Umarli są szczęśliwi? Dziennik trzeciego roku wojny

ARE THE DECEASED HAPPY? JOURNAL OF THE THIRD YEAR OF WAR

The presented book – written in the form of an intellectual diary, intended to refer to Gustav Herling-Grudziński’s “Journal Written at Night”, which was very well-known during the communist era, is the second volume of Grzegorz Przebinda’s war journal, written in the context of the current full-scale war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine on February 22, 2022. The first volume – “Putin’s Last War: a Philologist’s Dispute with Russia”, published in Polish in November 2023, covered events from the period immediately preceding the war to the end of its first year. This second volume was originally intended to be a story about the third year of the war, until the end of February 2025, but due to the accumulation and dynamics of bloody events, mainly related to Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president, it was extended with breaks until July 18, 2025. The author juxtaposes events and war crimes, day by day, with Russian culture, both old and new, and with the history of mediaeval Rus, Tsarist Russia, Soviet Russia, and actual Putin’s Russia. He also analyses the attitudes of contemporary Russian writers toward the war, many of whom he has known personally for many years. An analysis of their attitudes shows that Russian writers, theatre and film directors, etc., when it comes to their attitude toward Russia’s imperial war against Ukraine, can be divided into three groups. Some of them, mainly those living permanently in Putin’s Russia – primarily Zakhar Prilepin and Alexander Prokhanov – openly support the  war, while others –  mainly those in exile, such as Dmitry Bykov, Boris Akunin, Viktor Shenderovich, and Dmitry Glukhovsky – strongly oppose the war, for which they are wanted by Putin’s Russia and even sentenced in absentia to several years in harsh penal colonies. However, the most numerous group of Russian writers, also mainly those remaining in the country, led by Yevgeny Vodolazkin, are those who, in their speeches and literary works, ignore the war with absolute silence. The book, in its main part, begins with a description of the unbelievable events of March 2024, when prison authorities refused for a long time to release the body of  Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, murdered at Putin’s behest in a northern penal colony. It ends with a description and reflection on the subsequent terrible bombings of Ukrainian cities by Russia in the spring of 2025, during which entire families with children, mothers, and fathers were killed in their homes in Kyiv, Odessa, Poltava, and Sumy. The author of the above diary intended not only to show the inhuman nature of Putin’s war against Ukraine, but also to point out the fundamental difference between Russians who support the war and those who strongly oppose it. One of the latter, Alexander Skobov, a historian from St. Petersburg currently serving a 16-year sentence in a harsh penal colony in Syktyvkar in the northern Komi Republic, recently announced publicly: “Putin’s Russia has transformed itself into a generator of absolute evil and a deadly threat to both the surrounding world and its own population. It must be removed, just as the Nazi Reich was removed”. For there will be no other end to this war.