San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
USSR seen through eyes of Jewish Ukrainian soldier, prisoner, outcast
Why would the main character of Sasha Vasilyuk’s sharply observed first novel — an elderly Ukrainian veteran named Yefim Shulman, who was wounded in a long-ago World War II battle — set fire to his military ID and other items from his Soviet Red Army days?
The answer tells us a lot about the protagonist and his country. “In life,” Vasilyuk writes, “especially in a Ukrainian life, one never knew what would come next.”
“Your Presence Is Mandatory” is a gratifyingly specific portrait of a Jewish Ukrainian whose plight reflects that of his native country, which in 100plus years has endured ethnic cleansing, famine, occupation and dictatorship.
The San Francisco author, who lived in Ukraine and Russia as a child, ends the story in the early 21st century — before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which won its independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. But because the novel examines the destructive power of national myths, it’s impossible to read this book without thinking of the ongoing war.
We’re in the early days of World War II when Yefim, one of many Ukrainians in the Soviet army, loses parts of two fingers fighting Nazis in Lithuania. His injuries amplify his sense of alienation. “He wasn’t just a Jew,” he thinks, mindful that his ancestors were targeted during 19th century pogroms in Ukraine. “He was a Jew with a busted shooting hand.”
He’s eventually captured by German troops, spending years as a prisoner. After peace is declared in 1945, he learns upon returning to Ukraine that his family has suffered profound losses.
In time, Yefim marries Nina, a paleontologist, and together they have children. But his struggle
doesn’t end. Nationalist propaganda emerging from Moscow holds that Soviet POWs were passive — and in some cases, eager — collaborators with the Nazis.
As Vasilyuk demonstrates by citing real-life examples, the discrimination against Yefim and others is extensive. Government papers issued to Ukrainian civilians, who suffered when Nazis invaded, bear the words “lived in occupied territory.” Books published in the Soviet Union malign wartime hostages. And the children of former POWs are excluded from good schools and jobs.
The book’s title comes from a letter Yefim receives long after his discharge. For years, he has avoided telling family members that he was captured. He has “consistently falsified every employment and residency form.” But now his “presence is mandatory” at a meeting with Soviet state security. “What did the KGB know?” Yefim wonders.
His family’s future depends on his willingness to show contrition. Burning his ID is useless — the KGB has his records — a reality that makes his damagecontrol efforts all the more poignant.
Shame, as Vasilyuk vividly demonstrates, is corrosive. Yefim has “night terrors” for decades, and he shuns fellow veterans with whom he might discuss his experiences. The emotional burden transforms an idealistic young man — Yefim once believed that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was irreproachable — into a haunted loner.
Vasilyuk’s depiction of the era is impressively detailed. When Soviet soldiers want to determine if any of their number is concealing Jewish heritage, they rely on an antisemitic folk tale — “the infamous kukuruza test. Those who never lived next to Jews believed that kukuruza — corn — was a word Jews couldn’t pronounce without butchering the Russian r.”
Occasionally, Vasilyuk babies the reader. There’s no need to tell us that one character “felt like a vessel for the twentieth century.” A writer who doesn’t trust her audience to understand subtext deprives her story of poetic subtlety and allegorical heft. Happily, this doesn’t happen too often.
Though “Your Presence Is Mandatory” focuses on one Ukrainian, it resonates far beyond Eastern Europe. Every country has its legends, specious interpretations of history that elevate some citizens and destroy others. “It was absurd that world events could be held against a person,” thinks one of Vasilyuk’s characters. But it happens everywhere every day.