A Poem on the Sea of Tears, or the Chronicles of a Disaster. Oleksandr Dovzhenko about Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant

Author

Bondarenko Halyna

a Ph.D. in History, a chief research fellow at the Ukrainian Ethnological Centre Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3448-494X

A Poem on the Sea of Tears, or the Chronicles of a Disaster.
Oleksandr Dovzhenko about Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant

Abstract

The article is based on the diary entries of Oleksandr Dovzhenko. The realities of the construction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station (1950–1956), which has become another stage of Stalin’s plan to “tame nature” are investigated in the article. As a result of thoughtless, ideologically driven decisions, irreparable damage has been done to Ukraine’s ecology, its demographic and settlement structure, cultural and historical heritage. On June 6, 2023, the dam of the reservoir has been blown up by Russian occupation forces, causing a global environmental disaster. In this regard, interest in the history of construction and true testimonies about that time has grown. Oleksandr Dovzhenko has worked here for five years to create a film about the man-made sea. Communication with construction workers, people who have been forced to move, losing their small homeland forever, enabled him to create his own chronicle of events in their artistic comprehension. The communist pathos of the diaries is caused by the artist’s passion for the idea of irrigating the arid steppes and, to a certain extent, the self-censorship of a person forced to survive under ideological and power pressure, which later gives way to doubts about the expediency of what is happening. A record on a sense of something terrible and inevitable that is about to happen appears. The writer witnesses a catastrophe, and eschatological plots of the destruction of the unique Ukrainian world unfold before his eyes. Three main themes on which the author’s attention is focused: nature, history, and people, are analyzed in the study. The loss of centuries-old natural landscapes (the Great Meadow), the flooding of thousands of historical monuments (Scythian burials, places of the Cossack Sich), the destruction of folk architecture, sacred buildings, farmlands, and broken human destinies have prompted O. Dovzhenko to search for options to prevent the disaster. His memoranda to the Council of Ministers and the Academy of Architecture have allowed him to add national color to the urban space of Nova Kakhovka, to mark the gates of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station sluices with Cossack symbols – gull ships. The start of construction and the consequences it caused have led the artist to believe that it is inexpedient to continue building artificial reservoirs on the Dnipro. He has tried unsuccessfully to convey this idea to the specialists involved. Further experience has confirmed the truth of his conclusions. About 80 villages have been flooded again after the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station is blown up in 2023. After the water has receded, contrary to the pessimistic predictions of environmentalists, a willow forest has grown in this area within a year, and archaeological sites are once again on dry land. The first timid assumptions about the possibility to return the Velykyi Luh (the Great Meadow) have appeared. It seems that, following Dovzhenko, believing in the unconquerability of Ukrainianhood and the power of the national spirit, we can consider this a deeply symbolic phenomenon that gives us hope that all evil will be inevitably defeated.

Keywords

Dovzhenko’s diaries, flooded villages, destruction of heritage.

References

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