War has been raging in Ukraine for three months. In neighboring Poland, this is not without repercussions. War and violence are finding their way into everyday culture and society, says DW guest author Stanislaw Strasburger.
DW guest columnist Stanislaw Strasburger
A snack bar in Swinoujscie (Swinemünde), a town on the Polish Baltic Sea. The fast-food restaurant “Bei Oma Halinka” has specialized in the famous dumplings, Polish Pierogi. I feel reminded of my own grandma. I loved your “Russian Pierogi”!
Everyone in Poland knows what Russian pierogi taste like: a filling of potatoes, quark and onions, with plenty of pepper – delicious! I stand in line at the counter and suddenly I'm surprised: the “Russian” printed on the menu board in front of the word Pierogi has been pasted over. Now it says “Ukrainian Pierogi”.
Pierogi are popular in Poland – here they are made at one Stand sold in Kraków
According to Polish border guards, 3.4 million refugees from Ukraine have entered Poland since February 24 this year. In addition to the up to 1.5 million Ukrainians who have lived and worked there before. About 1.3 million left the country at the same time, but that doesn't change the overall picture: Everywhere in the country you can hear Ukrainian, Russian or this charming Polish, whose melody is a mixture of all three languages, on the streets, in shops and cafés is.
But with the pierogi in the snack bar, something else strikes me: the war has arrived in everyday life. It changes consumer behavior and shapes pop culture. For better or for worse.
War and everyday life
Shortly after the snack stop, I go to a benefit event for young Ukrainian artists. A DJ in a baggy T-shirt with a Led Zeppelin print plays Ukrainian neo-folk. They drink beer, move to the beat of the music and yell “Glory to Ukraine! Death to the enemies!”
Another example: a well-known Polish mustard producer. Suddenly, a popular variety in his product range, the “Russian Mustard”, disappeared from the shelves. No longer available, as stated on the company's website.
Products are disappearing from Polish supermarkets with a Russian reference
An opera by Mussorgsky has also been removed from the program of the Polish National Theater in solidarity with the “heroic struggles of Ukrainians for their fatherland”, as the head of the theater put it.
A respected liberal writer lectures his followers on social media, “the Russians” are murderers and rapists. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge this and tries to differentiate is called an idiot.
After all, a prominent progressive journalist lets himself be tempted almost every day to post videos from the current events of the war. A grenade launcher is fired, and a cloud of smoke and fire rises from a Russian tank. The videos are sometimes accompanied by martial music, sometimes simply with a happy pop song and commented on as “good news”. Significantly, not only members of the regular Ukrainian armed forces are “celebrated” in this way, but also members of volunteer battalions, whose political views the journalist had recently found completely repugnant.
Violence that remains
I have seen wars that have become part of everyday life and pop culture in many other places. About twenty years ago, during my first trips to Lebanon, I noticed stickers on car windows. They showed an armed man in a heroic pose, with a submachine gun in one hand and the flag of the notorious Party of God (Hezbollah) in the other. When I followed up with one or the other vehicle owner, they said: I don't have to share the political views of the party, but they are fighting for the country's freedom.
Images of Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah and Mohammed Raad in Lebanon
I also remember hand-sewn dolls in national costumes, with a felt Kalashnikov on their arm, in San Christobal de las Casas, Mexico. At a time when social media was hardly a factor, they were marketed through a network of local stores where you could buy them, complete with a DVD about the struggle of the Zapatistas under Subcomandante Marcos.
South Lebanon and the south of Mexico are just two of numerous regions of the world that have been marked by war and violence for decades. Because wars that are becoming part of everyday life and have entered popular culture are very difficult to end. Once the violence is in our midst, it spreads inexorably. We all get used to the conflict and learn to live with it. With this comes the danger that it will be prolonged and intensified. With a war that has arrived in everyday life, Ukraine is not the only one facing a terrible fate.
Stanisław (Stan) Strasburger is a writer and cultural manager. His current novel “The Story Dealer” was published in German in 2018 (in Polish in 2009 and in Arabic in 2014). The author was born in Warsaw and lives alternately in Berlin, Warsaw and various Mediterranean cities.