Looking at Women Looking at War - A Review
How does one save their nation’s cultural identity in the face of a foreign invader? This is one of the questions posed in the unfinished war diary, LOOKING AT WOMEN LOOKING AT WAR, by the late Victoria Amelia.
When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started on February 22nd, 2022, Victoria was on a trip in Egypt to see the pyramids with her 11-year-old son, Andriy. Leaving Andriy behind in Poland, she crossed back into Ukraine two days after Russian tanks rolled into her country’s borders. This decision of Victora’s to return back to her homeland proved to be one of the more difficult aspects of the book to understand at first.
Who willingly faces war when they can remain somewhere else in relative safety? Why run headfirst into a hostile invasion of one’s country if one does not have to? The reasoning behind Victoria’s decision to return to Ukraine is one of the more intriguing aspects of her war diary. Anyone who claims that Ukraine does not have an identity of its own separate from Russia must read this book, and would only shy away from LOOKING AT WOMEN LOOKING AT WAR so that they can maintain their firm yet mistaken belief of this war’s justification.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, Victoria was a well known and respected Ukrainian writer. She was a member of PEN International, and was offered a UK publishing deal for her book, Dom’s Dream Kingdom. She had a nice apartment in Kyiv and had traveled around the world to give speeches on various cultural icons of Ukraine.
Yet when Russia decided to invade Ukraine, Victoria did not flee a conflict that would inevitably lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of her countrymen. Instead, she left her son safe in Poland with her aunt and grandmother (a home she would have surely been welcomed to also stay), and re-entered Ukraine to become a war crimes researcher. Her focus was upon women, mostly Ukrainian artists, as they dealt with Russia’s brutal assault of their homeland. These women’s attempts to save cultural artifacts of Ukraine which Russia was and is currently trying to erase is described in profound detail throughout Victoria’s war diary. Small libraries containing books that had not been put into digital form so that if they are destroyed, the words written within would be lost forever. Paintings that reveal the history of Ukraine that are literally irreplaceable. Local museums housing the culture of Ukraine. Homes where famous Ukrainian philosophers lived. Nationally recognized poets and writers living in villages that were being overtaken by Russian forces. Some of these artists fled deeper into Ukraine to Kyiv or nearby cities. Those who stayed behind in Russian occupied territories for one reason or another were killed with bullets to the head, and then buried in mass graves.
LOOKING AT WOMEN LOOKING AT WAR reaffirms a basic truth that humans are coming to terms with as a species: war is pointless. We are no longer primates in the forests throwing excrement at each other. We have moved past the effectiveness of taking our neighbor’s lands and resources by force. Though the history of humans is the history of warfare, the future of mankind rests in working together, in putting aside our differences so that we do not completely destroy ourselves with our world-ending weapons of mass destruction. Victoria Amelina’s act of recording war crimes was an attempt to bring justice where injustice was committed, but her book also serves as a warning to those who have outlived her. LOOKING AT WOMEN LOOKING AT WAR is a guide on how not to treat other human beings, on what not to do to another nation which is simply trying to exist.
Before Victoria Amelina’s death, she was awarded a year-long residency in Paris in June 2023, which she had planned on taking to complete her war diary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Instead of staying safe in Kyiv until her departure to France, she decided to travel to Kherson one more time to record the story of the wife of the conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko, who had allegedly been killed by Russian forces. As she sat in Kramatorsk at a pizzeria with a delegation of Colombian authors after a long day, a Russian missile hit the building, killing 64 people and severely injuring Victoria, who died on July 1st, 2023.
The question one is forced to ask in reading of her demise is what was the point? What was solved by her death? Is the future of humankind improved by this writer being killed in a missile attack?
For those soldiers who pressed the button that sent the missile, for those generals who ordered the attack on that city, are their lives now better as a result that a woman who was an author was killed while eating a slice of pizza in the late evening?
LOOKING AT WOMEN LOOKING AT WAR is an unfinished manuscript by Victoria Amelina. Instead of ending in an epilogue, the war diary ends in her translated poem, simply titled Poem About a Crow. The first stanza is thus:
In a barren springtime field
Stands a woman dressed in black
Crying her sister’s names
Like a bird in the empty sky
