21 articles tagged with voices from ukraine were found.
The process of decolonization in Ukrainian cities is significant because of the remaining socialist heritage. This includes architecture, urban planning structures, toponyms, and symbolic spaces. While this heritage is deeply implemented in the contemporary cityscape, it has also become the subject of criticism, particularly after the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014. Socialist cities such as Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Kryvyi Rig played a prominent role in shaping the urban landscape and were conceptualized by Soviet urbanists in the 1920s and 1930s. These cities were designed to gain complete control over the social and professional aspects of residents’ lives, reflecting the ideological ambitions of the communist party. This article explores the importance of socialist cities in the context of colonial heritage, examining the origins of the idea and its ideological significance.
Essay by
Anastasiia Bozhenko and Olesya Chagovets
December 10, 2024
The essay analyzes the role of Western art institutions in supporting and promoting imperialist views on both the cultural and political history of what once was the Russian Empire, then the Soviet Union, and then the so-called “post-Soviet” space while they universalized and homogenized the multiple, complex, heterogenic, interconnected voices that temporally and spatially fell within the boundaries of the Russian Empire in its various forms. It looks into the case of the market-driven umbrella terms of “Russian art” and “Russian avant-garde,” as presented in several exhibitions in major Western museums between 2016 and 2019, dedicated to the centennial of the October Revolution, often called the Russian Revolution. The research focuses on the artists connected to Ukraine. It attempts to do them epistemic justice by restoring the complexity of the interconnections, contexts, and traditions they grew out of and were inspired by, as well as the ones they reworked, deconstructed, and revolutionized. By referring to decolonial thinkers, it combines and compares how imperial thinking, frames of reference, and coloniality work in symbolic and knowledge production.
Essay by
Kateryna Botanova
December 10, 2024
This article exposes the extent of Russian cultural aggression: the looting of museums and appropriation of items of the Ukrainian museum foundation, the damage to and demolition of archaeological sites of Ukraine, the explosion of the Kakhovka dam and the consequences of this disaster for Ukrainian cultural heritage, and the cultural erasure of Crimean Tatars.
Essay by
Elmira Ablyalimova et al
December 10, 2024
In this article the authors seek to analyze the difficult situation in which Orthodoxy finds itself in Ukraine. It shows that as a result of the Russian Federation’s military attack on sovereign Ukraine, inter-Orthodox relations, already complicated, have been further challenged. The authors investigate the factors that aggravate inter-Orthodox relations, their influence on world Orthodoxy, the reaction of Ukrainian citizens to confrontation in the religious sphere, and possible ways of overcoming inter- Orthodox confrontation.
Essay by
Hanna Kulahina-Stadnichenko and Liudmyla Fylypovych
December 10, 2024
In this essay, the author is engaging with the transforming presence of Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) in the Ukrainian social media space between 2014 and 2024. Building along and against the mainstream discussions on collective memory, The author argues that with the presence of war, the Ukrainian social media users memefied Bandera, making him a useful tool for politically-driven activities and an emptied signifier to be used in ironic contexts. The author also shows that in war-torn Ukraine, the meme and the myth of Bandera are intertwined with the commemorations of those who died on the frontline, which requires a nuanced understanding of the country’s changing memory landscape.
Essay by
Yevhen Yashchuk
November 5, 2024
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.
Essay by
Eugenia Seleznova
October 7, 2024
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.
Essay by
Eva Ievgeniia Babenko
October 2, 2024
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.
Essay by
Liubov Kuplevatska
April 23, 2024
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.
By
Anastasiia Chupis
December 11, 2023
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.
By
Svitlana Odynets
June 20, 2023
Issue 2025, 1: 
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, CentralAsia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.