Ukrainian philosopher and writer Volodymyr Yermolenko became the president of PEN Ukraine in November 2022. In 2020, he co-founded the Kult podcast with journalist and literary critic Tetiana Ogarkova, where they discuss Ukrainian and global culture and how it figures in the context of world intellectual history, the impact of war, and a post-colonial perspective.
Yermolenko is a winner of the Yuri Shevelov Prize (2018) and the Petro Mohyla Prize (2021), he was a Ukraine in European Dialogue Visiting Fellow at the IWM in 2021 and in 2022 became a grantee of the Documenting Ukraine program. He is the author of numerous articles on Ukraine, Europe, and global processes in Ukrainian and international media. He is also a frequent speaker on Ukrainian cultural processes in the West. Currently, he serves as the editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld.org.
Speaking exclusively with Iryna Slavinska for Suspilne Kultura, Volodymyr Yermolenko discussed the impact of war on Ukrainian culture, volunteering, and the need for a new social contract.
This conversation was planned against the backdrop that you are currently awaiting a vehicle for the front line as part of your volunteer duties. How does this volunteer task affect your schedule as a public intellectual?
Our main profession right now is to be citizens of Ukraine. Therefore, I’ll quote our Pavlo Kazarin, who says that you either have to be in the Armed Forces or you have to help the Armed Forces. I think this is a very simple maxim for every responsible Ukrainian citizen.
Unfortunately, I’m not in the Armed Forces—perhaps not yet—but I try to dedicate a lot of time to volunteer work. At the moment, I’m waiting for someone; we’ve purchased a large bus for a military unit and are preparing to hand it over. My wife Tetiana Ogarkova and I constantly purchase vehicles for the Armed Forces with funds from people’s charitable contributions—all the donations that come to our podcast are used for buying vehicles, and we also collect additional funds separately.
Along with my colleagues from UkraineWorld and PEN Ukraine, I travel extensively around Ukraine—at least once a month.
Let me ask a question from a somewhat past life: Do you recall or miss when you could simply create—work, write texts, give lectures—without living in a full-scale wartime context and trips to not-so-safe territories?
No, I don’t long for that time.
I think civilians have much more freedom and safety than those in the military. So, I compare myself not with what existed during peacetime but with my friends and colleagues who serve in the military. It’s much more challenging for them than for me.
We live in the time we live in. History rolls over us–and history is always cruel.
The idea of the “end of history” has always been very naive, but to some extent, it’s very humane. I think the western world lived with this fantasy of the end of history after the Second World War. But when history returns, it comes back on tanks, and these tanks roll over our utterly unprotected bodies and souls.
And when you find yourself already inside history, you must somehow deal with it. You can’t dream it away. History exists, and sooner or later, it crushes you.
That’s why I believe one needs to be as active as possible in such times and strengthen the agency of our delicate, unprotected organisms.
Can you delve more into how you viewed the idea of the “end of history” until February 24? I have a sense that there were quite a few people in Ukraine who somehow entertained this concept.
People tend to caricature Fukuyama a bit here. I’ve included his texts in my courses at Kyiv Mohyla Academy, particularly my course on political philosophy. If we carefully read his text—namely, his article “The End of History?” from 1989—he talks about the end of history as a utopian feeling that cannot happen in human nature, something impossible. Fukuyama anticipated and wrote about it.
So, the end of history is the end of the struggle for ideas, the end of the war of ideas. It’s the notion that we all agree on something and interact only through pragmatic matters.
The diachrony of our world–eastern Europe and, loosely speaking, the western world–is very interesting here. When history ended for the western world, it was just beginning for us. This diachrony is crucial for understanding.
Why?
Because for the Soviet Union, the end of history was the Brezhnev era. The 1970s were the moment when the Soviet victory in World War II, to some extent, halted history. Then came Stalin’s death, but what followed was inertia, that is, the continuation of Stalinism through inertia.
For us, history began in the late 1980s and the 1990s. But for the western world, the 1990s were a period of satisfaction and the end of history, a sense of their victory, economic growth, and the rise of democracy.
It’s very interesting to read books written in the early 2000s. They all talk about democracy flourishing. And now we live in a completely different time, where democracies are declining.
When significant historical changes occur, entire mountains fall on you, and gaps form, essentially creating an entirely new landscape of life. History for us never stopped since the 1990s, and now it has started to accelerate even more; time is becoming faster. Time doesn’t wait for you; you can't keep up with time.
That’s why I constantly say that the genre typical of such historical epochs is the genre of tragedy. It’s not a coincidence that in centuries when history returns, we see the flourishing of theater. We see it in the Greeks, we see it in Shakespeare and Racine; we see it during World War II in Brecht and later in Beckett.
Notice that our great playwright Lesya Ukrainka also strongly felt this. That’s why she is still so relevant today, especially her dramas.
In which Ukrainian works could one feel this anticipation of the return or acceleration of history?
The return of history means that you find yourself again in some kind of labyrinth and don’t know what will happen when you turn a corner; you don’t know what tomorrow holds. You’re carried along by some current, and you can’t plan twenty years or even one year ahead.
I think Ukrainian literature has keenly sensed this. I can’t single out specific works, but I feel how deeply Ukrainian culture has embraced this reality. Maximum reality and immersion in reality are characteristic of the Ukrainian cultural tradition. Where a particular cultural figure deviates from this, you immediately sense some falseness.
This is both a plus and a minus. The minus is that, it seems to me, we live in the trench of reality—we are buried in this reality. To become a truly universal culture, we sometimes need to rise a bit higher and speak to the world across mountains. Currently, we lack the search for plots and ways of expression that would be understandable beyond our country and that are rooted not only in our experience but could be universal.
But such plots do exist in our culture. The aforementioned Lesya Ukrainka tried to work with this to the maximum, seeking universal plots that could resonate with readers from other cultures. I sincerely believe that there will come a moment for her time in the global spotlight because her dramas are of the highest level. For me, the natural canon of drama is Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Racine, and Lesya Ukrainka.
Another example of universal Ukrainian stories is our novels about the great tragedies of the 20th century. For example, there’s Ivan Bahrianyi’s “Garden of Gethsemane” and “A Man Runs Over the Abyss,” Vasyl Barka’s “Yellow Prince,” and Todos Osmachka’s “Rotunda of Killers.” These texts, I believe, are still not widely read either here in Ukraine or abroad. However, they contain many elements that could become classics for other countries.
Ukrainian culture will continue to produce these reflections because they are much needed globally. The experience of our war, the experience of World War II, the experience of the Holocaust, the experience of the Holodomor... The world also needs to read the 20th century through the Ukrainian experience.
Is anyone from our contemporary scene addressing this?
I could mention someone, or I might not. I believe Sofia Andrukhovych’s “Amadoka” marks a truly significant shift in our reflection on this topic. The novel not only interprets the Second World War but also several other historical layers—it’s an attempt to look at history as a kind of eternal return.
This sentiment is also very palpable in poetry. For example, in the works of Kateryna Kalytko—I feel like this poetry simply penetrates the soul and touches on, perhaps, archetypal aspects of our experience in this reality.
If we talk about essays, one of the key books this year is Oleksandr Mykhed’s “The Language of War.” This book is like a blade touching your skin. You feel how the experience of war cuts at us, leaving wounds, lacerations, amputations.
There is also a very strong documentary cinema scene in Ukraine. Here, we can mention Iryna Tsilyk’s “The Earth Is Blue as an Orange” and Alisa Kovalenko’s “Home Games,” seemingly not about war but a grand history in which you feel the vulnerability and fragility of existence.
I liked the theme of fragility in the Ukrainian stand’s slogan at the Frankfurt Book Fair: “Fragility of Existence.” I think the metaphor of fragility is very important and necessary.
Ukrainian literature from the 1980s and beyond has often relied on the use of irony and jests. Slowly and not immediately, our literature is finding the strength to speak about serious matters in a serious tone. Would you agree with this statement?
Humor is not synonymous with frivolity. It seems to me that even [Yuri] Andrukhovych, despite all his irony, wrote very serious texts.
What is the role and function of humor in our cultural reality?
The answer is very simple — it’s a duel with death and fear.
In humor, there is always a moment of struggle, a desire to free oneself from something. Therefore, the humor of Bu-Ba-Bu was an attempt to break free from the grip of the Soviet reality.
The humor of absurdists, the humor of Švejk — it is irony over a war that is foreign to you. Obviously, this is not our case. In modern Ukrainian war literature, a more existential humor is heard.
A duel with death is absurd by definition because none of us has ever won and will never win a duel with death. It’s defeat by definition. But it’s like Cossack humor — and overall, the Cossack ethos, which always comes from the position of the underdog. You know the enemy is strong, and defeating him will be very difficult. But what matters are the actions that follow in despite of that. Freedom “despite,” struggle “despite.”
People often ask me where the Ukrainian national idea is. I believe it’s found in the idea of “despite” clear obstacles.
Freedom despite, humor despite, humanity despite, love of life despite…
And for me, this is like the distinction between freedom and will. Will is freedom despite, the assertion of freedom, when everything around you hinders this freedom.
Perhaps it would be interesting to discuss this ethos and the sources that nourish the current Ukrainian intellectual and artistic community.
It’s the sense that you live, seeking life despite the prospect of death, finding meaning despite the absurdity of a situation, embracing freedom despite captivity, and so on.
As an artist and philosopher who, for many, shapes the agenda — what do you stand on, what do you rely on?
I don’t think I shape the agenda for anyone. Sometimes, I can’t even formulate the agenda for myself or my children. So, I would speak much more modestly here. Instead, I can share how I see the tasks of Ukrainian philosophers now — besides the task of being a Ukrainian citizen. I think there are two things.
The first task is to instill a certain culture of thinking in Ukraine. It so happens that we are much more a culture of people who tell stories, people with powerful and very interesting emotions, but we lack a philosophical culture of thinking.
I believe a culture is incomplete without a rational element. I don’t believe that we lack an intellectual tradition and live in a culture of cordocentrism — that’s untrue. We have a deep intellectual tradition that includes Skovoroda, Drahomanov, Lypynsky, and Lysiak-Rudnytsky. The task of contemporaries is to deepen it.
Tetyana Ogarkova and I are trying to do this in our podcast Kult and for UkrainianWorld, “Thinking in Dark Times.” In them, we try to think in unison with the European tradition, reinterpreting key concepts of this tradition.
The second task is to show the world that Ukraine is not only a topos of experience, emotion, and struggle but also a topos of thinking–to show that we can speak on equal terms with the great intellectual world.
I don’t know if this will succeed, but it is something to strive for. Additionally, the book that Tetyana and I are currently writing will be a book of philosophical reportage. I really want it to be a book not only about what we are going through but also about how we place all this on the same shelf with the greater world culture. It’s about how in a modern-day war, there can be a dialogue with Pascal, Bergson, Heidegger, or Kant. This is important to me. It is precisely in such times that important meanings are formed.
One could also reflect here on the overall role of culture in contemporary Ukrainian society. For some shortsighted people, culture remains in the background as something optional. How could this have changed with the war?
Culture is the language of society. Culture is the process of society speaking to itself. It manifests through various forms of language: cinema, music, and texts. We cannot live without language.
Certainly, one can live without words, but that would be a very biological and animalistic existence. A society without culture is silent and unheard both within and outside. In other words, it doesn’t exist.
Few heard us in the 20th century; only now are we beginning to be heard and listened to. However, we still haven’t understood that we need to invest maximally in the ability to speak in different languages and through different genres.
If we talk not only about the global context but also the internal one — how can we be heard beyond the “bubble”?
I don’t know. Perhaps you are right, and there is some kind of “bubble” for several thousand (tens of thousands?) people. Today, I think Serhiy Zhadan has overcome this “bubble,” and that’s very good. For my daughter, who goes to school in Brovary, Zhadan is a star she would like to take a photo with... but it seems she is almost the only one in her class who knows who Zhadan is. So, there is still a lot of work to be done.
On the other hand, I am fascinated by how Ukrainian popular culture is developing now — primarily in music. Also, Ukrainian-language content on YouTube is gradually gaining substance.
What role does the Ukrainian language play in contemporary Ukrainian culture?
This role is very interesting, and we see it in opinion polls. Since 2022, the number of people claiming to speak Ukrainian has increased, the number of those speaking Russian has decreased, and the proportion of those claiming to speak both languages has remained roughly the same. This suggests that people who spoke both languages have shifted more to Ukrainian, and those who spoke only Russian have started to speak both languages. This is also noticeable in the public space.
Interestingly, Ukrainian has become a language of community for many, even for those who don’t consider it their personal language. A Russian-speaking person may say they consider Ukrainian their native language but still remain a Russian-speaking individual in everyday life.
It’s also necessary to dispel the myth of purely Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking regions. We travel a lot in the east and south, and talk to people in villages, where they speak excellent Ukrainian in Kherson, Kharkiv, and Donetsk oblasts.
I believe people need to work on themselves and gradually switch to Ukrainian to the best of their abilities. This is a normal experience. I myself transitioned to Ukrainian at a certain point, even though I was a Russian speaker in childhood and adolescence.
This transition moment is a shared experience for many as a conscious choice, a moment of change — even if your Ukrainian is learned, that is, not acquired from infancy. I’ve long told myself that Ukrainian is my native but learned language. This is the experience of many people in our country, and there’s no need to fear it.
I would urge everyone who speaks Russian to gradually transition to Ukrainian. Most importantly, speak Ukrainian with your children. Honestly, what saddens me the most is when I hear Russian from children. It seems to me that the parents of these children simply haven’t thought through what is happening. They haven't considered how criminal the Russian system is and the language associated with it. They allow themselves to remain in their inertia instead of taking a not-so-difficult step and switching to Ukrainian.
What, in your opinion, is the future of the Russian language in Ukraine?
I don’t know if it will disappear. Right now, it seems unlikely, but we have to understand that history changes. Not long ago, in the early 19th century, Polish was spoken in Kyiv. Everything has changed since then.
The Ukrainian language should be at the center of our solar system. Which planets will revolve around it is open to discussion. I would really like us to revive the presence of Yiddish, for example, or to make Crimean Tatar more prominent and have it be taught in schools and universities.
Somehow, Russian might exist, on par with other languages, as a part of Ukrainian culture, but not the central part.
Part of the culture? As a language that created a part of the body of work – like a hypothetical Gogol or Bulgakov?
I would not talk about Bulgakov in this sense, but a writer like Anatoly Kuznetsov. His novel about Babi Yar is an important part of Ukrainian culture; it should be studied in schools and universities. I think there are many similar examples.
I would also think about how to integrate Crimean Tatar literature or how to restore knowledge of Polish-language culture and literature in Ukraine, as well as Latin or Greek culture and Yiddish culture. In this conglomerate, in this solar system, there might be a place for Russian-language texts. But they certainly should not claim a central or equivalent place with the Ukrainian language. The center of our solar system should be Ukrainian.
In my book “Eros and Psyche,” I have an essay about Mariya Vilinska, otherwise known as Marko Vovchok. She has Ukrainian-language stories, but she also wrote in French and Russian. And she has Russian-language novels, among which I analyzed the novel "Zhivaya Dusha," which is an interesting example, like "Marusya" – a classic work for both Ukrainian and French literature. This text was written in Russian, although she presented it as a “translation from Ukrainian.”
If you delve into the text “Marusya,” you understand that it contains a very powerful and correct political message. I think it’s a dispute with Kulish and his “Black Council,” a novel that can be seen as a critique of Ukrainian political culture and the history of why Ukrainians, in his view, would not be a political nation because they constantly quarreled.
“Marusya” is a story about an attempt to stitch together the halves of Ukraine separated by Russia and Poland. It has a powerful main message. She also portrayed the Russians quite negatively. But it’s a Russian-language work. I don't think we can exclude Marko Vovchok and her Russian-language texts just because of the language they were written in. Each case should be judged separately.
Ukrainian culture should be strong enough at its core to not fear that Russian-language elements in its orbit will destroy it. I’m not sure if we are currently strong enough. We exhibit a more defensive behavior, but in the context of war, that’s understandable.
We will become stronger, and then as a show of strength, we can say that Gogol is Ukrainian, but there are questions about him. For example, not everything about “Taras Bulba,” can be considered good, as this text can be read as an attempt to show that the only way for Ukrainian Cossacks is integration into the so-called Russian world. And, of course, that is unacceptable for us. So, yes, Gogol is ours, but we have questions.
On the other hand, I don’t think we can do the same with Bulgakov. And we can hardly call Nikolai Berdyaev a Ukrainian philosopher. He did too much for the development of the “Russian world,” which is killing us today. Although, at the same time, he was a fairly subtle critic of Russian communism and Russian Orthodoxy.
Instead, Lev Shestov, who also identified himself with Russian culture, could be part of our canon. Why? He lived and worked in an important context: Jewish Kyiv, a sense of life without foundation, and his constant dialogue with Jewish and ancient traditions. This metaphor of “groundlessness” is important for the Ukrainian 20th century – it later emerged in the works of Petrov-Domontovych and Shevelov.
Let’s talk about the post-colonial process in Ukraine. Some have long been immersed in the process of saying goodbye to the empire, while others are only now taking off their rose-colored glasses and recognizing the traces of imperial influence around them. How far have we moved away from the empire? How do we fully bid farewell to it?
I would like us to bid farewell to it. I would like us to dismantle it.
It's also important for us to understand how Russian imperialism differs from western imperialism, which colonized distant ethnic, racial, cultural, and linguistic groups. In such empires, the instrument of domination and the message of the European colonizer was the concept of difference: you are different from me, and you will never become like me. To some extent, this message transitioned to Nazism when the Nazis tried to maximize the otherness of Jews.
Russian imperialism is different. When it colonizes Ukrainians, it says: you will never be different; you will only be like me. Your chance to survive is to assimilate, to become like me. Anything different is a deviation – a mental, psychological, and cultural deviation.
That’s why it’s more challenging to work with, as Russian imperialism is built through assimilation and the substitution of concepts, where the idea of a nation replaces the notion of an empire, initially the “Great Russian,” and then the “Soviet” one.
For this sort of imperialism to function, the policy of erasing memory is crucial. This is why Russian occupiers plunder Ukrainian museums. Their logic is simple: they aim to take away all memory from Ukrainians. For the same reasons, destroying the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the 1930s was crucial for the Russian Empire. Now we see the same intentions in their actions today.
We don’t yet know what will ultimately define the 21st century. Will it be a century of empire restoration? Various scenarios are possible. Today, we see a resurgence of imperialism worldwide – not only in Russia but also in China, India, and Turkey.
In this context, our role is crucial for the world because we are essentially on the verge of this new wave of imperialism. If we don’t stand firm against it, this imperialism will continue, once again engulfing half of Europe, and we will find ourselves in a situation similar to 1939.
How has Ukrainian society changed in these almost two years since the full-scale invasion?
I think there has been an increased sense of subjectivity and individual responsibility. At the same time, it is unclear how long this will last. Unfortunately, civic-minded individuals either perish on the front lines, lose their strength, or suffer health setbacks.
This has always been the tactic of empires – to eliminate the most active and populate the area with passive crowds. That’s why they target schools, aiming to convey a clear message to parents not to return here with their children under any circumstances.
A deep demographic pit is being created, and overcoming it will take a very long time. The experience of overcoming the consequences of the Holodomor shows how much time it will take – nearly half a century was needed to awaken our self-awareness.
In history, nothing is irreversible. The Greeks and Romans understood this, but Europeans in modern times ceased to understand it – we have become too enamored with the idea of progress. However, the great impulse of progress and development can once again fade. We must do everything possible to prevent this.
What should the Ukrainian cultural community do in this context?
I believe, based on all the acquired experience, it is capable of doing very unconventional things. When we talk about books, visual arts, and everything that is being produced now, it is unique. This is our great opportunity, and I truly hope that our voice will be heard in the world. Despite all the horrors of war, we are all seeking our unique voice.
All the cultural figures I know are either in the military or volunteering and assisting the military. This requires a very active political and civic stance. At the same time, I see the birth of a new sensitivity. In such a postmodern world that has become so cynical, where there has been a hardening, embitterment, the birth of some total hate on social media… Ukrainian culture testifies to how important sensitivity and empathy are.
It is precisely this global return of sensitivity that our culture can offer to the world right now.
How to respond to constant questions about the “great Russian culture”?
We must tell the world that the words “great,” “Russian,” and “culture” in one sentence are a very toxic combination, the root of all problems. The root of Russian war crimes is not Putin but the very idea of a “Great Russia.” It all fosters the sense that an individual is worthless, and Great Russia is everything. However, everything related to this “greatness” is the root of evil, the root of crime.
Ukrainians are the best experts on Russian culture. I believe they have a better understanding than Russians themselves because Ukrainians see things that Russians don’t, like how Pushkin’s “To the Slanderers of Russia” is a work where Putin’s messages resonate. It includes hatred toward Europe, the threat of war to Europe, and the thesis that “Slavic rivers” will merge “in the Russian sea,” and so on. They don't see that Lermontov’s “A Hero of Our Time” is a colonial work. No one in the world can demonstrate this better than we can. I believe this should be our mission.
At the same time, I generally dislike the concept of canceling; I think it's wrong. We need to develop critical thinking about Russian culture. But it is much more important to talk about Ukrainian culture, to invest our energy primarily in that.
It saddens me a bit when discussions about Ukraine once again turn into discussions about Russia. After all, we still need to talk about who we are.
But there is another more complex problem. If there is indeed a trend towards neo-imperialism in the world, and Russia has finally turned away from the West and is turning towards China and India, this is a big problem for us. If the West feels weaker in this context, the question is how it will react. Will it feel that it’s time for serious resistance, or will it just close in on itself and pretend that it doesn’t concern them?
The 21st century will be the century of the Ukrainian question. It will not be solved by two or three military operations and will always come back. And even our independence is not something guaranteed forever. But we want to believe that we won’t have to fight them throughout the entire century.
One last question about the cultural community and its unity. You’ve talked about a complicated situation. How can the community support each other and maintain its inner solidarity in this tough environment?
I would like it to be solidary. These conflicts sadden me – we waste unnecessary time and nerves on them. If we fragment as a community, we definitely won’t survive; we’ll only breed enemies within ourselves.
Granted, criticism is sometimes warranted, yet it should incorporate elements of empathy, conveying a sense that we're all in this together.
I advocate for refraining from public interactions with Russians, as we wrote in the PEN Ukraine statement. But at the same time, I am absolutely against canceling our own people. The same goes for our interactions with colleagues and friends abroad who have different views on Russians, those who interact with someone there, publish someone, or accept someone into their communities... We need to tell them what we agree with, not what we don’t. But we cannot be enemies with other Ukrainians, and we cannot be enemies with our allies abroad. We cannot afford fragmentation.
We need to increase the number of allies, not the number of enemies.
This also applies to our dealings with colleagues and friends abroad who hold different views on Russians, engage with them, publish their work, or include them in their communities. We should focus on expressing our agreements rather than disagreements. It's crucial not to view fellow Ukrainians as enemies, and we must maintain positive relations with our allies abroad.
Text originally published (in Ukrainian) by Suspilne Culture as part of a collaboration with Documenting Ukraine.
Translated by Kate Tsurkan
