Recommendations from the Kyiv Independent: “The Rooster House” by Victoria Belim (Patreon)

Hi everyone,

It’s Dominic Culverwell, the business reporter at the Kyiv Independent. The summer is officially over here in Kyiv as the last warm days come to an end. While I didn’t get around to reading everything on my summer list, there is one book in particular I’d like to recommend to you. It’s called “The Rooster House” by Victoria Belim, a Ukrainian author and journalist who returned to Ukraine in 2014 after spending 20 years in the U.S. and Belgium.

“The Rooster House” is a complicated family memoir that echoes the stories of many of my Ukrainian friends and colleagues. It deals with themes of family, memory, and identity that are as relevant now as they were a decade ago. Although the memoir wasn’t published until last year, Belim started writing it before Russia’s full-scale invasion, and her concerns for Ukraine’s uncertain future have a sharper bite now within the present-day situation.

Born into a mixed family with members from across the Soviet Union, Belim gets into a confrontation with her Russian-speaking uncle, Vladimir, during the illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea and the subsequent invasion of Donbas. While Belim is proud of her Ukrainian identity and condemns the Russian invasion, Vladimir buys into the Kremlin’s narratives and the two refuse to talk with each other.

Belim decides to return to Ukraine in the wake of the Revolution of Dignity and Russia’s initial invasion, having spent the last two decades in the U.S. Delving into her family history in a bid to reconnect with her Ukrainian roots, she becomes obsessed with her great-grandfather's long-lost brother, Nikodim, who was arrested “fighting for a free Ukraine” in the 1930s. She unearths dark family stories on her quest to find out what happened to the mysterious Nikodim, sometimes accompanied by her grandmother, Valentina, who would much rather be in her garden. Along the way, Belim writes beautifully about her grandmother’s homeland, Poltava Oblast, and we are introduced to colorful characters that tell us about Ukraine's troubled past and resilient culture, as well as Belim’s own memories of summers in her grandmother’s village. 

Her journey eventually leads Belim to the dreaded Rooster House, an opulent mansion in the city of Poltava and an outpost for the KGB during the Soviet Union. I won’t reveal what she finds there, but it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

The memoir explores the blossoming Ukrainian pride and cultural identity that emerged from the Revolution of Dignity and has grown even more after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Belim, who left Kyiv in 1994 at age 15 and now lives in Belgium, is an outsider at the start of the memoir, entering a new and unfamiliar Ukraine. Her observations on Ukrainians, and particularly Ukrainian women, come from both a place of familiarity and strangeness as she navigates the country. Anyone who has visited Ukraine will recognize the warmth and hospitality of the people she meets.

Belim eagerly embraces Ukraine’s history, as well as her own, and contemplates the difficult future Ukrainians face during a time of deep division within the country. Not everyone saw the revolution as a positive development and Belim comes to terms with her own disagreements with Vladimir, eventually accepting the “past in its complexity.”

Reading “The Rooster House” made me think of my Ukrainian friends who participated in the revolution, imbued with optimism for the future despite the bloodshed and sacrifice. Like Belim, many actively chose to learn more about Ukrainian culture that the Soviets and Russians suppressed. Since 2022, much of Ukraine has followed suit in this cultural revival, with bookstores promoting Ukrainian literature, instead of Russian, and exhibitions displaying the work of Ukrainian artists.

However, even now, some friends still grapple with family members that are like Vladimir: reluctant to let go of the Russian imperialist lens. It’s a painful division that many continue to struggle with in Ukraine.

For those of you who have Ukrainian friends and family, “The Rooster House” harbors many familiar stories. For those that don’t, Belim guides the reader on a very personal introduction to Ukraine and its history that will leave you laughing and crying.