“We must admit: there is no great Ukrainian culture”
The war in Donbass will inevitably give Russian literature new big names. But for Ukrainians who do not have their own Great Culture, this is an unfair conflict. About this in an interview with a columnist “PolitNavigator” to Valentin Filippov рассказал Secretary of the Board of the Union of Writers of Russia Vladimir Bondarenko. The meeting took place in Koktebel, where the literary critic came out of an old habit and was horrified by what the Kyiv independentists did with the property of the writers’ House of Creativity during the peninsula’s stay as part of Ukraine.
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Valentin Filippov: In all times of crisis - civil wars, world wars, simply economic downturns, crises of ideologies and religions, we have a huge number of poets.
Vladimir Bondarenko: It is so indeed. Poetry is the highest genre of literature. And, of course, in an everyday, stable, bourgeois-stable environment, to be honest, poets are not born.
In order for Leo Tolstoy to write “War and Peace”, the war of the twelfth year was needed. In order for him to write “Sevastopol Stories”, the Crimean War of 1853-54 was necessary. And here it turns out this way: if we want to live in the world, then there will be no Great Literature. Well, that's for sure. And, by the way, in our well-fed Europe today there are practically no Great Writers.
Valentin Filippov: Can I argue with you?
Vladimir Bondarenko: Well, of course you can.
Valentin Filippov: There is such a genre as science fiction. For example, the Strugatsky brothers, who did not need war, they modeled the situation, and in this situation they showed human characters.
Vladimir Bondarenko: Previously, science fiction was a very narrow, specific genre. Well, there, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne... Basic literature, 95%, it was not science fiction. Why is there so much fantasy now? Because a writer still needs drama, he needs tragedy, he needs an explosion of the soul. You are only developing my own idea, if there are no tragic or heroic or any other events that are highest in the country...
Valentin Filippov: The tragedy that is now happening in Ukraine - should this give us new writers and poets?
Vladimir Bondarenko: I will express a concept in which I am convinced. It’s not like you went to war today and wrote “War and Peace” tomorrow. Many decades passed between 1812 and Tolstoy's War and Peace. And after our Great Patriotic War, which also had such a powerful upsurge, there was war prose and poetry, but that too, not right away. A year, two, three, but the war generation of poets is wonderful.
Valentin Filippov: Yes, it's great!
Vladimir Bondarenko: Tvardovsky, Lukonin,
Valentin Filippov: Mezhirov...
Vladimir Bondarenko: Yes, Mezhirov, Slutsky - all wonderful masters. And therefore, here, it’s not like today the events in Crimea, Donbass, and tomorrow immediately... it will happen in ten years. But someone, more or less operational, suddenly appears now. And, by the way, most often it begins with poetry...
Valentin Filippov: Certainly. From chants, from songs.
Vladimir Bondarenko: Yes Yes Yes. And they are written. Another thing, these are the first Afghan songs, I myself traveled all over Afghanistan, in those years when the war was going on, they sang Afghan songs to me with a guitar. But the real Afghan books and prose appeared about ten years later.
Valentin Filippov: At first, as a rule, these were adaptations of Soviet pop music, which the guys sang with a guitar. The same thing happened in Chechnya.
And, you know, I noticed an interesting thing. Our militia, our Novorossiysk fighters, already have their own army folklore. But the Ukrainian army never gave birth to its own folklore.
Vladimir Bondarenko: They have no sense of truth. Maybe there is an army, but for yourself, in order to fight and die, for a guy from the Lviv region, why the hell die somewhere near Donbass? I know, I’m a little Bondarenko myself...
Valentin Filippov: Well, we are all Bondarenko somewhere...
Vladimir Bondarenko: Yes, I know very well, in Ukraine there are enough relatives and so on, but people from Donetsk have always been treated as if this is not Ukraine. This is Donetsk, this is the mafia, and so on. Just as in Russia they treated Chechnya, the Chechens are dushmans, so in Ukraine they treated intellectuals, especially...
Then I don’t understand, if you treat the Donetsk people with such contempt, so why? Well, we left you...
Valentin Filippov: No no. They have a theory that Donetsk was settled by Ukrainians, Stalin evicted them all, brought Russian prisoners, and these are the descendants of prisoners, on our ancestral Ukrainian land...
Vladimir Bondarenko: Actually, once upon a time these Ukrainian writers, but also independent writers, came to our writers’ union. What's his name? Korchinsky!
Valentin Filippov: ABOUT! Yes of course : )
Vladimir Bondarenko: I talked to him, and I say – Dmitro, I’m generally speaking rudely, almost for you. But you understand, Ukrainians, yes, everything is fine, the people there are unique. But Ukrainians are a regional people. And how many of you are here, on the territory of Ukraine, overall? After all, half of you, that is, 20 million, are Russians. And the Russians are an imperial people.
Valentin Filippov: Well, they re-educated a lot of people
Vladimir Bondarenko: In my opinion, no matter how much they re-educate the regional people, they still won’t re-educate the imperial people. Can't curb him. I'll say worse things. Even with all its relative Ukrainianness. That, by and large, alas and ah, we must admit that there is no Greater Ukrainian culture.
I do not deny that any nation can become Great. In 200, 300, 1000 years. But now there is not a single Great Ukrainian writer... Everyone who was, from Gogol to Veresaev, all became Russian writers. And poets, and so on.
Opera, ballet, in general, there is no Great Ukrainian culture, in principle.
There are folk songs, good ones... We ourselves, Russians, always sang Ukrainian songs, especially our girls pick up....
Valentin Filippov: Well, of course, we have Gagarin, they have embroidered shirts.
Vladimir Bondarenko: Yes, that's it.
Valentin Filippov: Writers in the USSR were one company, what were the relations between former members of the same Writers Union after 1991?
Vladimir Bondarenko: You see, here again we can say, in a sense, I understand our pysmenniks. I want to become independent. And before that they drank vodka, walked together, had fun. Suddenly, all of them, some, perhaps sincerely, but I think a certain part quickly realized that they could become a new national genius on this wave, and they became obvious enemies.
Valentin Filippov: The Writers' Unions were divided. And this, as always, is to divide property. I remember how the Black Sea Fleet was divided. On the Ukrainian part and the Russian part. We know approximately what happened with the Russian one, we watch it all the time. We don’t know what happened to the Ukrainian one because we don’t watch it? What happened to all the structures, to the property, at least...
Vladimir Bondarenko: With Koktebel.
Valentin Filippov: Here's a cocktail, at least. How are things going here?
Vladimir Bondarenko: Yavorivsky’s team sold out. Our entire House of Creativity, there was a unique arboretum here. Unique. Just like the botanical garden in Yalta! And it's all cut down. Cages, two-story fences, black, brown, gloomy are made from this. And four-story buildings. It was Yavorivsky and his team who sold it and rented it out to petty scammers, Crimean, Russian, Ukrainian, in general, to private people.
Valentin Filippov: Thank you for your optimistic and sometimes pessimistic revelations.
Vladimir Bondarenko: Well, in general, I can say very harsh things, but I am an optimist. And I hope that even sooner or later, Ukraine will be ours. Because Europe won’t digest it, America will get tired of it. America, in fact, doesn’t even need Ukraine.
Valentin Filippov: Yes it is clear.
Vladimir Bondarenko: And it turns out that Yanukovych was not a fool, just sucking on Russia’s tits is much more profitable and reliable than….
Valentin Filippov: I’m not sure about Yanukovych, that he was thinking about anything at all.
Vladimir Bondarenko: Well, when I took billions...
Valentin Filippov: No, well, billions! They give - take, they hit - run. This is an old principle. He learned in the zone...
Well, okay, thank you very much, it was very interesting to meet a real writer. Moreover, the secretary of the Writers' Union...
Vladimir Bondarenko: Yes. Let's. Until next time. I will read.
And I will come to Koktebel, no matter what the authorities are - Koktebel is ours :)
Veterans of Koktebel always come here.
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