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Tanya Zaharchenko
Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Cambridge

Genealogies of Memory in Central and Eastern Europe Conference
Warsaw, Poland (November 23-25, 2011)

How memory becomes identity: The curious case of East Ukraine [abstract]

Today’s conventional wisdom on Ukraine as a deeply divided country, trapped in a post-Soviet cultural crisis of East versus West, maintains a firm hold not only on popular imagination, but on many scholars as well. In a political take on contemporary Ukrainian multiculturalism, supporters of this approach argue for a need for the homogenizing process of nationalization in order to cleanse the country of undesirable external influences. The given paper challenges this binary formula, arguing instead for a historical approach to multiculturalism. When history forms memory, which in turn forms identity, all resulting formations are equivalent in their right to exist and to be perceived as Ukrainian. Application of the frameworks of regionalism and memory theory to fluid identities in Ukraine shows that nation-building in a country this big and diverse should not be a homogenizing process, and that all of its existent national identities, including hybrid ones, should have a firm and recognized place in society – equal to, and along with, some more rigid and established self-perceptions of the country’s diverse population.

Keywords: Ukraine; regionalism; multiculturalism; nationalism; memory; identity

Original date Jan 13, 2012 3:25 PM
Links updated Mar 9, 2012

When I watched Ariel Dorfman’s “Death and the Maiden” (directed by Roman Polanski in 1994) for the first time, I had just entered my teens. And I remember feeling overcome by something that felt like a silver-lined cloud. The silver lining was a sense of inner satisfaction, of the triumph of justice, which my young and passionate mind derived from the film’s final scenes. The storm cloud was – well, everything else.

Trailer

Something wasn’t right. And only with years I was able to pinpoint what it was. The thing is, I was never convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Doctor Roberto Miranda was guilty. That he is, indeed, the same doctor who tortured the blindfolded Paulina Salas all those years ago; that recognizing his voice in the middle of a stormy night wasn’t a product of her long-tormented mind. At the doctor’s confession in the final scenes (which can be watched here), I remember getting close to being 99% convinced. Ninety-nine percent. And that remaining, relentless 1% has lingered in me ever since. With years, it grew as I grew, as I began to sense that the thinnest of lines in the world are the lines between accusation and confession, between fiction and reality, between repentance and retribution. If one zooms out, it wouldn’t be all too surprising to discover that this one percent of fierce doubt is what led me, over twists and turns, into Memory at War. If I had to name one work of art that combines memory, trauma, and working through the past, it would have to be “Death and the Maiden”.

“Throughout the play it is uncertain whether details are evidence of Roberto's guilt or Paulina's paranoia. At the end of the play it is unclear who is innocent.” – thus summarizes Wikipedia. Into the Subject field, the unseen contributors inserted: “The aftereffects of repression on hearts and souls of people in a country emerging from totalitarian dictatorship”. Yes, that is the subject. And no, we never get an answer. But I feel fortunate to have gotten a hint at tackling it. One day, when we were visiting Ariel and his family in North Carolina, someone mentioned the seagulls flying around in that final scene of the film. Through laughter, it came to light that Rodrigo, the eldest son, had been the one feeding them off the edge of the cliffs. He had to pass the long hours of the filming somehow, after all.

Since then, I never again saw three characters in "Death and the Maiden". A fourth presence had taken shape. It was someone beyond the reach of the camera, someone observing, watching. It could have been a young boy feeding seagulls, but just as well, it could have been me. You. Any one of us. Paulina, Gerardo and Roberto are never alone. They stage their long and painful trial, and we are the jury.

To this day, the jury is still out.

So when I heard that the Harold Pinter Theatre is staging “Death and the Maiden” this fall, I knew I had to go. Which I did, this past Monday, October 17, for a preview performance. I walked across Parker’s Piece, hopped on a National Express bus and went to London, to try and finally be convinced.

Thandie Newton is Paulina Salas in this classy production, which officially starts on Wed 19 Oct 2011 and runs until Sat 21 Jan 2012. “Death and the Maiden” was written in 1990. We are now twenty-one years into this trial. And we are still listening to the evidence.

On its website, the Theatre’s description is succinct:

Years have passed since political prisoner, Paulina, suffered at the hands of her captor: a man whose face she never saw, but can still recall with terrifying clarity. Tonight, by chance, a stranger arrives at the secluded beach house she shares with her husband Gerardo, a human rights lawyer. A stranger Paulina is convinced was her tormentor and must now be held to account...

Despite some moments which might have been better solved differently, this production does an excellent job with, perhaps, the most important of humanity’s thin lines: the one between accusation and confession. As part of Gerardo’s effort to free the man his wife has taken captive, he seeks to ensure that Roberto confesses as convincingly as possible. So he hands Paulina a microphone to tell her side of the story. She sits downstage, surrounded by darkness, and begins to recount how it all started. For a while it is her voice we hear and her face we see; but slowly, lights shift upstage, onto the two men, as Paulina’s words transform into the voice of Roberto, continuing her story of torture. At this transformation of voices – from the accuser to the confessor – my angst-ridden 1% fluttered around the theatre like an insomnia-stricken ghost. Is he telling his own tale, or did she lead him where he must go if he wants to get out alive? Whose voice is Roberto’s? Does he shed his masks, or does he, quite on the contrary, enter a perfectly performed role? These are the same questions, the same doubts from twenty years ago. Had I gone to London for nothing, other than to take a long walk by the Thames? Will this trial never end?

But suddenly – again in the final scenes – memory studies awakened in me, and kicked in. What if Roberto confesses, passionately, sincerely, to what he didn’t do, but what his nation did in his name? Over the course of that long night, picking up the depth of wounds in Paulina, he could, indeed, confess to save his own life. But he could also confess to save hers.

Trying to convince Roberto to play along, Gerardo tells him:

Maybe it liberates her from her phantoms. How can I know what goes on in people’s heads after they’ve been… But I think I understand the need of hers, because it coincides with what we were talking about last night, the whole country’s need to put into words what happened to us.

What if Roberto’s own guilt doesn’t really matter at the end, because he does just that: put into words what no one had voiced before. Is that not the ultimate responsibility, the ultimate apology to set Paulina, and victims like her, free from vicious ghosts of memory? My 1% of doubt settled softly back into its usual place as the audience began to applaud, and there it grew eerily still. I stayed for a while, looking at the empty stage. Dr Miranda, did you just consciously carry out what the whole world needed someone to do? What you yourself, perhaps, needed someone to do? What Vladimir Bukovsky described as a prerequisite to the wind's returning onto its normal path: one person who takes upon himself the common sin of the many. The closest I ever came to being convinced of your guilt was through the rising sincerety of your confession. But what if one doesn't need to be have committed crimes in order to internalize the victims' pain and sorrow; in order to internalize the perpetrators' guilt? Is direct personal action the only acceptable qualification for repentance?

The play's main character, I realized then, wasn't the brave but traumatized Paulina, nor her husband, Gerardo, a human rights lawyer haunted by demons of his own. The main character is the widely despised villain, Doctor Roberto Miranda, the man who, at the end, has agency. And who (out of fear? guilt? or compassion?) chooses to confess. To his own crime or to the crime of his times? Is there a difference?

... The jury is still out. But this trial is moving forward.

***

The ending of Act III, Scene 3:

PAULINA: I’m not going to kill you because you’re guilty, Doctor, but because you haven’t repented at all. I can only forgive someone who really repents, who stands up amongst those he has wronged and says, I did this, I did it, and I’ll never do it again.

ROBERTO: What more do you want? You’ve got more than all the victims in this country will ever get. [He gets down on his knees.] What more do you want?

PAULINA: The truth, Doctor. The truth and I’ll let you go. Repent and I’ll let you go. You have ten seconds. One, two, three, four, five, six. Time is running out. Seven. Say it!

[Roberto stands up.]

ROBERTO: No, I won’t. Because even if I confess, you’ll never be satisfied. You’re going to kill me anyway. So go ahead and kill me. I’m not going to let any sick woman treat me like this. If you want to kill me, do it. But you’re killing an innocent man.

PAULINA: Eight.

ROBERTO: So someone did terrible things to you and now you’re doing something terrible to me and tomorrow somebody else is going to — on and on and on. I have children, two boys, a girl. Are they supposed to spend the next fifteen years looking for you until they find you? And then —

PAULINA: Nine.

ROBERTO: Oh Paulina, isn’t it time we stopped?

PAULINA: And why does it always have to be the people like me who have to sacrifice, why are we always the ones who have to make concessions when something has to be conceded, why always me who has to bite her tongue, why? Well, not this time. This time I am going to think about myself, about what I need. If only to do justice in one case, just one. What do we lose? What do we lose by killing one of them? What do we lose? What do we lose?!

They freeze in their positions as the lights begin to go down slowly. We begin to hear music from the last movement of Mozart’s Dissonant Quartet. Paulina and Roberto are covered from view by a giant mirror which descends, forcing the audience to look at themselves.

11 - 12 March 2011, King’s College, Cambridge

В марте в Кембридже состоялась первая аспирантская конференция, организованная нашим проектом, на тему культурной памяти в Восточной Европе. Я была в составе панели литературоведов, и говорила в основном о "Ворошиловграде". По-английски мой обзор этой встречи появился ещё в нашем майском бюллетене. А теперь и русскоязычный обзор вышел в 110-ом номере Нового Литературного Обозрения (НЛО). Текст здесь.

This past March King's College hosted the inaugural Graduate Reseach Triangle conference on cultural memory in Eastern Europe. I was part of the literary panel, and presented primarily on "Voroshilovgrad". My coverage of that event in English came out in our May 2011 newsletter. Now, the Russian version of the coverage is out in the 110th issue of the New Literary Observer (NLO) - as seen here.

Original date Sep 22, 2011 9:25 PM
Links updated Mar 9, 2012

As the Wehrmacht army entered West Ukraine in 1941, prosecutor Major Alexander Maiboroda grabbed the last truck in the column of people escaping from the oncoming soldiers. Into its open luggage compartment he helped his Jewish wife, Etel’, and their three young children – a boy and two girls. The short distance separating them from the armed men was the thin line between life and death, between future and nothingness. Under the aim of moving tanks, Etel’ held tight onto her youngest, Zina, born in the spring of 1939. She knew that her children, in whose veins ran the mixed blood of the two races targeted by Nazism – Slavs and Jews – might have been taking their last breaths.

But the army was in a good and celebratory mood the day it crossed the Ukrainian border, and did not seek to murder the unarmed families just yet. Or maybe they did fire, but the shots missed the last vehicle of the moving column. Or maybe, somewhere among the soldiers, someone’s heart skipped a beat in the right direction. I’ve heard both of the first versions; the third one is my own. I’m not sure we will ever know. What we do know is that Etel’ and the children made it through the war. Through suffering and struggle, Zina grew up and became Zinaida Alexandrovna, my grandmother.

This account is about Drobitsky Yar, a ravine near my hometown, Kharkov (Kharkiv), where she and her family could have been slain, but weren’t. A timely evacuation to Siberia saved their lives. Had they been in Kharkov that winter, their fate would likely have been sealed. By various accounts, between 16 000 and 30 000 human beings were shot and buried here, on the south-eastern city outskirts, during the cold December of 1941. Most of them were Jews; the rest were Red Army prisoners of war, resistance fighters, and the mentally ill. Over the years, an impressive memorial complex has grown here to commemorate them.

The setting

Drobitsky Yar is quite unlike its far better known counterpart, Babi Yar, the darkly infamous ravine in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev (Kyiv) that swallowed over 33 000 Jews in September 1941. Today, Babi Yar is marked solely by a minimalistic sculpture of a menorah. In some distance, closer to the nearest metro station, a monument to the murdered children has been erected. Composed of somewhat frightening life-sized dolls, it completes the limited physical memorial reference to the horrors committed here.

Click for full-size image

Meanwhile, all around the park, the busy and modern capital lives its usual hectic life. The breathing city had incorporated what had once been its outskirts.

This process never took place at Drobitsky Yar. The place itself isn’t widely known, either internationally or domestically. When I tried to hire a taxi to visit it, the driver had to call around, and still couldn’t figure out where I wanted to go. Another company didn’t know where it was, either, but they already knew they wouldn’t take me there, as their services were limited by the Ring road that circles our city. To reach the place where thousands lay murdered, one must step slightly beyond the Ring. The city stays behind, and only the wind tosses among the silent, richly green plains above the mass graves. Stepping out of the car into that wind today, I thought what I always think in such places. We could have been here, in the moaning pits of death that have grown quiet now. But we are not. Why? And how does one possibly, ever, internally justify that?

The history

Kharkov was occupied during the night of October 23-24, 1941. Several weeks later, on December 5, a census was held to identify the Jewish inhabitants of the city. Their names were entered into a separate yellow list. On December 14, 1941, the Nazis issued an order that gave all Jews two days to relocate to the barracks that had been set up for factory workers in an area known as KhTZ, abbreviated from the Kharkov Tractor Factory. The penalty for failure to relocate within the given timeframe was death.

That week, the temperature dropped to below -15 °C. For three days (December 14-16) a river of frozen and terrified families, totalling at least 16 000 human beings, flowed along the snowy streets – mostly along the Moscow Prospect – to the designated location on the outskirts. Fearing the worst, some mothers dropped their babies into the sidewalk snow, where they could be saved by the remaining population before they froze or starved to death. Tatiana Bezzubkina, the Drobitsky Yar tour guide to whom many thanks are due for her time, points out that the factory barracks were designed to hold 70-80 people each. When the Jews came, however, they held 700-800 instead. The conditions were atrocious. Generally, ghettos were not set up in the East Ukraine; Kharkov was one of the few cities where one did exist – albeit for less than a month.

After the move to the ghetto was completed, the Jews were taken to the nearby Drobitsky Yar, where mass graves had been prepared for them. They were shot by the hundreds. A single murderous trip from the ghetto to the Yar ended the lives of between 250 and 300 persons. Accounts of the contemporaries invoke bloodcurdling descriptions: for days after each execution, the ground of Drobitsky Yar moaned and moved. Crawling around the pits of hell, some civilians reached for the rare survivors who emerged from the blood-soaked earth. This image is invoked by Yevgeny Yevtushenko in his 1987 poem, The Apple Trees of Drobitsky: “Расскажи нам, Рувим Рувимович, как подростком, в чём мать родила, весь в кровище, в лице ни кровиночки, выползал, разгребая тела.” Russians, Ukrainians and Armenians were also executed here; this stands behind the poem’s pained lines about four murdered girls – Jewish, Ukrainian, Russian and Armenian – who give rise to young apple trees that whisper in each of their languages.

Человечество, слышишь, видишь –
здесь, у сестринской кровной криницы,
Сара-яблонька шепчет на идиш,
Христя-яблонька – по-украински.
Третья яблонька – русская Манечка,
встав на цыпочки, тянется ввысь,
а четвёртая – Джан, армяночка.
Все скелеты в земле обнялись.

The memorial complex

Today, nine mass graves have been identified at Drobitsky Yar through biochemical testing of the ground. They are marked by simple white signs: e.g. "Burial Site 3”. The first small commemorating obelisk was set up in the 1950s:

In 1988, the newspaper Vecherny Kharkov published the first article about these murders. Until then, Kharkovites rested and camped in the area, among human bones that sometimes emerged from the ground. One website mentions an account of little girls’ braids, complete with bows, that emerged there as well.

The memorial complex of Drobitsky Yar stretches far into the fields, and is comprised of several key points spread over nine hectares of land. Its idea was proposed half-a-century after the tragedy, in 1991, when a foundational stone was laid. Architect A. Leibfreid won the design competition. The memorial’s construction was blessed in 1994 by a Rabbi and an Orthodox priest. The construction halted shortly afterwards due to a lack of funds, reflecting the turbulent 1990s. It was re-started again five years later, in 2000. The memorial was officially opened in December 2002, sixty-one years after the Kharkov Jews were given two days to move to KhTZ. In 2005, a Mourning Hall was opened underneath the main structure of the complex.

At the entrance to Drobitsky Yar, a black sign announces that one has arrived to a "Place of Bloody Terror":

Nearby, a black stone summarizes the story in three languages: Ukrainian, Hebrew, English.

Walking past these signs and up some white steps, which symbolize Mount Sinai, one arrives at a broken and twisted rendering of a menorah. It is styled into burnt wood to convey the wasted lives it commemorates. A sign under it says: “Here the dead teach the living” – in three languages: Latin, Ukrainian and Hebrew.

From the menorah, the view over the valley is open and beautiful. Glancing down along a curving road, one can catch a glimpse of another part of the memorial complex – a white, candle-like structure, hardly visible against the white glow of the sky. This road, leading from black to white parts of the memorial, is the route thousands of people walked on their last day in 1941.

This furthest part of the memorial is styled after the dome of the sky, the dome of a synagogue, and a candle, combined. The white walls, imprinted a menorah (on one side) and a Star of David (on another side), rise over an open book, which contains the commandment “thou shalt not kill” in ten languages. (The Wikipedia entry, as seen in September of 2011, is incorrect; these are not the Ten Commandments, they are a single commandment in ten languages). On a sunny day, the white walls form a striking contrast with the blue sky and the surrounding green openness. On the outer sides of the dome, the dates of murders are inscribed.

Under the white dome, in the Mourning Hall, a black Cup of Sorrow stands in the middle of a darkened room. Filled with small colourful lights that flicker on and off – symbolizing souls born and extinguished – the Cup’s reflective effects are designed to make it appear bottomless, symbolizing suffering that has no end. All around it, on dimly lit walls, names of over 4 300 victims, known to have died here, are inscribed.

Some names have a detail added to them: e.g. “and newborn baby”, or “with her two small daughters”, or “and maid”. When I came here for the first time, I remember being struck by that maid – noted only as Fedorovna – who must have been a Slav following her Jewish family to the grave.

Click for full-size image

When I asked Tatiana Bezzubkina how the four thousand names were identified, she sighed. “Through the relatives who come here,” she said. The desk and walls of the memorial’s office contain the pictures brought by such visitors:

... as well as a guest book. One of the visible entries is: “Lord! Teach me what I should do to ensure that this never happens again.”

In the passageway between the office and the Hall of Sorrow lays a letter brought by German visitors to the memorial:

On one of the office shelves, the bullets discovered in the area stand against a notebook entitled “Towards Memory”. This symbolism finished my visit, and sent me home, feeling as overwhelmed as anyone would – perhaps as overwhelmed as one is meant to get there.

The wrong kind of ending?

On the way back, looking out from the Ring road to the fields surrounding my city, I thought about ways to start and end this story. It would have to do with time, and with memory, of course. But reality entered its own checks and balances into my thoughts. A few minutes before getting home, I stopped at a grocery store. As I paid at the register, a young and rather square-looking security guy checked out the Drobitsky Yar brochure I had picked up. He wanted to know what it was. “It’s about the thousands of Jews murdered in a ravine outside our city,” I said. He replied: “Not enough. I would toss there a few more.” The cashier, a young woman, looked on approvingly.

You know those times when your mind races through a lightning-fast set of things you want to say? Those decisions you make in milliseconds from a number of inner options. The thing is, none of the options that crossed my mind at that moment did justice to the lives that ended in Drobitsky Yar. None, except silence. Several seconds later, I took the change and walked out, saying nothing – something I didn’t quite expect to do. “Maybe a dozen!” he continued into my back, realizing I wasn’t picking up the confrontation he was hoping for.

Outside, I talked myself into calming down and letting go. Answering him would achieve nothing. Given the way I tend to get engaged with things, it would just brutalize the trip I wanted to preserve in my mind. He wasn’t worth it. I told myself I’ll put the energy into this text instead. At least, I’d try.

Directions

If anyone plans to visit Kharkov and would like to reach Drobitsky Yar, please don’t hesitate to contact me through the MAW website or here. The memorial staff plans to open a homepage soon, but does not have one yet. Depending on where in the city you are staying, we can plan out your way. For oblivious taxi drivers, the general pointer is just past the crossing of the Ring road and Moscow Prospect. The entrance will be on the left, so a car coming out of the city will have to make a U-turn. For a more complicated public transport route, the Proletarskaya metro station would be key, with a bus ride or a long walk from there. Map-wise, look to the south-eastern corner of the city, in the direction that says Rogan’.

The strangest feeling about being out there, past the last city buildings, in the green open area, is just that: the openness, the silence, the lack of urban energy, which makes Drobitsky Yar seem untouched by time. It’s as if the years have rolled by, and the bodies are silent.

But the wind whispering through the trees – an invisible, eternal, tireless witness – is still the same one.

The Memory at War project specializes in Slavonic studies, but despite this focus on my chosen part of the world, I remain fascinated by memory in places that lay outside its boundaries. This geographically interdisciplinary approach to area studies – connections, comparisons and parallels – is one of the convictions I've brought to my work here. These days, I’m gathering more than my share of connections and parallels in Ireland.

This isn’t the first August I spend in Donegal, Ireland’s beautiful and rugged northernmost county, where Irish is still spoken on a daily basis and where traditional folk music fills the bars with violins and flutes. My father hails from these lands; his mother’s ancestors arrived here from Scotland as early as the 13th century as mercenary soldiers, while his father’s family has lived here as long as anyone knows. In and around Gortahork (Gort a' Choirce – Field of Oats), a little township close to Falcarragh and Dunfanaghy, everyone is his cousin. But that’s not why I come here.

There’s simply something about Donegal, with its perpetual layers of deep gray above and deep green below; its smells of turf, rains, sea salt, autumnal smoke and oceanic roughness; its fishermen, poets, legends and history. I’ve read that some places on our small planet simply work better for each of us than others; if this is true, then Donegal is one of those places that works for me. Dún na nGall is Gaelic for Fort of the Foreigners. The foreigners were the Vikings, who set up camp here in the 9th century. Ironically, the county is now the last remaining fortress of Irish culture and language. Very few regions in Ireland still operate in Gaelic; those that do are known as the Gaeltacht.

This preservation could be due to the general isolation of Donegal, brought about by the turns of history. The Partition of Ireland in the 1920s has a massive direct impact on the county: it was cut off, economically and administratively, from Derry, which had acted for centuries as its main port and center. Derry was now in a different country – Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom. But Donegal was also cut off from the new Irish Free State (which became the current Republic of Ireland in 1949). Only a few miles of the county are connected by land to the rest of the Republic. Effectively, Donegal found itself in a world of its own.

On the long bus ride here from Dublin, a bit over one hour is spent driving through Northern Ireland. But this summer, after my first year at Cambridge, I took notice of the fact that the road signs for Londonderry in that area have been altered: a can of green spray paint has meticulously taken out the ‘London’ along that entire route, leaving only ‘Derry’ – the city’s original name, anglicized from the Irish word Doire, before it was prefixed with London- in 1613. This gesture of memory, though commited by an invisible hand, reminded me how alive the recollections of war and of violence remain on this beautiful island.

This past year hit the county hard. Seventeen businesses closed their doors in Letterkenny alone, according to the local butcher. In addition to the economic crisis, winter frost descended on Donegal in May, killing off the potato crop. Poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh, treating us to tea at his house last week, described the devastation: the severity of the temperature drop, coupled with the gentleness of young spring foliage, turned the newborn leaves black in his garden. Framed on Cathal’s wall is a handwritten translation of one of his poems (composed, as usual, in Irish) into English by Seamus Heaney. Its text mourns the decline of Ireland as the poet remembers her. One line struck me: “If only anger could split the atom of grief!”

The BBC covers Cathal's poetry as "... an act of re-possession. Re-possessing tongue and tradition to a large extent." I cannot pretend to comprehend the strength of his feelings for his ancestral lands (‘Slan go fóill!’ he waved as we departed late at night – ‘Goodbye for now!’), but I am once again reminded of the common themes of traumatic memory in the world – grief, and anger, and nostalgia, and the resulting poetic license people may take while working through these feelings.

July’s first week was thoroughly conference-themed. It all started on Monday with a two-day conference entitled Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe, taking place at King’s College, Cambridge. This specialized event attracted some serious heavy-weights of memory theory, as well as a whole set of experts who work in memory studies. The two-page program of speakers can be found here, and I believe that relevant abstracts and video podcasts will be available on the Memory At War (MAW) website shortly.

For the newer generation of memory scholars, this was a valuable opportunity to hear what our senior colleagues had to say. Rather than trying to offer a comprehensive academic overview of all presentations – a task assumed by another colleague this time – I’d like to blog about some of the things that left an impression on me. And among these was a strong realization of how incomplete our verbal arsenal remains, despite our best efforts.

I was struck, for instance, by how often the concept of nostalgia came up in talks and discussions. Yet our use of this term arguably exceeded its Merriam-Webster definition – ‘a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition’. In my experience, the actual 'return to or of' isn't always a part of the longing encountered. This was most clearly visible in a presentation by Harriet Murav, who described one artist’s nostalgia for the military bombardments of her childhood. The presenter expressed interest and surprise that one could be nostalgic for such things. When I caught myself not being at all surprised by the artist's words, I realized we may be using the same term to designate some very different inner aches.

This isn’t the first time I hear the label ‘nostalgia’ applied to an unnamed yearning simply because we don’t have too many alternative words to tackle the nuances of what else that yearning could entail. I myself have engaged in debates about Yugo- (in relation to former Yugoslavia) and Soviet-nostalgia, and in doing so, felt the limitations of the available concepts. If one misses, cherishes, or simply appreciates a certain aspect of a given past, but would never want that past (or even that aspect) to actually return, is this still nostalgia? Selective nostalgia? Temporal, spatial or conceptual nostalgia? This label carries a load of connotations, many of them quite critical, and yet it hardly begins to reflect the complexities of a range of possible feelings about the past. The only time I’ve been truly content with the use of this word was in its role as title of Tarkovsky’s masterpiece.

Beyond these contemplations, of course, it was wonderful to see some old friends at Cambridge once more. Natan Sznaider dropped by from Tel-Aviv, Andriy Portnov from Kiev, Nancy Condee from Pittsburg, for instance. Somehow, these and other colleagues’ re-gathering lent a sense of closure to my first doctoral year. No less enjoyable were the new acquaintances. Among these, it was particularly nice to meet MAW’s next set of doctoral students, due to start this coming October – Molly, who will be working on memory in theatre productions, and Tom, who will be working on dissident memory. Both of these topics hold a special place among my interests, and I look forward to watching them develop.

Welcome!

May Week is drawing to an end, and I don’t quite know how to start comprehending the fact that my first year at Cambridge is already over.

Wikipedia – a grad student's best friend – says: "May Week is the name used within the University of Cambridge to refer to a period of time at the end of the academic year. It takes place in June. The end of exams is a cause for heavy celebration amongst the students of the University. Highlights of the week include May Balls, June Events and garden parties."

Indeed, Easter Term ended on June 17 this year, commencing a celebratory May Week from which I am yet to recover fully. During this week, a couple of days after Suicide Sunday (which theoretically refers to a celebration of those who haven't committed suicide due to the year-end stresses, but which in reality constitutes happy picnicking on King’s otherwise forbidden lawn) I defended my first year report under the new dissertation title: "Literature on the Border: Frontiers of Memory in the Post-Soviet Fiction of East Ukraine". This is called 'registration' in Cambridge (and 'transfer of status' in Oxford) – it means that that a student's probationary status within the University is lifted, and one becomes a full-fledged PhD candidate.

Yes, it's really done! It took a 10 000-word piece of writing (which I called the dissertation framework – pretty much the size of a Master's thesis), a chapter-by-chapter dissertation plan (which my supervisor had to squeeze out of me in light of my usual innate resistance to scheduling and planning), a nice long summary of work completed, and a rather bureaucratic personal development report. At 3 pm on Summer Solitice, Tuesday June 21, my two thoughtful and helpful assessors spent two hours talking me through all this, before releasing me into a warm June evening which (after weeks of hard work) felt simply beyond relief.

Various fireworks, my first King’s Affair (complete with the 5 am ‘survivor photos') and the last Grad Formal of the year followed in quick succession. Strange: I was in such a different place this time last year, in many ways. Now still slightly bewildered, I am left with two questions:

- Is my first PhD year really over?
- Really?

... a brutal timelapse of King's Affair has been discovered here. It made me realize that the clouds over me these days are perpetually moving eastward.

A final-year PhD candidate, whose articulate and engaging presentation I recently attended as part of King's Lunchtime Seminar series, told me the other day: "If you clearly know what you're doing in your first year, then your topic is too simple for a PhD." I can't help thinking that she is right. And I'm wondering about it because, as always, the more I read, the more connections my mind identifies and pursues. Like a tree that starts with a trunk and ends with hundreds of branches and leaves. The first year is almost over, and I'm still mapping. Shouldn't I have settled on a single leaf by now?

This is particularly ironic because, for as long as I can remember, life has always placed me in the vicinity of people who function, essentially, like a train: they set themselves down on a given track, establish a plan, lower the curtains on all side windows, and methodically roll forward. This organized routine certainly impresses me, but I can't help wondering about all that remains beyond its tracks-defined tunnel vision. On the other hand, because I find schedules and structure so oppressive, I tend to work in fluctuating flares of high mental and emotional focus (which can easily turn into all-nighters), and this can be less than thrilling to those who prefer more predictability.

We have now received a June deadline for the mandatory first-year report. The main part of this report, a 10 000-word piece of writing, will have to reflect my topic in the clearest way possible. So I’ve been reading more - only to discover (sigh) more and more things to engage with. For instance, a survey of literature dedicated to Kharkov (based on the last update of my PhD topic) has revealed to me a whole new field of scholarship that focuses on identity in the borderlands, theory of frontiers, and cognitive mapping. (See, for example, Newman D. Borders and Bordering. Towards an Interdisciplinary Dialogue in European Journal of Social Theory, 2006, Vol 2). This captivating area, loosely called border studies, is keeping me up for the second night in a row, with brief pre-dawn naps. Channelling this motivation into several longer but productive weeks – culminating in a good report – is the challenge I’m facing right now.

The third story I wanted to recount here is more of an urban legend – albeit a fully documented one. It has become a modern Kharkov phenomenon, and its name is Oleg Mitasov.

Mitasov was an educated Kharkovite who was profoundly affected either by the developments of the late 1980s – the political and social collapse around him – or by the loss of his doctoral dissertation in economics, which he allegedly left in a tram on the way to submitting it. Explanations are several, but the result was one: acute schizophrenia, which poured itself out into endless writing on all available surfaces. Mitasov covered every centimetre of his huge 7-room apartment (a communal flat in which he had stayed entirely alone) with words, often in several layers. He also wrote on all surrounding buildings. Most of that writing is now lost, but some has been preserved.

The photographer who took this picture describes it as follows:

Умер Митасов в 1999 году, но его настенные послания до сих пор помнят харьковчане старше 35 лет. […] Люди воспринимали надписи по-разному, многие считали его культовой фигурой, чуть ли не пророком, и видели в его текстах нечто большее, чем просто буквы. В его бывшей квартире после евроремонта – офис. А в интернете до сих пор пользуются популярностью фото его жилища (семикомнатная расселенная коммуналка, в которой остался он один). Прикосновение к чужому безумию многие находят втайне неотразимым.

In 1999 Oleg Mitasov died of tuberculosis in one of the city’s psychiatric clinics. But these imprints of his illness have become a pilgrimage site – a partially preserved recording of troubled times which, almost inexplicably, continues to draw viewers and sympathizers. As the Russian paragraph above points out, an intimate view of someone else's insanity can be irresistible. Kharkov's citytext would be incomplete without it.

When I asked to see the legend with my own eyes, my two guides, Andrei and Yura, were more than ready to oblige. It had been Andrei who, during one of our talks/interviews, had directed my attention to Mitasov by calling him "Kharkov's newest myth" and "darkest figure". As we walked along Pushkinskaya street, one of the main old streets in the city centre, I wondered how one can hide a myth in such a busy area. Soon, however, we turned off Pushkinskaya, and continued for only a few more minutes until, suddenly, we were no longer in the city centre. At least it didn’t feel that way anymore. A half-burned carcass of a two-story building, with bushes growing out of its eyes, sat surrounded by broken glass and last year’s leaves in what had to be the city’s most depressing abandoned back yard. “Mitasov is alive!” shouted big white letters on a brick wall. After a pause, we walked ahead in the falling twilight, until the original faded writing appeared on our left. We spent a long time circling around.

I want to leave out of this account my own perceptions of the poetry of Mitasov’s feverish wordplay, of which сразу же сужение ума на земле (see above) is a typical example. I would prefer to leave out, too, my own sense of the meaningless or meaningfulness of his messages. This is because, in fact, this memory site is not about Mitasov per se. Writing something on a wall does not make any place significant in itself; its importance is formulated when others make it a site of visits. I doubt that this unfortunate human being’s suffering and collapse into insanity necessarily make him a prophet he is sometimes proclaimed to be. But I do know that it has made him a beloved dark legend of the city.

It’s the phenomenon of this legend’s attraction for our contemporaries that makes Mitasov’s dwellings a memory site. His tortured glance into the past, now a past itself, is like a double-fold in time: here was a man writing out «союз нерушимый республик свободных на земле нет», and now, from where we stand, neither the man nor the союз exist. In this way, the phenomenon of Mitasov is a diary – perhaps the most honest, if not entirely comprehensible, diary of all.

Indeed, the photographer who took these pictures also wrote:

Его роман с жизнью счастливым не был, а уж иллюстрации к нему и подавно. Да и вряд ли то, что вы видите, можно назвать иллюстрациями, - скорее, это пространство самого романа. Пространство жизни. Свидетельство существования столь откровенное, что меня не покидает чувство стыда всякий раз, когда я смотрю на эти фотографии. […] На протяжении всего времени мое отношение к данному явлению менялось от восторга коллекционера, кладоискателя, к пониманию того, что вещи, подобные квартире Митасова, нельзя превращать в фетиш или музей. […] Скажу честно, что эта огромная семикомнатная квартира, полностью покрытая граффити ее хозяина, произвела на меня очень тяжелое, жуткое впечатление. Про такие места обычно говорят: сколько попов не приглашай, все равно не высвятишь. Даже не представляю, как там живут другие люди, кажется, что и три ремонта не в силах вытравить эту гнетущую атмосферу. Если в молодости Митасов и мог казаться нам чем-то вроде свободного творца, то после посещения квартиры не остается никакого сомнения, что Митасов был настоящим сумасшедшим, тяжело душевнобольным человеком. Именно поэтому повторюсь, что его жизнь и эти надписи ни в коем случае нельзя рассматривать как искусство. Скорее своеобразный дневник душевнобольного, и я подходил к этому как к дневнику.

What I find so essential about this area is that it preserves, for us, clues to what pained someone who was sensitive enough to be this pained at the end of the 1980s. Armed with a mobile phone set on "camera" in twilight, I could not help gravitating towards lines that contained Lenin and modified socialist slogans. And before I knew it, I stood hypnotized by a riddle:

только вперёд ни шагу · назад

Where are we to put a comma?...

A final thought: Oleg Mitasov's significance is not rooted merely in the existence of his unique spatial journal. What’s equally important to recognize is the fact that this poignant temporal dissection is in demand today, along with its pain and its riddles. That’s why the site remains revered and unforgotten. We, the contemporaries, need it to be.

Circling the Kharkov Cheka on Chaikovskaya 16 later that night (as described in the previous post), we exchanged thoughts on how heavy and dark the place seemed to be, how loaded with all the suffering of the past. “Surely that energy can't just vanish,” said one of the writers who accompanied me. “Surely not,” replied the other. “It stays, somewhere under ground or above, until it explodes. In those particularly sensitive to it.”

And we knew who he was referring to.

This spring’s field trip to Kharkov unearthed some dark sides of the city. These were shown to me by local writers, after they heard about my new focus. Three memory sites, in particular, struck me as worth mentioning here.

The first is a building which now houses the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Kharkov region. This very central structure was always an integral part of the local landscape for me, until Serhiy Zhadan, back in Washington DC, told me to look for a memorial plaque on its side. This spring, together with Rostyslav Melnykiv, one of the authors of the article mentioned in my previous post, I headed out to find it. It wasn’t obvious, but there it was – on the side of the building facing Chernyshevskaya street.

The plaque, commemorating 3809 Polish offers and nearly 500 Polish citizens shot inside this building in 1940, says that The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) and its prison were located here in the Soviet era. The next time I saw my mother, a born-and-bred Kharkovite, I asked her what she knew about the former NKVD in the city centre.

She frowned. Then she told me about an older lady, now deceased, who was her close friend for many years. The lady lived in the centre (mom later showed me the street), and, together with other people of her generation, she remembered the Red Army’s retreat from Kharkov during World War II. According to those witnesses, prisoners were burned in the NKDV during the retreat, and for days (or weeks) afterwards, the city smelled of burnt human flesh. That smell is what my mother’s friend remembered.

But there are no other memorial plaques on this building.

Unable to look at it ever again in the same way, I began crossing the street whenever I had to pass by. Several days later, I told Andrei Krasnyashchih of what I've heard. Andrei, a self-professed lover of Kharkov, co-authored “Kharkov in the Mirror of World Literature” – a comprehensive collection of international literary quotes mentioning the city and its various places. In response to my story about the NKVD, he told me about the infamous Extraordinary State Commission of Kharkov (Харьковская ЧК), headed by the sadistic Stepan Saenko. Saenko is mentioned in A.I. Solzhenitsin’s “Архипелаг ГУЛАГ” and A.N. Tolstoy’s “Хождение по мукам”. Even earlier, poet Velimir Khlebnikov described this murderer in his poem “Председатель чеки” (1921):

Тот город славился именем Саенки
Про него рассказывали, что он говорил,
Что из всех яблок он любит только глазные.
„И заказные”, — добавлял, улыбаясь в усы.
Дом чеки стоял на высоком утесе из глины,
На берегу глубокого оврага,
И задними окнами повернут к обрыву.
Оттуда не доносилось стонов.
Мертвых выбрасывали из окон в обрыв.

Several days later, together with Andrei and Yury Tsaplin, another co-author of the Kharkov literature article (and a writer in his own right), we went to seek out this Cheka building. It is now a residential house located at Chaikovskaya 16, and it is, indeed, a dark-looking place. Not as dark these days, however, as it was in 1919. There are no memorial plaques here, either. Koshachy Yar (Cat's Ravine), where bodies were tossed after torture and execution, is now merely a lowering of the city's terrain.

Excavation of Red Terror victims outside the headquarters of the Kharkiv Cheka, Ukraine. Summer 1919. Source: Wikipedia.

The most recent (and therefore perhaps the most haunting) memory site, however, is the third one on my list.

... to be continued

Last month, as part of our project's interdisciplinary Film Seminar entitled Europe East and West: Film, History, and Mourning, I presented a Macedonian film called "Before the Rain". When I chose to do so, I wasn't guided solely by my love for this movie and for the Balkan region itself. I was also interested in approaching something very familiar from this new position of mine – that of a memory studies scholar – while drawing the audience’s attention to the rich field of collective remembrance in former Yugoslavia, which, I believe, should constitute a part of any comprehensive European memory studies programme.

In every important relationship of our lives, we all can tell stories of how and when we met. I believe the same is true for places. “Before the Rain” is what started my long-standing connection with South Europe. When I first watched it, I was an undergraduate at Bard College (NY). The year was 1999.

That was nearly 12 years ago, and every time I’ve seen it since then, I discovered something new. Which, I think, is precisely what makes a work of art successful – its ability to grow and evolve with us over the years. “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, which I first read in the single-digit years of my life and which was then nothing but a gripping fairy tale, is another excellent example of this temporal versatility.

In my presentation, I therefore tried to approach the film from my new position, arguing that its chronological puzzles reflect the human process of reminiscence, which is never linear in the first place. And, of course, I had the pleasure of getting to address some of my favourite topics as well – on taking sides, on making choices, on outsiders and insiders, and on the role (and responsibility) of an artist. At the end, I suggested a concept of 'memory as a matter of choice' – and not as a binding given, as we tend to perceive it – as exemplified by things each of the characters chooses to rely on when making a decision. "Alexandar: remember murder or remember love?" was the last line of my talk notes.

Throughout it all, I was privileged by the presence and support of colleagues from South Europe. But one thing I didn’t quite expect was to hear back from Milcho Manchevski, the film’s director. He kindly agreed to send me some thoughts for his audience at Cambridge, despite the busy premiering of his newest triptych, "Mothers". I passed his words on to the viewers when introducing "Before the Rain". The wholeheartedness of his responses enriched the film with a personal touch, which I enjoyed, as if for the first time, with those who gathered in the unheated Keynes Hall.

“It is incredible to read his own words about the movie. It is a revelation,” was the email from a close family member. But Milcho did more than that. He proved once again, to me, the possibility of a warm human presence behind a strong and lasting work of art – a combination that, at first glance, can seem unlikely. Which is a tribute not only to the Balkans, or to Macedonia, or to modern post-Yugoslav cinematography, as his works are usually perceived. This one is a tribute to Milcho himself.

To this, only a “благодарам” can be added.

Thank you.

The Oxbridge system relies rather heavily on the collegiate system of governance and organization. In face of a demanding and highly structured Oxford / Cambridge approach to education, one invariably takes comfort in one’s chosen college – which becomes, in many ways, one’s social and intellectual heaven.

To explicate: one cannot attend Oxbridge without becoming a part of a specific college within the university. And every college, naturally, is a little different from others. When you choose a college in Oxbridge, you choose your foundational basis; essentially, you choose your roots within the university. And you tend to do so rather carefully.

This does not mean that there is only one choice that will fit you. In fact, I think there are very few choices that actually won’t fit at all (if any). However, each college has certain tendencies, certain traits, that may be more preferable for any given individual than the alternatives.

The University of Oxford, for instance, consists of 38 colleges plus 6 private halls. I spent my year there (2006-2007) at St Antony’s College. And I would not have it any other way. I loved it. I am an Antonian (this membership is for life). That’s where my Oxford identity lays.

However, my choice at Cambridge was (perhaps deliberately?) very different. St Antony’s is a special and unique little island which is rather modern, graduate-only, political-sciences oriented, and located somewhat out of town center (which makes it a fairy-tale world of its own). These days, my chosen home is a contrast in many ways. But some things, such as a reigning laid-back attitude, remain the same. There are 31 colleges in Cambridge; mine is the only one that does not require its students to wear gowns – ever. Not even for matriculation. It has a reputation as the most left-wing, equalitarian, gay-friendly, progressive college, with the highest percentage of state-school applicants. We still have a hammer-and-sickle symbol preserved on the wall of our college bar. At the end of the academic year, we don't go for the traditional formal May Ball; we hold an alternative celebration called King's Affair. And all this diversity is enhanced by the fact that we’re one of the oldest, centrally located, most beautiful colleges at the University – founded in 1441 and often used as an image of the University of Cambridge in general. It is a perfect balance, almost the way South Europe is a perfect balance between the Slavic and the Mediterranean. It just makes sense.

I chose well. I know it, even while getting trampled by disoriented tourists on a regular basis – something that never happened at St Antony’s. Despite such drawbacks, this college is a fit.

And perhaps I know it tonight (February 23, 2011) sharper than on a usual night, because I am just back from Formal Hall – served, as usual, in the Great Hall, where all daily meals take place. Just a few days ago, I joined a Macedonian colleague for dinner at his Trinity College – another picturesque place in Cambridge, but more traditional in many ways. We sat in a lovely dining hall on simple long benches, with Trinity’s High Table (reserved for fellows) rising slightly over everyone else. Rising physically – via a step-up. Which, as a concept, is simply abolished where I am. Literally abolished: any physical raises were equalized with the rest of the Hall, and everyone – students and fellows alike – dine on normal chairs on the same level with each other. No benches involved. I didn’t realize how much it meant until I experienced the opposite. Returning home from Trinity’s doubtlessly pretty hall, I could not help but appreciate our lack of status differentiation. It is unique in the University; it might well be unique at Oxbridge as well.

We’re King's College, chosen individually by each of us for the liberal mindset of its collective. And at Formal Hall tonight, over wine and excellent food, girls in lovely dresses and guys in smart-casual suits (no gowns, unless you are a fellow) behaved reasonably Oxbridge-ish against the majestic backdrop of our beautiful old hall – until the speaker at the microphone proposed we toast the staff that had been serving us tonight. At this, all these youthful representatives of brilliancy went briefly out of control. First they applauded; then they whistled; then they just wouldn’t stop. The previous toasts didn't seem to receive as much enthusiasm. And none of it was thoughtless; every moment of it was simply King’s. As I looked at our dear staff, blushing quietly against the Hall walls, I knew this might be one of the few colleges where nearly every student – regardless of IQ or income – value this work as sincerely as they value their own research. It’s based on some very internal principles, which are somewhat difficult to articulate right away, because they're instinctive in many ways. It would make a lot of sense at St Antony’s, where cosmopolitanism is key. But somehow it makes even more sense at King’s, where long-dead Provosts stare at us from harry-potter walls, right next to one of the most refined chapels in the world. We uphold our paradoxical progressiveness, the way our counterparts at places like St John’s – perhaps the most opposite college at Cambridge – uphold the traditionalness of theirs. ('Rich' is one of the four adjectives Johnians used to describe their college in the Alternative Prospectus.) And many of these traits are, of course, only stereotypical generalizations. Yet this particular stereotype works for me.

Can most people be happy at either place? Certainly.

Would I change King’s for any other college at Cambridge?

Not at the moment.

***

Excerpt from the entry for King's College in Cambridge University Alternative Prospectus:

A fifteenth century masterpiece rooted in that dreamy- spires-tradition of angelic choristers and academia... Behind the stained glass façade lies reality. The buildings may be old, but King's reputation for shaking the foundations of tradition is unrivalled in Cambridge. [...] Whilst maintaining its heritage as one of the most historic and beautiful sites in Britain, King’s pushes boundaries, twists the rules and celebrates the outrageous. [...] The predominant ethos at Kings is that you work hard and play hard. On the political side of things, King’s has one of the highest turnouts at student elections and is a pioneer in the campaigns for College sustainability, campaigns against the arms trade and top up fees. [...] It is this atmosphere that allows King’s to maintain a reputation as being the forward-thinking College in Cambridge at the same time as retaining those traditions for which it is famed world-wide.

He is twenty years older than I. So I should really call him nothing other than Alexander Nikolaevich. And yet he is already younger than me. Which is the way he will stay forever. So he cannot be anything other than Sasha, and sometimes – SashBash. Because there is familiarity in death that extends beyond any familiarity most of us will ever achieve in life. It’s not unlike the closeness of hikers who meet on a mountain trail – one heading up, another heading down. Joined by a rising peak, synchronized in step and purpose, they would not even think of using a patronym. They share a road. We share a flight.

And I don’t mean the flight down those eight floors on February 17, 1988. That’s something no one will ever share with him, no matter how much those who remember continue to mourn it. I mean the flight upwards. It’s the effect his songs have had on me for years; I don’t foresee it changing anytime soon.

When I decided to give Alexander Bashlachev a sizeable role in my Master’s thesis on rock music in the USSR, I was half-expecting my supervisor, Prof. Andrei Zorin, to object. He didn’t. (His innate respect for the student is just one of the many reasons why working with him at Oxford was such a treat.)

And so I listed SashBash where he belongs – among the greatest rock-bards of the Soviet Union. A genuine Homo Cantans.

“Тесто”, though not his best-known song by any means, contains one of the few Answers I’ve been able to find so far. And, in a childish way, I wish he could know that. But perhaps he wouldn’t be all too pleased about it. After all, he sang of hoping to see the time when his songs are no longer needed.

… which won't be anytime soon.

Спи спокойно, поэт.

(За полтора года до смерти, квартирник у БГ – "От Винта")

I’ve been thinking of another thing A.Korotaev mentioned to me last month: the difference between society of equality and society of the equal – общество равенства и общество равных. This may sound like an obvious thing, but to me, it offered a helpful framework for approaching certain concepts. Society of the equal (общество равных) consists of people theoretically equal before the law. Therefore they form a government which gets tasked with observing this notion – e.g. it can re-distribute wealth between the rich and the poor in various ways. This is classic social democracy.

Society of equality (общество равенства), however, requires an institution to maintain uniformity – not before the law, but according to a single line drawn across all individuals. And this includes hitting on the head anyone who pokes out of that line. When, in the beginning of last century, people walked into a doctor’s big apartment, got rid of him and his family, and distributed the rooms to various others – creating the (in)famous коммуналки for decades to come – they were hardly pursuing equality before the law. Instead, they were pursuing their own understanding of justice based on linear equality – with injustice symbolized by a neighbor who owns more than you do.

This notion of linear equality (if I may call it that way) is another concept I find not only fascinating and disturbing, but also crucial to understanding certain aspects of history. Perhaps it’s precisely the ideological and practical confusion between these two types of society which dictated the bloody trials of the 20th century.

One more thing has been looping around my mind after that meeting and in the recent weeks. The popular Russian saying – победителей не судят (victors aren't judged) – in the USSR had crystallized into победителям не обязательно судить самих себя (victors don't need to judge themselves). And so, after 1945, while the Germans did, we didn’t. We had the luxury of not having to think inconvenient thoughts, mandated by that great victory. I do feel strongly about continuing to care for it. But I also wonder how much we’ve lost by winning. Perhaps so much that we’re still threading water, while others – the ‘drowned’ – have had to learn to swim. I can’t quite elucidate this further right now, at least not any better than Habermas, Etkind and others have done before.

But the 'Stuff I’m (obsessively) thinking about' tag is oh-so-present here.

In light of today’s lethal attack on innocent civilians in Moscow – yet another tragedy in a long sequence of terror and murder – it is time to reconsider, and take responsibility for, terms we use to describe such things. Just like honour killings have nothing to do with true honour, suicide bombings have nothing to do with real suicide. Suicide (Latin suicidium, from sui caedere, "to kill oneself") is, as Wikipedia puts it, the act of a human being intentionally causing his or her own death. Merriam-Webster defines it in a similar way: “the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily”. Key word: own. The relative significance of oneself and one’s own death has very little to do with using one’s body as a weapon of mass murder. The subtly romantic term we currently use for such perpetrators is not only erroneous, it also shifts the focus of their actions onto them – when in reality their self-elected demise is only a small part of the pain, suffering and death they routinely inflict.

We can’t take back that pain, suffering and death. Other than prayers (for those of us who pray) and blood donations (for those of us in the vicinity), there is not much we can physically do to help those affected. But we can, and should, attempt to take linguistic responsibility for how we transcribe it all into our minds, our history, and our memory. Open your BBC page – today it starts with “a suspected suicide bombing”. How did a bloody killer deserve this high honour of lingual emphasis and empirical preeminence? Call it murder, journalists. It is homicide via corpus, so call it what it is. There is power in words and in defining things through names; use it. As long as we allow assassins to remain “suicide bombers”, we formulate and promote a half-conscious framework of martyrdom with dysfunctional focus points. We can do better than that. We are carriers of the mightiest weapon of all – language.

Let it fire.

Full “Ice” Moon – says my Lunabar Almanack for Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 21:22. It says so because ever since I started using the application, I’ve had it set on Neo-Pagan moon names. And, like most things pagan, this description couldn’t be more accurate.

Under tonight’s full moon my beautiful old college feels even more otherworldly than usual. Icy-blue shadows hang over the pitch-black River Cam, which whispers softly from under the little stone bridge at the Backs. Our noble ducks (who are, as usual, going about their nightfall duckie business while talking tirelessly in the darkness of the vast lawn) have turned into silvery silhouettes of creatures from times long past. If you stop on that bridge and let the last echoes of someone’s midnight stilettos fade away into the winter air, you begin to slip imperceptibly into a nameless, solitary, still space between the pages of time, filled with voices from the past and faces from the future. Softly, half-consciously, but steadily, you join all those who have stood there for centuries before you, with the chapel rising against a never-ageing sky, and you can’t help but wonder: what did they think of? what did they hope for? what did they fear? whom did they miss? whom did they long for? whom did they love? And above all: did they know of you the way you know of them? Or are you just an inadvertent voyeur, standing motionless at a temporal moonlit window as water flows beneath your feet?

I was just thinking: maybe every once in a while we're all standing on stone bridges and glancing into another’s world, while someone peeks cautiously into ours. There, between the pages of time, things can get pressed into each other, and mix and merge and coalesce, the way lovers do. And then, you never really know if the voices you hear all come only from your own past, just like you never really know who suddenly hears – and cries over, and laughs over, and wonders over – words that had been spoken to you. Memory is: sharing those phantasms. When the moon is Full, and is Ice, it’s really not all that startling to hear an unfamiliar fleeting note among the quiet voices of your mind. Don't be afraid. It’s just someone’s lost or invisible loved ones, whispering by, while someone else, for a moment, can hear yours. It’s all transposable on old stone bridges, when everything is moonlit.

… And then you keep walking, leaving the river and the chapel and the lawn and the busy ducks behind. You carry along your voices – holding the treasured ones a bit closer, that’s really why you tighten the coat around yourself – and perhaps also some that aren’t yours. They just attached themselves to you, back there, on the bridge, because those they had spoken to no longer remember them. Pasts, like dogs and people, can be homeless, too.

That's okay. Like a mother whose child is away, you can host them, hoping that, should something happen, someone will take him in as well. There must be nothing worse than (voluntarily or not) losing memory and losing memories. That's when you'd have to rely on the kindness of random strangers on stone bridges.

Come home, voices. The moon is Ice Full.