THE LITERATURE OF WAR IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE: NARRATIVE FUNCTIONALITY, HISTORICAL MEMORY, AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE

The literature emerging from the war that erupted in the Ukrainian Donbas in 2014 constitutes an increasingly significant cultural phenomenon, subject to multifaceted interpretation. First and foremost, war literature transcends the boundaries of purely aesthetic expression, acquiring a functional character. It serves as a communicative medium capable of informing society about events on the frontlines, the everyday realities of life during wartime, and both the individual and collective experience of ongoing trauma. A primary objective of such texts is to articulate the emotional, psychological, and physical dimensions of war—dimensions often generalized, oversimplified, or ideologically distorted by other forms of discourse.

Ron Capps views literature as a potent and essential weapon in the context of war, stating:  «Ми ставимо поезію, белетристику й творчий нонфікшн (creative non-fiction) поряд з хімічною зброєю, міжконтинентальними ракетами з термоядерними боєголовками й роботизованими дронами. І в процесі бачимо, як уява використовується для докорінно різних цілей»[1].

Secondly, the literature of war fulfills a historiographic function, offering reflective engagement with the causes and consequences of the conflict through the lens of past experience. In this sense, it operates within the framework of Ukraine’s communicative memory, engaging with the legacy of Russian imperialism—particularly Soviet totalitarianism—and its most destructive manifestations: political repression, linguicide, ethnocide, the suppression of national self-determination, and the systemic devaluation of individual dignity and freedom.

Thirdly, wartime literature assumes a therapeutic role across multiple levels: individual, generational, and national. Many such texts are authored by individuals who have directly experienced the most traumatic phases of armed conflict, often suffering physical and psychological losses. For these writers, literary expression becomes a means of self-articulation and a vehicle for processing trauma.

The literature of the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian war places at its center a generation shaped by the economic and political turmoil of the 1990s, the pivotal shifts of the 2000s, the Orange Revolution, the Revolution of Dignity, and the present war. Parallels may be drawn with the generation that participated in World War I—formed by the philosophical and aesthetic currents of modernity (e.g., Nietzscheanism, Freudianism), scientific breakthroughs, and technological progress. This was a generation that sought to lead Europe out of the imperial crisis. As Ernst Jünger wrote in his psychological reflections on war: «Таке покоління, як наше, ще ніколи не ступало на арену світу, аби вибороти собі владу над своєю добою»[2]. However, unlike Jünger’s abstract concept of generational transformation, the current Ukrainian context speaks to a specific national community—one that is struggling not only for its sovereignty, but also for the right to determine its developmental trajectory, to emerge from the shadow of the Russian (Soviet) empire, and to return to its European cultural home.

The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 24, 2022, marked a new phase of the war. This escalation generated a distinct response, both within Ukrainian society at large and in the cultural sphere in particular. Despite the extreme conditions, literature began to respond almost immediately, not only documenting the invasion but also accumulating and articulating live experiences of occupation, violence, death, and the existential threat to Ukrainian statehood. The current war has foregrounded questions that previously remained underexplored in political or historical discourse—namely, that the global order established after World War II has not fully resolved itself, and that Russia’s numerous military engagements since the mid-twentieth century must be understood as part of a single, continuous imperial project.

Within the first year of full-scale war, numerous literary works appeared, including Poetry Without Shelter, War 2022: Diaries, Essays, Poetry, Oksana Zabuzhko’s The Longest Journey, Ostap Slyvynsky’s A Dictionary of War, Vladyslav Ivchenko’s After the 24th, and Kateryna Babkina’s Mom, Do You Remember?. These texts should be interpreted not merely as literary artefacts, but as cultural phenomena—symbolic events that emerged organically in response to the most violent stage of the war since 2014.

Traditionally, poetry has served as the first literary response to war, given its unique capacity to convey the immediacy and emotional intensity of lived experience. From the earliest days of the full-scale invasion, poetry began to appear across various platforms, particularly social media—many of these works were later collected in the anthologies mentioned above. The American philosopher Judith Butler has noted that sensibility is the primary target of war[3]. This observation is echoed by Ukrainian literary scholar Taras Pastukh, who, in his analysis of poetry produced during the early months of the invasion, draws on Carl von Clausewitz’s assertion that war, as an act of violence, inevitably intrudes upon the sphere of human emotion[4]. Poetry, then, becomes a form of affective resistance—one that gradually but effectively leads Ukrainian culture out of the state of initial shock it experienced in the first days of the Russian invasion.

Most of the published texts bear witness to literary attempts to comprehend the war. Above all, they reflect the desire of individuals caught in the midst of traumatic events to feel—and later to know and understand—themselves while in a state of shock or even affect. In light of authoritative reflections on affective states and their influence on the process of artistic creation, particularly literary expression, it must be acknowledged that scholarly opinions diverge to some extent. Jill Bennett, for example, argues that traumatic affective experience resists representation. According to her, the unassimilated and exceptional nature of such experience renders it unreadable, resulting in the blockage of any possibility of cognitively accessing or processing the trauma endured[5]. The reflections of certain writers lend support to this theory. In her diary, Larysa Denysenko attempts to give verbal form to events she partially witnesses herself during the active Russian assault on Kyiv. The process proves to be complex: images and events merge into a continuous flow of emotions that are difficult to represent. The first step toward comprehension takes the form of a simple statement of facts: “These bastards are playing games. Shooting people waiting in line for bread. Killing a child running after a kitten. Firing Grad rockets at evacuation buses filled with exhausted people who already feel a fragile sense of hope, having just escaped from Mariupol. Filth. Filth. I hate my own helplessness”[6]. A somewhat different in form, yet similar in essence, condition is articulated by Oleksandr Mykhed in his essay The Green City: “Today I wish the war would take everything from me already—so that I no longer have to feel new levels of pain”[7].

In such cases, Tomasz Dalasiński observes that affect reconfigures our understanding of the subject—from a narrative-discursive model to a post-narrative, or even post-discursive one, in which the central focus is not the evolution of “Me”, but its ever-shifting present[8]. Indeed, most war-related texts transcend the boundaries of conventional narrative. They represent, in a sense, a process of groping for meaning—an attempt to find verbal expression for the existential condition in which individuals found themselves on February 24, 2022.

In this context, we can also identify another significant feature and function of war-related texts: the verbalization of a shock event. The literary language previously tested and employed to represent the hostilities in Donbas since 2014 proved, in many respects, inadequate for conveying the state in which the Ukrainian individual and society found themselves. Everything preceding that day lost its narrative relevance. Writers often underscore the devaluation of their prior literary experience, as the events defy the frameworks of understanding typical of contemporary intersocietal relations. In his essay Powerlessness, Andriy Lyubka remarks that in such a state, “with every next letter, any word is devalued”[9]. Sofiia Andrukhovych confesses uncertainty about her ability to write after the war, noting that her experience has led her to understand that “words have changed their nature”[10]. Many writers emphasize its impotence and inability to convey the condition of a person at war today. This, in essence, exemplifies the post-narrative mode of thinking that Tomasz Dalasiński seeks to articulate.

Thus, when analyzing texts that describe the experience of previous wars, one may conclude that the affective nature of war deprives the individual of the capacity and need for representation. As a result, this poses a threat of losing the memory of war that could otherwise enable the reconstruction and articulation of lived trauma. The war that began in 2014 generated entirely different social demands and narrative perspectives. This, in part, contributed to the fact that the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, led to the emergence of numerous literary texts that ultimately also serve as testimonies of crimes committed against Ukrainians. On the other hand, this development illustrates the extent to which literature can function as an effective mechanism in shaping historical narrative, documenting current events, and creating cultural therapeutic tools for recipients traumatized by war.

[1] We put poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction alongside chemical weapons, intercontinental missiles with thermonuclear warheads, and robotic drones. And in the process, we see how the imagination is used for radically different purposes

Р. Кепс, Як писати про війну, Київ 2022, с. 19.

[2]“A generation like ours has never before entered the world arena to gain power over its own time”  

Е. Юнґер, Війна як внутрішнє переживання. Перекл. З нім. О. Андрієвського, Київ 2022, с. 10.

[3] Дж. Батлер, Фрейми війни. Чиї життя оплакують? Перекл. з англ. Ю. Кравчук, Київ 2016, c. 17.

[4] Т. Пастух, Поезія в час війни, [в:] https://zbruc.eu/node/112014 (27.05.2022).

[5] J. Bennet, Wnętrza, zewnętrza: trauma, afekt i sztuka, [w:] Pamięć i afekty,Red. Z. Budrewicz, R. Sendyki, R. Nycza, Warszawa 2014, s. 146.

[6] Війна-2022: щоденники, есеї, поезія… С. 102.

[7] Там само. С. 297.

[8] Dalasiński T. Ludzkie arcy(nie)ludzkie. Efekt afektu i aktualność podmiotu drugiej nowoczesności, [w:] Pamięć i afekty,Red. Z. Budrewicz, R. Sendyki, R. Nycza, Warszawa 2014, s. 108-109.

[9] Війна-2022: щоденники, есеї, поезія…, с. 236.

[10] Там само, с. 231.

1. Bennet J. Wnętrza, zewnętrza: trauma, afekt i sztuka, [w:]Pamięć i afekty, Red. Z. Budrewicz, R. Sendyki, R. Nycza, Warszawa 2014, s. 146.

2. Dalasiński T. Ludzkie arcy(nie)ludzkie. Efekt afektu i aktualność podmiotu drugiej nowoczesności, [w:] Pamięć i afekty, Red. Z. Budrewicz, R. Sendyki, R. Nycza, Warszawa 2014, s. 108-109.

3. Батлер Дж.. Фрейми війни. Чиї життя оплакують? Перекл. з англ. Ю. Кравчук, Київ 2016, c. 17.
4. Війна 2022: щоденники, есеї, поезія: антологія. Львів - Варшава 2023.
5. Забужко O. Найдовша подорож: Есей. Київ 2022.
6. Кепс Р. Як писати про війну, Київ 2022, с. 19.
7. Пастух Т. Поезія в час війни, [в:] https://zbruc.eu/node/112014 (27.05.2022).
8. Поезія без укриття: антологія. Упор. Н. Гармазій, Брустури 2022.

9. Юнґер Е. Війна як внутрішнє переживання. Перекл. З нім. О. Андрієвського, Київ 2022, с. 10.