Victoria Amelina, killed by Russian rockets, joins a procession of Ukrainian writers whose lives were cut short by oppressors

Sat, 5 Aug 2023 19:26:41 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://theconversation.com/victoria-amelina-killed-by-russian-rockets-joins-a-procession-of-ukrainian-writers-whose-lives-were-cut-short-by-oppressors-209045>

"Histories of modern Ukrainian literature are often as much about writers’
lives as their works. This is scarcely surprising.

Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina died on 1 July, from injuries she received
during a Russian rocket strike on the city of Kramatorsk on 27 June.

She joins a sombre procession of Ukrainian writers and poets whose lives were
blighted or violently cut short by hostile states that oppressed their
homeland. They enjoy heroic status in the nation’s collective imagination.

Literature in the Ukrainian language has been one of the foremost vehicles for
asserting the identity of Ukrainians as a nation and claiming the rights of
that nation to be free from imperial overlords.

Taras Shevchenko is a poet of unparalleled Romantic invective against tsarist
autocracy and colonialism. His symbolic aura was enhanced by his birth into
serfdom and his ten-year exile.

Esteem for the challenging poetry of Vasyl Stus is amplified by reverence for
the 13 years he spent in the Gulag, where he died in 1985.

The many innovative Soviet Ukrainian writers and artists of the 1920s, known
collectively as “the Executed Renaissance”, are remembered no less for their
works than for the fact they were killed or imprisoned in the 1930s.

It will never again be possible to read Victoria Amelina’s works without
knowing she died as one of thousands of victims of a war launched against
Ukraine by Russia – with the intent of seizing Ukraine’s territory, ending
Ukraine’s sovereignty and erasing Ukrainian identity."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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