Russian 71 Students Write a Novel in Russian

Students in Creative Writing in Russian (Russian 71, W17) collaboratively wrote a 140-page long epistolary novel (a novel in letters). The events of the novel take place in Ukraine and Russia during the recent Euromaidan revolution of 2013-2014.

Students in Creative Writing in Russian (Russian 71, W17) – Allyssa Austin, Kaley Daleske, Timothy Messen, Luka Pejanovic, Charles Springer, and Misha Tovmashenko – collaboratively wrote a 140-page long epistolary novel (a novel in letters) titled War and Us (Война и мы, which is a play on the title of Tolstoy’s Война и мир). The action takes place in Ukraine and Russia during the recent Euromaidan revolution of 2013-2014. While the characters are fictional, they are a composite cross section of the participants, both willing and unwilling: ordinary people of various ages, professions, personalities, and political or national affiliations. The characters have different positions on the conflict and debate their evolving responses to the real life historical events in a series of (email) letters.

Written entirely in Russian and composed of over 120 letters, the three sections of Война и мы are named after the major action-sites in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict: Maidan, Crimea, and Donbass. Full color front and back covers were created especially for the short print run of Война и мы by an artist in Lithuania who was displaced from Ukraine by the events narrated in the novel. All the participants received a bound copy and an additional one is available in the Russian Department seminar room. Creative Writing in Russian will be offered again this fall and built around a different topic – if you are interested in collaborative creative writing in Russian, please contact victoria.somoff@dartmouth.edu.