A Ukrainian mother trusts Putin – and drives her son crazy

The fact that we live in times of crisis is evident in the fact that even the weather is political. When Russian television meteorologists look at their maps, they show Ukrainian cities that Putin's troops have invaded since 2014 and now occupy.

It's three degrees Celsius and sleet in Russian Donetsk, but the mother in Dmitri Kapitelman's new novel is nevertheless cheerful. She sits for hours every day in front of her "Television Russia," allowing the state broadcasters to feed her misinformation.

The old lady is a dazzling figure, and this accounts for a good portion of the tragicomic punchlines of the book "Russian Specialties." From her living room sofa, she wages a battle alongside the invaders and against the ignorance of her son. This son, one might assume, is Dmitry Kapitelman himself, and his novel is autobiographical.

At the age of eight, the writer came to Germany with his parents. They were "quota refugees" and, as citizens of a Soviet successor state, were able to settle without any red tape. The family began a new life in Leipzig. It's unknown whether it was so dramatic that it only needed a few strokes to transform it into literature. For what one reads in Dmitrij Kapitelman's work is literature, both dark and comic.

"Magasin" is the name of the shop in Leipzig-Kleinzschocher, where the owner and his wife cater to the nostalgic feelings of Russian immigrants and East Germans feeling homeless. In the post-reunification era, the business flourished with Novosiberian pelmeni, Soviet lemonades, and rose gold jewelry. It goes without saying that caviar and vodka were also on offer.

The motion detector on the shop door rattles with a piercing noise when homesick customers arrive. The first-person narrator gazes in amazement at this world, where the women always wear a bit more garish makeup than is usual in southwest Leipzig. The father is a Jewish melancholic who understands the language of the fish that eke out their existence in an aquarium before being sold. The rest of the staff goes about their daily work with exasperating slowness. They adopted this slowness "as political self-protection in Soviet Zhytomyr" or somewhere else. To wear down the "KGBschniks."

From the present, Dmitrij Kapitelman flashes back to the significant events in the history of the "Magasin," recounting more or less chronologically the "moneymaking Kleinzschocher" and its later opposite. The area is changing; Leipzig has a dense network of Russian shops. Once upon a time, eight truckloads of Monastirsky kvass, the bread drink from Kyiv, could be ordered at once. Now, due to a lack of money, it's almost impossible to order any goods. Ultimately, the coronavirus spells the death knell for the entrepreneurial venture.

"Russian Specialties" is a highly subtle regional novel. One with paradoxical premises. It's not about the feel-good aroma that arises from people's connection to their origins, but about something very specific. About ruptures, about shifts. They are a consequence of historical events and of Putin's invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

The family in the novel, like the author's, comes from Kyiv, Ukraine. They traveled to their hometown for two decades to buy goods for the store, but for the mother, the metropolis and its surrounding countryside are now places of misfortune. Not because of Putin, but because of Zelensky. "Ukraine only has itself to blame for the many deaths! Why doesn't Zelensky just give up? Then the Nazi regime in Kyiv will finally be over!" says the mother.

The "Russian nationalist" woman has allowed herself to be persuaded by TV stations and YouTube channels to believe the myth of Putin's "special operation" in Ukraine. While she bravely drives her Volkswagen through Leipzig, far from the war, she explains to her son, who is riding alongside her, that the story of the Bucha massacre is also a "fake." Actors were hired to play the corpses in order to incite the world against Russia.

Putin's propaganda has penetrated the shopkeeper's life unfiltered and wreaked havoc. The first-person narrator attempts to combat this devastation with a self-therapeutic program. He is just 36 years old and resolves to read 36 pages of Russian literature every day, but his "native language" doesn't make it easy: There are over 30 synonyms for hard-heartedness in Russian, ranging from "unbelievable" to "exceedingly cruel."

Dmitrij Kapitelman's new, third book is written in his usual arabesque style, but has a precise seriousness. This seriousness is only underscored by the novel's most obvious punchline. In the second part, the narrator travels to Ukraine. His friends have been drafted into the military or have volunteered. With his German passport, the half-Ukrainian tourist arouses the jealous envy of the border guards, but otherwise remains unmolested.

In Kyiv, a world opposite to the images of Russian propaganda opens up. Danger and colorful defiance mingle in the vibrant city. Air raid sirens sound again and again. When the bunker Dmitrij has to take refuge in one day is shelled, his mother sends him a text message. She tells him her son has nothing to worry about, because the Russians only attack military targets. She knows this from a reliable source.

Surrounded by Ukrainian reality, the son must endure the madness of a woman who, in good Russian, has become inexorable. What home is, what could be a peaceful home in today's Europe, has transformed in her mind into a truly monstrous nostalgia.

Dmitrij once asked her why, as a Ukrainian, she couldn't care less about the country and why the Russians were so important to her. Her answer: "I couldn't give a damn about Russia! I want the Ukraine of 30 years ago back!" The 1990s in Ukraine were a period of post-Soviet chaos, political arbitrariness, and corruption. Putin might be able to use that after conquering his neighboring country. He probably won't succeed in restoring youth to a woman who idealizes the past.

Dmitrij Kapitelman: Russian Specialties. Novel. Hanser Berlin, Berlin 2025. 192 pp., Fr. 32.90.