Victoria Amelina the latest Ukrainian novelist killed by Russia – will SA heed her plea to ‘write, please’

Friends and colleagues of killed staff members gather to mourn in front of a makeshift memorial next to the remains of a restaurant destroyed in a recent missile strike, in the centre of Kramatorsk, on June 29, 2023, amid Russia's military invasion on Ukraine. - The toll from a Russian missile strike on a restaurant in eastern Ukraine rose to 12 dead and at least 60 wounded on June 28, 2023, including children, as the Kremlin insisted Russian forces only hit military-linked targets. (Photo by Genya SAVILOV / AFP)

By Dzvinka Kachur

4 Jul 2023

Victoria Amelina, who was killed in a Russian missile strike, had spoken out about how Ukraine was reliving the Executed Renaissance of the 1920s and early 1930s when poets, writers and artists were persecuted, imprisoned and shot.

The effects of the Russian war on Ukraine cannot be easily measured. How can we measure the loss of Ukrainian writer and poet Victoria Amelina (37), who just a year ago participated in the South African Time of the Writer literary festival.

On 27 June, Victoria was fatally wounded during the Russian missile strike of a restaurant in Kramatorsk and died four days later, in Dnipro Hospital.

In Kramatorsk, Victoria was with the delegation of Colombian writers and journalists. They were having dinner at the popular Ria Lounge restaurant when the Russians launched a missile. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the attack on Kramatorsk, said that “Russia does not strike civilian infrastructure”. The attack instantly took the lives of 12 people, including four children. Dozens were wounded, including three Colombian citizens: MP Sergio Jaramillo, writer Héctor Abad, journalist Catalina Gomez and Victoria.

Victoria Amelina. (Photo: Wikipedia)

During her talk at the festival Victoria read an extract from her first, due-to-be published non-fiction book in English, War and Justice Diary: Looking at Women Looking at War, and explained how the war interrupted her writing. “My writing was always about empathy and I used to write in cafés and on the train.”

In another interview, Victoria said that before the combat operations she was primarily a novelist and essayist, but then wrote more poetry because “that’s what war leaves you”.

“The sentences are as short as possible, the punctuation a redundant luxury, the plot unclear, but every word carries so much meaning. All this applies to poetry as well as to war,” she said.

Ongezwa Mbele, a poet and performing arts academic, and the facilitator of the festival’s conversation, felt the vulnerability of the situation around Victoria, even through the screen. She commented on the risk Victoria faced by speaking out in the war situation. But could she know that this risk meant silence through death?

Victoria also shared with the South African authors and audience how Ukrainian literature today faced the same elimination it did during the so-called Executed Renaissance, when Ukrainian-language poets, writers and artists of the 1920s and early 1930s were persecuted, imprisoned and shot during the Great Terror of the Soviet Kremlin (August 1937 to November 1938). After the full-scale invasion, Victoria joined the human rights initiative Truth Hounds and was documenting Russian war crimes. Thus she strongly felt that she and her colleagues, facing the current Russian invasion, are reliving that horrible period of Ukrainian history.

Read Daily Maverick’s coverage of the Ukraine war

Victoria found and published the diaries of another Ukrainian writer, activist and volunteer, Volodymyr Vakulenko, who was abducted near Izium in the occupied Kharkiv region, tortured and killed by Russian military forces. Months later, his body was identified through a DNA test in the mass grave of Izium, in grave #317.

Friends and colleagues of killed staff members gather 29 June 2023 to mourn in front of a makeshift memorial next to a restaurant destroyed in a Russia missile strike in the centre of Kramatorsk. (Photo: Genya Savilov / AFP)

Russia is aiming to silence Ukrainian voices. Writers can be the voice and the consciousness of society, and perhaps Victoria’s call can be heard not only among Ukrainian writers, but also in South Africa on her social media, where she asked everyone: “Write, if you can, please!”

Read more in Daily Maverick: Russia tramples international law by abducting Ukrainian children, but South Africa can help get them home – here’s how

The list of Ukrainian writers, poets, translators, musicians and ballet dancers who are tortured, executed or killed by missile strikes by the Russian army is growing. Nevertheless, in a few weeks a Russian ballet company that still pays taxes in Russia will perform at Artscape in Cape Town and The Teatro at Montecasino. This would be a time for South Africans to decide if they want to sponsor the second Executed Renaissance of Ukrainian culture. DM

Sirens
By Victoria Amelina

Air-raid sirens across the country
It feels like everyone is brought out
For execution
But only one person gets targeted
Usually the one at the edge

This time not you; all clear.

Translated from the Ukrainian by Anatoly Kudryavitsky. First published in the anthology Invasion: Ukrainian Poems about the War, SurVision Books, Dublin, Ireland, 2022.)

Dzvinka Kachur is a representative of the Ukrainian Association of South Africa.

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