Raising Lyric Voices for Ukraine and for Freedom
ON SUNDAY 6 March 2022, some voices will be raised in Berlin—the voices of Nobel Laureates, dissident painters, essayists, poets, singers.
These voices will be raised for Ukraine, for freedom, for all of us who wish to live and wish other to live in the dignity of their own true, self-determined lives. And these voices will be raised against geopolitical thuggery, like the occupation of Ukraine; against absolutism and the violent imposition of narcissistic ideologies on a sovereign nation and its people. Lyric voices will be raised against the dark machinery of oppression. Voices will be raised for freedom, a sacred human right, and the language in which and for which literature speaks
The event is organised by Uli Schreiber and the good brave people at the Berlin International Literature Festival. It was my privilege to be their guest in 2018, and I stand with them, and with this impressive cast of writers, in decrying the abomination that is the invasion of Ukraine, a dilapidated and brutal land grab, justified on the most flimsy of assertions. Any such power play merits condemnation by all who can still think freely. It will always attract the resistance of writers, whose mission is to speak for all that, in a human life, is wild and free and holy and intolerable to those who mistake power for life. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is no less repugnant than any other such military invasion in history. But it is happening on our watch, so we must rise and speak and write against it. And so these writers will do on Sunday in Berlin
The invasion of Ukraine is an assault on the people of Ukraine, a deprivation of their lives and freedoms; but it also imperils, as Schreiber and the others at Berlin have written, all our freedoms. And freedom itself as we have known it in much of the world since the end of the last war. This invasion by one European power of another undoes seventy years of the rule of international law on that continent and across much of the world. If we have had the privilege of free speech and civil rights and democratic government and freedom of travel—and peace—we have had these freedoms, which we take as our rights, as the rights of all humans, because since 1945, peace has held. Neighbours have respected the sovereignty of their neighbours. Prosperity and personal liberty have depended on this sustained peace, which is now broken.
Putin’s invasion sets an especially dangerous precedent in an era when anti-democratic authoritarian sentiments are on the rise in the West and in the East. And this is a nuclear world. The atrocities committed upon Ukraine are appalling to watch, but image the wasteland our world would become if a conventional war escalates as Putin has threatened, or if someone makes a mistake such as all wars witness, and a nuclear power plant is in range.
If you’re in Berlin or nearby, bet along. I’ll post the details below, as they came to me from the festival. There’s a live feed you can find your way to if you check out the event on their Facebook page. (The time corresponds to 12 midnight on the east coast of Australia, where I am.)
For your and for our freedom!
Voices on the War in Ukraine – live
Sunday, 6 March 2022, 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Bebelplatz, Berlin
We cannot wait any longer. Since the early morning of 24 February 2022, Putin has been waging war against the independent country of Ukraine and its people. Soldiers and tanks are invading the country. Putin targets cities with missiles and bombs. The stages of his warfare are known from history: siege, destruction, annihilation. We know them from Grozny and Aleppo.
Putin's attack on Ukraine is the attack on a country that is historically, linguistically, and culturally a Europe in miniature. Naturally, it is bilingual and multi-confessional. Kiev, Odessa, Lviv, and Kharkiv are European metropolises that have survived all the catastrophes of the 20th century, first that of Stalinism, then that of German rule. Now war and terror have returned to Ukraine.
Despite censorship and propaganda, the truth about this war will also reach Russia. The images of the bombings in the center of Kharkiv, of the clouds of smoke over the residential districts of Kiev, of the dead and of the millions on the run.
Be it in Warsaw, Paris, Sarajevo or Berlin: we must not remain silent. We must stand by the attacked in words and deeds. It is a war, two hours' flight from Berlin. We must name the perpetrators of war crimes. We must not refuse our help to those fleeing violence and war. And when we feel powerless and speechless, we must listen to the voices of others.
Let us demonstrate our sympathy and solidarity with the people of Ukraine. Let us listen to their voices. Let us put into words what we feel in the moment of need and connect with each other across borders: analog and digital, with words and music, in the open space, in the center of Berlin.
In the fight for your freedom and for ours!
Karl Schlögel, Gerd Koenen, Claus Leggewie, Katharina Raabe, Manfred Sapper, Ulrich Schreiber, Wolfgang Klotz
Keynotes – analog or digital – among others by:
Swetlana Alexijewitsch
Yuriy Gurzhy
Yevgenia Belorusets
Juri Andruchowytsch
Jurko Prohasko
Katja Petrowskaja
Serhiy Zhadan
Kateryna Mishchenko
Dževad Karahasan
Mariana Sadovska
Wolf Biermann
Ai Weiwei
Mario Vargas Llosa
Irina Bondas
Martin Pollack
Walter Tomuschat
Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Navid Kermani
Timothy Garton Ash
