Decolonization in Odesa: Ukrainian Literature Amid Cultural Chaos

Decolonization processes in Odesa created a situation of resistance, rejection, quarrels, and polarized opinions. We talked to Iryna Nechytaliuk, PhD in Philology, associate professor at the I. Mechnikov National University of Odesa, lecturer and promoter of Ukrainian literature, about how this chaos was influenced by her "happy Soviet childhood" and the study of Ukrainian literature. Read the abridged version and watch the full interview on Intent about escaping from reality, Odesa, the life of "newcomers," the Ukrainian language, youth, and Pushkin.

Has the study of Ukrainian literature fulfilled its mission? There are many stories about how Russia destroyed Ukrainians, biographies of writers. Just remember that Vasyl Stus was murdered in 1985. But why did 2014 and February 24 come as a surprise to many?

We studied and knew it poorly. My elementary school was entirely the Soviet Union. That is, people a little older than me have never been taught Ukrainian literature properly. The majority of the Ukrainian population has not yet been taught Ukrainian literature. And they have absolute stereotypes that it is very sad and boring. And while my children and I can overcome this very easily, a few lessons and we are already fans of Ukrainian literature, they come home, start family conversations, and mom and dad say things like: "Oh, ugh, I remember, it's so terrible." And this work of mine turns into almost nothing. Stereotypes are very strong.

We need to work with the older population. There should be a huge number of popular programs. I dream that our city will be full of billboards with words about Odesa by Yanovsky, Dovzhenko, and poems by Lina Kostenko, so that this bubble will grow and there will be no chance for a person not to know Ukrainian literature. It didn't work, no. It couldn't do it, there was no chance, really.

About Stus. This is my life. I lived a happy Soviet childhood, and then I found out that at a time when I thought there was no country more beautiful than the one where I live, people were behind bars. For what? Just for being poets. Prisoners of conscience. Just for having a certain opinion. And for me, this stress happened when I was about 18 or 20 years old. And people still haven't come to terms with it, haven't reevaluated it, haven't put the puzzles together. And it was at this time that Stus was fighting, expressing his opinion. And he was not the only one. Svyatoslav Karavansky, Halyna Mohylnytska, Nina Strokata, Oleksa Riznykiv, and others.

What happened in my student days. We received a lot of information not only about the Executed Renaissance, but we had to work with previous eras. For example, when we discovered Shevchenko and reread Kobzar, it turned out that this was not the one-cell Shevchenko with three poems. When we discovered Lesya Ukrainka, and not only that: "...Dawn lights, victorious, triumphant, cut through the darkness of the night...". This is not only about the revolution, and definitely not about the Soviet revolution. So this is also a huge surprise. And then, you know, we are still processing these large amounts of information, and we are still reaching our level, the level of Odesa. And I tell my students in every class that maybe you will be the ones to collect all the information we have. Specifically, our problem is that the voice of Odesa is very weak on the map of Ukrainian culture. Odesa is still waiting for researchers, and I'm waiting for them myself, and somewhere I feel guilty that I'm doing a lot of things, but I need to sit down and write.

You know, it's easy to be a Ukrainian philologist in Lviv, maybe harder in Kharkiv, and definitely easier in Kyiv. But to be a Ukrainian philologist in Odesa is a separate quest. There are misunderstandings on all sides.

But I really like what is happening now. I am waiting for something exciting to happen next. This is despite the fact that we are at war and under tremendous pressure. Our literary and cultural life did not stop, even under the threat of direct invasion. I miss the literature that is being published in Odesa. Here I am very glad that there are Valeriy Puzyk and Andriy Hayetsky, who are voicing, talking about us and outlining our presence in Ukraine.

Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh

This period of growth and formation affects us today. What can you tell us about Balta, what the city was like when you were growing up, and what you were reading at that time?

It is my hometown, but I lived there in a military unit. And it is a separate microcosm. I mean, in connection with the immigrants, whom I met when I was 20 years old in Odesa. It was such a strange thing for me, because when you live in a military unit all your life, everyone is an immigrant. There are no indigenous people there, and even more so, my parents are doctors, and we stayed in this unit, and there was constant Brownian motion around us. Some people went to Mongolia, Germany, Cuba, and then returned. And we, who did not go anywhere, on the contrary, were in a kind of state that everyone was coming, and we were locals here.

I know why people, especially the military, are nostalgic for the Soviet Union. They did not live in the Soviet Union, by and large, at all. Because a military unit is a separate world. Abroad, behind the fence, we had perimeter guards with their own supplies. We had our own stores, which had things that were never on the shelves in Balta: grapes, oranges, condensed milk, special clothes, of course, which were issued free of charge. To give you an idea, my mother did not have a warm bathrobe, because the windows did not close - it was very warm in the house in winter. That is, these people did not know how the Soviet Union lived. They had traveled around it, but from one military unit to another, so they had the idea that I had traveled all over the Union. They don't really know anything. All military units lived the same way.

We had a commune-a house with eight apartments. Of course, the doors were never closed, and there were a lot of young families. My parents are doctors, so we used to go and help with babies, because the men were military, they were always on duty and not at home. Mutual aid is constant. My dad was very nervous because all the tools he had were always in some other apartment somewhere, not with us.

I know for sure that I was shaped by Stendhal's Red and Black. Matilda was beautiful, and I really liked the way she talked to men. I remember, for example, what poignant things came to her mind beforehand. A brilliant mind, she could improvise during a conversation, it was wonderful. I think I tried to be like her, ironic, sarcastic. I try to be clever. The Pushkinists used to criticize me literally in the sense that I was very unintelligent. I think, God, there is not a day in my life when I don't study, because I really like it. I get tremendous pleasure when I learn something new. And here, after studying and studying, it turns out that it's not like that.

Your interview with Pushkin about imperial narratives caused a stir. Did you expect any quarrels afterwards?

I didn't expect it to be so widely disseminated, because I actually talk a lot, I have many interviews and recordings about Odesa and Ukrainian writers. Why? Even when I write about the hospital, I have to put the word Pushkin in there, so that people will at least come to see what else we live with there, besides this.

This resonance told me that I did everything right. I've hit the mark. I prepared seriously, went through all the points literally with encyclopedias, looked it up, found an authoritative source. Who contributed to this monument, how much money the city council gave, how much was raised from mercantile Odessans, and I quote. I realized that I had no right to make a mistake, because it would definitely be a mistake that would be analyzed. I thought that maybe one or two people would do it, but not so massively. And in fact, when I re-read the hateful remarks, apart from the fact that I am stupid and this is nonsense, or the lady wants popularity, and so she decided to talk about Pushkin-to reproach me, or I am wrong somewhere-they could not.

Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh

Do you know why I still agreed? Because I'm watching what's happening and I think there are powerful voices there. In general, the pro-Russian community is very talkative. They learned how to do it from the history of Marxism and communism. I just listen to their speeches, and everything fits into the matrix of the previous era. And our side is so sluggish. We are being poured with mud, and we are shifting from one foot to the other and keeping silent.

First of all, I am a literary scholar, and secondly, I had a great Russian literature class at university. I was asked for my opinion, and I have the right to express it. The final point when I was dealing with this, and in fact I was afraid to enter a cage with tigers and hyenas, was when I received the news of the death of my classmate. It's not fair. Guys lose their lives, they are not afraid, and you are afraid to express your opinion and that someone will be offended, or you will offend someone. I think not. This is wrong and unfair.

I have absolutely nothing against Pushkin. I also have him on my shelves. By the way, I think that not many of those who hated me have it in the same condition as I. I understand this nostalgia and why one can love Pushkin. But, again, one must recognize that one cannot love Pushkin and not love Russia. It is impossible. I'm not going to change anyone's mind, but don't do this to your children. Why are you now forcing your children to sympathize with Russia through Pushkin, and then... This admiration for nature, birches, is the firmware. That's why they are national poets.

By the way, I'm very curious why they chose Pushkin, because they were actually destroying the entire class that Pushkin represented. He was a nobleman. All this is explained very well. First, nostalgia for the noble culture has not disappeared. In fact, in the 1930s, it was very much alive. Because when it's very difficult for us, we want something light, just to turn off our brains. For a second, there was the Holodomor in Ukraine at that time. And then I am shown grandmothers who know Eugene Onegin by heart and survived the Holodomor. This is an escape from reality. They ran away wherever they could. By the way, it is impossible to escape from reality in Shevchenko. Because Shevchenko is very effective. He does not let any negative things remain fixed. He always needs a reaction. If you notice that something is wrong here, do something about it; you can't live like this; you have to change. Pushkin does not have this.

I would like to think that there are good sides. In 2014, we observed that young people entering universities took the Revolution of Dignity into account, entering to study political science and journalism in order to be able to change. How did today's students react to the full-scale invasion? Have they changed?

In 2022, I saw that my students understood me, and they mostly write in Ukrainian. If they didn't, I hinted at it somehow - who better than Ukrainian philologists? Then many people switched to Ukrainian. I watched on Facebook, many museum workers. I thought that my dream was coming true, though in a very bizarre, unnatural way. And then the fear went away, and everything came back. Because being a Ukrainian citizen and speaking Ukrainian is work. It's a daily job, you have to improve your skills, you have to expand your vocabulary.

Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh

You didn't acquire your Russian vocabulary in one day, you've been building it since birth. So, in fact, you can do the same with the Ukrainian language. There are such polarized opinions here. On the one hand, it's so easy. On the other hand, oh, no, it's so complicated, I'll never get there. And the truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle. It's a path that you have to overcome, make an effort. Most people break down not on effort, but on the resistance of the environment.

In fact, do you know what journalists are asking me now? How did it happen? They ask me how such an explosion of culture in Ukraine at this time happened. And I don't know. I don't know where we get the strength to go to theaters, exhibitions, lectures, listen to lectures, and read books between explosions. And it's all done with such sincere enthusiasm. There is such a level of enjoyment when you see a performance and manage to do it without airborne anxiety. You enjoyed the art, and somehow you passed between the drops without being killed. It's beautifully simple. That is, we somehow feel art so keenly now that not many people have this, maybe fortunately it actually happens, but we have some compensation.

Марія Литянська