In parts I and II of the dispatch on the Ukrainian war prose, I wrote about Ukrainian national identity in the east of the country as a political and civic choice. This choice to identify with and fight for Ukraine characterises Olena Stiazhkina’s characters and the writer’s own political trajectories.
Before the war, Stiazhkina was a professor at the department of Slavic history at the Donetsk National University. She fled from the Russian invasion in 2014 and became a prominent civic activist advocating for the people on the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Stiazhkina’s linguistic choices emphasise the complexities of Ukrainian national identity of a writer coming from the east of the country.
[Some of these issues are discussed in fragments from the Fighting Talk, our event at the School of Slavonic and East-European Studies which was co-organised by the UIL].
Her novel In God’s Language (Мовою Бога, 2015) about the city of Donetsk under Russian occupation was originally written in Russian and published in a journal. It was then translated into Ukrainian by Kateryna Sinchenko and published as a book. The two versions have different endings.
The Russian-language text ends with a step towards reconciliation between a local collaborator and a pro-Ukrainian guerrilla fighter. The abridged Ukrainian version, which appeared later, ends with a dramatic fight between the two characters. According to Stiazhkina c. 2015, reconciliation ceased being conceivable.
[You can read excerpts from In God’s Language in Uilleam Blacker’s translation in Apofenie; the brilliant has translated parts of the novel as well and will hopefully translate the whole thing!]
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Ukrainian Killjoy Dispatch to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.