Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the writer Andrey Kurkov has been on all the platforms, but very few to talk about his new novel, The gray bees. As demanded everywhere, because he is one of the most famous Ukrainian authors in the world since the success of the novel The Penguin, translated in 2000, it was not easy to hook him by Skype, because he was traveling to London, Oslo and Paris, before returning to Ukraine, which he does not want to leave in turmoil.
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So I ask him: what is the role of a writer in times of war?
“Literature is forgotten,” he said. I stopped writing my new novel, I don’t know when I’ll be able to continue. I am engaged in informing the foreign public about the war, because I am known in a few countries. I can write articles, do interviews, meetings, conferences. I am not the only Ukrainian writer to do this. That’s life today, because journalists can’t do everything. They can explain in reports what is happening, but the why is up to us to explain. Why this war started, why President Putin wants to destroy Ukraine. »
But I would still like to talk a bit about literature, since his novel is about the war in Donbass, where Ukrainian soldiers and pro-Russian separatists have been fighting since 2014. It’s a novel he didn’t want to write, he was waiting for this conflict to end. And years have passed since the idea for this novel was born after a conversation with a young man from Donbass who moved to Kyiv to open a cafe there. This young man regularly went to see the few families left behind in a village stuck in the clashes, almost on the front line, to bring them food, because there was no more electricity, shops, gasoline. or post office. “I understood that it is a gray zone, a no man’s land, without control. That is to say that you remain solely responsible for yourself and your destiny. I wanted to give a voice to these civilians. »
Because he found that in Ukraine, there were a lot of novels about this conflict, with too many heroes and battles, and not enough of these civilians who are overtaken by the war. From the start of his novel, we understand the absurdity and the tragedy of the situation, with two characters, Sergeyitch and Pashka, enemies since childhood, who are forced to come to terms a little under fire, because they are now the only two inhabitants of their village. Sergeyitch is a beekeeper; the only thing that matters to him are his hives, which he will have to carry away from the bombs. And it will be quite a ride, under the watchful eye of the “Russian big brother” who is never far away. “These are people who work a lot, who are honest, explains Andreï Kurkov. They are the representatives of a forgotten proletariat, who still think that communism was possible, but that the corruption of the former communists destroyed the dream of the proletariat. »
And the writer adds that the only ones who have succeeded in creating a communist society are the bees… “They don’t need anything, they work, produce honey and are happy. »
Why are animals or insects so important in his work? “Because they are natural. We know what we can expect from cats and dogs, panthers, bees. You never know what to expect from people like Putin. If we compare insects and Russian heads of state, I prefer insects. I also prefer the coronavirus to these people. It’s easier to survive during the pandemic than during the war. »
Andreï Kurkov goes further: “What is happening today is a massacre, it is not war. We destroy schools, high schools, universities, churches, mosques, synagogues, museums, monuments, libraries, theatres… This is not war. It is an attempt to exterminate a nation, a people. On the other hand, he believes that for 20 years, Putin has only consolidated the Ukrainian nation.
The dream of a free Ukraine
Andreï Kurkov defines himself as a Ukrainian writer of Russian language and he has nothing to do with those who criticize his mother tongue, who say that everything that is Russian-speaking belongs to Russia. For him, Ukraine is multicultural and multilingual – he is also a polyglot and speaks six languages, including French, which we use for this interview.
Like most analysts, he did not see the large-scale Russian aggression on his country coming. “I thought an escalation in the Donbass was possible, yes. But total war with millions of civilian and Russian-speaking victims was impossible to predict. It’s incredible barbarism now. Russia’s visiting card. For Putin, it is not important that thousands of Russian soldiers are killed or that the economy and industry are broken by the sanctions. For him, the most important thing is what he will leave after his death. He wants to go down in the history books as someone who recreated the Soviet Union. It will not work. We see it. »
And if Vladimir Putin wants to go even further, Andrei Kurkov predicts the worst for Russia. “His entourage must understand that it is a dead end. That is to say, the great Russian culture is over. Because all Russians are now responsible. All this great culture, classical music, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, etc., has been instrumentalized to create this image in the minds of Russians that they are better than the others, a superior race. Especially towards the Ukrainian, a slave who wants to become free. »
I was an avid Dostoyevsky reader in my twenties, and Kurkov tells me that Putin is too.
This aggressive fatalism… I see a lot of similar things in Dostoyevsky’s behavior and Putin’s. We are close to committing suicide, but taking everyone around us.
Andrei Kurkov
For Andrei Kurkov, all of Ukrainian history is linked to the current war and he believes that it is not a local war. He notes that Russian propaganda has roots in Latin America, because journalists from Mexico and Chile called him to ask if it was true that Ukraine is an anti-Semitic country where it is dangerous to be Jewish. “What can I say to that? We elected a Russian-speaking Jew as president with 73% of the vote! »
“Ukraine has its own history, with its dramas, its tragedies,” he continues. But Russia always tries to write the history of other peoples and was never happy that Ukraine wrote its own. This war is because of Ukraine’s independence, of the difference between Ukrainian and Russian mentalities. An individualist and anarchist mentality, whereas the Russians are collective and monarchist. We adore his tsar, we are always behind him and when they are tired, they kill him and adore the next one. Ukraine has always been in the dream of an independent country separated from Russia, from its political and ideological slavery. And today, 30 years after independence in 1991, it is another war for the same independence. But Ukraine will survive because it has survived many tragedies in its past. »
The gray bees
Andrei Kurkov
Liana Levi
400 pages
The gray bees
Andrei Kurkov
Liana Levi, 400 pages