THEODORA DIMOVA

"I work as a columnist for Portal Culture and I publish my essays on this site every week. Since the war started, I have written 20 essays, which I decided to publish in a collection in memory of the anniversary of the attack. Here is what I wrote in the preface to this slim little book."

The last year we have lived with the anxiety of Russia's war against Ukraine. The last year the war has been the main topic in the world. Our hearts are constricted with pain, we are affected indirectly, but it is the Ukrainian people who bears all the suffering of the war. Our generations grew up in peace, we knew about the war only from books and films. We could not allow the thought that it was possible to have a new war in Europe.

A year ago, Russia committed a brutal aggression against Ukraine. The attack had been in the pipeline for a long time; Russia was massing troops and conducting military exercises along the border. When politicians and diplomats said that an invasion of Ukraine was being prepared, the Kremlin retorted with a sneer that only mad people could say such things. The world expected the attack, but when it was carried out, we found it hard to believe that such a barbaric act was possible in the twenty-first century.

For a year now, the Ukrainian people have been subjected to a devastating barrage of rockets, bombs and shells. Ukrainian towns have been destroyed and depopulated. The destruction of the country's infrastructure is a direct goal of the aggressor. The Ukrainians are living in extreme deprivation, but they are showing amazing courage.

The world supports the struggle of the Ukrainian people. In civilised countries, marches are held in support of the invaded country, Ukrainian flags are flown, and humanitarian, financial and military aid is sent from dozens of countries. The Kremlin's allies are fewer than the fingers of one hand.

Everyone talks of peace, but the war has been going on for more than a year and there is no prospect of it ending soon. Most disgraceful is the position of those who call themselves peaceniks and call for Ukraine not to be given the means to defend itself. This is a call, disguised behind hollow peace-loving phrases, for the country to be occupied by the aggressor.

On the eve of the anniversary of the Russian aggression, an unprecedented European Union-Ukraine summit was held in Kiev. This is the first time such a forum has been held in a country that is at war. The summit was held amid howls of sirens. European politicians may be hearing such a howl for the first time in their lives, but it has been howling in the ears of Ukrainians day and night for a year now, waking up Ukrainian children and causing them to huddle in their mothers' laps as they flee to bomb shelters. Ursula von der Leyen said that Ukraine is a real inspiration for Europe.

The European Union and the world are helping Ukraine, but it needs much more help to push the aggressor out of its territory, to end the war, to end the death. Peace talks will not begin as long as the Kremlin has any hope of victory. The world must help Ukraine in such a way as to melt any hope the Kremlin has. And then, when they come to the negotiating table, speak honestly, firmly and with good faith so that all preconditions for future conflict are removed. Because most often future wars are embedded in the unjust clauses of peace treaties. That is why in the gospel beatitudes Jesus Christ speaks not of peacekeepers but of peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. My dream is that the work of these sons of God will succeed.

The heroism of the Ukrainian people evokes admiration, but the pain of their suffering is much greater. Compassion is the impetus to write the texts collected in this book. To echo the words of Dr Martin Luther King, I have a dream, my dream is that one day writers will write like this and have such an impact in society that they will no longer allow anyone to start a war.

Prof. MIHAIL NEDELTCHEV

A practitioner and theoretic of literary-historical reconstruction and an early 1990s politician; a participant in the international research projects ‘Bulgaria and Ukraine: a culture of ruptures (19th-21st centuries)’ (2017-2020) and ‘The world from yesterday: the sense of a threatened Europe in the literatures of Bulgaria, Ukraine, Poland and Czechoslovakia: 1935-1939-1945’ (2021-2024); author of the obituary ‘Ivan Dziuba – praiseworthy son of Ukraine’ (2022).

The Bulgarian humanitarian intellectuals belonging to the democratic community are well aware of the several centuries-old efforts of Ukrainians to strengthen and defend their national cultural identity. In fact, this cultural relationship has traditions going back to the Middle Ages – to the gift of the Cyrillic script, to the missionary work of conversion to Christianity, to the civilizing mission of prominent Bulgarian medieval scribes and churchmen in Kievan Rus.

In fact, contrary to Russian imperial propaganda, it was Ukrainians who made up most of the military personnel who participated in the liberation of Bulgaria in 1878. And it was in the southeastern Ukrainian borders – in the universities of Kharkov, Odessa, and Kherson, that dozens of Bulgarian youths were educated in the second half of the 19th century. Even before that, in the 18th century, several hundred thousand Bulgarians were living in these lands – the so-called Bessarabian, Odessan and Tauric Bulgarians, whose descendants are today the fifth largest national minority in modern Ukraine.

The Bulgarian humanitarian intellectuals know well these Bulgarian-Ukrainian historical narratives; they became a good basis for the Bulgarian-Ukrainian cultural and political reciprocity. In the last decade of the 19th century, several great Ukrainian scholars who were opposed to and expelled from Russia found a home at Sofia University – among them one of the founders of the Ukrainian modern concept of the national idea, Prof. Mikhailo Dragomanov, whose daughter Lydia married the great Bulgarian philologist and public figure prof. Ivan Shishmanov. The writers of the Circle of Thought maintained close ties with several Ukrainian writers – among them the classic of Ukrainian literature Lesya Ukrainka. In 1918-1919 it was prof. Ivan Shishmanov who was the Bulgarian minister plenipotentiary in Kiev under the democratic government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. And this is well remembered!

The majority of Bulgarian humanities scholars experienced Putin's Russia's criminal war against Ukraine, which is seeking its place in modern Europe, as a great tragedy. We had heard well the warnings of impending danger from such powerful works as the novel Moscoviad by the great modern poet Yuri Andrukhovich, from his and Sergiy Zhadan’s and other poets’ political verse, and we had listened to the songs of the Maidan bards. We are trying to liberate the minority Bulgarians from the evil spells of Putin’s propaganda. We are convinced that for us, as humanitarians, as literary scholars, working together with Ukrainian colleagues on common projects is a very good opportunity to show that we are together in a united Europe, that we are in solidarity. “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!”

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YORDAN EFTIMOV

A public intellectual, poet, and literary scholar, teaching at New Bulgarian University (Sofia). His last poetry book ‘Before they have washed off the blood’ (2022) is dedicated to the war in Ukraine. 

When we talk about any war, we must be sure that it has already been described by the poets. Moreover, wars repeat themselves to such an extent that they are always quotations from other wars. The set of human actions is always equally drastic and too simple in variation. War is radically more monotonous than peaceful life.

If I had to sort out who the greatest war poets were, I wouldn't have much trouble. I'll start with Snorri Sturluson with Egil's Saga, “The Tale of Igor's Campaign”, Robert Burns on the Scottish War of Independence, Miguel de Cervantes and Gilbert Chesterton on the Battle of Lepanto, Alfred Tennyson (“The Charge of the Light Brigade”) and Rudyard Kipling (“The Last of the Light Brigade”) on the Crimean War, Thomas Hardy and Charles Swinburne on the Boer War, countless poets related to the First World War (British poets and above all Wilfrid Owen wrote wonderful poems, but there is also Bulgarian contribution in the person of Dimcho Debelyanov). I will also talk about the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885, as well as the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 and how they were developed by the ideologist of Bulgarian nationalism Ivan Vazov, as well as the participant in the First World War Geo Milev, author of the most – the sharp criticism of nationalism – the question “Wonderful, but what is a Fatherland?”.

But shall I refuse to speak of modern wars and the reaction of the poets? Can we think of the Vietnam War without the poems of Denise Levertov, Allen Ginsberg, and William Merwin? Or about the war in Afghanistan without Joseph Brodsky's “Lines on the Winter Campaign, 1980”?

However, I would first talk about how Russia's current neo-colonial war against Ukraine constantly updates scenes and plots from the Iliad.

For example, the beginning of the war. Just look at how the negotiations are presented in the “Iliad” (Menelaus and Odysseus under Priam – “Iliad”, III, 204 – 311). Negotiations are always in vain. And today many are calling for negotiations – what an illusion!

Then let's see how both in the “Iliad” and today in Ukraine (for example, during the expected truce for Christmas) it is profitable for everyone to break the oaths (Feast of the Gods – “Iliad”, IV, 64 – 73).

Then comes the speech-making scene – and let's compare the rally concert at the Luzhniki Stadium featuring Russian commander-in-chief Vladimir Putin on March 18, 2022, with the speech of Odysseus tasked by Athena to stop those already determined to return to Argos distrusted Achaeans (“Iliad”, II, 172 – 210).

War is a loss of the human image. Mercy is impossible. And there is the ossification of battle-driven heroes (e.g. in “Iliad”, XXII) and the countless videos on social networks today of rocket-torn residential buildings, of shelled hospitals and schools, of soldiers in trenches and armored personnel carriers on which dropping bombs from drones.

In the “Iliad” the tragedy of the difficult return of the corpses of the fallen soldiers is vividly shown (“Iliad”, XXIV, 169 – 676), and the images of the mobile crematoria of the Russian army, the images of the invisible corpses of the inhabitants of Mariupol, covered with the debris of their houses, the images of the new cemeteries, many of them temporary, between residential buildings are so defining of the current war.

Every scene, every story from the Russian aggression in Ukraine has its prototype in the “Iliad”. Even when, in May 2022, a Ukrainian journalist and soldiers hijacked an infantry fighting vehicle from a famous Russian motorized brigade within 100 meters of combat positions. Because it is a retelling of the story of Odysseus and Diomedes who go scouting and return with the stolen horses of Rhesus. And doesn't the body of the castrated Ukrainian being dragged in a jeep remind of the desecration of the body of the murdered Hector?

But still the most important is the most general. That all treaties in time of war are subject to revision. That martial law often lasts only the moment it is written. That war is not so much a matter of strength as of cunning. That war is ultimately always a transgression of morality.

Now that we know all this, can we have any other position than that the aggressor should be stopped only by greater cunning and not by persuasion? And can we hope that this war is more noble than any other war? One thing we must know in all cases – the dehumanizing work of war should not discourage us. The fog of war should only be a stimulus for the better education of modern societies.