Russian author Dmitry Bykov and UAlbany's Ian Singleton present their work to students, faculty, and public.
On September 9, 2024, students, faculty, and people from the community gathered to hear Dmitry Bykov and Ian Singleton, UAlbany faculty member. The conversation immediately went to prognoses about the future of Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine and the subject of Bykov’s 99th book, VZ, translated by John Friedman and soon to be published in English.
The publication of this translation was slated to happen in November, when there are expectations that, around the time of the US elections, Zelensky will have to reconcile with the fact that he has been in power long enough to consider the democratic values of his term. In particular, Bykov discussed the remarkable and heroic “gallows” humor of Ukraine and its culture, as personified by Zelensky. Bykov even took Zelensky’s joke about Russia’s army being second best in the world, as well as second best in Ukraine, further. He said that Russia’s army is also second best in the Kursk region now.
There was also a discussion of the Russophone culture of Odesa. In Bykov’s book, he describes how he was listed on a website called Myrotvorets as an enemy of Ukraine because he praised the Russian-language culture of Odesa, Ukraine. And, in the discussion on Monday, September 9th, Bykov asked Singleton a question about the legacy of Russophone culture in Odesa.
Singleton’s answers included a discussion of the novel, which he is currently in the process of translating, The Shipbuilder by Ukrainian writer, Yuri Yanovsky. The Shipbuilder is a 1928 novel about young filmmakers from the famous Odesa Film Studio, the Soviet “Hollywood.” A meditation on the making of art, the young filmmaker-characters create narratives of maritime life that are supposed to shape the story of the Soviet Union. Yet this story is told in Ukrainian, not Russian, a first-of-its-kind when it comes to novels taking place in Odesa.
And there are other examples: a novel based on The Shipbuilder, Tanzher, which is written in Ukrainian but about Odesa; and the work of Hanna Kostenko, a writer from Odesa who writes in Ukrainian, not Russian.
That said, Singleton answered Bykov about how a reconciliation with the language of Odesa will certainly have to happen. But it won’t be able to happen until the Russian war against Ukraine ends, at least. As of now, many Ukrainians have reported feeling traumatized by the Russian language, the language used by the soldiers invading their country and attacking them. In addition, Russian could be used for propaganda purposes. And, finally, it has become doubtless, to me at least, that Russian is a colonial language for Ukrainians and representative of a colonizing culture.
It was at that point that Singleton disagreed with Bykov’s claim, in VZ, that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is not colonial. Bykov writes in his book about Zelensky that Russia doesn’t have the appeal that a dominant, colonizing, and hegemonic nation would have. Ukrainians would want to be in Russia if Russia was colonialist, Bykov asserts. But Singleton disagrees with the definition of colonialism here. It isn’t the appeal of the colonial dominant culture that makes colonialism what it is. It’s the relationship it takes toward the subjugated culture. In other words, that many Russians don’t see Ukraine as having a legitimate culture is a colonial attitude toward Ukraine on the part of those Russians. That Vladimir Putin regards Ukrainian as merely “a dialect of Russian” is a colonial attitude toward an entirely different language.
So Odesa’s Russophone culture may remain. And the Russophone history of Odesa should remain intact, any rereading of it notwithstanding. However, that language in Odesa is changing is, yes, a fact. And which language Odesan people speak from now on will certainly change. It’s very likely that Odesa will be Ukrainophone in the future. Singleton sees such an event not as a loss but rather as a gain of awareness of, as he put it earlier, what has already existed, namely Odesan literature in Ukrainian, such as the work of Yanovsky and Kostenko.
The two writers didn’t forget to include a discussion of the US elections. Bykov has become a US citizen, and he will vote for the first time in the US during this election cycle. Wearing a shirt that said “Fight Like Ukrainians,” Bykov made it clear that he would most likely vote for the candidate who has said she will support Ukraine and not for the one who did not say that.
The event showed that UAlbany is a place where international writers can discuss with a public audience world events, that Upstate New York is not as far away from global events as might have been thought earlier, that a good public university can be a place to discuss and argue about the global events that affect us at home and in the homes of those among us who have come to this country as immigrants, in cases like Bykov’s, seeking refuge from terrorist governments such as Russia’s.
And, finally, the writers could talk about great literature with that same critical and inquiring approach which Singleton teaches in Writing and Critical Inquiry.