When talking about the East Slavs, it is not uncommon to see three “sister” nations mentioned (today in combat): Russia itself; white Russia, or Belarus; and Little Russia, or Ukraine.
All of them would descend from a primordial nation, the 9th century Rus, whose center was Kiev, capital of present-day Ukraine. Their language was East Slavic, which gave rise to modern Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian.
As the three nations have spent centuries under Moscow’s rule, it is not uncommon for their cultural achievements to be placed generically under the Russian umbrella.
It is not always simple to unravel the centuries-old threads that bind cultures linked by an asymmetrical symbiosis, sometimes with hints of parasitism. And those who are far from that fascinating and tangled corner of the planet may find it difficult to even know who is who.
For example, a frequent question: just as someone born in Brazil is Brazilian, is everyone born in Ukraine Ukrainian?
A thorny issue historically is the Jews there — usually educated in Russian, often persecuted and victimized by “pogroms” and, often, with little or no regard for belonging to Ukrainian culture.
This is the case of Boris Schnaiderman, great master of the translation of Russian literature in Brazil, and the writer Clarice Lispector. Or the actress Mila Kunis, who has already cited anti-Semitism as the reason for her family’s emigration, even in the days of the USSR.
Among the most brilliant exponents of this population are the writers Isaac Bábel (whose “Tales from Odessa” are savory and cruel chronicles of the vicissitudes of Jews in Ukraine at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century) and Vasily Grossman (of the monumental “Life and Fate “).
Because we cannot lose sight of the fact that, in Europe, what counts for the definition of nationality is ancestry, not place of birth. Thus, composer Sergei Prokofiev, painter Ilya Riépin or actress Milla Jovovich do not consider themselves Ukrainians.
On the other hand, the brilliant Suprematist visual artist Kazimir Malevitch often referred to himself as Ukrainian. And writers who were born there but wrote in Russian, such as Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Bulgakov, often incorporated elements of Ukrainian culture into their texts. As authors who took Ukrainian as their language, such as the poet Tarás Shevchenko, were not translated here, Gógol and Bulgákov perhaps constitute the best literature related to that country accessible to the Brazilian reader.
In fact, in the 19th century, it was not uncommon for Russian artists to resort to Ukrainian folklore when they wanted to imbue their works with a “national” character. To take just one example: the second symphony of the famous Pyotr Tchaikovsky is known as “Little Russian” for using Ukrainian folk themes.
In this area, the composer Nikolai Diletsky wrote, in the 17th century, an important theoretical treatise, anticipating formulations that would only appear later in the West. More recently, it is possible to mention composer Valentin Silvéstrov and conductor Oksana Liniv — the first woman to conduct at the cult Bayreuth Festival last year.
Cinema is possibly the art in which Ukrainians have achieved greater international prominence. “Earth” (1930), by Aleksandr Dovjenko, tends to enter all the lists of best silent films (not by chance, it is mentioned in “Manhattan”, by Woody Allen).
In Soviet times, talents such as Sergei Bondartchuk (“War and Peace”, “They Fought for the Fatherland”), Giorgy Chukhrai (“The Soldier’s Ballad”, “The Forty-first”) and Larissa Schepitko (“The Ascension” and “The Farewell”).
Today, an inescapable name in documentary (but also with a strong fictional production), with a militant tone, who has already come to Brazil, and had his films shown here, is Serguei Loznitsa.
But perhaps the most potent artistic synthesis of the three “Russia” that are currently fighting each other is Svetlana Aleksiévitch, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. A citizen of Belarus, where she lives, she writes in Russian, and was born in Ukraine — where one of his most famous books, “Voices from Chernobyl”. Documentary literature from her brings out of the closet the skeletons that the autocrats on duty would prefer to lock up.
