My Crimean friend Dzhemil laughed. And I laughed too.
I laughed because “Collaborator” in the Kiev “Cult” is a wonderful performance: the acting is excellent, the text is wonderful, the jokes are exemplary. Laughed through terrible fear. Fear that suddenly the time for reprisals against collaborators will never come. And the fear of what will come.
“BigKyiv” wrote this year about “a cultural phenomenon in Kyiv” – tickets for performances are sold out like pies from “Perepichka”: “theaters during the war attract sex and drama”.
There are now 25 public and about 20 private theaters in the city. They immediately remember that the Kiev theater “Cult” in February sold out all of its tickets for the production of “The Club of True Nevers” and this on a weekday. There is an interesting observation – theaters have become more open and show performances for 16+. Conclusion – during the war, people began to seek solace in the theater.
And I really got the impression that when we came to the play “Collaborator”, all of us in the audience came here to talk. Think. Voice a problem – hear its interpretation. And if the theater has become a place for analyzing the situation in the country, then I am happy that Crimea has become the main location for today’s performance. Because I want more performances about the Crimea. Because what hurts needs to be talked about.
Crimea is a unique situation, a closed space. There is a connection with the mainland, but it was cut off by the occupying forces. The criminal thread of the “Crimean Bridge” leads to the Russian Federation from the peninsula. But she too may soon be gone. Isolation of Crimea – the peninsula has turned into a cage of curiosities, or maybe just a cage where the occupiers conduct experiments on a living person.
“Jam Sax” is a Kiev saxophonist from Sudak. “The Star of Sudak” – this is how it was mentioned in the media and guidebooks of Crimea a long time ago. “The Star of Sudak” came to see Crimea today at the “Cult” theater near the Teatralnaya metro station in Kyiv.
– “An excellent performance,” says Dzhemil, “but, Alena, nothing new for me. I saw it with my own eyes. I grew up in Sudak. I saw the 90s. I saw the media, newspapers, television, deputies, parties, paid rallies in Crimea. I saw how people made money from Russian propaganda, I saw how everything was bought and how everything was sold. Only a fool could not understand this, everything was clear for decades. The nineties were all cruelty and blood. Propaganda has changed, it has become veiled. But its meaning remains the same. And if you remain in this closed society, you have only two options – total self-isolation or choose your role in this theater of the absurd. Or you lock yourself at home, and not. You leave the house, don’t talk to people, lock yourself in. For a quarantine that lasts your whole life. Or you become part of this system. I already saw it in Crimea. I played the saxophone, I played like this and so much to find an opportunity to get out of this. I won competitions – I knew that this was the only opportunity for me to escape. I left before the war. But I knew and saw that you couldn’t live like that”.
I have to admit, Dmitry Korchinsky is good. Okay, maybe not Korchinsky himself. His criminal “friends” in the persons of Kiva, Vitrenko and Dugin always embarrassed me. In the process of writing this article, the GPT chat was very worried about whether it was helping me incite a war. But he took my word for it that I myself was an angel of peace, and helped me formulate the following: “Through his performance, Korchinsky shows the complexity and contradictions of the inner world of collaborators, who can easily change their beliefs and positions depending on the circumstances.” It’s good that GPT this time didn’t write about the Crimean “Three-Body Problem” and RT-70; he obviously would have had more reflections.
On the page of the “Cult” theater this idea is formulated more harshly: “The performance touches on current topics. There is no need to be afraid of this. Only the topical remains in eternity. For example, all the famous tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were written and treated as political propaganda. 2.5 thousand years have passed, and they are still staged in theaters. The same will happen with this play. The play managed to do without positive characters. All the characters are worms and freaks. But fortunately everyone dies in the end”.
To get to “Cult”, you need to take the Teatralnaya metro station. Get off on the “Ukrinform” side and go in the direction of the former Pushkinskaya. Oh, God, I mean, towards the one whose name cannot be mentioned. But, fortunately, it won’t be necessary in the near future. The arrow “Theater →” will point inside the courtyard. Along the railings and walls of the mansion there are arrows to the top floor of the “Korchinsky Brotherhood”. As Wikipedia explains: “Brotherhood is a Ukrainian theocratic political party created by Dmitry Korchinsky. Registered from the Ministry of Justice on August 5, 2004”, with later improvement for the period of war – “Brotherhood Battalion” was founded by Dmitry Korchinsky, a Ukrainian writer, philosopher and military man, a participant in the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2014 and 2022”.
Literary drama, by the way, is fully revealed in the play. The very scene of the action is tea drinking at a table and references to Chekhov, this is “drinking tea”, playing “intelligentsia”. The main character is a philosopher. It is supervised by the FSB. In the announcements themselves, the authors mention that the dramaturgy is in the style of “Chekhov” and “Bulgakov”.
The performance reminded me of “The White Guard”. Waiting for the red train of revolution to rush towards you. These arguments by Vydrin mean that at the very beginning he made a mistake in choosing a side. Analyst! But he incorrectly calculated which side was more profitable to take, and to what terrible end it would lead. And most importantly, how will you beg the fleeing Russia to take you with them, but they won’t take you. Including because she never considered Ukrainians to be either Russian or equal. This is, in general, scary. It’s very scary to stay in the city. As the main character says, knowing what he, in the place of the winner, would have done with the traitors, savoring the future catastrophe and imagining his daughter and wife, seeing his end.
Going to the theater on Korchinsky, I spoke with a 24-year-old guy. He is from Donetsk, he left on the last plane. Managed. I asked: “Did you pick up your parents?” He laughed: “Alena, I was 14 then! It’s more likely that my parents managed to pick me up.” The boy studied in the USA and returned to Ukraine in 2021. I told him about the performance and asked: “Do you know who Dmitry Korchinsky is?” The guy answered simply: “No.” It’s funny. While we are talking about the ambiguity of the personality of the author of the play, at the same time a completely new generation of people grew up.
Korchinsky’s reasoning on the topic of why Russia “never makes mistakes” is noteworthy – because, like a cancer, it never offers anything new, never looks for answers, like a swamp. Russia, like Russian literature, is “usually admired.” But if you think about it, it’s interesting precisely because a person is asked to love something that is impossible to love, and the person tries to love, but cannot, and suffers, suffers. How good the irony was on the topic that Russians love, they are forced to love shit. “And some people from Broadway admire it,” Vydrin notes, “and they also want to get a little dirty in it.”
Vydrin is wonderful. As his daughter describes: “Maybe he has already proven that the Anglo-Saxons and Russians are one people, and London should be hit with a nuclear bomb.” As the GPT chat put it, “The play depicts the complex dynamics of human behavior and its relationship with society as a whole. Man is capable of noble and base acts, and it is important to remember that each of us has our own motivations and circumstances. Ultimately, society is built on how people respond to moral challenges and what values they recognize.”
Of course, I don’t want to be cynical. We all know that man is by nature a decent, persistent, brave being, with a strong will and the ability to think. One can only admire the man. In particular, Ukrainian. But sometimes a person commits immoral acts, from the area of “this has never happened before and here we go again,” here – he bribed a teacher in an exam, or gave a bribe in the executive committee, took some money from the cash register, lied, lied, embellished, did not update his data in military registration and enlistment office.
No, of course, most often a person acts nobly. It is obvious that each of us always commits only actions that speak of our integrity. But in society it happens that people act thinking about their own benefit, and not about high ideals. Of course not in our city, thank God!
This is how I roughly understand the essence of a collaborator – a person who benefits from defending the position of the winner. He doesn’t care whether the winner is right or wrong. It is important for him to grasp the benefits of being close to the winner.
I think that’s why the Maidan won. Then many more people began to support Maidan. A small group of people won over a large group of people to their side. And thus society turned towards Europe. The GPT chat clarifies “the attraction of Western ideas, values, or simply attraction to the West plays an important role in the process of changing society or worldview.” Yes, definitely. And yet, perhaps the key detail of the victory of Western values is that the model turned out to be victorious.
GPT Chat philosophically observed: “The issue of empty dreams and the power of money has a significant impact on the younger generation, for whom ideals and values seem insignificant or even non-existent. Many of them grow up in an environment where material wealth and consumption are considered more important than spiritual or moral values. This approach is creating a generation that is prone to superficial relationships and seeks instant gratification rather than striving for long-term goals or achievements.” In this context, Korchinsky ideally portrayed Vydrin’s daughter Manya. She doesn’t care at all. She’s on Tik Tok. Main wish: “Dubai. Or at least Türkiye.” The main vision of one’s role in life is formulated as follows: “to be the mistress of the owner of a poultry farm. Poultry farms, because to be the mistress of a man from Gazprom, you need to be a top model.”
In his interview for “Slovo Prosvita”, the head of the “Cult” theater Nazar Borushok noted: “I first saw the performer of the role of Manya, Vydrin’s daughter, Ekaterina Shvedenko in tok-tok. I needed exactly this type.” Borushok immediately reports that no one invented Vydrin’s personality either: “the play was written about Dmitry Vydrin, who is a real person. He really is a collaborator, and those who know him personally go to the performance several times.”
In the Crimea, through the power of money and actual physical strength, at some point society was “shown” that it was “more profitable” to be on the dark side. Perhaps this is also because Crimea was never part of Russia, and I didn’t really know how Ryazan, Perm or others lived. Timur Olevsky said in 2014, you know, people might have the thought “if it’s bad here and now, then somewhere it must be good.” Both the TV and the people with machine guns promised them that “Russia is better”.
Borislav Borisenko, who plays Vydrin, will exclaim at the end of the performance: “I was betrayed by my wife, Russia and the FSB.” And he will cry bitterly.
Vydrin’s despair – when you are not for an idea, it is more terrible to die. The idea that you wanted to play, but you were outplayed, your “allies” betrayed you, the idea turned out to be false. And not just false, you didn’t just know that the idea was false, you yourself formed it, you yourself invented this idea to cover up the falsity of your actions. This despair is worse.
What an abyss there is in this soul. When I stayed in Kyiv in 2022, I understood that there could be horror. But there was no terrible feeling of betrayal. Nobody betrayed me. Even the President stayed with me until the end. If I had lost, I would have been a person who stood up to defend my land. Well, I grew up in Troyeshchyna, and we were taught that we don’t just give away what we have. My choice. This is my home. I’m protecting him. If I lose this particular battle, well, okay.
Here, the “shredder with a double-headed eagle” and FSB agents burning documentation become a symbol of Russia and despair. Vydrin’s wife, Natasha, still hopes that they will be saved, because “those who have connections are always saved.” To which the daughter exclaims: “Explain to mom that we will be evacuated not to Rublyovka, but beyond the Urals.” Meanwhile, even her hairdresser left Crimea. And Vydrin finally realizes that the role of a collaborator is too small for Russia to fight for his life: “Everything will be fine for the main characters. And you and I must die for a dramatic ending.”
What is “good” about collaborators. And Korchinsky says this in his performance. That, by and large, they absolutely don’t care who they play for. Natasha hopes that when Ukraine returns, Vydrin “can be useful” as a “philosopher” and “analyst” who can easily not only prove that “faith and oil, import substitution will win,” not only explain that “we have already won, we just need to convince everyone else of this” and that “Russia, before winning, retreats.” or “Russia does not have a category of loss,” to prove that “the Nazis are so stupid that they did not notice that we destroyed them.” Vydrin can just as easily turn 180 degrees and explain just as thoughtfully why the arrival of Ukraine is a great good.
In general, the fact that collaborators exist is a problem. Korchinsky presents the Russian Federation as a tumor, and his collaborators as metastases.
Scary. And, in general, I feel sorry for the person. Therefore, firstly, we do not forget about the main principles of international humanitarian law, and secondly, the father of my child, Vasya, recently returned from Crimea, from captivity. Ten years in the war, two orders for courage and a year and a half in Russian captivity. The first thing he told me in January 2024, while undergoing rehabilitation in the hospital: “We are not them. We should never do this to living people. Tell everyone. Tell everyone: this cannot be done to prisoners!”
All that’s left to do is to survive, remain human and win this war.
Olena Stadnik
