Since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, Russian

authorities have provided several narratives to justify their aggressive actions and war

crimes. According to the first, their war is only a response to the actions of the “Nazis”;

therefore, the current war is a continuation of the Great Patriotic War in which Russia

defeated Hitler. The second asserts the superiority of Russian culture over Ukrainian

and explains the attack on Ukraine by the desire to protect the Russian language and

culture on Ukrainian territory. Both of these narratives can be categorized as ressentiment,

a term coined by Nietzsche that refers to a feeling of hostility towards an

individual who is deemed responsible for one’s failures or hardships. This reaction

involves glorifying an idealized past and vehemently opposing anything associated

with the freedom and cultural values of another. Russophone anti-war poetry written

after February 24th, both in Russia and abroad, deconstructs these propaganda

narratives and offers its own narrative strategy for talking about Russian history,

which I term the poetics of “de-ressentiment.” This essay analyzes anti-war poems by

Russian-speaking poets and identifies the principles and tasks of de-ressentiment in

the context of Russia’s catastrophic policies. The paper explores how Russian-language

anti-war poetry tries to find the right language to discuss the most traumatic topics

in Russian history and proposes a total revision of Russian history and culture. This

de-ressentiment revision should break free modern Russia’s destructive focus on its

past that deprives it of any future.

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