Stirring Up Dust
Sometimes when a musician dies unexpectedly, an Elliott Smith or a David Bowie, I end up bingeing their back-catalogue and becoming a bigger fan than when they were alive. It feels as if the war in Ukraine has had the same effect, teaching me so much about the place that I find myself wishing I could visit places that are now gone. It’s been eye-opening to learn about its archaeological urban sites as old as Mesopotamia, its Korean community who have lived there since the 1960s, and other features of its pre-war life and culture.
I’m wondering why I didn’t hear about all of this in 2014, but I think that’s because the focus then was on Crimea and its own distinct history (inadvertently following Putin’s agenda of treating Crimea as a place apart). Other than knowing that Chernobyl was within the borders of Ukraine, and being aware of the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan, I didn’t know much about the place.
That’s certainly changed. Last week my son and I watched the first episodes of Servant of the People on All 4, and it wasn’t hard to see why Zelenskyy became so politically popular there—already it’s a masterclass in the politics of Eastern European corruption and Western-facing ambitions. One of its more charming aspects, though, is the insight it offers into everyday life in Kyiv, from its kitchens to its classrooms.
My only previous personal insight into Ukraine was when it was part of the USSR. In the closing years of the 1980s, when I was first at university, my printmaker father started receiving letters from a young artist in Lviv, whose delicate, dreamlike etchings were like snapshots from another world. Five years later, thanks to Dad’s efforts, Igor visited the Art School at our university for a brief residence. Although I had moved interstate by then, I was visiting Tassie at the time, and remember meeting him and putting a face to all of those envelopes covered in Soviet stamps. When the war started in February, I looked him up, and discover that he’s now a film director of note in Ukraine. As far as I can tell, he’s in Lviv right now.
It isn’t only Ukraine that this war is teaching us about, but Russia too. As a Cold War kid I already knew a fair amount about it, filtered through the politics of the late twentieth century, and had paid attention to the upheavals of Glasnost, the Yeltsin years, and Putin’s increasingly malign reign. One of the best artifacts of the latter is the 2014 film Leviathan, which said so much about 21st century Russia through its focus on one small town and its corrupt mayor.
So I’ve appreciated learning more about Russia’s history from commentators tweeting about the war, as well as Ukraine’s. Putin himself uses history to bolster his case, so it’s essential to hear other accounts. Not that Putin wants Russians to learn too much about their society, having just cancelled the teaching of sociology, cultural studies and political science in Russia’s pedagogical universities.
A few links from the last week.
How sanctions are killing Russia.
Unprotected Russian soldiers disturbed radioactive dust in Chernobyl’s Red Forest.
The drone operators who halted the Russian convoy headed for Kyiv.
The harrowing story of one Ukrainian mother and her child.
Zelenskyy’s speeches to the parliaments of Australia, the Netherlands and Belgium yesterday, and his latest message to his people, are well worth reading. He manages to deliver a bespoke message for each, yet they all relate to and reinforce each other. The man is a force of nature.
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