Russian language and culture in new Ukraine: a threat to avert or a treasure to cherish? Talk with Andrei Kurkov
Date and time:
Thursday 29 March, 2018
19:00 - 20:30
Location:
Ukrainian Institute London
79 Holland Park
London
W11 3SW
As Russia deployed a far-reaching information warfare against Ukraine and a whole arsenal of soft power tools in the aftermath of its military aggression, it reignited new questions about the role of Russian language and culture in shaping a new Ukrainian identity. The issue is complex and multi-layered: what role should Russian language play in contemporary Ukraine, as it is the language of an aggressor while a large chunk of Ukraine’s population speaks it daily? Should Ukraine embrace this fact rather fight against it? Should it encourage Ukrainian literature in Russian? Should one be worried this literature will be seized upon as a soft power tool and made a part of “Russian world” (“Russkiy Mir”) by the Kremlin?
This talk will be moderated by Marina Pesenti, Director, Ukrainian Institute London.
This event will be held in English.
FREE
Speaker
Andrei Kurkov
Andrei Kurkov is the author of 19 novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin, 9 books for children, and about 20 documentary, fiction and TV movie scripts. His work is currently translated into 37 languages, including English, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Swedish and Hebrew, and published in 65 countries. Kurkov’s novels are “full of a sort of parodic wisdom that you would be foolish to take very seriously and even more foolish to take entirely unseriously,” wrote Daily Telegraph in 2013. He comments extensively on Ukraine in English- and French-speaking media.
