What Russia’s children think about the war in Ukraine

Unlike English, the Russian language has no use for articles, definite or indefinite. Instead, there is a mutual understanding applied to a particular conversation: the interlocutors simply understand whether they talk about a dog or a house in general, or this exact dog and this exact house. This certainty appears to be just hanging in the air.

The same goes for the war. In the past, the word ‘war’ would inevitably entail the certainty of the 1941–45 war. ‘The war’ always meant the Great Patriotic War. This is no longer the case. Now, if you mention ‘war’ in a conversation, your interlocutor will immediately think of the war in Ukraine or the war with Ukraine. The war that is happening right now.

In 2015 Samokat published my book The Raven’s Children, marking – as it turned out – the beginning of The Leningrad’s Tales series. Set in the period from 1938 to 1946, these books describe what it’s like to grow up in a world that has fallen apart. Shortly after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, one of the readers reached out to me saying what I was already fearing myself: we are now living on the pages of The Raven’s Children.

Working on these books, I’ve read many personal testimonies of the period: letters, diaries, and memoirs. One of the most poignant Russian documents of the 1941–45 war was the diary of Tanya Savicheva, a young girl trapped in the Siege of Leningrad. Her last entry is known to almost everyone in St Petersburg: “Everyone is dead, only Tanya is left”. Children’s war testimonies always serve as an indictment of war, even if they are unleashed in the attacking country.

Children nowadays rarely keep dairies. If they do then not on a daily basis. When the war started and the weeks passed one another with no end to it, one thing became very clear: we are experiencing something unimaginable, something unthinkable. That’s when I started talking to children. Asking them questions and gathering the stories of their present lives. What do they see, hear and think? How do they go to school, argue, make friends, read? What do they feel?

I thought, surely, I would see how this war, despite being so far away from them, was seeping into their conversations, their quarrels and making-ups, their growing up. I thought that time would make these stories invaluable. People would be interested in them just like we are interested in lives and thoughts of children in Germany in 1933–1945. But then again, these stories are already invaluable as we speak. After all, the future of Russia is decided not by a 70-year-old president, but by those who are now five or seventeen, eight or thirteen.

This is not an anthropological study, nor a social survey. These are mere conversations recorded during the war, and nothing else. I interviewed about two dozen children myself, just as many filled in a provided questionnaire. The list of questions was compiled to sound as neutral as possible, accommodating different sides of the present situation. But most importantly, it acknowledged the unprecedented split that the war had caused in Russian society. It was not my task to argue, to convince, to persuade or to prove my point of view. Do you support the war? I’m listening. Are you against the war? I’m listening.

Most of my respondents are aged 12 and over. The youngest are just five. I spoke with some independently minded 17-year-olds who can hardly be called ‘children’ anymore. I spoke with their parents beforehand to check what subjects were out of bounds. Some asked to look at the questions in advance, some then walked away.

I found myself faced with numerous dilemmas. What to do when, all of a sudden, a little boy whispers to you: “Can you tell me what actually happened in Bucha, no one would tell me?” Only once a child asked me why I was asking all these questions. I recalled one Icelandic saga, where a troll (if I’m not mistaken) asks the protagonist the very same question to which he replies: “because I want to know.” This answer satisfied both the troll and the child.

I asked a fellow journalist to join me in my little venture. In a way she was right to refuse. “It’s pointless,” she said. Statistically, yes, it is certainly pointless. I could never claim “this is what children in Russia thought”. Then why am I so sure that these stories are invaluable? The answer is very simple: because these children decided so. I didn’t eavesdrop on conversations on the streets. I wasn’t fishing around. I didn’t pretend to be someone I wasn’t. I explained it to everyone loud and clear: because we live in historic times. Because I want to know.

My youngest interviewees were aged around five and six. Of course, they were encouraged to talk to me by their parents. These little ones don’t know there is a war ongoing. They live outside of time, and one needs to look closely into the flow of their innocent speeches to catch a glimpse of the sign of our times, to spot the slippery yet undeniable shadow of the war.

Teenagers, that’s a whole different story. Some were lost, some were angry, giggly, strict, arrogant, provoked. But them wanting to share their experience is their way of showing that they acknowledge the value of both their position and their emotions. They acknowledge the historical value of their experience. And I see something bigger in this acknowledgement. Something that will shape the future society. Something that will shape the future generation.

Я против войны – I’m against the war

Since the first days of the war, the state employed large-scale punitive measures to stop any protest movements and supress societal discussions of the war. In their eyes, discussing means condemning, and that’s what the state is so terribly scared of. The restraints haven’t stopped the protests, but rather turned them into peat fires. Those living in St Petersburg know very well what it’s like: the flames are nowhere to be seen; everything is smouldering. But the smoke gradually thickens. The protest has taken shape of little signs that are shared with each other, shared with the city, with the world, with anyone who is willing to see. Anti-war stickers, graffiti, posters, figurines, price tags, ribbons – they are spread swiftly, on the run, by somebody’s invisible hands. By children’s hands too.

There is a mix of terror and excitement in the words of older children and teenagers when they speak about all this. They are excited because it seems like a game to them. As if they have stepped into a fairy tale about Little Thumb who is trying to fool the ogre. But this game makes your heart pound for real, bringing out the genuine fear. These children already know that the state just sweeps people up randomly, having no soft spot for teenagers either.

They tell me in detail about fines and charges, about administrative detention and delinquency records. It’s not the fines and charges they are afraid of, at least not entirely. They are afraid that Mum will be worried. That Granny will be scared (“it’s not good for her health”). That Dad will say: “See, I’ve warned you.” That the schoolmarm will report them to the FSB (Federal Security Service).

But what scares them the most is being grabbed by strangers’ rough hands, being yelled at, shout at and barked at by grown-ups – overfed men and women in uniforms. When you’re eleven, all grown-ups look big to you.

They’re afraid. Yet it doesn’t stop them. Overcoming the fear empowers them.

“We’ve started tying green ribbons everywhere. They are now appearing in more and more new places. I was just about to tie mine when I saw there was already one. It made me so happy.”

“I wear two bracelets in the colours of the Ukrainian flag.”

“We made those pins ourselves.” “Do you wear them at school?” “Yes, at school. Once we’re outside, we take them off and hide. But it doesn’t mean we change our opinions.”

“Why do you hide them?” “It’s scary.” “What are you afraid of? “That grown-ups will beat us up or say something to us.”

“The war posters on the tube are always covered with stickers or gum.”

The omnipresent face of state propaganda is also overfed. Russian cities are plastered with banners and posters. Government propaganda is produced at printing houses, paid with money. Wrapped, packaged, and delivered – it’s a whole industry. Pure business, nothing personal.

With protests it’s the opposite: everything is handmade, people draw and write by hand in their own way. These signs are imbued with a personal meaning, and most importantly, with a choice. These choices are made by particular people, it’s of their own making. In this small way a person gets to share a fleeting touch with their city, turning these signs into an essential and visible part of the urban life. Coming and going, and then coming back (the street cleaner who can keep up with a teenager hasn’t been born yet), they are like tiny pulsating lights signalling to like-minded people who “are just afraid or can’t speak up.”

Назови ее своим именем – Call her by her name

The girl has a simple Russian name, it’s in the top five of Russia’s most popular ones.

I don’t ask for surnames or school numbers. I don’t keep any video or audio recordings, I just scribble with my pen on paper. Sometimes I pause the conversation: “Hold on, I want to write this down in full detail.” Or “Hold on, I think what you’ve just said is very important.” I ask questions that have no right or wrong answers. It’s the answer itself that matters. In the meantime, the war is going on and to use the word ‘war’ is now punishable by law in Russia. Now it’s not uncommon for schoolteachers to inform on their own students, and for students to rat out their teachers and classmates. The words ‘fear’ and ‘be afraid’ have frequented children’s conversations the way they shouldn’t have. I’m responsible for the stories trusted to me.

“We can give you a different name, what do you say?”

There is a long moment while she thinks. She then shakes her head and says: “No, if my name is ***, then I’m ***.”

I write it down: “***, 11 years old.”

*** tells me how she got into an argument over the war with a classmate. He threatened to beat her up if she wouldn’t shut up. “That’s him admitting his defeat,” she explained. She then hastily adds that she was ready to fight for her beliefs.

As I type the text on my computer, my hands freeze over ***’s words: “just a silly boy”. What if the boy is not that silly after all, and his parents can identify *** and inform on her, and then… I go back and erase her name.

Perhaps, I should just stick with calling my interviewees simply ‘a girl’ or ‘a boy’? Or in doing so would I unknowingly pass the point of no return, succumbing to the state narrative of depersonalisation which inevitably leads to dehumanisation? Russian foreign minister Lavrov referred to people killed in Ukraine as “collateral damage”, while for Putin they are “cannon fodder” and those who don’t agree with him are “midges”.

But she is not a midge. She lives in St. Petersburg, she is eleven years old, and she demanded to be called by her name. And yet here I’m writing “a girl”.

Excerpts from the article by Yulia Yakovleva published by Holod Media. Translated by Ekaterina Shatalova

Winners of Index’s 2022 Freedom of Expression Awards announced

The winners of Index on Censorship’s 2022 Freedom of Expression awards have been announced at a ceremony in London hosted by broadcaster, journalist and commentator Ayesha Hazarika.

The awards, now in their twenty-second year, celebrate those who risk arrest, assault and imprisonment through their championing of freedom of expression. This year’s panel of judges consists of multi-award-winning artist Alison Jackson, artist and writer Coco Fusco, journalist Ben Preston, and Chair of the Index Board of Trustees Sir Trevor Phillips.

Awards were presented in three categories: the arts, campaigning, and journalism, alongside the annual Trustees Award. The winners were:

The 2022 Trustees Award – Andrey Kurkov

Andrey Kurkov is a writer, journalist, and the current president of PEN Ukraine. Born in St Petersburg in 1961, he graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, worked as a journalist and did military service as a prison warder in Odessa. He became a writer, producing screenplays and authoring critically acclaimed and popular novels, including Death and the Penguin. Kurkov is a hugely respected commentator on Ukraine, and his most recently translated novel, Grey Bees, explores the current conflict through adventures of a beekeeper.

The 2022 Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism – Sophia Huang Xueqin

Huang Xueqin is an activist and journalist who has worked with several domestic Chinese media outlets. She has reported extensively on the MeToo movement in China. Huang has worked to promote women’s rights, and to document and expose sexual harassment against women and girls. She has faced legal challenges because of her work and was detained between October 2019 and January 2020 after writing about mass protests in Hong Kong.

On 19 September 2021, Huang disappeared. It has since been confirmed that she had been detained along with labour activist Wang Jianbing and charged with “inciting subversion of state power”. She remains in detention and is now held in the No. 1 Detention Centre in Guangzhou. 

The 2022 Freedom of Expression Award for Arts – Hamlet Lavastida

Hamlet Lavastida has been described as a political activist by way of art, using his art to document human rights abuses in Cuba and to criticise Cuban authorities. Lavastida has been involved in various protest movements in Cuba, including the 27N movement which grew out of the protests held on 27 November 2020.

In June 2021, Lavastida was arrested after returning from a residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Following his arrest, Amnesty International named him as a ‘prisoner of conscience’. Lavastida stayed in prison for 87 days. Lavastida has been living in exile in Europe since September 2021, warned that he will be arrested immediately should he ever return to Cuba. 

The 2022 Freedom of Expression Award for Campaigning – OVD-Info

OVD-Info is an independent human rights media project documenting political persecution in Russia. They collect information about detentions at public rallies and other cases of political pressure, publish news and coordinate legal assistance to assist detainees. The organisation was set up in 2011 to document arrests during the widespread anti-fraud protests, the organisation has now evolved to offer legal guidance and support to people arrested at peaceful protests in Russia.

In September 2021, OVD-Info was labelled as a ‘foreign agent’ by Russian authorities. During the ongoing war in Ukraine and associated anti-war protests in Russia, OVD-Info’s work is more important than ever.  Despite a highly unpredictable situation and persistent censorship, OVD-Info continues to support detained and persecuted protesters in Russia.

Ruth Smeeth, Index on Censorship CEO said: “Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression awards celebrate the bravery and brilliance of journalists, artists and campaigners from across the globe. Each and every winner is a beacon for free expression, standing up for their democratic rights and values in the face of often unimaginable personal peril. The quiet heroism of our winners gives us all reason to redouble our work to defend free speech and free expression around the globe, give voice to the persecuted, and stand against repression wherever we find it”.

Watch the acceptance videos of the 2022 winners here.

NOTES TO EDITORS

For all media enquiries contact Luke Holland / [email protected] / +447447 008098 

Trustee’s Award 2022

Andrey Kurkov is a writer, journalist, and the current president of PEN Ukraine. Born in St Petersburg in 1961, he graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, worked as a journalist and did military service as a prison warder in Odessa. He became a writer, producing screenplays and authoring critically acclaimed and popular novels, including Death and the Penguin. Kurkov is a hugely respected commentator on Ukraine, and his most recently translated novel, Grey Bees, explores the current conflict through adventures of a beekeeper.

A memorial for the man who told the world about the Babyn Yar massacre

Anatoly Kuznetsov is the author of Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel. His memoir is a masterpiece of Ukrainian literature and a testament to the 30,000 Jews massacred at Babyn Yar (the Ukrainian spelling), Kyiv in September 1941. Today it would probably be called “autofiction”, a form of writing where autobiography borrows from the techniques of narrative fiction. However, for Kuznetsov, it is only the form which is novelistic, nothing in the book is fictionalised.

“I am writing it as though I were giving evidence under oath in the very highest court and I am ready to answer for every single word. This book records only the truth – AS IT REALLY HAPPENED.”

The book records the events following the German invasion of Ukraine in 1941 up until Soviet forces recaptured Kyiv at the end of 1943. But it also discusses the Soviet rewriting of history after the end of World War II and the terrible disaster in 1961 that followed the literal burying of the site of the atrocity in sludge and mud.

We only have the full text of this remarkable book because Kuznetsov defected to the UK in 1969 after finally losing faith in the Soviet Union after the invasion of Czechoslovakia the previous year. He smuggled the manuscript out in films hidden in his clothing and this was later translated by the Daily Telegraph journalist David Floyd, who had helped him defect.

Kuznetsov is buried in Highgate Cemetery, two plots up from actor Sir Ralph Richardson and just across from artist Patrick Caulfield and deserves to be just as celebrated. And yet, the grave is unmarked. Pilgrims to the monument to Karl Marx walk past this anonymous plot every day without realising that they are passing the last resting place of one of the most eloquent witnesses to the horrific human cost of totalitarian ideology.

There is now a crowdfunder to raise a headstone for Anatoly Kuznetsov, which has already received wide support.

Luke Harding, the Guardian foreign correspondent and author of several books on Russia recently described Kuznetsov’s book as “a brilliant documentary novel”… “a vivid, terrible and authentic account”.

Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel is presently only available in English in an old American edition from 1970, but it is surely only a matter of time before an enterprising publisher does this great book justice.

There is a fascinating piece in the Index on Censorship archive on Kuznetsov from 1981, two years after the writer died in London. The article, written by film critic Jeanne Vronskaya, discusses two films that were adapted from Kuznetsov short stories in the 1960s: We Two Men and Dawn Meeting. Each, in very different ways, was destroyed by the Soviet censor.

The first was a slice of 1960s neo-realism about a drunken driver who reassesses his life after an encounter with an orphan. The film showed gritty scenes of rural life and included real country people as extras. The film initially avoided the attention of the authorities and was due to be celebrated at a gala event during the 1963 Moscow film festival. But on the day of the screening the film was pulled.

Kuznetsov characterised the attitude of the Communist Party to the film in his interview for Index: “How can we represent the USSR with a picture that shows women dressed in terrible headscarves, snotty-nosed children, rough roads, privately owned geese, illegal private work, and without so much as a mention of the leading role of the Party?”

The film was shelved and a more suitable example of Soviet film making shown in its place. (By way of a sidenote, Fellini’s 8 1/2 won the gold medal at the festival, although the great Italian director’s masterpiece was never distributed in the Soviet Union).

The second attempt at adapting a Kuznetsov story was even more of a fiasco. Dawn Meeting was the story of a milkmaid struggling to survive in the collective farm era. When the censor saw the film, cuts were demanded to make the film more upbeat and patriotic. When Kuznetsov saw the final result he was horrified: “I sat there watching a film that was completely strange to me: about the raising of the standard of living in a progressive, prosperous collective farm, first class houses, excellent clothes, collective farm songs from Moscow Radio’s record library, fields heavy with wheat, and happily smiling collective farmers all over the place.” In a final twist, Dawn Meeting was on billboards all over Moscow when Kuznetsov left for the UK in 1969.

If these short stories are half as good as Kuznetsov’s masterpiece, Babi Yar, then they also deserve a wider readership. But it is his memoir that will act as his testament.

“I wonder if we will ever understand that the most precious thing in this world is a man’s life and his freedom? Or is there still more barbarism ahead?”  Kuznetsov wrote those words in 1969. He did not need to answer his own question.