Controversy Erupts as PEN America Invites Ukrainian and Russian Dissident Writers to Dialogue During Crisis

In New York, the association for the defense of freedom of expression PEN America invited Ukrainian and Russian dissident writers to engage in a dialogue around the current crisis. A business that turned into controversy.

Is dialogue possible between writers on either side of a conflict? That’s the question that rocked the latest PEN America festival, after the free-speech advocacy group invited dissident Ukrainian and Russian writers to take part at the same time. Three Ukrainian writers, two of whom are soldiers, were due to go to the World Voices Festival organized in New York by the association in May, but protested against the presence of Russian writers.

Artem Chapeye is a writer and soldier in the military police. According to him, appearing alongside Russian writers could be perceived as disloyal by his superiors and comrades. “I realize that these people do not support the government of (Vladimir) Putin, but I have obligations as a soldier,” he explains. Volodymyr Yermolenko, president of the Ukrainian branch of the international association, assures him that he does not believe in the possibility of dialogue in time of war. Difficult to “sit alongside Russian representatives, while our friends can die under Russian bullets,” he says.

“We should have had a better approach”

Faced with the impossibility of finding a compromise, two Russian writers as well as Masha Gessen, journalist of the New Yorker, have canceled their participation in the event. The Russian novelist Anna Nemzer – who fled Russia after the invasion of Ukraine – speaks of a painful solution, but claims to accept the refusal of Ukrainians to dialogue with Russians. “I have this cursed passport and, with my language, with the fact that I have lived there all my life, I am part of all this, I cannot escape it”, she regrets. “It’s a trap, it’s unfair, but how can I even use the word ‘unfair’ when we know what injustice is: raining bombs.”

Masha Gessen, who emigrated from Moscow as a child, resigned from the PEN America board in protest. “For me, an organization that defends freedom of expression cannot boycott someone’s speech,” the Russian-American journalist explained to the Russian television channel in exile, Dojd. PEN America director Suzanne Nossel said she regretted the incident. “We should have had a better approach.”

I realize these people don’t support Putin’s government, but I have obligations as a soldier

Earlier in the month, a similar dispute erupted in Tartu, Estonia, after two Ukrainian poets refused to attend a literary festival because Linor Goralik, a famous Russian author, was invited. “The war crimes committed in Ukraine are in the name of Russian culture,” said Ukrainian poet Olena Huseinova to explain her refusal to speak at the festival. “If I were a representative of Russian culture, I would not find the strength to speak, I would be too ashamed,” adds the one who fled Kiev in February 2022 with, for only business, the clothes she was wearing.

These disagreements illustrate the difficulty for international organizations to display their support for Ukraine while collaborating with Russian dissidents. While many artists have fled Russia, others have stayed, continued to voice their opposition and face harassment, threats and arrests. After the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Suzanne Nossel called for not boycotting Russian culture indiscriminately. “Cultural dialogues with independent-minded Russians are key to shedding light on the current crisis and finding ways to overcome it,” she wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

For Georgy Urushadze, former director of the main Russian literary prize and who fled Russia, it is also his duty to “publish books that capture the sadness of Russian reality”. “It’s important now and it will be important for historians in the future,” he said. In this context, how to envisage a dialogue between Ukrainian and Russian artists, even after the end of the war? For Volodymyr Yermolenko, president of PEN Ukraine, it will depend on whether “there is a process of repentance, real repentance”.