The American author, Elizabeth Gilbert, shocked writers this month. Shortly after posting on social media that her new Russian-set novel The Snow Forest would be published in February 2024, she announced its indefinite postponement. She explained that she had seen the “anger, sorrow, disappointment and pain” from her Ukrainian fans on Goodreads and did not want to “add any harm”. It’s possible that her publisher, Penguin Random House, may have recommended pulling her novel after the outcry. If not, it’s almost unheard of for a writer to volunteer self-censorship.

Are writers so used to cancellation that we now preempt it by cancelling ourselves?

Does Gilbert really believe that books set in Russia should be postponed for the remainder of the Russo-Ukrainian war? If so, the cultural embargo could continue for years through various ceasefires and reconflagrations. If books by western writers set in Russia are verboten, this by extension applies to all Russian writers who set their books in Russia. Having experienced the cold edge of cancellation firsthand, I strongly disagree with excluding writers on the basis of their nation’s politics, no matter how much I support Ukraine. What Gilbert should have done is anticipate the Ukrainian viewpoint in advance. Surely she could have justified the timeliness of her own novel.

Are writers so used to cancellation that we now preempt it by cancelling ourselves? Gilbert has accrued enough wealth from previous bestsellers such as Eat, Pray, Love to defer her novel, but if we all did the same, we wouldn’t be able to eat, never mind love or pray. With many publishers nowadays bowing to public opinion — Pan Macmillan dropped Kate Clanchy in 2022 after angry posts on Goodreads accused her of ableism and racism — it’s vital for writers to publish and be damned. Besides, how on earth does writing a Russian-set novel make any writer pro-Putin?

One of the few silver linings for the war in Ukraine has been the spotlighting of Ukrainian culture. Andrey Kurkov received a National Book Critics Circle Award this year for his novel Grey Bees, set in the Donbas. He also won the (somewhat wordy) Disturbing the Peace Award for a Courageous Writer at Risk. In June, the Abbey Theatre invited Lesya Ukrainka National Theatre to perform their Ukrainian version of Brian Friel’s Translations. I’d argue that as long as Ukrainian literature is being platformed and celebrated, there shouldn’t be a problem with Russian writing.

The beginning of the war saw a rush of knee-jerk reactions, with the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra for example pointlessly removing Tchaikovsky from its programme. It strikes me that boycotts tend to be enacted by the highbrow in possession of big egos and overactive consciences. Popular culture prances on regardless. The Bond film From Russia with Love is still being shown on Freeview.

Coming from Northern Ireland, I identify with the current language war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian city of Bakhmut is “Artemivsk” to the Russians, just the Irish city of Derry is “Londonderry” to the British. As Ukraine is fighting for its territorial survival, the removal of all Russian writers from public libraries, including the twin leviathans of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, isn’t surprising. The Ukrainians are highly sensitive to colonialism in Russian writing and are entitled do as they think fit. However, the fact that many of the banned books are recycled into toilet paper will be viewed by writers as an acutely brutal fate, up there with the mass book-burnings of the past. It’s somewhat typical of the blackly comic tradition of Russian literature that pulped tomes of War and Peace are now supplying the khazis of Kyiv.

Some of the most renowned Russian writers challenged the ruling regime. What about Solzhenitsyn, who directly rejected Soviet totalitarianism and was sentenced to eight years in the Gulag? What about Russian verse that predates the Soviet era such as Pushkin’s Ode to Liberty, which saw him banished from St Petersburg? Just as pertinently, what about the Ukrainian-born Gogol, who later satirised political corruption through his coruscating play The Government Inspector?

The greatest writers tend to speak beyond their national identity

It appears that Russian literature is more likely to be overlooked than cancelled in the UK and Ireland, which is a less controversial way of sanctioning a country’s culture. It is highly encouraging, however, that the National Theatre has recently livescreened Chekhov’s The Seagull. The greatest writers tend to speak beyond their national identity.

The important thing is not to weaponize literature. Books, rather than creating wars, have the power to help people endure the hardships arising from them. In April, Professor Nataliya Torkut, head of the Ukrainian Shakespeare Centre, said, “I do believe that William Shakespeare, and culture in general, can help us survive this cruel war. It is the essence of our human nature that we can’t live without beauty, without something that is much more important than our everyday situation.” The best writers speak universally to their readers.

To return to Elizabeth Gilbert, her decision not to publish The Snow Forest has endorsed mob rule. She stated, “It is not the time for this book to be published”, thus imprisoning her novel in a literary gulag of her own making. PEN America pointed out that, whilst Gilbert’s decision was “well-intended”, it was also “regrettable” and “wrongheaded”. If readers are allowed to veto a book before reading it, writers will be denuded of the limited power they possess in the publishing industry.

Funnily enough, a murder mystery called Blood on the Siberian Snow by C J Farrington was published in November 2022. The readership may be much smaller than Gilbert’s, but there have been no adverse comments on Goodreads over the Russian setting. Besides, social media comments are never going to reflect the opinion of society at large. One group of like-minded followers with an axe to grind spread the same agenda through their incestuous posts.

Next week, I’m going to meet with the Abbey Theatre about an idea for a Belfast-set play inspired by Nicolai Erdman’s sparkling satire on 1920s Russian society, The Suicide. Erdman’s play was banned by Soviet authorities and never performed during his lifetime. A modern ban on his play would simply perpetuate the suppression that cruelly ended his career. If Ukraine’s western allies hope for regime change in Russia, then they should be producing plays like The Suicide that question autocracy and lampoon unthinking dogma.

In the current geopolitical circumstances, will the Abbey commission a revamp of this Russian play? I passionately believe they should and will be promoting Erdman’s case. Writing does not do “harm”, as Gilbert says, and must never be blamed for Putin’s war. Russian expansionism is formed by history, not literature.