Into the black hole of war

“This despicable war of Putin against Ukraine is also a war against Russian culture. I realized one thing that amazed me, which is that the tanks were passing through Chekhov’s estate, the Cherry Orchard’s estate.” The man who makes this reflection, on February 28 on France Inter, knows what he is talking about. André Markowicz devoted his life to the translation of great Russian works, he restored their French-speaking brilliance to the texts of Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Chekhov, Gogol, Gorki, Bulgakov, so many writers who populate our pantheon and our imaginations of Western readers.

Today, it is the Ukrainians who are suffering. It is on them that the bombs and desolation fall. To speak of culture in Ukraine in these dark days is to speak of destruction, of endangered heritage, of artists on the barricades. However, this war does not unfold its effects only in Ukraine. It also attacks a certain idea of ​​Russia. War reaches the language – it is now dangerous to pronounce or write in Russian the words “war” or “invasion”; it attacks memory – Memorial, the Russian NGO which documented it, come what may, was dissolved in a sinister preamble; it silences dissenting voices. However, it is very often, in dissidence, in opposition and in criticism of the powers that be, that a whole section of Russian culture stands.

In this issue of Entre-Temps, on the sidelines of our daily editions which recount and document the Ukrainian tragedy, we have given the floor to Ukrainian artists, but we also wanted to show what is happening today for the Russians.

By offering you Emmanuel Carrère’s long report in Moscow, by meeting Georges Nivat, an immense specialist in the Russian world, through the condition of Russian artists, we want to show that the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine threatens to engulf like a black hole, a living part of Russia. Even if, once again, it is not a question of forgetting what Georges Nivat himself underlines: “The Ukraine is under the bombs and these bombs are Russian.”

Read again: Georges Nivat: “Whatever happens, Ukraine has won the moral battle”

Read again: Georges Nivat: “Whatever happens, Ukraine has won the moral battle”