About a year and a half ago, I wrote about Pavel Filatyev’s book, which was essentially an account of the first days of Russia’s war against Ukraine seen through the eyes of a Russian contract soldier. Even then, I wanted to believe that all this horror would soon be over.
But two years have already passed since Russia attacked Ukraine, and there’s still no end in sight. As a child, reading about the Great Patriotic War, I used to think that four years of that war was a whole lifetime. By that measure, Ukraine has already been at war for half a lifetime.
The initial shock has long since faded, and any hope of a quick ending is gone for good. And then a book came out by the remarkable Ukrainian authors Dmitry Gromov and Oleg Ladyzhensky, whom all fans of sci-fi know under the pen name Henry Lion Oldie.
Both authors are from Kharkiv — a city where, before the war, Russian was heard far more often than Ukrainian, even though its residents considered themselves Ukrainian. Before the war, Oldie were seen as purely Russian-language authors. They wrote in Russian, a language they command better than most Russians do.
But on February 24, 2022, war came to their home; Russian missiles and bombs began to fall on their city. And both of them, Dmitry and Oleg, started keeping a diary.
Invasion is that very joint diary by Henry Lion Oldie, covering a little under the first two months of the war. The authors don’t invent stories; they simply write down the facts of each day of their lives: what happens to them, what they learn from reliable sources, how they themselves cope with the horror of war, and what their relatives, friends, and acquaintances are doing.
I wouldn’t say these are remarkable memoirs or an outstanding work of literature. No — it’s just diary entries. Dmitry kept his in great detail, while Oleg wrote down the most important things briefly, but often accompanied his entries with poems.
Probably, if I were reading something like this now about events from seventy years ago, I’d say, “Eh, it’s so-so.” Because it’s hard to truly understand, let alone empathize with, what happened a long time ago, long before you were born. As a kid, I heard the phrase “Well, what can you do — it’s war, that’s how it is…” far too often. What’s more, a few times I caught myself thinking I was reading about some distant war. And then you realize it’s you who’s in a safe country right now, while back there in Ukraine your friends and colleagues have grown used to living in expectation of the next strike, and many have come to terms with the thought that tomorrow they might be gone because of yet another “high-precision strike on a military facility.”
In fact, exactly the same thing happens to the authors of the diary. You can see that in the first days there’s a kind of confusion born of refusing to accept what’s happening, as if this simply can’t be real. Then, literally just a few days later, the chance of coming under shelling becomes routine. There are practical methods for making your windows safer so they won’t be shattered by a nearby blast. So in less than a week, the shock passes, and a person learns to live in a state of war.
And still, there’s no realization yet that this will last. For example, after a visit to the enlistment office, there’s this entry:
I take a photo on my phone of a special QR code on the door of the enlistment office, upload it to the app, and now I can track my place in line too. I understand that at the current pace, the line will reach me and my son in about a month. By then, the war might already be over. With Ukraine’s victory, of course.
Fleeing the war, Oldie leave their native Kharkiv, but they do not leave Ukraine (even though some rabid “experts” insist they definitely saw Oldie living first in one country, then in another). What’s more, after the first wave of apathy, they find something they can do — something that lets them use all their experience as writers while also helping Ukrainians wage a defensive war against the occupiers.
The truth is, war reveals people, and everything that used to be hidden behind a mask of respectability comes crawling into the light. After all, Oldie are the organizers of one of the best-known festivals in the Russian-speaking fandom, Star Bridge, which all sci-fi writers used to attend with pleasure. But as soon as the war began, all the hidden filth came bubbling up to the surface:
A bitter twist of fate: the shell came from the very side the Russian sci-fi writers had been coming from for years, traveling to the welcoming city of Kharkiv for Star Bridge. They ate and drank, spoke at workshops and lectures, admired the festive fireworks. Many of them have now signed an open letter in support of the war, publicly endorsing the barbaric shelling of Kharkiv.
As I’ve already said, there’s no point looking for literary value in these entries. Their value lies in something else entirely. They let you see how ordinary Ukrainians live when war comes to their homes — people who never asked to be “liberated,” but had that “liberation” forced on them with bombs:
All around is a city block destroyed by missile and artillery strikes. A very old man in the line says sadly to another:
“Even the Nazis didn’t bomb Kharkiv like this…”
The other man sighs and nods.
In addition to the diaries, the book also includes two short stories written during the war and about the war. And this is where Oldie’s talent as writers truly shows. Short, vivid, hard to read, and deeply thought-provoking. They make you see that for Ukrainians this is a battle for their homeland. And on the other side, Ukraine’s fighters have long since stopped seeing people — they see beasts who came to kill their Homeland and their loved ones. And I’m afraid that will only be washed away over several generations.
I wholeheartedly recommend reading this book — constantly reminding yourself: this is not fiction, this is happening now, this is close.
My rating: 4/5
