‘The temptation is to forget this terrible war but we must not’ — Ukrainian author Sofia Andrukhovych

In her novel of the same name, due to be published in English next year, the Ukrainian writer Sofia Andrukhovych describes three periods that appear like scars on her country’s history: the Holocaust, the Stalinist repression and the Russo-Ukrainian war that started in 2014.

“For me, the lake was a metaphor for what I was trying to say with my novel. Something in human nature disappears, but nevertheless it exists in our consciousness; in human culture, it is a part of our lives,” she says.

This is how certain pages of Ukrainian history were hidden for decades, but if you dig deeper, you can unearth them, and tell the stories of those millions who disappeared during the wars, repressions, exterminations.

Among these are the Executed Renaissance, the destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia by the Soviet regime in the 1920 and ’30s. Two years ago, Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina wrote about the current Russian-Ukrainian war: “My worst fear is coming true: I am inside a new Executed Renaissance.” She was later killed by a Russian missile, the same fate as dozens of Ukrainian writers, musicians, actors and film-makers.

Andrukhovych has witnessed this repetition of history: “My novel was published in 2019, before the full-scale invasion, and everything that I lived through in my writing and believed was only literature became the truth and real life for us. I recognise so many things that I read in the testimonies, in the memoirs of the Holocaust survivors, and in the lives of the people who lived through World War II. And now I hear and observe so many of the exact experiences in Ukraine.”

In her novel, she also explores the mind’s ability to erase traumatic memories. Talking about the current war, she agrees that this can help some people who have experienced terrible things, but is also convinced that as a nation, Ukraine should keep all these memories and pass them on.

“The temptation to forget is very great; this barrage of terrible things that relate to specific atrocities and the methods of this abuse and torture are impossible to even comprehend,” she says. “Many people have had to experience terrible, unimaginable things, and they will have to somehow continue to live with them.

“When we talk about us as a society, it would be correct to remember all these things and not displace them. Just so that we get a chance not to allow it to happen again and to break out of this closed circle.”

The human body and psyche are very wise systems that are capable of healing themselves. And it seems to me that this will also happen to us… this vitality that exists in Ukrainians will help us to heal after these terrible times

Andrukhovych, who is from Ivano-Frankivsk, is the author of eight books of prose and a translator of eight books by JK Rowling, Kazuo Ishiguro and Ayn Rand, among others. Her novels Felix Austria and Amadoka have won awards including the Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski Literary Prize, the Sholem Aleichem Prize and the Hermann Hesse International Prize. On a visit to Ireland recently, she took part in Listowel Writers’ Week and the Mountshannon Arts Festival.

She mentions watching a documentary about the Irish psychiatrist Ivor Browne. “He said that a psychiatrist can never treat a person’s psyche. The human body and psyche are very wise systems that are capable of healing themselves. All that a good psychiatrist does is create a safe environment for this sick organism, simply to give it the opportunity to heal itself. And it seems to me that this will also happen to us. Because, on the one hand, we are all already very wounded, but on the other hand, this vitality that exists in Ukrainians will help us to heal after these terrible times. All we need is a safe, quiet, and peaceful environment.”

Natalya Korniyenko is a Ukrainian journalist based in Galway