Freedom-loving Don Cossacks, a country whose soil is soaked in blood, and a family trying to survive under different rulers. “Aleksandra” by Lisa Weeda draws a century panorama of Ukraine.
Author Lisa Weeda and her grandmother Aleksandra get along very well – but they haven't talked about Ukraine for a long time
She survived the Holodomor and was later deported to Germany by the Nazis as a foreign worker. After the Second World War, she built a new life in the Netherlands: the Ukrainian Aleksandra. She no longer liked going to her old homeland: “What else should I do there? I have to stare at graves every time I visit. And there are more and more.”
In the Netherlands “Aleksandra” is a customer
Aleksandra's granddaughter Lisa Weeda has named a book after her and interwoven her family's story with the fate of Ukraine. When the novel was published in the Netherlands in 2021, Russia had not yet launched its war of aggression against all of Ukraine. But Putin has been trying to destabilize the country for a long time.
Russian propaganda portrayed the Maidan protests for closer ties with the EU as a Western-sponsored coup, especially as pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych eventually fled the country. Russia used the unrest to annex the Crimean peninsula in 2014; At Easter in the Ukraine, the Donbas, the Russian-controlled people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk were proclaimed at the same time – both of which are not internationally recognized and have been fiercely fought over since then.
In the Palace of the Don Cossacks
Weeda's half-fictional, half-real novel begins when her protagonist, Lisa, wants to travel to Luhansk to search for her uncle Kolya's grave. Her grandmother asked her to put down a cloth there on which she had embroidered all the names of the family: red threads for life, black threads for death. The soldier at the checkpoint rejects her: “This cursed birthplace of your grandma It's not a country for a flying visit, it's too dangerous. Do swidanija (goodbye)!” he snaps at her.
A mock referendum was held in Luhansk in the fall of 2022; since then Putin has claimed the area as Russian territory
But Lisa manages to escape through a cornfield – and she suddenly ends up in the past: in the magical palace of the Don Cossacks. In its numerous rooms, Lisa travels through the century. “Each room shows part of the family history, but also part of the fate of Ukraine,” Lisa Weeda told DW. Always at her side: Her great-grandfather Nikolaj, who has longed for his daughter Aleksandra all his life and yet recommended that she stay in the West – safely – instead of living under Stalin's dictatorship.
The author became interested in the history of her ancestors only late. your Grandmother didn't talk about her life in Ukraine and the Soviet Union for a long time after getting married in the Netherlands, Lisa Weeda tells DW. Relatives often came to visit, but then we visited Amsterdam and the famous tulip fields. “I didn't know for a long time that Don Cossack blood flows in my veins” – not even what a Don Cossack actually is.
The Don Cossacks were considered excellent horsemen and warriors
She started researching: Weeda's maternal ancestors lived in the Donbas, they were free warriors who founded a kind of forerunner of the Ukrainian state in the 17th century, until it was crushed by the Tsarist Empire. They never wanted to be part of the Soviet Union and were therefore deported and murdered in droves. For today's Ukrainians, a Don Cossack is a hero who defends his homeland and never submits. And so the motto “We'd rather die free than in slavery” is the key sentence for Lisa Weeda in her novel. “But as I was writing I kept asking myself how best to show that it's not easy to be free when you're always oppressed?”
Dark clouds over the Donbas
The Dutch author has therefore decided on very special creatures that appear again and again in the book – deer with an arrow in the back: “They are strong animals, but they are also wounded. For me they symbolize the Donbas and Ukrainian history”, she says. “The deer are like the forefathers who know the fate of the country very well. They should take the reader by the hand and show him the way through the dark times.” And yet, as a reader, you are just as helpless as you are as a family member. “We can only watch from the sidelines as darker clouds descend on the Donbas.”
War has been raging in Donbas since 2014
Clouds that have been known in this region for centuries: “The side we were standing on kept shifting,” says Aleksandra's father Nikolaj in the book. It was never our decision.” His friend Oleg adds: “Too much blood has been wasted on our land, new earth must come over it, clean earth. But you don't give the soil any time.”
Famine and deportation
Back in the magical palace of the Don Cossacks, where Lisa sees her grandmother as a young girl. The time of the carefree childhood is short, soon Stalin's henchmen confiscate the harvests of the smallholders in order to drive them off their land as “kulaks” – alleged large landowners – in the end. The great famine begins: the genocide known as the Holodomor.
Golden yellow waving wheat fields to the horizon: this is how Aleksandra knew her homeland when she was a child
In the book, Lisa keeps being in danger of being spilled under colossal grains of grain as she moves through the palace. A symbol that the builders stole the grain to use the loot sold to build colossal buildings as a sign of power finance. “When I was in Moscow in 2018, I felt like a nothing. The monumental architecture kills you. And that Palace of the Soviet Union in my book Stalin really wanted to build, it was one of the most ambitious projects under his rule. It should be built in the heart of Moscow .”
But it didn't get that far. The Nazis invaded Ukraine. Many who had suffered endlessly under Stalin, including Nikolai's family, hoped for better times – a tragic fallacy. Like so many young girls, Aleksandra is snatched from her family and taken to Germany as forced labourers. After the war she married a Dutchman and returned to her old home for the first time in 1973.
Bad news for Aleksandra
Now Aleksandra is 98 years old. She has lived longer in the Netherlands than in Ukraine, but has always kept in touch with her family. “But the last few years have been very hard for her,” says her granddaughter. “She's still strong and would like to do everything on her own. But we lost Kolya and Igor. That was a big shock for her.” The two cousins were murdered, we learn in the book, because they contradicted the new rulers in Luhansk.
Not only soldiers, but also many civilians fell victim to the war in Luhansk
Aleksandra is also very concerned about the Russian attack on Ukraine – as well as the fact that her beloved relatives are on different sides. “Our blood keeps diverging, like the Donets (a river in east Ukraine, Editor's note), which separates us more and more, not only on the map…I don't know if we'll be able to pull ourselves together again in the end,” says her father Nikolaj in the book.
“Let's drink to peace!”
Lisa Weeda hopes that the war will end soon, but she also says: “For 20 years Russia has been brainwashed and the young generation really believes that Ukraine is a part of Russia. And in the completely destroyed Ukraine one is growing generation full of hatred for their neighbors. Those who live here must pay a high price. The wounds of this war will heal for at least half a century.”
Lisa Weeda is Dutch through and through, she says – but her heart also beats for Ukraine
There is a scene in the book where the Dutch part of the family visited relatives in Odessa. “We want you to feel love for our country despite the fragile situation here. Just like we do,” the uncle greets the guests. “Russian, Ukrainian, we're somewhere in between with our ancestors.” And then the vodka glasses are raised: “Let's drink to peace!” There are still many glasses to be emptied before peace finally reigns in Aleksandra's homeland.
The novel “Aleksanda” by Lisa Weeda will be published for the first time on February 24, 2023, on the anniversary of the war of aggression on Ukraine German language.