A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
Issue 2024, 3: Download.
13 articles tagged with voices from ukraine were found.
This essay reflects on the issues of the past, memory practices, decolonisation, and reconciliation, as discussed during the 2024 CBEES Summer School. The author applies these reflections to think of her own research on LGBTQ+ Ukrainians’ wartime embodied relationalities, and how the discussed issues might manifest for her studied group. She further reflects on importance of positionality in discussions on postwar memory.
This essay explores the intersection of personal reflection and Ukraine’s collective journey towards reconciliation amid the ongoing war with Russia. Set against the peaceful backdrop of a CBEES Summer School, the author delves into the challenges of memory construction, highlighting Ukraine’s historical complexities and the importance of inclusive memorialization in shaping a unified postwar identity. The essay draws comparisons with Eastern Europe’s post-communist memory work, emphasizing reconciliation and social cohesion.
This essay considers the myths surrounding the historical figure of Hetman Mazepa and their artistic expressions. More specifically, it compares and contrasts two recent stage versions of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Mazepa opera by theaters in Kharkiv in 2017 and Moscow in 2021, at the time of the Russian military operations on the territory of Ukraine. The desire of Ukrainian directors to return honors to the national hero is opposed by the Russian interpretation of the image of Mazepa as an archetype of a traitor. The essay shows how the Ukrainian version updated the plot and liberated the Mazepa myth from Russian and Soviet imperial distortions, thereby connecting the opera’s events with the contemporary struggle for a sovereign state. Meanwhile, underneath its modernist surface, the Russian version maintained the opera’s age-old metropolitan view of Ukraine as inferior.
The war crimes committed by the Russian Federation against Ukrainian children include physical harm (murders, injury, mutilation, child abuse, rape), violations of the rule of law (illegal imprisonment; denial of children’s rights to education, security, and access to humanitarian support; abduction; illegal transfer to custody), psychological damage, destruction of educational institutions’ resources, and using children for propaganda and military purposes.
The journey to Ukraine is no longer measured in kilometers. After Ukraine closed its airspace, the trip demands new spontaneous, situational solutions to get there. Instead, travel can be measured by time — at least fifteen hours from Copenhagen to the western Ukrainian border, but it may be up to thirty hours or more. However, the most accurate measurement of the distance to Ukraine today is the level of closeness to all those people who are staying in Ukraine, in their own homes, and do not even think about surrender. From this point, Lviv is closer than ever.
The impact of negative rhetoric towards Ukraine, the United States and European countries are the constant ingredients in the “menu” of Russian state media resources, not to mention blogs and social networks. Previous examples such as Rwanda and Srebrenica have shown how words of hatred lead to acts of hatred, with yesterday’s civilians being ready to kill their dehumanized neighbors. Unfortunately, one now can add to this list of examples Ukraine. Hate speech towards Ukraine began to gain momentum since 2014, after the “Revolution of Dignity” took place and the country was taking a political course towards European integration.
The concept presented by Bloodlands includes a particular state of being at the mercy of the cultural landscape, which has a complex imprint — of history, politics, socialization. I saw the task of my generation to be the “liberation” of this landscape, a performative healing of my country, where the process of coming to terms with the bloody past would have coexist with the development of solidary and non-violent cohabitation. Today’s war of annihilation has torn not only my generation, but also the older and younger generations from their previous lives and brought them down to the bloody ground.
Diary from Kharkiv on impressions of the first two months of a full-scale war unleashed by Moscow.
During the last eight years we have become used to living near the line of fire and the feeling of danger has been lowered: but everything changed the early morning on February 24, 2022. That day the first Russian rockets destroyed Mariupol’s anti-aircraft weapons and next day we observed civilian casualties in the eastern part of the city.
I decided to go to Sumy to support my parents and bought a train ticket. But the train was cancelled due to a Russian attack. So this was my destiny — to stay in Kyiv!
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.