Odesa
Who Does My Language Belong To? This is the title of a documentary I recently made in Czech about the rich and complex relationship between language and national identity. I was motivated to make the documentary after the Russian president claimed the right to Odesa as a Russian city – at the same time as bombing its citizens. In the 1990s this was a place I visited often, and I knew that if anyone did not have the right to claim possession of this wonderful international city on the Black Sea coast of Ukraine, it was Vladimir Putin. The Odesa of Isaac Babel no more belongs to Putin than the city of Kafka to Hitler.
In Who Does My Language Belong To? I look at some of the many ways in which language and national identity overlap – from Ireland to Switzerland, via Prague, Odesa and Cardiff. Ireland has produced no less than four winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. All of them wrote in the language of the colonizers – making the language their own. And here’s another paradox. We often hear about the historical rivalry between Czech and German Prague, but we tend to forget that the pre-war German culture of Prague was mostly Jewish, including every director of the New German Theatre in its fifty-five-year history. In claiming to liberate Prague as a “German” city, Hitler destroyed for ever its German-language culture. Vladimir Putin is doing something very similar with Russian in Ukraine.
There are models of the multilingual nation that can work. Everybody mocks Switzerland (not least Harry Lime, who falsely claims it to be the home of the cuckoo clock), but this country, with its four national languages, is one of the wealthiest and most stable in the world – and let’s not forget that Switzerland is a country where no less than 40% of the permanent resident adult population has a migration background. Clearly they have got something right.
As part of my documentary Who Does My Language Belong To? I recorded several interviews in English, including with my old friend Thomas de Waal, whose family has roots in Odesa, and with whom I visited the city in 1994. His knowledge of the post-Soviet space, especially Ukraine, Russia and the Caucasus is immense. Here is the interview I recorded with Tom in his garden in north London. I particularly like the part where he talks about Pushkin.
Interview with Thomas de Waal:
How Things Were Done in Odesa
Back in 1995 I made a documentary for BBC Radio 3 about Odesa, and in particular the city’s greatest literary son, Isaac Babel. Much has changed since then, but I hope it captures something of the spirit of this most resilient of cities. I recently came across it again on an old cassette…