Volodya & Vika – The American Spectator

Each morning we remind ourselves of all the lives that have been lost.
In the afternoon, we savor the sun shining outside the window.
The fresh grass rising up among dead rocks.
And in the evening we remind ourselves once again
Of all the lives that have been lost. 
— Serhiy Zhadan, “Three years now we’ve been talking about the war” (2017)

I

The forest-girt village of Kapytolivka is situated on the easterly side of the Siverskyi Donets River, not far from the city of Izyum in Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast. It is a modest, unpretending settlement where time has stood relatively still, boasting of a nursery school and a high school, a general store and a commercial bakery, a post office and a grand total of eight bus stops. Occupying pride of place in Kapytolivka is what surely ranks as one of the prettiest churches in all Ukraine, the classically-styled, azure blue-painted Saint Varvara’s, a sort of Taj Mahal erected in 1823 by Peter Stepanovich Kotlyarevsky in loving memory of his wife, Varvara Ivanovna, who had died in agony during childbirth. Kapytolivka, huddled in the shade of Saint Varvara’s graceful dome and dignified bell tower, has one other claim to fame, for it was here that the renowned poet, novelist, children’s writer, and activist Volodymyr Volodymyrovych Vakulenko was born in 1972.

The philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda found a refuge in Pan-Ivanivka, the poet Ivan Kotliarevsky had his cottage in Poltava, Lesya Ukrainka produced some of her finest verses in the Green Grove near Hadiach, while the exiled national bard Taras Shevchenko dreamt of a writer’s retreat in Pekari; Volodymyr Vakulenko, for his part, had his cherished native village, where he lived for nearly half a century. So enamored was he with Kapytolivka that he signed his name Volodymyr Vakulenko-K. in its honor (though that abbreviation’s association with Franz Kafka’s protagonists in Der Proceß and Das Schloß can hardly be ignored). It was in Kapytolivka that he penned the poems, short stories, and novels that would earn him awards including the Silver Trident, the Golden Trident, the Oles Ulyanenko International Literary Prize, and the top spot in the Les Martovych All-Ukrainian Competition. It was in Kapytolivka that he organized literary festivals and helped publish almanacs and magazines. It was in Kapytolivka that he cared for his autistic son Vitalik. It was in Kapytolivka that he tended to his lush garden overflowing with irises and ferns and fruit trees. And it was in Kapytolivka that Volodymyr Volodymyrovych Vakulenko — Volodya to those that knew him best — would lose his life. (RELATED: Ukraine Is More Alive Than Ever, While Its Enemy Is Rotting From the Inside Out)

In his youth, Vakulenko had been conscripted into the Soviet-era military, only to be subjected to severe beatings that left him with lifelong disabilities. His parlous physical state was worsened still by head trauma suffered while participating in the 2014 Maidan Uprising, so when the Russian army invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, there was no question of the forty-nine year-old Vakulenko taking up arms. What was more, Vitalik’s autism spectrum disorder precluded his leaving home for the sake of an unfamiliar life as a refugee, so the family made the difficult decision to remain together in an increasingly beleaguered Kapytolivka. Like his fellow writer in nearby Kharkiv, Serhiy Zhadan, Vakulenko’s service to the nation would take the form of volunteer work, collecting money and supplies for his fellow villagers, and for Ukrainian soldiers stationed at nearby checkpoints. In his spare time he continued writing, maintaining a diary written with a looping hand in red, black, and blue ballpoint ink, filling every last centimeter of his graph paper with daily observations, philosophical musings, and unstinting self-examination. (READ MORE: Keep Fighting, Ukraine. You Will Prevail)

The reverberations of artillery salvoes and counter-battery fire shook the ground more and more each day as the fighting approached, wrote Vakulenko in his diary, “like an angry viper crawling closer and closer to my hometown.” Initially the poet took a modicum of comfort in the constant explosions, which he supposed were “even pleasing to hear during the occupation, depending on the direction. If there were battles, it means that the city is standing, it means that our boys are alive.” Kharkiv held out against incredible odds, but Kapytolivka and Izyum eventually fell to the invaders, who proceeded to set up roadblocks and conduct house-to-house searches. Vakulenko complained of how “they were constantly searching, even empty bags … I was terribly upset that my nerves could not stand such humiliation,” while lamenting that “any kind of heroism, such as stopping an armored personnel carrier, takes place in big cities, and we are a small village, where the maximum that can be done is to gather patriotic people — no more than 2-3 people. I knew this for a long time, so I lived as a hermit.” 

Given his history as a prominent Maidan activist, Vakulenko presented an obvious target for the occupiers, but he continued to make life as comfortable as possible for his son, while volunteering in the community and carefully recording his wartime experiences with his trusty biros. On March 21, 2022, which happened to be World Poetry Day, Vakulenko caught sight of a sedge of cranes returning from their winter migration. In Ukrainian folklore the zhuravel, or common crane, is a symbol of exile and longing for the motherland, but also a welcome portent of spring and rebirth, so the birds’ arrival seemed like an omen of sorts after nearly a month of war and occupation. The poet made the following entry, which turned out to be his last:

At first, I dreamed of numbers, old calendars, my friends, and the boys [Ukrainian soldiers], as if I were hugging them, meeting them. I’m afraid to think what happened to them. In the first days of the occupation, I gave up a little because of my half-starved state in general. Now I have pulled myself together, even worked in the garden a little and brought potatoes into the house. Birds chirp only in the morning … Finally, in the evening, music on my cell phone saves me. And today, on the Day of Poetry, a small flock of cranes congratulated me from the sky, seeming to say: “Vse bude Ukraïna [Everything will be Ukraine]!” I believe in victory!

The very next day, five Russian soldiers arrived at the Vakulenko household. Volodymyr’s father, also named Volodymyr, answered the door, and was asked: “Where is your nationalist?” Volodymyr and his son Vitalik were taken away, their rooms ransacked, and their books, phones, and computers confiscated. Vakulenko’s captors threatened to shoot him in the kneecaps, but by evening he and his traumatized son had been released. The writing was very much on the wall, and Vakulenko acted quickly when day broke the following morning, taking his thirty-six page diary, rolling it into a canister, wrapping the container in a plastic bag, and burying it all beneath a cherry tree in the leaf-filled garden bed, instructing his father to unearth the document only when Ukrainian forces had liberated Kapytolivka. 

Russian paramilitaries returned a day later, on March 24, 2022, in a vehicle emblazoned with the fascistic “Z” symbol, to abduct the Ukrainian writer for a second and final time. Never again would Volodya be seen among the living, and never again would Volodya see his son, his parents, his house, his mementoes, his manuscripts, or his beloved village of Kapytolivka.

II

On September 24, 2022, the Ukrainian poet, novelist, and essayist Victoria Yuriivna Amelina — Vika to those who knew her best — arrived in Kapytolivka, and was welcomed into the grief-stricken Vakulenko family home. Volodymyr’s parents, Olena and Volodymyr, led her into the garden, which six months after their son’s disappearance had become an untamed, tangled riot of greenery. Amelina’s visit to Vakulenko’s native village was made possible by the stunningly successful Ukrainian Kharkiv counteroffensive, which had begun eighteen days earlier and had liberated some five hundred settlements, including Izyum and Kapytolivka. Once it was deemed sufficiently safe, Amelina could venture to this remote corner of Kharkiv Oblast in order to fulfill the terms of Volodymyr Vakulenko’s final wish, that his diary be disinterred once his hometown had been freed from Russia’s murderous clutches.

It took several hours of scrabbling and digging out shovel test pits in the Vakulenkos’ garden, but the diary was eventually discovered in its hiding place beneath one of the cherry trees. Despite being entirely…