Translated by Tatiana Rudyak

A year. It is very hard to find the words, other than words of pain and horror, to say today, on the 1st of March 2023, when this issue is out. A year of the full-scale Russian invasion in Ukraine. But I will now try not just to thank everyone who made this issue happen. I will try to talk about one of our authors, the wonderful Ukrainian poet Vlad Petrenko. Vlad’s work in Ukrainian (and its translation into Russian) is opening the poetry section of this issue. Thanks to Vlad, ROAR is changing its name from this day forward - and not just the name.

Vlad offered us to publish his great, in my opinion, and very important poem, Congo. He said that he sees it as a possibility for a dialogue of cultures during a war, and first steps towards peace, because he thinks steps like these are necessary and important. It was an honor for me to publish the poem and its translation, which was also done by Vlad and on my request, because I wanted as many people as possible to read it. But from that moment on it would have been wrong, - and this seemed absolutely obvious for me, - to read the acronym ROAR as Russian Oppositional Arts Review, or to call the Russian version on the site Russian. This is why there are some changes for the readers to notice:

1. ROAR is now the Resistance and Opposition Arts Review. The full name of it in Russian reads as Anti-War and Oppositional Culture Reporter.
2. The link from the English and the future French, Italian and Japanese (and other possible) versions of the magazine will lead to the Ukrainian/Russian version.
3. It would be an honor for us to publish more works of our Ukrainian colleagues - with or without translation into Russian, according to the authors’ wishes.

Now all that is left for me to say is that I am boundlessly grateful to those whose work and whose trust make ROAR possible: to the authors, to the team, to the readers.

My huge thank you goes to every person whose poems, essays, prose, plays, art and sound works are published in this sixth issue of ROAR. And a huge thank you to the team of editors and translators of ROAR (consisting entirely of volunteers). I want to name every one of those who worked on the Ukrainian/Russian version of the magazine: its managing editor Maria Voul, and our editors and copy editors Julia Isakova, Mark K., Maria Rogova, Olga Chaika, Sonya Kobrinskaya, K.B., Anton Kukhto, Natalia Zanegina, and others. For the English version, I would like to thank its managing editor Tatiana Rudyak, the editors Sarah Bloxham, Stephanie Sandler, Jackie Dobbyne, Sandy Balfour, Colleen Moor, Robert Darwen, Michael Antman, Doug Reed and Michael Kleber-Diggs, and our incredible team of translators. And of course this issue would not be possible without the team of designers: M., I., Elena Urman, Inar Iskendirova, Anna Orlova, Liliya Safronova, Maria Zweig and Marta Vosmova.

A separate thank you to Veta Sbitnikova and her team who are providing us with web design and functioning of this site.

The seventh issue of ROAR is planned for the 24th of April. We have already started putting it together and we will be happy to consider poetry, prose, art and sound objects related to the main theme of the magazine, in any shape or form. Please send them to [email protected].

I would like to add just a few sentences I end each editor’s letter with: we are already looking forward to the moment when we can close ROAR for good, when it will no longer be needed to mark this specific segment of culture as opposing the criminal Russian regime, simply because this regime will cease to exist. But until then we will do everything in our power for ROAR to continue.

Sincerely, Linor Goralik, ROAR Publisher and Editor-in-Chief

March 1, 2023

To the main page →