?
Margaret MacMillan: Since 1917, the Russian regime had a view of creating a new kind of society in which you could dispose of the living people who were in the way, and who were seen as obstacles. In a way, the Nazis did something very similar. The Jews were seen simply as people who stood in the way of their vision of the greater German people. This is very dangerous because it allows you to justify any amount of crimes.
Russia is doing something similar in spreading lies about Ukrainians. It is a way of dehumanising the enemy so that whatever you do to them is excusable. A series of Russian governments behaved like this, manipulating, moving people around and eliminating them. I do not think Stalin ever had any remorse for the millions of people who died under his rule. He simply saw them as inconveniences that needed to be gotten out of the way. I am not sure the present Russian leadership does either. In fact, I think they are annoyed by Ukrainians’ resistance. They are trying to get rid of Ukrainian history, to rewrite it in a way as if Ukraine or Ukrainian national consciousness never existed. These narratives can be very powerful.

As a result of the war, there is much more awareness in the world about Ukraine and its people today. That is something that will not be changed or forgotten when the fighting comes to an end.

Edited by Cammie McAtee