In Uzhhorod’s drama theater, the play “A Deal With An Angel” by Kyiv playwright Neda Nezhdana, had just started, when an air raid siren began to howl over the city. The actors froze. The theater’s manager hurried up onto the stage and asked everyone to go down to the bomb shelter below the theatre in an organized manner. He added that if the all-clear sounded within the hour, the performance would recommence – if not, then a new date would be announced.
Luckily for the audience, the all-clear came 45 minutes later, the audience took their places again in the auditorium and the play was performed from start to finish.
A Safer Place, so far
Uzhhorod, the capital of Zakarpattia Region, is a picturesque town on the western side of the Carpathian Mountains. Here, coffee and bograch are firm favorites – the latter being a popular Hungarian soup made with meat, potatoes, carrots, and hot peppers. Situated on the border with Slovakia, the city is within easy reach of crossings into Hungary and Romania.
Together with neighboring Bukovina – on the border with Romania – Uzhhorod is one of the safest places to be in Ukraine right now. That could change in an instant, of course, but so far not a single rocket has exploded on the territory of Transcarpathian Region. There are probably several reasons for this. The region is small and – aside from the influx of internally displaced people from other parts of Ukraine – is not densely populated. There are no large cities or military facilities in the area.
Hungarian Ukrainians
The most likely reason for the “non-aggression” in Transcarpathia is the high number of ethnic Hungarians who have lived here for several centuries. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s only friend in the European Union. Many Ukrainian Hungarians have both Ukrainian and Hungarian passports. They also have their own political “Hungarian” party, for which they always vote. Hungarians are calm, hard-working people who preserve not only their language, but also their culture and traditions, and especially their cuisine.
Until 2017, Ukrainian politicians paid little attention to culture in general and made no attempt to integrate the cultures of national minorities, including Hungarian culture, into the national culture of Ukraine. It is, therefore, no surprise that out of the several dozen Ukrainian authors who write in Hungarian, none of their books have been translated into Ukrainian. As a result, they have remained virtually unknown in Ukraine, except among residents of Ukrainian-Hungarian towns and villages such as Beregovo, Vinogradov, Bono, and Peterfölvo.
The Language Question
In the 2019 presidential election, many Ukrainian Hungarians voted for Volodymyr Zelensky. They could not accept Petro Poroshenko’s policies and especially his slogan “Army, language, faith”, which was aimed at patriotic Orthodox Ukrainians. Hungarians are traditionally Catholic and their native language is Hungarian. Poroshenko had also signed the Law on the State Language which brought a stop to the practice of teaching children in the languages of national minorities. Ukrainian then became the only language of instruction in schools and universities. In fact, the Law on the State Language was adopted in order to remove Russian as the language of instruction, but the Hungarian language became an unwitting victim. From that moment on, relations between Ukraine and Hungary deteriorated, while relations between Orban and Putin improved.
A Failed Provocation
The Russian secret services seized on the opportunity to “improve” relations between Orban and Putin and organized the arson of the Hungarian Cultural Center in Uzhhorod. They wanted to blame Ukrainian nationalists, but video cameras installed on buildings near the cultural center showed the reality. The video recordings led to the arrest of two Polish citizens who had arrived from Poland to carry out the attack under payment from their Russian curators. There have been no more provocations like this since.
Today, many Ukrainian Hungarians are fighting to preserve independence as part of the Ukrainian army. There are, of course, those who do not want to fight and who are trying to leave Ukraine on Hungarian passports. But the border guards in Transcarpathia use “place of birth” as written in the passport to determine whether a man under the age of 61 is allowed to leave Ukraine under the current law on general mobilization. If the place of birth is Ukraine, then they are treated as a citizen of Ukraine and not allowed to leave. Dual citizenship is still prohibited in Ukraine.
A Literary Event in a Kharkiv Bomb shelter
On the same evening that the theatre performance in Uzhhorod was interrupted, the presentation of a “children’s book for adults” by the American writer Adam Mansbach: “Go The F*** To Sleep” was successfully held in Kharkiv in an underground bomb shelter.
The book was presented by its translator, the cult Ukrainian poet, writer, and musician, Serhiy Zhadan. While working on the translation, Zhadan was inspired to write a song, which he performed at the presentation together with the Kharkiv rock band “The Village and People”. The book is currently due to be published on June 13, having already been postponed by the war. But those who came to the presentation already know its content – about an irritated father, whose little daughter cannot sleep.
The war has changed the plans of many publishers, but flexibility is key. They try not to cancel scheduled events so that literary and cultural life in Ukraine can continue despite the hostilities.
Ukrainian language version of the book titled, “Go the F**k to Sleep.” (Credit: Vivat Publishing House)
Ukrainian Children Without Their Story Books
This year, Ukraine participated in the Book Salon in Paris, where at the Ukrainian stand, only books by Ukrainian authors in French were presented. It was not possible to organize the delivery of books in Ukrainian from Ukraine to France. However, as France is accepting increasing numbers of refugees – the majority of whom are mothers with children – the country has a need for children’s books in Ukrainian. The French Ministry of Culture is already considering the possibility of purchasing Ukrainian books for children and teenagers for French libraries.
Therefore, it is likely that Ukrainian cultural life will start to thrive in France, as well as in many other European countries.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and not necessarily those of the Kyiv Post.
