The fact that the crimes of the Gulag… are not a historical trauma for Russia today proves that Russia has not yet recovered from the past — Andrey Kurkov This review could go on and on due to my fascination with so many parts of it. Even the multiple typos I came across didn’t have enough weight this time to result in a reduction in the rating! I would suggest this book to each and everyone who is interested in Ukraine, the currently ongoing war and the people’s stories behind it. I’m really glad about having discovered the author and am looking forward to reading more of his books. To sum it all up, I will leave one last quote here: Taken together, this is not only a chronicle of Russian aggression in Ukraine but a chronicle of how the war imposed by Russia – and Russia’s attempt to destroy Ukraine as an independent state – have contributed to the strengthening of Ukrainian national identity. Both of Kurkov’s grandfathers were communists. One died fighting for the Soviet Army in 1943 while the other lived until 1980. Other relatives were sent to gulags. Of his older grandfather’s silence about these relatives, Kurkov says, “It turned out that I was protected from the dangerous past.” Yet, his willingness to interrogate this dangerous past is what informs nearly every one of his detailed descriptions of the people and places caught up in the war happening now. Diary of an Invasion by the Ukrainian writer, Andrey Kurkov, consists of personal diary entries, texts on various subjects, wartime notes and essays spanning the period of seven months, starting at the end of December 2021 with the last entry recorded in July 2022. This is a chronicle of one person’s feelings, thoughts, emotions during the time of the Russian aggression in Ukraine. This is also a portrayal of the Ukrainian society, Ukrainian culture, and Ukrainian nationhood. Despite the continuous attempts by the Russian aggressor to destroy the Ukrainian nation, Kurkov writings show the strengthening of Ukrainian national identity.

Diary of an Invasion | The Spectator Andrey Kurkov: Diary of an Invasion | The Spectator

Diary of an Invasion' is Andrey Kurkov's diary written during the ongoing war in Ukraine. It starts a few months before the war and describes the events leading up to the war and Kurkov's own everyday, personal experiences. It ends at a time a few months after the start of the war. The diary runs for around six months. Around the time the diary ends, the expectation was that the war will get over before winter or latest by spring. But now we know that the war has dragged on into the second year with no end in sight. Kurkov says in his epilogue that he is continuing to work on this diary and we can expect a sequel. In Mariupol and other cities of the south and east, bookshops were destroyed along with their books. In other cities they were simply shut down. When they open again, it will mean that peace has come to Ukraine. When a bookshop opens again in Mariupol, it will mean much more. 4 April 2022 As for a possible coup, he adds: "Putin is from the KGB, he is very well protected. He has made the two Russian secret services - the FSB and GRU, the Army intelligence service - fight each other, the typical behaviour of a dictator. The truth is, nobody's happy there. In reality they have already lost the war. They can still destroy Ukraine, but the war is lost." Surprisingly perhaps to a British audience, he is not an unalloyed supporter of Zelensky, whose leadership has won worldwide praise, drawing comparisons to Winston Churchill. Although he does believe the president has proved himself under fire.Kurkov’s thoughts on an extremely important question for Ukrainians, as well as many Eastern Europeans, regarding the historical memory and historical trauma are compelling and important. Kurkov explores the suppression of collective trauma and how historical injuries affect the construction of national identity. He discusses at length the case of Ukraine, Russia as well as Lithuania.

Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Kurkov | Goodreads Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Kurkov | Goodreads

In the Ukrainian countryside, there is a long tradition of having plenty of bread on the table and of eating it with butter and salt or dipping it in milk. In a recent opinion piece for The Guardian, Andrey Kurkov writes about recycling. While over 3,000 Russian tanks have been destroyed since the beginning of the latest war in Ukraine, it’s the smaller scrap metal and artillery shell casings that artists have focused on painting for European auctions that have raised money for the Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid. The war offers other opportunities for recycling in the forms of historical figures, renamed places, and myths about national identity. Such are the adaptations of a culture at war, a thoroughly modern war that Kurkov examines through his own understanding of the history that led the Ukrainian people to where they are now.

Summary

Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov is strongest when he writes on cultural matters. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP From day one I stopped writing fiction. I couldn't concentrate on anything but reality. So, when I was asked to comment about events, I started speaking on radio and television then writing about what was happening." Paraphrasing Kurkov himself, at some point you start looking for internal enemies. And that's understandable. When we became refugees, we left all our books in Kyiv. Now, since my first wartime trip into Europe, I have some books again – gifts from my English publisher. I’m wondering when I will be able to take those books home and add them to my library.

Come back Boris! Support for former PM in Ukraine still

On the Donbas front we meet Ukrainian soldiers, outgunned and exposed, who adopt the dogs and cats left by fleeing civilians. Not only are they company, but the animals can hear incoming shells three seconds earlier than any human. When their pets take cover, so do the troops.For several days now, Ukrainian Facebook has been boiling over with the joy resulting from this victory. Ukrainians joke that Putin woke up last Sunday morning and was horrified to hear that Ukraine had won. It took him a while to realise that Ukraine had won the Eurovision, not the war – not yet. Kurkov's diary is beautiful, moving, inspiring, heartbreaking. It is not often that we get to read a diary in the middle of a war, in which the author of the diary gives an insider's view of things. I'm sad that this diary exists because of the war, but I'm glad that Kurkov decided to share his thoughts and insights with us and takes us deep into Ukraine in the middle of the war-torn zone and shows us how life is. We get a live account of events as history is being made. Though Kurkov holds a Ukrainian passport, he was born in Russia. Writing in both Russian and Ukrainian for most of his life has opened him up to criticism from both sides. Ever on the lookout for historical parallels to explain the present, Kurkov has written in defense of writers like The Master and Margarita author Mikhail Bulgakov after members of Ukraine’s national writers’ union called for the renaming of Bulgakov’s family home, which is now a literary museum in Kyiv.

Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Kurkov | Waterstones

The cover note for Kurkov’s book, courtesy of the New York Times, states that “Ukraine’s greatest novelist is fighting for his country”. But if the pen is a weapon, like a rifle, then – like a rifle – it is more effective at closer range. Whereas Kurkov’s journey, following that borshch party, took him westward, towards abstraction, Luke Harding, a good reporter, writes from the front lines and centres of power, expertly switching focus from the currents of history to lives destroyed by war. Kulturen spelar en viktig roll i Ukraina och Ryssland har genom historien upprepade gånger försökt utplåna den och dess kulturutövarna. Precicionsbomber har under detta krig till exempel bombat historiskt viktiga konstnärers och författares hem.

This journal of the invasion, a collection of Andrey Kurkov's writings and broadcasts from Kyiv, is a remarkable record of a brilliant writer at the forefront of a 21st-century war. He points out that historical truth and trauma are returned to the people through works of art, literature, and cinema. My friends in Lviv no longer pay any attention to the warnings and no longer run out of their houses to look for bomb shelters. They are tired of being afraid. The disappearance of fear is a strange wartime symptom. Indifference to your own destiny sets in and you simply decide that what will be will be. Still, it remains hard for me to understand the attitude of parents who allow their small children to play nearby to a multi-storey building while shells are hitting other buildings not so very far away. Is it possible to think this way about your own children too – what will be will be?" A dramatic experience makes for a dramatic perception of the future. But, as if by some divine joke, in the Ukrainian national character, unlike in the Russian one, there is no fatalism. Ukrainians almost never get depressed. They are programmed for victory, for happiness, for survival in difficult circumstances, as well as for the love of life. He was under the influence of this philosopher, Alexander Dugin, an advocate of the Eurasian policy (which considers Russia to be closer to Asia than Western Europe) based on anti-Western values.