The enemy's language in a friendly capital
Riga is divided between two neatly segregated worlds: extremely supportive pro-Ukrainian Latvians and extremely smug Russian fascists. These worlds do not intersect, unless you are Ukrainian. A Ukrainian is exposed to both.
During a day and a half in Riga, I went to the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia and spoke at the poignant Ukrainian Independence Day readings in memory of Victoria Amelina. At the event, I met the translator Māra Poļakova who produces Latvian versions of Ukrainian classic and contemporary literature with the speed of light, and my Latvian student R. who spent eight weeks this summer reading literatura on the UIL’s online course under my curation. I paid a therapeutic visit to the statue of Taras Shevchenko who rises from sunflowers like Venus from sea foam in Kronvalda Park, and to the empty space just opposite, where a statue of Aleksandr Pushkin used to be.
The moment I stepped out of my bubble, I was assaulted by the Russian language. This is how most Ukrainians whose lives have been reshaped by the war respond to Russian: the language has become a weapon used against us in the war of annihilation. (I wrote about it in the essay ‘Mother Tongue’). In Ukrainian first-aid classes, we learn that if there’s a need to check the consciousness of a military person, one should not call out to them in Russian. Russian is coded as the enemy’s language. A military person in the state of altered consciousness can react aggressively to its sound, even if, courtesy of colonialism, Russian is their native tongue.
For a Ukrainian, a Russian speaker is coded as someone who might kill them if the circumstances permit; certainly as someone who wouldn’t inconvenience themselves by intervening in the killing.
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