Queer Ukraine by DViJKA

Author:DViJKA
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Renard Press
Published: 2023-06-21T09:01:25+00:00

ernest huk

The Emancipation of Ernie

Every single moment following 4 a.m. on the 24th of February is incomprehensible. But it is a moral imperative for Ukrainians in the intellectual (battle)field to reflect on and preserve as many artefacts as possible. For too long, we were fed up with imported narratives on our own history as part of colonisation, either from the East or West, and they have to be immediately eradicated if we are to sustain our sovereignty.

In 2014, more or less as a reaction to the triumph of Euromaidan, Russia occupied Crimea and Donbas and the Russo-Ukrainian war began. At the time, I was a small-town boy from the very west of Ukraine, pursuing his dream to study in the capital and change his country for the better (yes, I’m a Legally Blonde fan). My outgoing nature and urge for validation soon led to me getting sucked into Kyiv’s simmering hipster economy – (Arma Comes) Closer, Cxema, Podmost, Optimus, Vogue, UFW, MBKFD, Pinchuk Art Centre, Don’t Take Fake, 86 Festival, Plivka, Kyiv School, Gogol Fest, Brave! and so on.

In other words, I became primarily a miserable Russian-speaking snob (although I am from a Ukrainian-speaking family), fetishising Soviet-era modernism (do you still remember the Calvert’s New East?) and thus criticising decommunisation. I spent all my money on Russian books – mostly from the publishers Garage and Strelka – mostly consumed news from Meduza and Нож, listened to podcasts from Radio Mayak, studied art on Arzamas, humanities on Syg.ma and sociology on PostNauka. And music (deep breath) – Kedr Livansky, Samjoe Bolshoje Prostoje Chislo, Pussy Riot, IC3PEAK, МЫ, Zemfira, Shortparis, Аntoha MC, t.A.T.u., Kate NV, Dmitri Shostakovich, Igor Stravinsky… This list can go on and on.

Of course, all of the above was a very small part of what my hipster peers and I were consuming at the time, since most trends were still coming over from the West. But still, it’s baffling – until 2014 I was a convinced nationalist, boycotting books and music in Russian on principle.

In 2015 Okean Elzy, arguably the most famous Ukrainian band, released the song ‘It’s Not Your War’ – and the terrifying truth is that it wasn’t. We were calling it the ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ or similar, to play it down and erase it from our lives, to keep our comfortable status quo intact so we could go back to drinking matcha undisturbed. Narratives about ‘Liberal Russians’ were very welcome among us.

My story wouldn’t be complete without looking at the adverse effects of importing uncontextualised theoretical frameworks from the West. I have always been attracted to guys, but my ultimate realisation that I was gay happened only when I moved out from my small conservative home town to pursue a sociology degree in Kyiv.

There I was exposed to two clashing forms of gender scholarship, presented by two passionate lecturers: (1) liberal feminist/homonationalist; and (2) intersectional feminist/queer. In classes focusing on the first framework, we were acquainted with gay people living in Ukraine who managed to enjoy their lives and succeed in their careers while being open about their sexual identity (I was shocked).

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