30/06/2025
My British acquaintance once asked me about Ukrainian literature, adding: “Is there anyone in Ukrainian literature like Chekhov or Dostoevsky?” It brought me back to my childhood, when anything Ukrainian had to be validated through the lens of internationally recognized Russian culture. Is there anyone in Ukraine like the Russian hip-hop legends Bad B (even though they’re actually from Ukraine)? Was there ever someone like Brodsky? And Mayakovsky? “He’s one of a kind!” Somehow, Ukrainian culture was always made to pass this test of equivalence with Russia before it could be taken seriously in a global context - or, more often, the conversation simply stopped at the Russian.
No one ever asked me whether there was someone in Ukraine like Kafka, or Sartre, or Oscar Wilde. Just as I never asked whether Russian literature had anyone like Márquez, Gary, or Exupéry — because it’s a meaningless question. Nor did anyone ever ask whether Russia had writers comparable to Ukrainian authors who wrote in Russian (since, supposedly, language doesn’t matter) — like Viktor Nekrasov, Arseny Tarkovsky, or Mykola Gogol. On the world stage, they were simply and automatically counted as Russian.
And when people ask me for Ukrainian equivalents, I always want to ask in return: is there anyone in Russian literature who came even close to writing as gracefully and profoundly about equality and human dignity - not humiliation, but dignity - as Olha Kobylianska, Lesia Ukrainka, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Valerian Pidmohylny, Viktor Domontovych, or Hrytsko Chubai? But I don’t - for the very same reasons I mentioned above.
Ukrainian literature is as original as Russian, or French, or German, or North and South American literature. Influences flow in all directions — that’s how an open world functions. Ukrainian literature, like Russian literature, has drawn from German, French, and British traditions — and, like those Western traditions, from classical Greek and Roman texts. These influences are shared and reciprocal.
I told my acquaintance: don’t look for equivalents — explore what you’ve never read. Ukrainian literature is rich with such voices. The problem is that far fewer of them have been translated into other languages — and even today, that remains the case. For too long, global attention has been narrowly focused on those who rule empires and colonies, but not on those who spiritually enrich them — at the cost of their own identity.
We shouldn’t look for literature that resembles something else — we should read literature that resembles nothing else. And Ukrainian literature is exactly that. It’s worth reading.
I can recommend Ukrainian authors — but for the most part, their work exists only in Ukrainian or Russian.
(In the photo: Ukrainian writers and civilian activists Olha Kobylianska and Lesia Ukrainka. The name of the photographer is unknown to me.)
