Kate Gladka: Blood, sweat & tears in Kyiv

Grumpy Old Men contributor Kate Gladka tells stories about how daily life goes on in war. This week she watched "The Word House," a film about Soviet extermination of Ukrainian writers in the 1920s

I'm 33, and I'm from Kyiv. For most of my life, I've been involved in writing and journalism. After February 24, 2022, the history of my country, city, and myself took a sharp turn. Like yours probably did. And I understand that words don't stop the war, but they can carry a charge, unite, and evoke empathy in people, and that helps us live. Every day, I ask myself: is the war inside me? It sounds abstract, but I mean quite specific things: where do I fight, where do I not take responsibility for certain aspects of my life, where do I feel anger? And these moments are becoming fewer. For me, war has, first of all, become a state of consciousness, a state of mind. It's easy to blame Russians for everything, and I don’t minimize their crimes or what they are doing here. But I'm interested not in them, but in us.

The ‘Executed Renaissance’ of Ukraine - once again.

If we don’t delve too deeply into the perilous history of Ukraine, it might seem that Russia has only been terrorizing Ukraine since the Soviet Union era. And supposedly, not just Ukraine. To some people, even the existence of the Gulag camps might indicate the actions of dreadful dictators, but they do not - to some people - represent the Russian mentality as a whole. To some people.

On May 9, I went to watch a film called “The Word House. An Endless Novel” by director Taras Tomenko (in Ukrainian: "Будинок Слово. Нескінченний роман"). This film tells the story of the 1920s when the Soviet government moved the capital of Ukraine from Kyiv to Kharkiv. Understandably, it was impossible to construct the “captivating Soviet reality” without artists, so the Ukrainian elite was enticed to Kharkiv in every possible way. At the initiative of writers in the late 1920s, the Soviets began to build a cooperative writers’ house, a progressive project at that time. It included 66 apartments, a solarium on the roof, a separate dining room for the artists, 3-4 room apartments, a telephone in each apartment, and many other innovative solutions. Considering that many people didn't have housing in Kharkiv or, at best, lived in jam-packed “komunalkis” (communal housing) with a shared phone and toilet, the offer was enticing. So, critics, journalists, writers, actors, and directors received keys to these brand-new apartments in the country’s new capital. The film subtly shows how a talented and ambitious generation entrusted themselves to those whose job would be to destroy them. Step by step, the NKVD kills, intimidates, drives to suicide, and exiles to camps the majority of this building's artists. The NKVD was the forerunner of the KGB.

(A screen grab from the film “The Word House. An Endless Novel”)

This generation didn’t include simply talented individuals. They were creators who had a colossal influence on shaping Ukrainian authentic culture and people of vast knowledge. They were also integrated into the wider European culture. They united people around them and were the voices of their generation. Of course, the logic of Soviet power operated in two ways: either to force them to write what the party wanted, thus abandoning their Ukrainian identity, or to kill them.

A century has passed, and we live in the 20s of the 21st century. My compatriots and I go to the cinema in the historical center of the capital of Ukraine - an independent country that Russia has attacked, once again using the same methods to destroy and erase Ukrainians, our culture, language, and monuments, raping and killing. When I came out after the film screening, two young girls, about 18 years old, were sitting in the park near the cinema. One of them was in tears. We sat together in the hall, so I remembered her face. Her friend tried to calm her down. Honestly, I myself left the cinema with a lump in my throat. I stopped nearby to hear what the girl was saying. "How can we even breathe, live, and create when they destroy us generation after generation? Why don't they leave us alone?"

(Kate Gladka at the “Word House” in Kharkiv, in front of a list of all the artists who lived there and were killed).

A hundred years pass, and battles continue on our territory for every 100 meters of advancement of the front line. They continue in the very same Kharkiv region. In the 1920s, some writers of the generation - which was later called the “Executed Renaissance” - witnessed how the Holodomor (recognized internationally as genocide against the Ukrainian people) was organized in the Kharkiv region. And Russia, as the legal successor of the USSR, has never answered for it.

So when I hear this young girl cry, I understand these tears. And it's a very ambivalent feeling. On the one hand, it's a generation that already clearly understands that any attempts to trust and build relationships with Russians have never ended well for Ukraine. On the other hand, a lot of rhetoric is repeated, both propagandistic and in attempts to “reconcile” us with neighbors.

In March 2023, the literary residency was (re)opened in the ‘Word House’ in Kharkiv. The very same house. Its first resident became a writer, a volunteer, and a member of the Ukrainian PEN Club, Victoria Amelina. In that same March 2023, while writing a foreword to the diary of another murdered writer, Volodymyr Vakulenko, in Izyum, she wrote, "my worst fear is coming true: I am inside a new ‘Executed Renaissance’." In July of that year, Victoria was killed by a Russian rocket in Kramatorsk. Young, talented, and also a voice of her generation.

And everything is again repeated. So what and with whom should we negotiate?