Oksana Zabuljko: "Harari was wrong: we Ukrainians would like to die of boredom."

BarcelonaOksana Zabuljko (Lutsk, 1960), philosopher, novelist, and essayist, is one of Ukraine's most influential living authors and still lives in Kyiv. She has written some thirty books, but you probably don't know her because Catalan and Spanish are not among the dozens of languages ​​into which her work has been translated. She is incisive, direct, and insightful. She visited Barcelona at the invitation of the CCCB.

You say that the West doesn't understand Russia or Putinism. Why?

— It all started with my article in the literary supplement of The Times In April 2022, they published an article titled "How to Read Russian Literature After Butxa," referring to the Ukrainian city occupied at the start of the invasion where the rapes and murders of civilians committed by Russian troops were discovered. It caused a stir. The message was very simple: how is it possible that for thirty years, Russian literature was studied in universities in Europe and the United States without anyone seeing what was happening in broad daylight? For twenty years, Russian literature was outlining the scripts for a future war against Ukraine and against Europe. Hundreds of titles. Historical fantasy, imperial revenge, "revision" of history. It was explicit. Anyone who read Russian could see it. And, meanwhile, in 2014, when blood was already being spilled in Donbas, you could open a Yuval Noah Harari bestseller in a European bookstore and read that in the 21st century, a person would be more likely to die of boredom than in a war. I still ask myself: where is my boredom? I'd like to die of boredom. And yet, Ukrainian literature is barely translated. I've been told that only 41 texts are available in Spanish or Catalan. Forty-one texts (not books) from one of the great Slavic literatures, with a thousand-year history! Translation depends on academic departments of Slavic studies. And Slavic studies were, in practice, Russian studies. That's why I ask: what were all those people being paid for, if fascism was growing right next door and nobody was talking about it?

Was the large-scale invasion that Putin launched four years ago not, then, any surprise?

— No. This has been brewing for thirty years. Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB defector, explained very clearly in the 1980s how the mechanism works: first, demoralization, which lasts for at least a generation and attacks education and the media. Then, destabilization, which affects finance and the military. Next, crisis, disorder, what is presented as a civil war. And finally, normalization. Look at 2014: many Western politicians were saying that what was happening in Ukraine was a civil war, not an invasion. We saw Russians on the ground. We know how to distinguish them. But it was easier to believe it was an internal problem. It's not a "conflict," it's a naked and brutal invasion, completely unjustified.

An invasion that has exposed the division within Europe.

— The Berlin Wall still exists in our minds. Despite all the efforts of Milan Kundera's generation to introduce the concept of Central Europe, the notion of Eastern Europe persists. Kundera spoke of a Europe held hostage. But the mental map hasn't changed. This is even reflected in Germany's electoral maps, with support for the AfD in the East.These divisions persist. And language is fundamental. I've had to correct moderators who presented Ukraine as a "former Soviet republic": Ukraine has a long history before the USSR and its own political process since 1991, but thirty years later it's still perceived that way: these mental frameworks persist. As Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, the former president of Latvia, told reporters: we are not a former Soviet republic, we are an annexed country that regained its independence. It all starts with words!

Is Europe wrong in its interpretation of its own history?

— The 20th century in Europe began in 1914 and is not yet over. One day it will be described as a century-long war. The Second World War was the second act of the First. It stopped, but its causes were not resolved. Today we hear the same language: "stop it," "by any means necessary." But unresolved grievances accumulate until they erupt again. Timothy Snyder wrote about "bloodlands" to explain that the war in Eastern Europe was very different from what Western Europe experienced. In the East, people were taken hostage, deported, enslaved. Entire territories became killing fields between two totalitarian regimes. The Third World War has already begun, even though many refuse to see it. Intellectuals always arrive a war too late. We read the present with the categories of the previous war.

One of his latest books summarizes in 125,000 characters what Europe has overlooked in Ukraine. Can you summarize it?

— It is necessary to go back to the 17th century, when Kyiv was the spiritual center of Eastern Christianity. We are heirs to the Byzantine tradition, culturally and spiritually. We are Greeks, ultimately. The Cossack Hetmanat had its own institutions. And it is there that we must look for the roots of Ukrainian democracy. Later, the Ukrainian elites were absorbed by the Russian Empire. The Ems Decree of 1876 banned publications and institutions in Ukrainian. To modernize, you had to become Russian. Maintaining Ukrainian identity meant living on the margins. In 1918, there was the Ukrainian People's Republic. Another deception. Then, Stalin. After that, the Holodomor [the mass famine caused by Stalinism that left millions dead]. And in 1991, we said enough was enough. And that "enough" is what we see today in the resistance of Ukraine. It did not emerge from nothing.

Have we gone from a Europe that said "never again" to one that fears war?

— The fear of war is very easy to manipulate. We've been taught that there's no value higher than peace, while the great powers have been waging wars everywhere. But you don't choose war. I remember one reel That Ukrainian soldier had a scar on his forehead after capturing a Russian prisoner. He was shouting at him, using a lot of profanity: "I'm a teacher. What I want is to teach children. Why should I be here fighting against you?" The same thing has happened to all Ukrainians: in 2021, I was writing a novel that was going to be the best work of my career. And Putin interrupted it. Now I dedicate myself to writing things I'd rather not write, but it's what I have to do. Like that man, who wanted to be a teacher and had to play the soldier.