Russophone literature of Ukraine: self-decolonization, deterritorialization, reclamation

ABSTRACT

This article discusses sociolinguistic aspects of belonging through the phenomenon of Russophone Ukrainian authors who have either switched to Ukrainian or continued using Russian during the Russo-Ukrainian War. It draws on a survey that the author has conducted over the past several months of 30 such authors. Fifteen respondents, who during the war have opted to withdraw from their main language of creativity in favour of another, are compared to a second group of 15 respondents, who continue using Russian as their language of creativity. The article engages with these authors’ reflections and reasoning as to why they have given up (or not given up) the Russian language in favour of Ukrainian, and it offers some considerations on the sociopolitical implications of making (or declining to make) such a switch, as well as questions of self-decolonization, linguistic affiliation, and sociocultural peripheries and marginality.

RÉSUMÉ

Cet article traite du phénomène de l’appartenance et de ses aspects sociolinguistiques à travers le cas des auteurs ukrainiens russophones qui sont passés à l’ukrainien ou ont continué à utiliser le russe pendant la guerre russo-ukrainienne. Il s’appuie sur une enquête que l’auteur a menée au cours des derniers mois auprès de 30 de ces auteurs. Quinze de ces répondants ont choisi pendant la guerre d’abandonner leur principale langue de création en faveur d’une autre, tandis que 15 autres continuent à utiliser le russe comme langue de création. L’article se penche sur les réflexions et le raisonnement de ces auteurs quant aux raisons pour lesquelles ils ont abandonné (ou non) la langue russe en faveur de l’ukrainien, et propose quelques considérations sur les implications sociopolitiques d’un tel changement (ou du refus de le faire), ainsi que sur les questions d’auto-décolonisation, d’affiliation linguistique, de périphérie socioculturelle et de marginalité.

KEYWORDS:

• Russophone literature of Ukraine
• decolonization
• Russo-Ukrainian War

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the survey participants for their sincerity and openness, and to Larysa Bilous, Gilad Sotil, Oksana Vynnyk, and my mother, with whom I discussed early drafts of this article. I would also like to thank the journal’s two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and Avram Brown for his editorial assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. On, for example, Vladimir Nabokov’s switch and his own reflections on it, see Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov, 472; and Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 54. On Nabokov and Joseph Conrad, see Ibáñez, “(In)Hospitable Languages and Linguistic,” 62–64.

2. For instance, Tamar Steinitz emphasizes the practical as well as emotional and political premises for such a transition (Translingual Identities, 8). Eugen Banauch similarly traces such a switch by Jewish authors in Canada who exist between definitions: on one hand, they are not able to assimilate fully in the target language and culture; on the other, they are neglected within the study of German exile writing (Fluid Exile, 12). Andrea Hammel discusses revulsion with the German language, associated with the Nazis (“Translating Cultures and Languages”).

3. For example, Al-Yasir and Al-Yasir discuss a range of Arab-American authors – in particular, refugees and immigrants to the US from Syria and Lebanon – who gradually abandoned Arabic in favour of English (“Oriental Version of Otherness”).

4. Kayyal, “From Left to Right.”

5. See, for instance, Pavlenko, “Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries,” on de-Russification of the public sphere and the general shift from the language of the colonizer in post-Soviet states.

6. Ukraine’s Russophone literature has been well explored in scholarship. See, for instance: Chernetsky, “Russophone Writing in Ukraine”; and Puleri, Ukrainian, Russophone, (Other) Russian.

7. From this line on, the poem shifts to Ukrainian.

8. This and all further translations from Russian and Ukrainian are mine.

9. Bennett, “Purging of Catharsis”; Schaper, “Aristotle’s Catharsis.”

10. Martynov, “Moiu knigu perevodiat.”

11. Kabanov, “Svet v raione otkliuchaiut.”

12. Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka.

13. This author reports having already begun the transition. On the construction of boundaries from Russia, see Vozna, “Towards World Russians?”

14. However, this is not the case with Kabanov, who knows Ukrainian and sometimes writes poetry in it.

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Notes on contributors

Alex Averbuch

Alex Averbuch is a scholar, poet, and translator. Currently he is the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta. He earned his PhD in Slavic and Jewish studies at the University of Toronto with a dissertation on the history of the genre of solicitory poetry in Ukrainian, Russian, and Hebrew. Averbuch’s research explores commodity culture, gender and critical race theory, epistolarity, photography, theatricality and performance, translation, and creative writing in foreign language pedagogy. He is the author of three books of poetry and an array of literary translations between Hebrew, Ukrainian, Russian, and English.