Journal

Until last month it had been a long time since I had given much thought to the summer I spent in Kriviy Rih in central Ukraine in 1994. That was a different time. Post-Soviet, messy but hopeful, innocent. And I was a different person. Only just out of school, pre-children, pre-marriage, barely in my twenties, immersed in studying Russian. Almost thirty years later this city – whose name means “Crooked Horn” – is the centre of the world. Because it’s Zelensky’s hometown.

I am plunged back into memories of Ukrainian friends from that time and place, all Zelensky’s age and era, all native Russian speakers who made jokes about their Ukrainian accents, taught me to say privit instead of privyet (Ukrainian vs Russian for “hi!”) but had little interest in identity or nationality back then. They just wanted to make money and be out from under Communism. I had studied Zelensky’s comedy work – which is mostly in Russian, not Ukrainian – when he was first elected and so was aware of his charisma and dynamism. I’d followed his acquisition of the Ukrainian language with interest, only belatedly understanding the profound significance of that move.

Now I find myself on a Channel 4 documentary, Zelensky: The Man Who Took on Putin, interpreting twin broadcasts coming from a bunker in Kyiv. Talking to his own people, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych – to use his Ukrainian patronymic – is inspiring and statesmanly. In Russian, he dispenses with formality and uses the familiar ty form to address Putin direct: “I’m your neighbour. Come and sit down with me! I don’t bite.”

The hard fact of Putin

A Russian stand-up comedian friend who has performed on stage with Zelensky messages me to apologise for not being in touch sooner: his Facebook was down for days. He must have got a VPN (secure connection), like all the other Russian actors and writers I follow on Instagram who are posting half their content there and half of it on Telegram. (Reminder to self: I must get a Telegram account. Like I need another social media network in my life. Something else to thank Putin for.)

I get a message from Translation Firebird, a Russian conference at Cambridge University where I’m speaking in April. They’re changing their focus and inviting as many Ukrainians as possible. Should any of us even be dignifying Russian content with our attention at the moment? Or should we be studying it all the more in order to read the runes? I become obsessed with the Instagram account of Ilya Krasilchik, former publisher at independent media outlet Meduza.

Operating from outside Russia, he is publishing eyewitness statements in Russian that contradict the state narrative. His content is important and imaginative (“How to Talk to Your Relatives Who Only Watch State Television”) but as the days pass I watch his numbers plummet and he is constantly trolled, especially after he writes a piece in the New York Times under the headline “Russians Must Accept the Truth. We Failed.” I dream about my Crooked Horn friend Zhenya (where is he now?) who was fond of telling me in the early 2000s, “Stop trying to understand Putin. He is a fact.” You don’t question facts.

Lost in translation

A minor personal victory occurs as the International Booker Longlist is announced. I’m one of five judges who have done battle with 137 works in translation from across the globe. It’s a thrilling experience. But also exhausting and, let’s be honest, eye-strain-inducing. The longlist of thirteen books covers four continents and twelve languages – including, for the first time ever, Hindi. The winner is announced at the end of May, with both author and translator sharing the £50,000 prize. I find myself stupidly pleased that I can focus on a mere thirteen books and childishly shove the remaining 124 off the bedside table and under the bed.

The Anna Karenina fix

Finally some good news. The Russian publisher of my book The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature has got out of Moscow. The team is safe. And still working. They had protested the war publicly, which was, on the one hand, admirable but, on the other, worrying.

This book came out in the UK in 2017 and was published in 2019 in Russian under the snappy title Self-Help, Tolstoy-Style. (I’m not complaining. In Finnish translation the book has become Don’t Throw Yourself Under a Train. Good life advice. But a bit of a spoiler.) Self-Help, Tolstoy-Style was a big hit in lockdown Russia where it was reviewed as “Mrs Maisel reads War and Peace”. Pre-pandemic I was in Moscow and Tula doing library events and meeting readers.

I keep mulling over one encounter, an interview with a journalist. Did I mind answering a round of quickfire questions on camera? Of course not. “Vodka or gin?” I’m pretty sure I said gin. I am British, after all. “Moscow or St Petersburg?” This is a contentious question. But I’ve only ever properly lived in St Petersburg so I could wriggle out of it.

Then out of the blue this: “Russia or Ukraine?” A joke? A test of my allegiance? Or something else? I stuttered something like: “I can’t answer that because I love both… But I do want to be able to get home and we are in Russia so…” I have no idea if they used it. Should I have read more into that question at the time? What difference would that have made? Now, of course, there’s only one possible answer. Slava Ukraini.

Viv Groskop is a writer, critic, broadcaster and stand-up comedian. She is the author of “How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking”, also a Top 10 iTunes podcast, now in its 16th series, featuring guests like Hillary Clinton, and Nigella Lawson. Her latest book is “Lift As You Climb: Women, Ambition and How to Change the Story”