Sergey Lukianenko1, a guest of honor of the 2023 Worldcon in Chengdu, heads the list of eighty organizers of the “Stars Over Donbass” literary festival who have signed an “Open Appeal” supporting Russia’s military action in the Ukraine.
Russian sff author Lukianenko attended the inaugural event held in Donbass in 2019, an oblast of Ukraine that was recognized as an independent republic by Russia in February. A report at the time by the Analytical Service of Donbass, a Russian-language website, also named five other prominent writers, Andrei Lazarchuk, Alexander Pelevin, Evgeny Lukin, Vitaly Pishchenko and Alexey Mashtakov, who all are signers of the “Open Appeal” posted yesterday.
Borys Sydiuk, an internationally-known Ukranian sff fan, called out the “misanthropic document” on Facebook, urging his readers “to ban these people who support the genocide of the Ukrainian people: please, don’t issue visas to them, don’t publish them, don’t invite them to cultural events.”
The full text of the letter translated into English including the names of the signers follows the jump.
OPEN APPEAL OF PARTICIPANTS OF THE INTERNATIONAL LITERARY FESTIVAL “STARS OVER DONBASS”
Bandits, armed with Nazi ideology, have been killing our compatriots for eight years, killing women, elderly people and children in Donbass.
For three years in a row, we organize an international literary forum “Stars over Donbass” in front-line Donetsk. We witness with our own eyes what the 21st century Nazism is – broken houses, destroyed neighborhoods, graves of Donbass residents who died because of Ukrainian punishers. We wipe away tears, looking at the names of the children in the Avenue of Angels.
Forget? Never.
Forgive? Impossible.
In this difficult time of trial, when an aggressive information war began, we cannot stand aside. There are millions of our readers with us, including those who are now carrying out their military duty with arms in their hands.
We support our army, which acts as clearly, professionally and selflessly as possible. We support our Supreme Commander-in-Chief, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who launched a special operation to denazify and demilitarize the state of Ukraine.
Retribution will surely come to those who allowed the militarization of Ukraine. Without it, its return to a normal, creative life is impossible. And we have no doubt that it will be done.
- Sergey Lukyanenko
- Roman Zlotnikov
- Oleg Divov
- Vadim Panov
- Andrey Lazarchuk
- Evgeny Lukin
- Evgeny Schepetnov
- Maria Semyonova
- Mikhail Atamanov
- Alexey Abramov
- Irina Andronati
- Viktor Artamonov
- Dmitry Baikalov
- Victoria Balashova
- Ksenia Bashtovaya
- Andrey Belyanin
- Dmitry Belov
- Kirill Benediktov
- Fedor Berezin
- Svetlana Bondarenko
- Yuri Burnosov
- Vladimir Vasiliev
- Sergey Volkov
- Maria Volkova
- Evgeny Garkushev
- Tatiana Glushchenko
- Alexey Gravitsky
- Anna Derbeneva
- Anna Dolgareva
- Alexey Evtushenko
- Ludmila Evtushenko
- Andrey Ermolaev
- Vitaly Zabirko
- Andrey Zemskov
- Elena Bazzaeva
- Iar Elterrus (Yehuda Ben Yosef)
- Pavel Ievlev
- Dmitry Kazakov
- Vyacheslav Kovalev
- Alexander Kontorovich
- Alexander Kofman
- Petr Kulakov
- Dmitry Lazarev
- Darina Lysakova
- Andrey Martyanov
- Nadezhda Maslova
- Anna Matveenko
- Alexey Mashtakov
- Denis Murashkevich
- Ivan Naumov
- Karina Pavlyuchkova
- Olga Pasko
- Anton Pervushin
- Elena Pervushina
- Vitaly Pishchenko
- Katerina Polevodova
- Anna Revyakina
- Alexander Rudazov
- Vladislav Rusanov
- Mikhail Savelichev
- Faina Savenkova
- Georgy Savitsky
- Anton Sviridenko
- Taisiya Sevryukova
- Svetlana Sevryukova
- Andrey Sinitsyn
- Sergei Slyusarenko
- Tatiana Stolyarova
- Kirill Sudakov
- Zlata Tebieva
- Mikhail Tyrin
- Elena Khaetskaya
- Sergey Chekmaev
- Max Cherepanov
- Sergey Shilov
- Julia Andreeva
- Alexander Peterson
- Andrey Zemlyanoy
- Yuri Mori
- Mikhail Afonin
[Thanks to SF2 Concatenation and Jonathan Cowie for the story.]
1 The spelling of Lukianenko here follows the usage of the author’s official site. However, his name is commonly translated on Amazon and in news articles as Lukyanenko.
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Some of the signatories also feature in the remarkable 2014 article by Kathy Young in Slate “The Sci-Fi Writers’ War” (They predicted and possibly inspired the conflict in the Ukraine, and now they’re fighting it.) I can’t find whether File770 linked it back then.