During the air raid siren, some of the frontal updates will grow to save you. “For the first few days, and even now, I felt like sand was in my mouth instead of words,” he said. Olena StyazikinaWhen I met for Crimean Tatars a few days after the recent bombardment of Kieu, a famous novelist and historian. Born in Donetsk, the largest city in Donbus, Stiazhkina fled in 2014 when Russian-backed separatists fought for control. She so far ended up in Russian.
She has a friend who escaped from Kieu, but she never left home. She was strong and confident when we met, but she wondered what would happen to her ten years later. She mentioned the writers Primo Levi, Paul Celan and Jean Améry, who survived the Holocaust and committed suicide a few years later, and her eyes were rejuvenated.
What is driving her is the impulse of the Ukrainian archive. “As a witness, I can write. As a writer, I can’t,” she told me. “I understand that I have to be a witness. That’s why I write a diary every day. And this time I’m going to end it on Victory Day.”
Ukraine has at least partially revived the country after the Maidan Revolution, which defeated former President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. The political revolution was swaying, but the cultural explosion endured, creating a new generation of young filmmakers, photographers, designers, and especially DJs and electronic musicians.
