What Ukrainian Literature Has Always Understood About Russia
Ukrainian national identity is not an accident, nor was it invented by the West. But for centuries, Ukrainians have struggled to fend off attempts to erase their culture. In the early 19th century, Russian publishers accepted Ukrainian literature only if it was ethnographic, comedic, or apolitical. (Serious literature had to be in Russian.) Successive laws in 1863 and 1876 led to the effective banning of all works in the Ukrainian language, as well as their near-complete prohibition in public settings. In the 1930s, Stalin executed a whole generation of writers who had been rebuilding Ukrainian literary culture in the decade prior, brutally cutting short the growth of the country’s vibrant avant-garde.
Our world is not going to be the same again because this war has no historical parallel. It is a raw, 18th-century-style land grab by a superpower — but in a 21st-century globalized world. This is the first war that will be covered on TikTok by super-empowered individuals armed only with smartphones, so acts of brutality will be documented and broadcast worldwide without any editors or filters. On the first day of the war, we saw invading Russian tank units unexpectedly being exposed by Google Maps, because Google wanted to alert drivers that the Russian armor was causing traffic jams.
Whether this really is “the first TikTok War,” wishful thinking colors the very claim. People have good reason to look for some new, crucial difference between the images of one war and those of all other wars that came before. If something is new, then maybe we’ve escaped the same old story in which lots of people die for no reason. If something is new, then maybe it can be different. But to look for that difference in the offerings of a technology company is obviously sad and misguided. In years to come, we will surely see, I don’t know, the first Twitch war, or the first Discord war, or the first war on some new platform that hasn’t even been developed yet.
El peor de los casos es improbable pero no imposible, como lo es el riesgo de una gran guerra en general. Como Putin está visiblemente encerrado en un delirio paranoico y arrogante, no se puede excluir nada. También en este sentido trágico podría ser « el principio del fin ».
