Carol singers, snow, bombs, Ukrainian Christmas.

The detail of the old doors and a privilege to have something that wasn’t destroyed. I really appreciate the rustic vibes of Lviv.

As a kid when I heard the stories about the Soviet Union my grandparents told, I thought they were imagining that country, so bizarre its ideology and habits sounded. To think I could actually live there 😳. So happy USSR collapse day.

For some reason it is my holiday habit to be running out of airports coughing my lungs out and calling bus drivers to wait for 5 minutes (thankfully, Ukrainian bus drivers can take pity on you). Sorry, Europe, but you won’t stop me, I’m coming home! 😁🐈‍⬛

On the darkest days, I always write the most optimistic texts. This one is called “What Ukraine Should Do with Russia”. open.substack.com/pub/vika4goo...

Graham Greene lived through London Blitz, and his descriptions of the feeling of the world was approaching, and details are very on point to what I have seen in Kharkiv.

Christmas is the time to thank everyone who’s been with us! Don’t give up, the good will prevail in the end 🫶🫂. Just don’t lose empathy and attention.

Christmas Eve and the kind russian people hit power and heating stations in Kharkiv, a cemetery in Chernihiv, destroy the Black Sea ecology with oil spillages, and kill energy workers.

The only thing that the russian state built in the city of Donetsk in 12 years of occupation have been filtration camps. They recycled former Ukrainian art centres for this purpose at that.

Graham Greene as always understands war cities. From “The End of the Affaire”.

In every airport always 😂. Even if you think he’s not there, a western writer is already working on a new romantic putin face book for the travelers

A global assault by big states on small ones will not end the way big states think it will.

Language is important. When a war of aggression is called “[victim’s name] + conflict”, the focus on the aggressor is lost. Make sure to always remember and pronounce the name of the aggressor. It should not be “they-who-not-be-named”. Justice starts with small steps.

Found this book by accident at the university giveaway. Haven’t read it yet, but feel that it might be something on EU politics 😅.

In 2017, the architect Nina Furmanova recalled how working on this 1970s Kharkiv hotel, saying “I, a small woman, defended the project in front of men and secured approval for a high-rise!”. Says a lot about being a woman in the male-dominated skyscraper architecture 😅.

Besides being an important linguist, Yuri Shevelov was a fantastic essayist, and left an important very honest memoir, “My Meetings with Roman Jacobson”, that elucidate dual colonial lens and oppression of non-russian scholars in the US Slavic studies in 1950-1960s.

On the day of Yuri Shevelov’s birthday I’m sharing my translation of his essay, the Fourth Kharkiv. It’s more than a text about a city, as the essay shows layers of colonial violence and meditates on what makes a city. viktoriagrivina.medium.com/the-fourth-k...

A beautiful ethnographic article by a brilliant young anthropologist Hanna Dosenko from Irvine university: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

Yesterday was the day honoring the liquidators of Chornobyl disaster. One of them is Oleh Veklenko. He was a young conscript in the Soviet army sent to Chornobyl in 1986. His sketches started an exhibition and then a festival of eco poster. I deeply admire Oleh’s activism.

While a linguist turned US left messiah Noam Chomsky is in the news again, I want to just remind that Chomsky has never displayed a single drop of empathy for the victims of war crimes, be it in Bosnia, Syria, or Ukraine. And that’s how he should be remembered.

Doing some fascinating reading, work of the brilliant Aimee Joyce.

Saturday morning vibes, books and syrnyky.

Kharkiv in 1931 as seen by the modernist genius Borys Kosarev. He lived till 1994, and taught art at a local academy most of his life. Soviet state allowed only one personal exhibition of Kosarev in 1967, and closed it swiftly. His heritage was rediscovered in the 1990s.

More from Borys Kosarev. 1923 work, They Went Home is filled with movement, energy, and mystery.

A 1921 work by a Kharkiv artist Borys Kosarev, titled City Without Windows. Prophetic art, unfortunately.

Looting cultural heritage of Ukraine on the occupied territories got a russian archaeologist in detention in Poland. The said archaeologist is an employee of Hermitage museum in St Petersburg, and the amount of stolen art from colonies in Hermitage would make British museum look like a saint.

The best city in the world is Kharkiv, actually. A fact.

Saw this fascinating set of texts from 2022 by the scholars of Ukraine, including @victoriadonovan.bsky.social 🫶. Online version is open access.

Russia has started to attack not only hospitals, but also pharmacies in Ukraine, endangering treatment of civilian population. This indicates continuation of a genocidal strategy adopted towards Ukrainian population by the russian state. www.rescue.org/uk/press-rel...

I’m collecting books that are somehow connected to Kharkiv. Vasyl Berezhny wrote 1970s space sci-fi. While studying journalism in Kharkiv, we saw an observatory and fell in love with stars. Just bought his 1978 collection, Along the Time Spiral. Excited!

This Kharkiv cat wishes all a chill Sunday.

It’s birthday of the Ukrainian baroque philosopher Hrihorii Skovoroda. A verse by Lina Kostenko imagines Skovoroda’s monument walking with Lina through time (excerpts): “Oh, look there who is sitting in that garden? Do I dare talk to him? Shall I eat that hybrid apple? The one whose spirit 👇

“We rather adapted to the house , rather than the other way around”, is such a warmly humorous sentence. Distracting from editing my poor thesis, I am reading The Rooster House by Victoria Berlin.

Happy to share my recommendation in this brilliant list of the books any 20-year-old should read with @theconversation.com. My choice is The City by Valerian Pidmohylnyi, and it’s a love-hate-love relations 😉: theconversation.com/twenty-exper...

A great opportunity for those in US to buy the Kharkiv books at a huge cyber Monday discount (adds at checkout), at @columbiaup.bsky.social @kharkivisadream.bsky.social #books #kharkiv 👇

Proud to highlight a WOW WOMAN who advocates for Ukraine in Scotland. She is the real deal! Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social is from Kharkiv and that alone should tell you everything you need to know - she is strong and brave. www.wowwoman.com/inside-ukrai... Share and be proud of Ukraine!

Vasyl Stus wrote poem “Enough Blood” in 1971. It fits today’s privileged pacifism well. - Enough blood, - the torturer declared, When the knife was still driven under my ribs, Stuck in my back. And I thought, all wincing with pain: What if he decides To be my doctor as well?

Listening to an anthropological paper, you are never safe from hearing about the “russian fugitives” in today’s Balkans, making the neighbourhoods more “russian-speaking” since the locals are so happy to learn the language of the “fugitives”, and even remember it from school 💀.

As if “a Ukraine” doesn’t need forests and cities 😭. I recognize a good intention, but the way “land in Europe” doesn’t include Ukraine here, and Ukraine is seen as a Soviet food colony once again is a bit scary.

This Kharkiv cat is oh so energetic and enthusiastic about your work things.

An artwork by Maria Schneider-Senyuk dedicated to the 1930s hunger in Ukraine. Maria drew inspiration from traditional ornaments. Her art was looted by the russian military from the Kherson art museum in 2022.

Kazymyr Malevych wrote a lot about Ukrainian food. His work, Three Figures, is said to reflect the death by hunger of the Ukrainian farmers in 1932-33. “Hammer and sickle bring death and hunger”. Drastic difference to his colorful suprematist works, the drawing haunts viewers.

1921-22, 1932-33, 1946-47

“When you need to warm yourself, When you are hungry to share a word, When you crave a bread crumb, Don’t go to the tall trees — You’ll not be understood there, though Their architecture achieves cosmic perfection, From the one-thousandth floor They might toss snowy embers on your head.. 👇

Tomorrow will be the Remembrance Day of the victims of Holodomor. How strange to stumble across the park exhibition in Edinburgh where Kharkiv is mentioned in such precisely in its darkest hour.

Starting the day with uncontrollable laughter at reading a review on a French novel about fictional Ukrainian ballet dancers who just love the great russian culture so much they listen to Chaikovsky in Olenivka torture prison wiping tears with cheburashka. chytomo.com/baleryna-z-k...

This Kharkiv cat has exactly the character for a successful Monday.

This pretty lady lives on the street where Mary Shelley lived 🐈‍⬛.

Photos of a friend’s Kyiv Art studio hit by a russian drone. Then, a young talented poet Serhii Naumenko, resident of my first art residency killed on the Zaporizzhia front. We all met in 2022 by Chetemosh river, made art and ate pizza by the water, wrote. Talked about future. I have no words left 👇

This Kharkiv cat is your Friday deadlines administrator.