u/Auri_Nat

For very relevant context, her side of the family is/has been Catholic, though non-religious/practicing. Regardless, she views religion as something bad: the cause of most wars (past and present), a justification for discrimination and hatred, and especially as a way of subjugating women (tonight, she specifically said "as a feminist"). I'm not saying that she doesn't have a point, to some extent, but I'd rather blame the individuals who wield religion as a tool to do harm with than religion itself.

To her, there's nothing good to be found with religion, except maybe community, but that apparently comes hand-in-hand with extremism, which is bad! (Alternatively, she's proud of the time that a then-boyfriend told her that she, a non-religious individual, behaved more Catholic-like than religious Catholics he'd previously dated. Ugh.)

Anyways, we spent a portion of dinner arguing about antisemitism, Israel, and everything in between. It started when she brought up the NYT as a reputable source and I couldn't help my reaction of disbelief. I bought up Kristof's "opinion piece," she said that she was near tears/devastated by it, and even that, yes, dogs have been used to rape people throughout history. Which, what?? Since when?? What are your sources?!

I went into how the NYT was standing by him and she went into how he's such a reputable journalist, she has no reason to not believe him. Besides, attention must be brought to the sexual violence that Israel perpetrates against Palestinians! I'm not saying that that's never happened, but, again, what. Has she never seen Sde Teiman in the news? I sure have! And for a pretty long time too, and even now on an occasional basis!

I brought up how a comprehensive, 300-page report on the sexual violence that Hamas perpetrated against Israelis on Oct. 7 and, later, the hostages, was published the very next day, and she said that that had already gotten plenty of attention. I felt like I was losing my mind. NGOs and other humanitarian organizations, including at the UN, took way too long to even acknowledge this subject in the first place (#MeTooUnlessUrAJew). And how can she not know that there are still many people who do not believe this happened? Or, potentially worse, that it was justified? That there are people asking for pictures and videos before they'll believe it (they still wouldn't), as if these victims, survivors, and their loved ones, haven't suffered enough?

Anyways, she admitted to seeing headlines about this report, but not actually reading any articles about it. She didn't have that problem with Kristof's piece. And it's been over a year since I sent her one article about Russian sexual violence against Ukrainians, and she has still not gotten to it. She also couldn't answer my question about the last time major/legacy media covered general sexual violence in prison (or outside of it) in any country other than Israel.

She started talking about how it's not just her, but her well-educated and informed friends too. One of them works at the UN (she has told me this so, so many times, like that's supposed to make her friend the ultimate arbiter) and is, apparently, both Jewish and utterly appalled at what is going on. Another has Jewish heritage (from her maternal grandmother), and similarly horrified. I asked if this friend was involved in her community, if she practiced at all, etc., and my mom eventually said that this friend is actually Christian. But, because her grandmother was Jewish, her opinion as a Jew counts!! Just what is going on here!?

I brought up the fact that Israel has been condemned/criticized by over 150 UN GA resolutions in the last decade, with the second-most condemned/criticized country being Russia, by receiving 32 resolutions within the same period (and they not only started their war, but are also doing a far better job at committing genocide than Israel (and no, Israel is not committing genocide)). There are 11 resolutions for Syria, 10 for Iran, 10 for North Korea, 10 for Myanmar, and one for Afghanistan. Add up all the other countries condemned/criticized by UN GA resolutions, and it isn't even close to how many times Israel has gotten them. My dad finally jumped in and said that the UN is biased against Israel.

My mom moved onto how Israel intentionally targets journalists. Personally, I wouldn't mind being a journalist myself, one day. I know that the job comes with risks, including death. For example, there's Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered, most likely by the Russian state, for what she had been writing. But when I see videos of Palestinian journalists who exchange their vests for guns, or vice versa, well, I struggle to care much about this issue. (I know that sounds bad. But I am so, so tired of having to be neutral and care about everyone, when that's just not possible. I'm just tired.) Some of the rescued hostages were being kept in the home of a journalist, and my mom says that that maybe happened. That's what they say happened.

She always says stuff like "Israel is doing horrible things," and I just wish she'd be a bit more specific. The Israeli government is one thing, and I do think that they're pretty awful. But generalizing comments like that to Israel itself condemns not only the government, but everyone else too. It also condemns the people who support Israel continuing to exist. Which is, somehow, stunningly, a very fierce point of contention for so many people who, incredibly, sure don't care as much about actual ethnostates or other religious states (no Jews, no news).

Now, she has noticed that there's an increase in antisemitic hate crimes. I pointed out that there were more antisemitic hate crimes than hate crimes against all other groups combined, and she can read the FBI's reports on that, but, apparently, it's not that bad. She doesn't know at all about the protests that have been going on in NYC (where I grew up and still visit) recently, about the guy wearing a fake suicide vest or individuals waving terrorist flags as they marched past Jewish residences (not the Israeli consulate, but Jewish residences). She hasn't seen that video of a Jewish woman being pulled to the ground or that other video of a masked man intentionally flashing a strobe light in a Jewish boy's face. I couldn't even get to that second example with how exasperated she was by the first. Either I'm making this up, or the "propagandists" (read: pro-Jewish/pro-Israel individuals and groups) I follow are. At a minimum, they're blowing this stuff way out of proportion.

Just, I look Jewish enough, I frequent Jewish establishments, and I'm working to become more involved in my community. My mom, who is very much against me doing that, doesn't seem to get that the next video could feature me. She doesn't know about any of this and doesn't seem to want to. After all, it's only on social media, and, apparently, I follow propagandists. Fine. But it's not like the NYT isn't biased either.

And, again, it's always Israel this, Israel that. She said tonight that Hamas being bad/evil is a given. That everyone knows that, so there's no point in reminding them of it, especially when there's other stuff (like Israel) to focus on. I didn't know how to respond to that, initially. She definitely hasn't seen the protestors who shout "I am Hamas" and similar comments. I brought that up, and she said that every movement has its "crackpots," and I shouldn't judge the merit of the whole by the actions of a very few. Funny, I guess she's never heard the saying that if there's a Nazi at the table and ten other people sitting there, talking to him, there's a table with eleven Nazis.

Also, it is not just a few crackpot individuals. Way too many people support Hamas. As for the whole mentality that it's not worth acknowledging that Hamas is terrible, well, I'm not going to risk assuming that you're not doing so because you agree with that statement and don't want to waste your breath on it. I'm going to assume that you're not doing so because you disagree with that statement. And if you support Hamas, then I'm scared and feel threatened by you. Furthermore, that mentality helps pro-Hamas folks by making them think that they have more people supporting them than they actually do because there are fewer speaking out against Hamas!!

I'm just so tired.

And, listen. I am so excited to be exploring this part of my identity (my paternal great-grandparents and grandparents assimilated out of fear when they got to/grew up in the US), but I can't talk to my mom about any of it. I want to, but it just turns into an argument about how I'll be subjugated, as a woman, and ultimately unhappy. About how I'll be putting myself at risk, because being Jewish is inherently dangerous (oh, the irony). I won't have my bat mitzvah anytime soon, but given how things are now, between us re. this subject, I just don't know if it'll be worth inviting her and the plus-one of her opinions. But she's still my mom and I want here there.

Meanwhile, I'm baffled by how she just glanced over my brother's recent birthright trip to Israel and bar mitzvah ceremony during it. She even oohed and aahed over the certificate he got. Then again, he's not interested in the religious aspect of it, whereas I am.

I just don't what to do.

...Well, at least this was cathartic. Hope this was somewhat comprehensible.

(Very long post, sorry, but I've been thinking about this for a while.)

Anne Applebaum describes him as "a Ukrainian who wrote in Russian." Paul Robert Magocsi is more exacting, and describes him as "a Ukrainian who published only in Russian" (italic emphasis mine).

Magocsi also points out/clarifies that he is "perhaps too simplistically described in the literature as russified and therefore of little or no interest to the evolution of the Ukrainian national revival," and instead categorizes Gogol as a Little Russian representing one "of multiple loyalties present in many national revivals, including the Ukrainian."

Olga Andriewsky, meanwhile, lists him as one of many "Ukrainians who sought their fame and fortune in the Russian capitals and made their careers by serving as cultural mediators between Ukraine and educated Russian society. [...] Implicitly if not explicitly, their work tended to minimize or aestheticize differences between Russia and Ukraine and thus to discount the inherent autonomy or 'otherness' of the Ukrainian historical and cultural experience."

She states that "it was the ability of these Ukrainian writers to interpret and order—and ultimately tame the Ukrainian experience so as to make it accessible to a Russian audience that became a key to their literary success."

On the one hand, Gogol wrote in Russian (and so his works are translated from Russian), spent a lot of time in the Russian Empire (St. Petersburg), and died in the Russian Empire (Moscow). He undeniably contributed to Russian literature and culture.

On the other hand, he was born in the former Hetmanate/modern Ukraine, into a Ukrainian (and Polish) family. I'm pretty sure he had Cossack heritage. Also (per my understanding, which might be wrong—research aside, I've only read Dead Souls), at least some of his works were based in Ukraine (to him, the lands currently inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians, maybe the former Hetmanate, maybe even Kievan/Kyivan Rus'; to us, all of those, but also modern-day Ukraine). At least some of them definitely incorporated the "Ukrainian experience." Essentially, the nuances of a people who were not Russian.

If Gogol, someone with Ukrainian heritage, born and raised in that milieu, wrote about Ukrainian life using that very background, then wouldn't he be a Ukrainian literary figure? Even if he wrote in Russian? Even if his politics were those of a Little Russian, rather than, say, a Ukrainophile/Ukrainian populist (I'm using those terms in the context of 19th-century politics)?

Taras Shevchenko didn't seem to think so: "They give us the example of Gogol, who wrote not in his own language but in Russian, or Walter Scott, who did not write in his own language." But what about you guys today? Do you share the same sentiments? Do you perceive him to be more a Russian literary figure than a Ukrainian one? Is he a Ukrainian one at all??

On a related note is Andriewsky's comparison of then-contemporary Russian reviews vs. then-contemporary Ukrainian reviews of Gogol's works:

• Russian reviews:
  • "As the reviewer for Severnaia pchela (Northern Bee), Russia's most widely read newspaper, remarked on reading Gogol's Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan'ki (Evenings at a Farmstead near Dykanka, 1831), the 'Little Russian school' of writers was to be applauded for abandoning its efforts 'to preserve in all their purity the peculiarities of their dialect and the originality of a long-past lifestyle' and for leaving behind 'this … too local goal, and turn[ing] to deeper thought …”
  • "Russian critics such as Vissarion Belinsky praised Gogol as a genius for finding the 'universal and human' in Little Russian life."
• Ukrainian reviews:
  • "By contrast, the Ukrainian literary critic Andrii Storozhenko criticized the short stories for their many ethnographic, historical, and linguistic inaccuracies. Storozhenko believed that the Russian reviewers had praised Gogol's stories because 'in all likelihood they were unfamiliar with the ordinary way of life of the inhabitants of Little Russia.'"
  • "This view was echoed years later by Panteleimon Kulish. 'If the Russian reading public were educated in its native Slavic culture so as to be able to read Kvitka and Shevchenko freely, as familiar Slavic poets, then in those perfected mirrors of national sensibility, custom and tradition they would recognize the scandalous errors of Gogol's stories and would regret all the words that were wasted on shining ghosts from an inauthentic world.'"

First of all, fuck that first reviewer and his "deeper thought" comment. Second of all, apparently Gogol actually didn't know what (or how to write about what) Ukrainian life was really like, despite growing up that way. Wild.

Regardless, do these very different receptions also reflect modern sentiments? Do Russian readers notice the Ukrainian particularities in Gogol's works? Do Ukrainian readers consider them to be accurate?

On yet another note, and I'm getting very fundamental/technical here, but what about the transliteration of his name? My English-language copy of Dead Souls spells his name as Nikolai Gogol on the cover. Given that it's a translation of an originally-Russian text, it makes sense that the translator/editor/publisher would use the Russian transliteration of his name. And if he only wrote in Russian, then it also makes sense that the translations of his other texts have used and continue to use the Russian transliteration. The obvious result of this is that the general literary public knows Nikolai Gogol as, well, Nikolai Gogol. A Russian author, at least on the surface.

Should they, though? I get translations of his works attributing credit to "Nikolai Gogol," since they themselves were written in Russian. But is there an argument to be made for using the Ukrainian transliteration instead? Or is that just performative politics?

(Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't his name in Ukrainian written as Микола Гоголь? Mikola (or Mikolai? Mykola/Mykolai??) is not the same as Nikolai. I've also seen his last name transliterated from Ukrainian as >!Hohol!<, but I'm pretty sure that that's a slur. Point is, how different even is his name transliterated from Russian vs. from Ukrainian?)

———

Sources (in order of appearance):

Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine (Anne Applebaum)

The Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism: Galicia as Ukraine's Piedmont (Paul Robert Magocsi)

"The Russian-Ukrainian Discourse and the Failure of the 'Little Russian Solution,' 1782–1917" in Culture, Nation, and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter, 1600–1945 (Olga Andriewsky)

The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (Serhii Plokhy), for the Shevchenko quote