“Transcarpathian Dialogues” in Vynogradiv district: discussion of the highest openness (PHOTO)

It has been a long time since the assembly hall of Vynogradiv District Library was so crowded. And it is not surprising. Because Ukrainian literary elite came to the district to conduct "Transcarpathian Dialogues".
The project started from Uzhgorod, then they visited Beregovo and Vynogradiv districts.

In Vynogradiv, "Transcarpathian Dialogues" were conducted by well-known writers Andriy Kurkov from Kyiv, Galina Kruk and Galina Vdovichenko from Lviv, Mykhailo Roshko and Oleksandr Havrosh – representatives of Transcarpathia.

They started, of course, with the impressions of the city and Transcarpathia in general. Lviv writers said that they were jealous of local artists – in Transcarpathia, there is so much you can write about.

The purpose of these meetings is to establish the intellectual dialogue between the various cultures of national minorities living in the same area. The organizers want to unite the country in this way, to talk about what is happening today and now.

The theme of Vynogradiv "Transcarpathian Dialogues" is "Man between politics and culture." The writers were not talking about their works, it was not a presentation of their books.

First, the organizers were asking questions to each other, thus bringing the audience to debate, and there were many questions from the audience.

The most discussed topics were "ATO zone"; "How to forgive the enemy?"; "How to write now about what is not over yet?"

Galina Vdovichenko admitted: at one moment, she realized that she could not write anymore about what once had been interesting for her.  She had to write about what was troubling her at the time. All experiences, ruined lives and heroism of soldiers are described in her book "Mariupol process."

Andriy Kurkov told about his two trips to the ATO area and how literature brings back to something lighter. He recalled how he and his fellow writer organized a reading. Men with guns were sitting in the forefront and listened to poems about love… Not about war…

There was a question from the audience: will the ban on books and films in Russian change anything?

The organizers said that language is not the enemy, the enemy is in the head. Of course, when it is not a straight propaganda. Banning is the easiest thing, but making a decent Ukrainian-language product that would be interesting to the widest possible audience is a difficult task.

Andriy Kurkov said that Ukrainian-language books should be cheaper than Russian ones. This is how it can be popularized.