Writing During a Genocidal War

 Susanna Brail interviews Ukrainian writer Lena Kudaeva for The Asian Review under My pen is my gun, the words are my bullets…Lena Kudaeva. She has much to say, I want to emphasize why she writes and the value of writing:

Can you tell our readers about how your writing journey?

I didn’t write until I was forty-three years old. I’ve always been told that I have a mathematical mind. So, I started writing by accident, a couple of years ago, after I attended an intensive documentary theatre course by Andriy May. During this course I wrote my first dramatic text 6,5. I collected documentary evidence and interviews of Ukrainian forced migrants who lost their homes in 2014 during the russian occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In the summer of the same year I was selected for the DRAMLABNEO Week drama laboratory supported by the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. Being in the laboratory brought about my first creative dramatic text Diary of an Excellent Student. This text was autobiographical. It was long-listed at the VIII Drama.UA Play Contest in 2021. And I decided to write further.

You are a Ukrainian living under temporary protection in Poland. How important is your voice to raise awareness about the current situation in Ukraine? And how do you think the creative fraternity in Ukraine should contribute to this?

Because of what our nation is currently experiencing, namely the threat of destruction, the voice of every Ukrainian is important at the moment. Be it the voice of a journalist, a soldier, an artist, a volunteer, or a war witness. Because right now the world needs to hear Ukrainians and understand what’s happening in Ukraine. The voices of Ukrainians are evidence of war crimes by the russians against the civilians of Ukraine. Therefore, every story is important and should be heard.

Writing heals: how true is this for you?

It absolutely works in my case. Writing is therapy. Especially when you write personal texts or texts about events that really concern and interest you. For example, my text Insect helped me relive traumatic events from my childhood and let go of those events.

It works like this – first you write the text and get it from inside yourself, then you see this text from the stage in a reading or in the form of a performance. And this helps to finally separate the traumatic event and look at it from the side of an outside observer.

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The Asian Review Is connecting the continent with over 20,000 daily readers across the world. What do you want to share with them as your parting words?

It sounds scary, but the truth is that the international community is already used to the war in Ukraine. All the terrible news about the wounded and killed, about the destroyed cities, about the ecological consequences of the war gradually turned into daily statistics. These are numbers and data that are included in the daily reports of international organizations and broadcast to the world in the form of dry numbers. However, behind each number there is grief, loss, pain, despair, a cry for help, fatigue, death. It should not be forgotten that russia is currently committing genocide against the Ukrainian people. And this genocide, this destruction can be stopped by uniting to solve a common problem. Therefore, I want to call on the world community to support and help Ukrainians by any means – financially, informationally, with weapons, human resources, and support for refugees. And most importantly, do not let the thought of russia’s war against Ukraine turn into a daily routine.

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