When Lenin Becomes Lennon: Decommunisation and the Politics of Memory in Ukraine

Kovalov, Maksym

doi:10.1080/09668136.2022.2078478

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Accordingly, I do not go into the description and analysis of the symbolic nation-building practices of the post-socialist Ukrainian state (heritagization, musealization, memorialization, etc. ), nor do I discuss the regional aspects of the subject, due to the restricted scope of the study and the complexity of the phenomenon (On the latter, see, for example: FEDINEC -SZEREDA 2009; KUZIO 1998KUZIO , 2001KUZIO , 2002KOVALOV 2022;KUCZABSKI -BOYCHUK 2020;KUDRIAVTSEVA 2020;SZEREDA 2009;BORBÉLY 2023;ERŐSS -KOVÁLY 2018;FEDINEC -VEHES 2010). 16 As is well known, academic knowledge production, including academic ethnographic research, plays an extremely significant role in the shaping of everyday local heritage discourses in today's rural and village societies.…”

Section: Heritage As "Non-tradition"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Theory and Practice. Ethnographic Approaches to Cultural Heritage and an Empirical Example from Western Ukraine

Borbély

2024

AEthn

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The study focuses on the examination of today's ethnographical approaches and theoretical-methodological paradigms of cultural heritage, as well as everyday social practices related to heritagization (preparing lists of local values and Hungarikums, monumentalization, festivalization, musealization, etc.). In the first part of the paper, the author briefly describes the most common ethnographic approaches to the concept of cultural heritage, as well as the most important related analytical models. He argues for approaching heritage phenomena and their various manifestations (objects, places, and practices) through a kind of ontological framework. Through an empirical example — the analysis of the collection/preservation of values that started after 2010 among the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia — the study presents the local/regional practices and ritual and symbolic patterns of heritage making in the Western Ukrainian region. Examining the activities of minority political–cultural elites, the author analyzes the transformations of meanings through which the individual local cultural assets or certain accentuated elements become global social realities, for example national/translocal heritage objects.

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Section: Heritage As "Non-tradition"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Theory and Practice. Ethnographic Approaches to Cultural Heritage and an Empirical Example from Western Ukraine

Borbély

2024

AEthn

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“…The renaming of streets during post-socialist and postcolonial transitions may be considered an act of justice (Kovalov 2022). Specifically, transitional/retrospective justice is a legal and administrative process carried out after a political transition to address the repression and wrongdoing carried out by a past regime that has been toppled from power.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This erasure has included the removal of communist place names from symbolic spaces. In the media and the scientific literature, this process is commonly called "decommunization" (see Kovalov 2022;Kuczabski & Boychuk 2020;Kudriavtseva 2020;Kutsenko 2020;Gnatiuk 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Case Study of De-Russification of Ukrainian Hodonyms

Gnatiuk,

Melnychuk

2023

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The 2022 outbreak of the Russian full-scale war against Ukraine has led to a reassessment of memory politics in Ukraine. The erasure of communist symbols or “decommunization” has evolved into a decolonization process of de-Russificationin in which Russian cultural symbols, including toponyms, are removed from the symbolic space. This article presents the results of a mixed method investigation of Ukrainian hodonyms to shed light on the effects of war on a nation’s postcolonial toponymic legacy. We argue that de-Russification in Ukraine is a case of national “toponymic cleansing”. Simultaneously, this process may be interpreted as an act of restorative justice following cultural colonization. The findings indicate that posttransitional rethinking of place names in Ukraine is still strongly bounded by the effect of scale, and specific approaches to de-Russification are largely dependent on the local historical, cultural, and geopolitical context.

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“…2020). As Kovalov, M. (2022) points out, the interactions of subnational veto players involved in the renaming process and the work of local toponymic commissions help to understand compliance and opposition to decommunisation. The authorities and regional political elites often manipulated the provisions on decommunisation to address their tactical challenges (Kutsenko, D. 2020).…”

Section: Memory Politics In Ukraine and Geopolitical Fault-line Citiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

From geopolitical fault-line to frontline city: changing attitudes to memory politics in Kharkiv under the Russo-Ukrainian war

Gnatiuk,

Homanyuk

2023

HunGeoBull

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The article investigates changing attitudes to memory politics in Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. In February 2022, with the outbreak of the full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war, this geopolitical fault-line city became a frontline city with significant potential outcomes for urban identity and local geopolitical preferences, including attitudes to the national memory politics. The research is based on the comparative analysis of the two surveys among residents of Kharkiv, conducted in spring-summer 2018 and in autumn 2022 – before and after the full-scale war. The results of the surveys are analysed by means of descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression. Additionally, two focus groups were held in order to receive additional justification when interpreting the results of the survey. The research shows that the attitudes to Ukrainian nation-centric memory narrative, including both decommunisation and decolonisation, have significantly improved. Nevertheless, public attitudes to the memory politics in the frontline city are highly reflexive in nature and deeply embedded in the context of the ongoing war. The geopolitical divide, which existed before the war, has largely transformed into a cultural one, namely heterogeneity of attitudes to the Russian cultural heritage in the city. This softened albeit still existing divide has, to some extent, materialised in physical space and runs between the ardent supporters of decommunisation and decolonisation that massively fled from the atrocities of the war and their opponents who at most choose (or were obliged) to stay in the front-line city. The study reveals that military conflicts may either activate hidden geopolitical divides in geopolitical fault-line cities or contribute to their transformation or even disappearance.

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When Lenin Becomes Lennon: Decommunisation and the Politics of Memory in Ukraine

Cited by 7 publications

References 42 publications

Theory and Practice. Ethnographic Approaches to Cultural Heritage and an Empirical Example from Western Ukraine

Theory and Practice. Ethnographic Approaches to Cultural Heritage and an Empirical Example from Western Ukraine

Case Study of De-Russification of Ukrainian Hodonyms

From geopolitical fault-line to frontline city: changing attitudes to memory politics in Kharkiv under the Russo-Ukrainian war

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