Igort (Cagliari, 1958) still did not know how to read or write when his grandmother and father read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to him. There was no Russian ancestry in the family, but his passion for Soviet literature was passed down from generation to generation. So much so that, despite being Italian through and through, the cartoonist and comic book writer had his heart divided from a very young age, because he felt that he had two homelands, culturally speaking. Therefore, in his works he added a t to his original name, Igor, to Russify it.
With these precedents, it is not difficult to understand that the Sardinian author feels very closely the conflict that has been brewing for a long time between Russia and Ukraine and that a little more than a year ago unleashed the war. A cruel resolution that led him to write the graphic novel Ukrainian Notebooks. Diary of an invasion, which he presented this weekend at the Cómic Barcelona room.
“When the Kremlin opened fire on Ukraine on February 24, I shuddered. What we had feared so much was happening before our eyes. There were many naive people who believed that Putin was not going to take the step and I do not understand why. Boris Yeltsin’s crusade in Chechnya was followed by a second war that destroyed the territory. Years later, he entered the Crimea. How did the intellectuals not see that the next thing was going to be to invade the Ukraine? It is probable that they did not want to see itâ€, reflects the author during an interview with La Vanguardia.
As the days progressed, the news became pessimistic and Igort’s anguish increased. The cartoonist has many friends in Ukraine. As ironic as it may seem, he met them during a trip he made years ago to see the houses of a Russian writer, Chekhov. “He had many but his favorite was the one he had in Yalta, Crimea,†he recounts. And there he left. He followed his unwritten rule to avoid hotels and lived with Ukrainian families for several months.
The experience was such that he put aside the literary project that had led him there and ended up creating the famous Russian and Ukrainian Notebooks, a graphic report that earned him applause from the public and opened the doors of the publishing market in different countries. . “What he did not expect was to have to talk again about the relationship between the two countries because of a war. Without a doubt, this is the most difficult book I have ever faced, â€he admits.
It was not something premeditated. “The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. My friends called to report what was happening. At first I didn’t know how to assimilate all that information but I thought it would be a good idea to put it on Facebook. A good journalist friend asked me why she didn’t do a new graphic novel about it but she didn’t see me capable. I was too attached to that story and had many good friends in both countries. But the calls continued and the networks fell short, so I started little by little and, after five pages drawn, I couldn’t stop â€, she explains.
Although it was an arduous task, the cartoonist did his best to distance himself to see everything with greater perspective. “I understood then that this is not a war of Russia against Ukraine, but of the Kremlin, in which two ways of seeing the world are facing each other. One is that of the autocrat who does what he wants and if you disagree, he sends you to Siberia or poisons you. The other is us, the West, where we vote to elect our presidents. Something that Putin has not quite entered his head, since he himself revealed himself a few years ago during an official speech in which he dared to affirm that the Slavic man was not made for democracy.
Told from a purely human perspective, the book reflects some curiosities, such as the salvation of palianytsia, a baked bread that makes it possible to identify camouflaged invaders. “It’s a word that Russians pronounce differently and that makes Ukrainians know who is hiding under a hidden identity.” Also the experiences of those who are in occupied territory. “My friend Anatoli, who lives in Donbas, has ten more TV channels, all in Russian, but he gets depressed when he hears the presenter on talk shows saying that it is impossible to re-educate Ukrainians and that the only way to kill them is is to exterminate them. A phrase that, surprising as it may seem, is repeated more and more.
Faced with this scenario, the cartoonist makes a wish: “Not having to write a third book. That will mean that everything will be over. But for now, that key that allows peace is held by China â€, he concludes.
