“Odesa Will Never Be a ‘Russian’ City Again”¹

Russophone poet Galina Itskovich wrote the statement serving as the title of this text about the identity of her native Odesa, Ukraine in 2023, more than a year and a half after the full-scale invasion by Russia. But what does being “Russian” mean here? Odesa is a part of Ukraine, of course. Yet, ironically, this statement was made in the Russian language itself. Russian is historically the primary language of many people in Eastern Ukraine. On the one hand, the Russian language doesn’t necessarily coincide with a pro-Russian political identity, as evinced in the surveys undertaken for “The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast—Ukrainian, Russian and Suržyk as ‘native language’, ‘primary code’, frequently used codes and codes of linguistic socialization during childhood” by Gerd Hentschel and Olesya Palinska. On the other hand, identity and language are often closely related. If we’re interested in examining the relationship of Ukrainians to the Russian language, focusing on Odesa is ideal since the city is traditionally understood as a “Russian” one. Yet that distinction is obviously no longer appropriate after the full-scale invasion and destruction wrought on Odesa by Russia’s military.

Despite this attack and despite the war Russia is waging against their country, many Ukrainian writers have continued to use the Russian language to craft their creative work. The editors of Воздушная тревога (Air-Raid Siren), a volume of writing by Russophone Ukrainian writers, introduce the book by stating, “Ukraine sounds like different languages,”² and go on to list the following as languages of Ukraine: Ukrainian; Yiddish; Crimean Tatar; Romanian; and, finally, Russian.

This list could represent the idea of a “network” of languages established by the Kenyan writer and translator Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who has written extensively about decolonizing the mind through decolonizing one’s linguistic practice³ ; in the Ukrainian context, this practice would mean refraining from usage of Russian (the colonizer’s language). However, Ngũgĩ has also written that the colonizer’s language can still be of use in the decolonizing process, as long as it is not assigned a status that is at all greater than equal to the colonized language; again, in Ukraine, this would mean that Russian can remain in usage but must never be assigned a status unequal to that of Ukrainian. Such a practice would be in keeping with current Ukrainian law⁴ , which, despite Russian propaganda’s claims to the contrary, does not “ban” the Russian language. Indeed, there are translators in Ukraine as I write who work on translating Ukrainian poetry into Russian, which is treated as simply another foreign language by the Ukrainian law mentioned above.

Specifically, Ngũgĩ uses English as a means for distribution of his originally Gĩkũyũ texts in order for them to be translated from Gĩkũyũ to other African languages by translators who don’t know Gĩkũyũ but know English. In such a translational situation, English is used as a helper language, a language bridge, something similar to an interlanguage, or a language that mixes both a speaker’s first and second languages. Again, in this situation, the interlanguage is a developmental phase not in one individual speaker but in a network of translators.

Returning to the work of Hentschel and Palinska mentioned above, suržyk (or Surzhyk) is a hybrid language with features of both Russian and Ukrainian often mixing within sentences, a language which is unique to Ukraine. Linguistically, the very existence of this patois shows a desire on the part of Ukrainian speakers to use both the colonized and the colonizer’s languages. Using Ngũgĩ’s idea as a critical lens means finding a way for translators to use the colonizer’s language, Russian, in order to both promote and expand the audiences for Ukrainian literature.

Of course, such a practice must not only adhere to Ukrainian language policy and law but also be careful not to assign a status any more than equal to Russian. The word “equal” here carries a temporary meaning since the current legal status of Russian as a foreign language in Ukraine is unequal. It is also, arguably, not necessarily in accordance with the linguistic reality of the country, at least in the Eastern region where most of the Ukrainian victims and refugees of the war come from as well as the Southern region where Odesa is located. As many know, in Odesa, historically and prior to the war, of course, many had not maintained equality for the Ukrainian language. Indeed, according to Odesa resident and writer Maria Galina, before even the full-scale invasion, if somebody spoke Ukrainian there, residents of Odesa would ask, “Where are you from?”⁵

While everyday speech in Odesa is changing, the Russian language will likely remain a primary language for many Ukrainians. And, of course, literary language is not as quick nor perhaps as willing to respond to immense political change. Indeed, poets are often those who can trace and perhaps predict linguistic cultural shifts such as what is taking place today in Odesa and Ukraine at large. In Воздушная тревога, Galina (Maria Galina) writes about literary language: “Poetic expression in the time of war hasn’t stopped, but it has changed—those who earlier wrote in free verse now write in formal verse, and, on the other hand, those who wrote in rhyme switched to free verse; what changed is the palette of expression, the tonality.” ⁶ Does this change mean that Russophone writers of Odesa will change their literary language from Russian to Ukrainian?

One way of approaching this phenomenon of how language changes during immense political upheaval is to look at writers from Odesa whose lives have changed, who have emigrated due to much earlier major political events such as the twilight years of Soviet Ukraine. Returning to the work of Galina Itskovich, we can consider the poem “Odesa Accent,” which refers to the accent indicated in the title as like a photographic negative: “Only the accent, alive, like the sand of the sea, / in every vowel, a desperate gull’s scream, / pulling back irresistibly, leading into trance, / imprinted on membranes the way negatives coincide.”⁷ Indeed the Russian language, especially for Ukrainian emigrants such as Itskovich, is often “imprinted” in such a way as language is but for a different setting than the one in which the emigrant now finds themselves. As such, Itskovich’s language can be like a negative which depicts the current reality of the United States, to which she has immigrated, but with the “complementary” or “opposite” words of the Russian language.

But such a feeling about the Russian language is not limited anymore merely to emigrants from Ukraine. Even for those who remained, Russian now can feel like a negative imprint on their experience. In Odesan resident Oleg Fesenko’s poem “There’s Nothing Left,” the speaker reflects on the language in which he’s writing, stating, “I write in Russian, / because it is the language of losers; / the language of death, / of which there is almost nothing left, / only a few words / for a farewell song.”⁸ Here the Russian Itskovich spoke in Odesa, which was a primary language for her in that setting, has now become a “negative” in Ukraine for the Odesan Fesenko. Fesenko appears to feel as if he must explain or even justify why he’s writing in Russian and not Ukrainian. Ukrainian does appear but only when there are other speakers in the poem, in the second stanza when dismembered⁹ soldiers ask the poet, “How are our brothers at the front?”¹⁰ (“Як там на фронті наші брати?”) Whether or not these Ukrainians had spoken Russian at one point, like the poet himself, the speaker now presents their words in Ukrainian despite later declaring the reason why he writes in the Russian language. The “negative” is not something he imposes on other Ukrainians, especially not on those who fought and were so traumatically wounded in the war.

Perhaps when Fesenko refers to Russian speakers as “losers,” using a word which literally means “those who lose,” he’s referring to Russian soldiers. For Ukrainians who are older than those fighting in Russia’s military, Ukrainians who have been speaking Russian longer than the young fighters have been alive, Russian soldiers’ use of the Russian language can be doubly disturbing.

Another poet in Odesa, Igor Bozhko, depicts the vulgar language of those fighting for Russia, almost as if they want to soil their very own language if it will be used in Ukraine. In the poem “he clings to mama’s skirt,”¹¹ Bozhko describes such a young Russian-speaker who has come to Ukraine to conquer but who will die, be eaten by a dog. But, before all of that happens, the “he” of the poem will lie in a hole abandoned by his comrades. The last stanza reads “and you’ll call your mama ‘whore’ / and remember—‘whore’ / every time you say ‘whore’ / you’ll die a little more.”¹² Russian is truly the “language of losers” here, corrupt from within, especially as used by the young soldiers going to fight for the “rotten” (“гнилая”) idea of “doing their duty for their motherland”¹³ presented in a poem by Bozhko entitled “Photographs From the Front.” The Russian language has been conquered by this corruption from within, conquered by itself, in a sense. In a sense, a most Pyrrhic victory.

Yet the “alcoholic poet” (поэт-алкоголик) in “autumn / war / abandonment” doesn’t want to write “about explosions / black smoke // about shattered homes // about those crippled by the armature // …of russian culture.”¹⁴ The “armature of Russian culture” has irretrievably crippled some. Is this armature perhaps the Russian language? With the same irony as in the statement at the beginning of this presentation, Bozhko is articulating this idea in Russian words. The poet doesn’t want to but finds himself unable not to write about the war as it continues throughout the seasons. And he perhaps doesn’t want to but finds himself writing in the language of the crippling, destructive culture of the Russian nation. Perhaps, however, he can maintain Russian as a language of Ukraine, one that’s otherwise disconnected from Russian culture.

The next line continues to pair abruptly words which sound alike only in Russian, “spring / war / all blossoms in the park.”¹⁵ The similarity of the words for something generative such as Spring, vesna, and something destructive such as war, voina, shows the tension described in the paragraph above. A (re-)generative quality is juxtaposed against a destructive one. Yet when it comes to the Russian language in Ukraine at this time, such a juxtaposition and the tension it produces between these opposite qualities of the language itself is likely both irreconcilable and, even in Odesa, the only option Russophone writers have if they’ll continue to write in the Russian language.

It is an understatement to say that any poetry written by Ukrainians after the full-scale invasion by Russia, no matter in which language, is about the Russian invasion and the war. Russophone Ukrainian poets continue to use the language of the society that is warring against their very selves.

But, of course, poets are more clever about the potentialities and limitations of language than anybody. While continuing to write poetry in Russian, at least for the time being, Maria Galina has begun to use Ukrainian to write in social media posts and other nonfiction texts about her experience in Odesa at this time.¹⁶ This dualistic linguistic situation comes up in Galina’s poetry about the war as well. In a poem about a drone, she writes, “It sees that somebody sees it, somebody bowed over a monitor.”¹⁷ In this poem, an inhuman drone reflects on its human operator. Or is it the human who’s reflecting, not the drone at all? Does this drone sound like a metaphor for language? Any human reflection here is mediated through a device of war. Is the Russian language such a device? One answer to such a question comes from Galina’s description of how some suspect that usage of Russian has a propagandic purpose, no matter how it’s used. On the other side of the drone’s interface, Galina uses the more archaic Russian word for “somebody,” некто (nekto), instead of the more contemporary кто-то (kto-to), to describe the drone’s operator. This somebody is a Russian. So, if you ask a Ukrainian, they might say the Russian is, in Ukrainian, a “нелюд,”¹⁸ or a “cruel, evil, and soulless person.” The drone, as a war device, is a way of mediating and removing the humanity from the acts of destruction it, as controlled by the Russian operator, is committing. However, the drone also, “sees that, which the operator can’t reach.”¹⁹ Later Galina writes that what the drone sees is, “everything that a person is forbidden from seeing.”²⁰ Perhaps language is a device that allows its operator to see or understand beyond what is generally permitted to a human being, similar to what a photographic negative can reveal. Perhaps Galina, in her poetry, is exploring how language may be used.

As the poem concludes, the drone will never tell about what it has seen, which includes a “river singing a lullaby to mermaids and corpses”²¹ because it has no “tactical or strategic value.”²² This river must be a Ukrainian one, with both a mythical and positive image in its “mermaids” and one obviously connected with the war in its “corpses.” Perhaps similarly, the Russian language can be used to make corpses or, in other words, for “cruel, evil, and soulless” purposes and behavior by Russian operators, as long as such usage is “tactical or strategic,” and as long as such usage can dehumanize the object of the Russian operator’s language, the Ukrainian victims of the device of war. But the Russian language can also be a relief, something returning to mythical, fictional, or aesthetic usage, as well as to honor the ubiquitous dead in this conflict. Inversely, a declaration that Russian can only be used for the former purpose may be a “tactical or strategic” perspective on a language that could continue to be the primary one for a large number of Ukrainians.

At least as long as the war continues, any questions about the Russian language in Ukraine must remain open. While the editors of Воздушная тревога claim Russian as one of the languages of Ukraine, it is nonetheless a colonial language, like the one in which this very essay is written, as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o would remind us. As such, the status of the Russian language in Ukraine must be constantly reevaluated and juxtaposed against the status of the Ukrainian as well as other languages of the country.

In a sense, the Russian of Ukraine is the most truthful variant of Russian spoken in the world since the Russian spoken in the territory of Russia itself cannot include the word “war” in reference to the war in Ukraine without the speaker suffering severe punishment. Of course, this feature of Russian spoken outside of Russia is true of the Russian language in other countries as well. But I take it for granted that, in Odesa, you have a community of Ukrainians which has over time played a very significant part in the development and literary life of the Russian language itself. That Odesa has remained a part of sovereign Ukraine is a victory in this sense. And that such questions about the status of Russian in Odesa must continue is an important indicator of the significance of this war for both Ukrainian culture, of course, but Russian culture as well.

No. Odesa will never be a “Russian” city again. And the Russian language will, for at least as long as the war continues if not longer, be under suspicion of being of use as a tool for propaganda from Russia’s rulers. As long as the war continues and likely for long after, this tension will remain in the work of all but especially Russophone Ukrainian writers.

But as these poets Galina Itskovich, Oleg Fesenko, Igor Bozhko, and Maria Galina continue to work with language in order to see that which was forbidden before, so will such questions and literary criticism continue to respond to and work against the colonialist strategy of the current government of Russia and its war against sovereign Ukraine.