Home, Family, and War: Images of
Home in the Ukrainian Novel About
the War in Donbass
Katarzyna Jakubowska-Krawczyk, Marta Zambrzycka
University of Warsaw, Faculty of Applied Linguistics, Department of Ukrainian Studies, Szturmowa
4, 02-678 Warszawa, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6281-7011, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2123-8531
k.jakubowska@uw.edu.pl, m.e.zambrzycka@uw.edu.pl
This article focuses on one of the most pressing issues in Ukraine today, the ongoing
war in the Donbass. Using selected examples of Ukrainian prose, the authors analyze
the impact of the war on the fate of individuals and their families. However, the
theme goes far beyond the literary text and touches on important social and political
issues facing Ukraine today. The authors understand prose as one of the narratives
of culture, which not only conceptualizes reality in a certain way, but also has a
real impact on social attitudes. Contemporary Ukrainian prose about the war in the
Donbass analyzes many stereotypes about the inhabitants of eastern Ukraine, shows
them in their complicated family relationships, and also takes up one of the most
universal literary motifs, namely the figure of the house in the face of a disruption
of its everyday order. Characteristic of this prose is the individualized perspective,
which aims not only to present events on a broad political level, but above all to draw
attention to the impact of these events on the individual. Such an individualized
perspective is an effective means of reaching the recipient and making him aware of
the multidimensionality of the military conflict taking place before our eyes.
Keywords: literature and war / Ukrainian literature / war in Donbass / home / family
relations
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Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 45.2 (2022)
Introduction*
The war, dragging on in eastern Ukraine since 2014, the emergence
of the separatist DRN and LNR republics and the annexation of
Crimea are extremely important events not only from the point of
* Editorial note: the journal has received and accepted this paper before the Russian
invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The editorial team believes that the recent war
in Ukraine makes the type of research conducted in this article even more pertinent.
PKn, letnik 45, št. 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2022
54
view of defense and national integrity, not only exposing a number
of yet unsolved social, identity and awareness related problems, but
also exerting dominant influence on contemporary Ukrainian culture
and literature. Topics related to Ukrainian-Russian armed conflict, and
the situation in the area referred to by the Ukrainian authorities as
temporarily occupied territories (Separated Territories of Donetsk and
Lugansk Districts) are naturally and increasingly so becoming impor-
tant motifs in films (both fiction and documentary), drama and stage
performances, journalist and biographical texts, as well as literary fic-
tion and poetry. The texts analyzed here raise problems related to the
armed conflict going on in Ukraine, but it should be emphasized that
the issues discussed in the article have a more universal overtone and
are pertinent to areas and populations affected by war.
The many meanings of a home
Culture in its several dimensions is not just a running commentary on
reality, it can also be an instrument of true change, even in the sphere
of awareness. To some extent, it also applies to literary fiction being
an example of building a narrative about current events, based on in-
depth reflection. What is characteristic for literature (or at least for
many of its instances) is a personal, individualized outlook intended
to not only show events in a broad political perspective, but above all
to draw attention to the impact that these events have on a human
being and on families, especially—but not only—on those who live
in the area of warfare or in the occupied territories. The prose dealing
with the war in Donbass dismantles stereotypes about the inhabitants
of eastern Ukraine, shows them in the context of complicated family
relationships, and embraces one of the most universal literary motifs,
namely that of a figure of a home confronted with a situation which
ruins the day-to-day accepted order of things. Here, the concept of
home includes both literally understood space inhabited by an indi-
vidual or a family, but also extends to the shared cultural, linguistic
and historical background. So, home can be both a house, the prover-
bial “roof over my head” and the people who live there, and a specific
region, village, city or the entire country. The war destroys the home
space in all its aspects.
This brings us to the main subject of this text, to the images of
home (understood both in the literal sense—as a place of residence of
an individual or a family—as well as in the broader sense of the home-
Katarzyna Jakubowska-Krawczyk, Marta Zambrzycka: Home, Family, and War
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land) at the time of the escalation of conflict and the outbreak of war.
We are going to discuss this motif basing on the example of two novels:
Internat (The Boarding House) by Serhiy Zhadan and Shidnyi syndrom
(The Eastern Syndrome) by Julia Iljukha. In this article, we will try to
show that the relationship between the protagonist and his/her home
space is a kind of compass, an indicator of their identity transformation
under the influence of external events. Although we will trace these
processes on the examples of Ukrainian novels, several may turn out to
be characteristic of other literary works written in countries torn apart
by war.
The current situation in Ukraine has transformed the subject of
war: now it is not just an element of historical memory, but a pre-
vailing problem. No wonder, then, that it occupies a significant place
in Ukrainian literature—both in books which document the past and
recall its witnesses, and in fiction and poetry. As much as they are
tragic, military developments of recent years have contributed to the
growth of war narratives, and have deepened them—probably for the
first time in Ukrainian literature—adding anthropological, existential,
and psychological contexts that allow for an in-depth analysis of the sit-
uation of individuals engaged in combat, and those that have become
accidental participants of skirmishes. The new way of writing about war
is a phenomenon going beyond the Ukrainian context, and embraces a
wider space of post-Soviet states.
The war in Donbass in the literature
The literature on the currently ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war in
Donbass is written from many points of view, not only by Ukrainian
authors (Polishchuk, “Zobrazyty”), nonetheless, it seems that the
context of micro-stories or “grassroots narratives” mentioned by the
Polish researcher, in which the ethical dimension is most important,
constitute an adequate interpretation framework for most works.
Notwithstanding the events presented by the authors from the point of
view of individuals actively participating in military operations or from
the viewpoint of accidental victims of war, most narratives focus on the
individual and the emphasis is on the destructive effects of war, both
on the personal level (family, professional, social), as well as in a wider
social dimension. Such an optics—the perspective of the participants
of military operations—is shown, among others, in an excellent novel
Slidy na dorozi by Valery Ananiew (2018), as well as in Tochka nul
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(2017) by Artem Chekh. In both novels the authors describe personal,
individual war experience. Showing without embellishments the reality
of war, as well as the ruthless and embarrassing truth about the condi-
tion of the Ukrainian army, both authors emphasize wartime influ-
ences exerted on a sensitive and intelligent individual, torn out of his
life and “thrown to the front lines.” Both Serhiy Zhadan in his novel
Internat (2017) and Tamara Horiha-Zernia in her Docia (2019) de-
scribe the war from the perspective of people experiencing loss, trauma,
breakdown of home and family, and necessity of resettlement. The lat-
ter work is one of many examples of literary reflection on the situation
of women and children during the war. Another is Julia Iljuha’s novel
Shidnyi syndrom (2019), discussed later in this article, where the author
touches upon the topic of post-traumatic syndrome experienced by war
veterans (including female soldiers), previously absent in Ukrainian
prose. Poetization of military experiences is another interesting phe-
nomenon. Those experiences are shown from an extremely subjective,
unreal perspective—this type of narrative is represented by the extraor-
dinary work Lito ATO (2015) by Olaf Klemensen. Ilovaisk (2015) by
Yevheniya Połozy is a kind of journalist investigation on the borderline
of reportage and fiction. The same author, analyzing the causes and
course of the tragedy at Ilovaisk, refers to individual testimonies of par-
ticipants of the “Ilovaisk siege.” Texts written by Russians or authors
writing in Russian, including Serhey Loyko and Volodymyr Rafjeenko,
deserve special attention. The first Russian writer and Los Angeles Times
war correspondent is the author of a text on the borderline of fiction
and reportage which testifies to the dramatic 242-day defense of the
Donetsk airport which took place at the turn of 2014/15. In spite of
the reportage flair, the author introduces personal themes here as well,
creating a fictional hero who, on top of his war ordeals, struggles with
personal dramas. Although from the literary viewpoint the book leaves
much to be desired, it undoubtedly constitutes an important narra-
tive about the contemporary Russian-Ukrainian war. Another author,
Volodymyr Rafeenko, is a Ukrainian writer from Donbass, who spoke
and wrote only in Russian until the outbreak of the war and was deeply
immersed in the context of Russian culture and literature (Yurchuk).
This tradition is evident in his excellent, multi-layered and enigmatic
novel Dovhi chasy (written in Russian and translated into Ukrainian
in 2017). Sparkling with quotes and allusions to Yefofeyev, Bulgakov,
Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, and written in the spirit of macabre grotesque
bringing to mind, for example, the prose of Victor Pelevin, Rafeenko’s
text is one of the most interesting voices of the ongoing war to be
Katarzyna Jakubowska-Krawczyk, Marta Zambrzycka: Home, Family, and War
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heard in contemporary Ukrainian prose. Rafeenko’s demonic vision,
in which war is a kind of absurd with death as the only way out, was
appreciated by critics and other Ukrainian authors, among others by
Yulia Yurchuk: “The famous Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych
praised The Length of the Day as the best Ukrainian novel in many
years, and Zhadan said that this was the most important novel about
the war where reality is shown from the perspective of an inferno.”
(Yurchuk) A Polish-Ukrainian scholar, Agnieszka Matusiak, has a fol-
lowing comment: Rafeenko’s novel is “the most important Ukrainian
book since the publication of Yuri Andrukhovych’s Moscoviada and
Oxana Zabuzhko’s Polovi doslidzhennja z ukrainskoho seksu. What’s
more, this is truly intellectual prose, which Ukrainian literature has not
known since the times of Viktor Domontowych/Petrow’s Bez gruntu.”
(Matusiak 81)
The novels discussed above, and two novels presented further in the
text, show war as a destructive factor ruining the lives of individuals.
This perspective makes it possible to place these novels in the context
of “grassroots narratives” with an ethical dimension mentioned ear-
lier, that is, in the stream of war narratives introduced into the post-
Soviet space by Svitlana Alekseyevich. This approach is diametrically
opposed to the trend mythologizing warfare, and giving it the status of
a heroic legend strongly associated with political ideologies (Stomma
7), or pointing out the sacred reality features (Caillois) of the war in
the understanding of Otto’s sacrum as tremens and fascinatis (Otto).
Yaroslav Polishchuk wrote in detail about the fact that the currently
emerging Ukrainian war literature is dominated by subjective, indi-
vidual, ethical perspective, in which the experiences of individuals,
“minor” human tragedies, reflections and attitudes are emphasized.
The poetics of “minuscule stories” about the war is part of the tendency
to study literature from the ethical point of view, a perspective that has
dominated English language literary studies since the 1990s.
Assuming the perspective of grassroots narrative, it is impossible to
avoid the theme of the house as a space summing up basic values which
constitute an individual. As a result of the shock of the experience of
war this space is destroyed, and attempts to rebuild it are tantamount
to man seeking his own place in the world, redefining his own identity
in the face of a traumatic experience.
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Zhadan: anti-death in non-homes
Zhadan shows residents rooted in Donbass with all their problems,
identity conflicts and all their baggage of experiences. It is not only a
physical space, but above all a mental one, because it is most strongly
defined by the human mentality. The topic of Donbass and its inhab-
itants is not new to Ukrainian literature, it has existed in it for over a
century. In the article “Donbas: crisis of identity,” Yaroslav Polishchuk
quotes Almanac Literary Donbass and reminds that Donbass began to
be written in the 1940s (Polishchuk, “Donbas” 16). More publica-
tions and magazines were created over time. As we have already writ-
ten, the situation of the armed conflict in the East of Ukraine has
caused an extremely lively interest in the history, culture, and identity
of these lands. A good example of this are the novels we analyze, in
which the authors deal with the image of Donbass developed over the
years. These are mainly metaphors relating to the steppe landscape,
Soviet industrialization, extremely hard physical labor, the crisis of the
post-Soviet period, dehumanization and existential void (Polishchuk,
“Donbas” 14–15). The works analyzed by us make extensive use of
them, trying to deal with the history happening in front of our eyes.
They are characterized by the creation of an inextricable weave of mo-
dernity and Soviet times. The authors, as it were, stand apart between
the two realities, trying to find a place for themselves in them. As
noted by Yulia Ilchuk, Zhadan “shows the persistent presence of tran-
sit zones between the present and the past” (Ilchuk 259). This is clearly
visible not only in the Internat, but also in the collection of poetry
Zhyttja Mariji published in 2015, in which the author combines the
spiritual dimension with the struggles of war life. In it, the writer also
uses the metaphor of the house, showing how its meaning is gradually
transferred from the sacred sphere to the profane. Zhadan moves from
the image of the house to the non-home, and also, as Alla Demchenko
notices, “an anti-death bearing death or acting as a hellish space be-
longing to the Devil” (Demchenko 217) and force them to confront
the traumatic realities of combat, of taking lives and putting their own
in jeopardy. In the orderly life of a local teacher, he finds an appar-
ent stabilization of his home, he temporarily renounces his home only
when he can try to save his humanity. Himself temporarily homeless
in his three-day journey, Zhadan’s main character comes across home-
lessness all around.
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Iljukha: Donbass dreaming
Literary figure of home house figure is at the foundation of Julia Iljukha’s
novel Shidnyi syndrom, published in 2019, which—in the form of a
manuscript—received second place in the “Коронація слова” com-
petition in 2018. What the novel shares with Serhiy Zhadan’s Internat
is a picture of quite complex family relationships and the fate of those
who happened to be living or stayed in Eastern Ukraine during the
outbreak of the Ukrainian-Russian armed conflict and the emergence
of separatist republics. Another aspect shared by the two novels is that
their protagonists remain in a state of suspension, torn out from every-
day life, forced to abandon their homes and families, and to begin their
own agonizing journey. Due to this state of suspension or a form of
eradication, in both novels, the figure of home refers less to the present
fictional time and more to the past (in reminiscence) and the future (in
dreams and fears). Like in Zhadan’s novel, the protagonists’ dream is
to return to the safe space of the abandoned home or build a new place
that could be called a home. However, because in Julia Iljukha’s novel
the lives of three main characters intertwine, and only one of them
is originally from Donbass, their attitude to memories of home and
their dreams and fears vary dramatically. At the intersection of the two
novels, there is also lack of declarations of political commitment and
indefinite world outlook of the main characters. The war forces them
to revise their attitudes and reflect on the way they act and, at the same
time, everything they do is driven by private, personal motives and
their main longing is to return to a normal life rebuilt in the conditions
of peace.
Serhiy Zhadan’s Internat is firmly rooted in the climate of the posi-
tional warfare in eastern Ukraine. The author shows the tragedy of mil-
itary operations from the perspective of an ordinary inhabitant of the
territory affected by the political conflict, who finds out that suddenly
his house is in the middle of a very sensitive area. The inspiration for
the final form of Internat was the Debalseve offensive.
The novel Internat is spanned by the protagonist’s departure from
his family home to bring back his nephew from the boarding school
under fire and come back home with him. The domesticated space
occupies an important place in the narrative; however, the writer is far
from idealizing it. On the contrary, showing the life of the house and
its inhabitants, it reveals various aspects of the existence of a post-Soviet
man, a resident of Donbass which continues to be a theatre of war.
Traditionally, home was the center of the world which revolved around
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it. Home gave shelter, a sense of security, being the most important
point of reference. Józef Tischner emphasized the fact that home con-
stituted an area of private familiarity (see Tischner). It provided oppor-
tunities to withdraw from the world and shelter from other people,
strangers, from what was yet undomesticated. In Zhadan’s novel home
is the only part of the protagonists’ “own territory,” it separates them
from the rest of the world and allows to apply their own rules. Even if
not everyone accepts them.
Beata Spieralska, in “Dach nad głową. Pojęcie domu w językach
indoeuropejskich” draws attention to the connection between human
personality and the inhabited space. Moreover, the researcher points to
the notion of home as a form of reflection of the personality, embedded
tastes, concepts, and ideas (Spieralska). Such construct of home is one
of the aspects of the world of Donbas described by Zhadan, because it
is in the description of the way it functions that we learn about Pasha’s
mentality, his values and everyday life of his family.
The home and the homeland
By constructing the space of home in his novel Internat the way he
did, Serhiy Zhadan endowed the space with the task of a detailed de-
scription of life in Donbass. He used the space of the house to create
a symbol of the condition of the people of Donbass. It is tightly knit
with the history of this land and with the persistent questions about
the identity of its inhabitants. These issues are also part of the image of
the main protagonists. They constitute a part of the main character’s
internal debate, the subject of Pasha’s conversations with his nephew,
but they are most likely to make themselves felt when Pasha is stopped
at successive checkpoints and he must answer the question—“Who
are you?”. His teaching profession identifies him more accurately than
nationality. This attitude prevails not only because of fear but is also
a reflection of the way his family home has operated for years, which,
unlike many other literary images, is not a model of the cultivated
Ukrainian tradition.
Magdalena Sulima writes: “[T]he word ‘home’ sounds similar in
many languages: in Farsi it is dam, in Greek domos, and in Latin domus.
We associate them all in with the concept of construction or building:
a man is at home because he built a house or had it built. A house is
a specific space, separated and inhabited by people where they feel at
home, protected from the outside world.” (Sulima in Cisło 82) The
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house that the Pasha family lived in was not built with their own hands.
Its history is closely linked to the history of Donbass. The house was
built after World War II by German prisoners of war. The protagonist
values it highly because he associates the fact with solid construction
and meticulous execution of the building works.
Nevertheless, from the very beginning, the house is stigmatized by
someone else’s history, and not always easy. It is not a place in keeping
with Ukrainian traditions and customs, not a house and location care-
fully chosen by later residents. The writer has shown this cutting one-
self off from one’s tradition of being rooted in the land when he gave
an account of what happened to Pasha’s family next-door neighbor.
When the part of the building he lived in burned down, he did not try
to rebuild anything or settle in again, he simply boarded a train and
left, thus cutting himself off from the space he had inhabited for years.
The building was part of a housing estate built around the station and
subjected to its rhythm. The collapse of the industrial and railway infra-
structures associated with the socio-political changes of the nineties was
closely connected with hard times for the inhabitants of the area. The
next storm they had to face was the Ukrainian-Russian war. It was the
war that forced the main protagonist, against his will, to leave the fam-
ily home and set off on a journey to bring home the nephew from the
boarding school. The journey, however, contrary to his expectations,
became a symbolic comeback, a discovery of true values of home.
In the foreground of the account of what happens at home, there
are complicated family relationships. This space seems to be lacking
warmth and love. The hearth and home of the house is the TV which
is never turned off. Home has been deprived of important codes, signs,
meanings, and symbols attributed to an abode for centuries. One could
say, quoting Le Corbusier, that it became a “Machine for Living.”
Residents treat it instrumentally and it may seem they sometimes treat
themselves instrumentally, too. During his journey across the war-torn
territories Pasha realizes, however, that the family relations are not the
result of wrong attitudes, but rather the effect of struggling and hard-
ships that people living in this territory were not spared. He remem-
bers his childhood and events which alienated the family and which
strengthened his belief that regardless of what he might do or plan, his
life would take its own course.
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The traumas of the war
Both Zhadan and Iljukha talk about families and individuals affected
by the war conflict, raising several issues related to the identity of the
inhabitants of eastern Ukraine, with ideological differences dividing
the Ukrainian society, they both analyze the impact of war trauma on
the human psyche. They also point at the positive aspect of increasing
self-awareness as a result of a huge shock of being confronted with a
situation as extreme as war. The main difference between the novels
is that Iljukha draws attention to the psychological effects of the war
trauma on participants of combat operations. In her interviews, the
author, who herself worked as a volunteer at the front lines, says that
her book is about people returning from the war with their bodies but
spiritually never left the war theatre. In spite of the fact that they do not
declare specific political views or attachment to the broadly understood
cultural tradition, the protagonists of Shidnyi syndrom are involved in
armed struggle, supporting the Ukrainian army, though not for pa-
triotic reasons, they experience a threat to their own lives and taking
someone else’s life. The war fundamentally affects their future, con-
demning some to fall, leaving others in a void, and giving yet others an
unexpected chance for a new life.
The author avoids duplicating stereotypes and simplifying pat-
terns that distort the image of Ukrainian society. She highlights a
huge diversity in word viewpoints and extreme differences in attitudes
in the assessment of current events which restricts, if not prevents
communication, at the same time creating non-obvious characters
which combine many contradictory attitudes. One example is Vasil,
a Ukrainian-speaking young boy from the town of Rivne, who even
while studying in Kharkiv, the Russian speaking city, does not give
up using the Ukrainian language, which obviously causes problems.
He is treated with a mixture of indulgence and contempt, like a freak:
“Everyone happens to talk about him. Someone grows Madagascar
cockroaches, someone does not clean teeth for years. And our Wasia
speaks Ukrainian. Everyone has their quirks.” (Iliuha 15) Despite the
mockery and even problems with passing exams, Vasil does not give up
his native language. However, he is not, as might be expected, a truly
positive hero and patriot, defending his homeland with nothing else
on his mind.
The plot of Internat develops within the space of three days, when
the main character Pasha, a Ukrainian language teacher, travels across
war-torn areas. Kostiantyn Wozdvestenskoy wrote: “It is a novel about
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responsibility, however grandiose it could sound. Behind the line of
everyday events is not difficult to see all the rest. Social conflicts in
which Donbass and the entire contemporary Ukraine live. And the
choice is simple: will you run away from responsibility your whole life
or will you take on a little bit?” (Vozdvyzhens’kyi)
He recalls the times when he started college in the big city, and a
poignant sense of alienation that he experienced there, and longing for
home. Whenever he could, he would come back home but, as if in spite
of what he had felt in the city, he separated himself from the family
and locked him in his room, building a wall between the past and the
present. The protagonist’s reflections during his journey, when he faces
danger every now and then, make him aware that his home, although
not perfect, is the center of his world. It is where he feels safe. It is a
space where every corner is familiar, a territory saturated with emotions
and memories.
A house filled with a thousand meanings […] known by heart […]. The family
you were used to as you are used to your own body. Parents—still alive and
healthy, from which you are moving away more and more, who understand
you less and less, although it does not worry you at all: it is enough that they
are just somewhere there, not far from you. (Zhadan, Internat 227)
The family situation has changed significantly. His mother passed
away, his sister is never there, traveling, but his father is at home all
the time, and his presence consolidates this space and makes the home
a safe haven: “Silent evenings, dark nights. How much fun there is in
all this, how much warmth.” (Zhadan, Internat 308) Those who travel,
experiencing the horrors of war, more and more often think of home as
promised land and a lost paradise. Inna Bulkina wrote that there is not
so much around “hybrid warfare,” but “hybrid reality that pulled Pasha
out of his comfort of balancing himself into ‘his’ and ‘not his.’ These
are terribly conventional categories: for him ‘not mine’ is everyone who
is on the way home” (Vasylenko and Bulkina). The protagonists’ dream
is to see familiar faces. Their fear and anxiety are that their home may
no longer be a safe space, that the brutal war may have crossed the
threshold, they would like to prevent it at all costs and protect all the
residents. The residents of the house by the station hope to save it from
the war, and the experience of their travels also means that a change in
perception of their own internal wars. They want to make the house
and the days, weeks and years spent in it an alternative peaceful world.
They realize, however, that as a result of military action, the house, too,
may be destroyed.
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Zhadan shows Donbass residents, rooted in the area, with all their
problems, identity conflicts, and all their baggage of experiences. It is
not only a physical space but, above all, psychological because it is most
strongly defined by the mentality of man. The leitmotif of Donbass
and its inhabitants is not new to Ukrainian literature, it has been pres-
ent there for over a century. Yaroslav Polishuk, in his article “Donbas:
crisis of identity,” recalls Literary Donbass and reminds the reader that
Donbass appeared in narratives in the 1940s. With time, more publica-
tions and magazines appeared. As we said before, the armed conflict in
the Eastern Ukraine resulted in intense interest in the history, culture
and identity of these territories.
The home and homelessness
The war and its effects make the protagonists homeless, drag them out
from familiar territories and force them to confront the traumatic re-
alities of combat, of taking lives and putting their own in jeopardy.
The main protagonist of Zhadan’s novel is not a type of free spirit
who sees the joys of life in travelling the world and looking for adven-
ture. Pasha values peace of mind and predictability. He finds appar-
ent stabilization in the orderly life of a local teacher. He temporarily
renounces his home when it is the only way to save his own humanity.
Himself temporarily homeless during his three-day journey, Zhadan’s
main protagonist comes across homelessness all around. He encounters
homelessness both in his meetings with people forced to abandon their
homes, and in deserted buildings along the way. Standing blocks of
flats with no signs of life, no light, with broken windows; empty hous-
es, some concealing traces of recent crimes instill fear and disgust in
him. Sometimes, however, in their temporary homelessness, the char-
acters in the novel attempt to find shelter in such places. Nevertheless,
more often they seek places that are hidden away, considered safer,
consequently overpopulated, for example, basements and cellars. Their
inhabitants, hiding from artillery and air force attacks try to make those
closed and cramped spaces their home, camping out, as if they wanted
to settle down there and feel at home for a moment, securing bedding
on the floor or creating a makeshift kitchen with a camping stove.
It is the railway station which becomes the clearest symbol of home-
lessness, filled with women and children who have nowhere to go,
regarded to be temporarily displaced persons. Terrified, tired, clutching
to all their meagre belongings, as if suspended in time and space. When
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they watch the horrors of war, looking out of the windows, sometimes
watching their own homes burning, their belief that outside the walls
of the station there is only chaos and death becomes stronger, “they sit
there as if in a church in a besieged city, they think that no-one will grab
them or get to them there, they look through the windows and see the
world that which is becoming ever narrower” (Zhadan, Internat 52).
Zhadan vividly compares this space to a prison for women, a prison
from which they can, in fact, escape but with a high probability escape
may be a true encounter with death.
Alla Demchenko finds an image of the homelessness also at the rail-
way station in the volume Zhyttia Mariji. According to the literary
researcher, it becomes the image of a lost paradise and a lost homeland
(Demchenko 210). The researcher also emphasizes the borderline char-
acter of the space located between what is known and familiar, and all
what is alien, evident also in Internat. As much as in the poems she
perceives hope interwoven in this space, in the novel the image of the
train station is terrifying and depressing.
Homelessness is at the heart of the very institution of Internat. After
all, a boarding school is a space inhabited by children abandoned by
their parents. The headmistress does not try to make it a substitute for
a family but is dedicated to creating a safe space for her pupils, where
they could develop to the best of their abilities. Their experience of
abandonment and the stigma of being unwanted children undermines
their belief that the world is a nice place. With the horrors of war,
it becomes unbearable. The headmistress is trying hard to shield the
young people entrusted to her care and prevent external circumstances
from breaking their humanity. The boarding school metaphor applies
not only to abandoned children, but to all of the Donbass’ novels. As
we read in the novel, “these people have also lived for a long time in a
kind of a boarding school, in a situation resembling an orphanage …”
(Zhadan, Internat 182).
This feeling of abandonment and desperate clinging to memories,
and often also to the habits inherited from the Soviet era, has the power
to save what was best in their lives: their childhood, stabilization, rela-
tive prosperity. This nostalgia becomes a kind of weapon against the
uncertainty of everyday life and helps preserve the dignity of the inhab-
itants of a strong country, understood in its own specific way.
Yaroslav Polishchuk suggests that the boarding school metaphor
should be viewed as a category of a non-place, therefore, a space
devoid of any sense or destiny. An individual cannot take root in this
space, remaining lonely and homeless, losing his identity (Polishchuk,
PKn, letnik 45, št. 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2022
66
Hibrydna). This view is shared by Alla Demchenko who emphasizes the
fact that “staying in such a place brings about spiritual homelessness
which leads the protagonists to a symbolic anti-home” whose image
“extends its limits to the concept of destroying identity […] we are
talking about a destroyed mental landscape that turns into a landscape
of trauma” (Demchenko 215).
Shidnyi syndrom, on the other hand, best describes the category of
homelessness as the relationship between an individual and the state
in the context of war and the realities of existence following the return
from the front lines. The two protagonists undergo a kind of uprooting
and are deprived of what is most important to them. For both Maksim
and Vasil, family life and a safe, familiar space of home had been the
foundation of existence and the center of all thoughts, motivation and
actions. Maksim found happiness in this space and Vasil, though the
family he started was not very happy and living with his wife was rather
an imitation of intimacy, he felt an obsessive attachment to the idea of
the family as the only permanent point of reference. His addiction to
his wife was largely due to his conformism and the need to feel safe, but
the home space was a place where he wanted to return, regardless of the
difficult relationships at home.
Maksim loses his family, Vasil returns to his wife, however, their
post-front life together inevitably runs into dire straits because his wife
cheats on him and because of a mental trauma, which the protagonist
is unable to cope with. Tatiana is thrice homeless, as she has never had
a real family, and the spaces in which she lived belonged rather to the
category of anti-houses. Tatiana first abandons her family home, run-
ning away from the drinking and never-ending violence, then leaves
her sadistic husband and also leaves Russia, in the eyes of which she is
now a traitor, having joined the Ukrainian army. Tatiana has never had
a real home, but the dream of home drives all her actions and influ-
ences her decisions.
The loneliness of the veteran
The motif of homelessness, feelings of being estranged and having no
support is particularly important in the context of those returning
from the front lines. The state for which they fought turns out to be
inefficient, incapable to provide the veterans with adequate help and
psychological support. Tatiana, who is trying to legalize her residence
status faces mounting bureaucratic problems, making her reflect bit-
Katarzyna Jakubowska-Krawczyk, Marta Zambrzycka: Home, Family, and War
67
terly on the dysfunctionality and a specific “ingratitude” of the state,
“those numerous legionaries who fought on the Ukrainian side initially
cherished the hope that the country they were ready to die for […]
would repay them, by granting citizenship for example. But even this
timid hope quickly dissipated” (Iliuha 162). The state which she and
others fought for turns out not to be the home where they wait for
you with open arms. Although it is dysfunctional and in many respects
pathological, Tatiana finally finds shelter in her new country and a
hope for fresh, and finally peaceful and normal existence. When she is
given permanent residence, she tries to adopt a boy from an orphanage,
beginning a new part of her life.
Administrative paradoxes are intertwined with a particularly
unpleasant negative attitude of some people towards members of the
armed forces, experienced by the protagonists right after they return.
When Vasil steps out of the train at Kharkiv railway station, a passer-
by throws insults at him, calling him “Bandera gang member” and
“murderer.” These social divisions, as well as impunity for war crimi-
nals and administrative inefficiency, paint a pessimistic picture of a
state torn not only by war with an external enemy but also unsuccess-
ful both at systemic or social levels. Such a state cannot be and is not a
real and safe haven for the protagonists returning from the front lines.
This is clearly demonstrated by Vasil’s despair who, blinded by drunk-
enness, kills some people in the bar, recognizing in one of them a mer-
cenary hired by the separatists. Vasil’s reflection, on the senselessness
of war and his own (though not voluntary) sacrifice, underlines the
situation in which veterans after returning from the front lines have
found themselves: “Why did he give the war a year of his life, what
were the secrets, shots when the enemy returns so easily to the streets
of the city he defended? Why did the war take him away from himself,
why did it take my soul, leaving behind a wound that would never heal
again?” (Iliuha 233)
The situation of war veterans outlined in the novel is reflected in
political, sociological and press analyses, whose authors point out the
problems faced by soldiers returning from the front lines. Bartosz
Pachuta writes:
In the soldiers voice one can hear hostility towards the authorities, there are
accusations of inaction, corruption and inefficiency in finding a settlement to
the conflict. It is often difficult to say where the enemy is really hiding: […]
All this negatively affects not only their physical condition but above all their
mental state. […] Will they be able to function properly again after the war?
(Pachuta)
PKn, letnik 45, št. 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2022
68
In the context of these novels, “homelessness” should be understood
in a metaphorical rather than in the literal sense, since inadvertent loss
of home and associated psychological processes characteristic of home-
lessness are not typical experiences of any of the protagonists. What
should be taken into account, nonetheless, is that the very concept of
homelessness is extremely complex and may be defined in various ways,
while the experience of sudden political and social shock can be, and
very often is one of the many reasons for losing a space considered to
be home (regardless of whether it is a real home/apartment, region or
state). Barbara Moraczewska, quoting the classification of homeless-
ness, points at a category that may be defined as “short-lived,” “acute,”
and “embracing people who lost their place of residence as a result
of a special coincidence” (Moraczewska 115). The coincidence is not
necessarily a war, confronting people with a dramatic change in living
conditions, taking away familiar places and their loved ones, forcing
them to stray, hide, look for new places to live, is often associated with
a long-lasting trauma of adaptation to new living conditions in a for-
eign country, culture, or language.
Conclusion
In Zhadan’s and Iljukha’s novels, the concept of homelessness refers
more strongly to the loss of the sense of security, to being temporarily
uprooted and having no support, it is associated with a sense of help-
lessness in the face of the collapsing reality as one has known it. In the
end, the protagonists either return to their homes or create new famil-
iar spaces. Nevertheless, the war-induced condition of homelessness in
both texts goes beyond the experiences of the characters and, although
not explicitly expressed, suggests and is a reminder that, as a result of
hostilities, including the war in Donbass, thousands of people really
and irrevocably lost their homes and their loved ones. War and other
social and political upheavals are incomprehensible and somewhat ab-
stract to those who have not experienced them. Perhaps this is also why
it is worth remembering that, as the author quoted above writes: “To
become homeless it is enough to find oneself in an unfavorable situa-
tion which one cannot cope with alone. After all, every homeless per-
son once had a home, family, friends, a job, dreams and hopes which
were annihilated …” (Moraczewska 123–124)
Both the discussed novels, using literary plots and protagonists, try
to tell a tale about the war in Ukraine. Serhiy Zhadan depicts people
Katarzyna Jakubowska-Krawczyk, Marta Zambrzycka: Home, Family, and War
69
who face the war only at one of its stages. They don’t know what may
happen next, whether or not their homes will survive or they them-
selves will survive. They return home, breathe in the fragrance of fresh
sheets, a symbol of love and care of the oldest inhabitant, but how long
this fragrance is going to hang around in the house at the abandoned
railway station remains an open question. A war, especially one that
is not yet over, is difficult to describe. Urszula Jarecka says: “[With
respect to] historical wars, ended and closed, their features are easier
to discuss than in the case of recently ended wars or those that are
still raging. This is also one of the main problems associated with dis-
cussing modern wars. Interpretation of the events cannot be entirely
certain, because not all facts are known and not all contexts have been
revealed.” (Jarecka 96) If it is at all possible. Perhaps literature present-
ing individuals involved in the conflict may draw an objective outline
of war, and help unravel the tangle of stereotypical ideas about resi-
dents of Eastern Ukraine, or Ukraine in general. Bartosz Pachuta said:
“The conflict in Eastern Ukraine is the greatest European calamity of
the 21st century to date, and its effects will be felt for a long time.”
(Pachuta) Contemporary Ukrainian literature is trying to confront
this problem, describing several of its aspects, showing the proportions
of individual tragedies and failed attempts of the government, inca-
pable of securing safety or providing assistance. Indeed, literature is not
only fiction, neither a mere comment on or reaction to events, but an
attempt to change that reality.
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Katarzyna Jakubowska-Krawczyk, Marta Zambrzycka: Home, Family, and War
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Dom, družina in vojna: podobe doma v
ukrajinskem romanu o vojni v Donbasu
Ključne besede: literatura in vojna / ukrajinska književnost / vojna v Donbasu / dom /
družinski odnosi
Članek obravnava eno najbolj perečih aktualnih vprašanj Ukrajine, trenutno
vojno v Donbasu. Na izbranih primerih ukrajinske proze avtorici analizirata
vpliv vojne na usodo posameznikov in njihovih družin, čeprav tema presega
literarni tekst, saj se dotika pomembnih družbenih in političnih vprašanj, s
katerimi se danes sooča Ukrajina. Avtorici prozo razumeta kot kulturni nara-
tiv, ki ni le način konceptualiziranja realnosti, temveč tudi realno vpliva na
družbena stališča. Sodobna ukrajinska proza o vojni v Donbasu analizira šte-
vilne stereotipe o prebivalcih vzhodne Ukrajine, jih prikazuje v njihovih zaple-
tenih družinskih odnosih, zajema pa tudi enega najbolj univerzalnih literarnih
motivov, in sicer podobo doma v trenutku, ko se poruši z njim povezani red
vsakdanjosti. Za takšno prozo je značilna individualizirana perspektiva, ki ne
želi zgolj predstaviti širšega političnega dogajanja, temveč predvsem opozoriti
na vpliv tovrstnih dogodkov na posameznika. Takšna individualizirana per-
spektiva je učinkovito sredstvo nagovarjanja naslovnika in ozaveščanja o števil-
nih razsežnostih vojaškega spopada, ki se odvija pred našimi očmi.
1.01 Izvirni znanstveni članek / Original scientific article
UDK 821.161.2.09
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v45.i2.03