Dïaspora Journal Issue 2

After the Second World War ended, the generation

that fought for the world’s freedom were lauded

as heroes, and rightly so. Unfortunately, the evil

of autocracy which they tried to quell in their own

time has reared its ugly head again. In Ukrainian,

the term ‘цвіт нації’ or ‘ower of the nation’ refers to

such people, the best which a society has to oer. It is

my belief that these individuals are not only ghting

on the front lines of today for a military victory; they

are ghting for their culture on the pages you are

A LETTER FROM

THE EDITOR

TABLE OF

CONTENTS

NOT THE MORNING I IMAGINED

THE CHRISTMAS OF UKRAINE FOR

THE WORD

WHY CHANGE THE TITLE?

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE

“USEFUL” AND “NON-USEFUL” JEW:

IMBEDDED DOUBLETHINK IN

RUSSIAN SOCIETY

RECLAIMING HISTORY: HOW

RUSSIAN IS ODESA? BALANCING

BETWEEN EMPIRE AND AUTONOMY

MYTH IN THE CITY: COMPARATIVE

URBANISM IN KYIV UNDER

ORTHODOX COSMOLOGY AND

MARXIST IDEOLOGY

THE ARKA SVOBODY

UKRAYINS’KOHO NARODU: A SITE

OF MNEMONIC CONTEST AND THE

RECONFIGURATION OF POWER IN

CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE

THE RIGHT TO KNOW AND

THE DUTY TO REMAIN SILENT:

JOURNALISM IN TIMES OF WAR

JUST ENOUGH

THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBLIC

SENTIMENT IN UKRAINE

HEGEMONY IN UKRAINE:

A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR

DEMOCRACY THE CRIMEAN TATARS: A UNIQUE

INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY IN

UKRAINE’S PAST, PRESENT AND

FUTURE

MY LANGUAGE

WHERE THE RIGHT DOOR

LEADS: LEARNING UKRAINIAN IN

CAMBRIDGE

IMAGE CREDITS

OUR TEAM

Oleksandra Atamanenko

Oleksandr Shtepan

Diana Postavka

Benya Pyatski

Daniil Malitskyy

Anna-Mariia Brynchak

Anastasiia Hryshchenko

Liubomyr Semeniuk

Dariia Hryshchenko

Kira Santalova

Oleksandr Diachenko

Andrii Kuzma

Maryna Santalova

Diana Shypovych

I have made some of the best friends of my life in

the Edinburgh Ukrainian community and through

them an entire new world of ideas has opened up

to me. Nevertheless, as a relative outsider, I have a

unique perspective and have watched with awe as

these people, who live daily with all the torments

of wartime, have thrived in the face of it. That

survival is even more important because of what it

truly means. This war is not only about territory,

but about society and community and knowledge,

which is why journals like this one are so important.

Our theme for this issue is ‘Why Study Ukraine?’. To

me, the answer is simple: to study Ukraine is to seek

understanding of the will of democracy to survive in

the face of terror. What better lesson could one hope

to learn in the world we live in today?

Dïaspora encapsulates exactly what Ukraine is

ghting for: its freedom and way of life. Because

even if an entire generation is devastated, their ideas

and spirit will live on. But if their achievements are

erased, and their culture, then it’s as if they never

existed. That is what Putin wants, and it is the one

thing we simply cannot allow.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

ULRICH POEHLMANN

about to read.

SPONSORS

104

106

108

2 3DЇASPORA JOURNAL

NOT THE

MORNING I

IMAGINED

Not the morning I imagined,

When I laid down to sleep in the dead of night.

Not the morning I imagined,

When they came to stare, with eyes devoid of light.

Those ‘comrades’ laced with their cloying lies,

Who froze the world with menacing fangs.

They gifted thunder to our skies,

And fear to children with silent pangs.

Are you our friends, if all you bring is sorrow?

You lie — and worse, your silence is a blade.

Are you our brothers, striking in the shadow?

I don’t want words. Just shoot. Let the bombs cascade.

There’s nothing sacred in shameless destruction.

No innocence to shield you in this war.

You won’t create joy from corpses or corruption.

No gift of blood can mend a shattered heart’s core.

Whether I stop, or move, the passerby can’t save me.

Your ‘sorry’ (извини) sounds as false as all your pleas.

Look closely — it’s you, your child, your history

Who plant again the seeds of an old disease.

Do you know your past, if books you’ve never read?

If you had learned, you wouldn’t strike so blindly.

Are you sincere, while hiding the truth instead?

You cry at traitors — and yet betray us too, unkindly.

You broke our bond like whores that scorn aection,

You’d smile and cheer if given half a chance.

You drank away the last of our connection —

While we press on. May your defeat wake you from this

trance.

The capital stands silent, grey and hollow.

Outside — a hush. Just trembling walls remain.

Dark birds driven mad by the lies they blindly follow,

While people watch their screens…

And I still chase the rhyme in pain.

Not the morning I imagined,

When what has happened — can’t be undone.

Not the morning I imagined,

Once you lose your morality — it can never be re-won.

OLEKSANDRA ATAMANENKO

P.S.

And I’m sorry it’s not in your “Russian tongue.”

My soul rings and moans alone.

For the senselessness of what you’ve “secretly” done,

You will in history, atone.

24.02.2022

4 5DЇASPORA JOURNAL

THE CHRISTMAS

OF UKRAINE

FOR THE WORD

A Manifesto for Ukrainia

Studies as a Strategic, Cultural,

ad Civilisational Iperative

OLEKSANDR SHTEPAN

here are moments in history when time ceases

to be exclusively a continuous chronological T

sequence (chronos), and a moment of vertical inter-

ruption appears in it. The Ancient Greeks called

such moments kairos: a qualitatively charged mo-

ment in time that requires decisive action. In kairot-

ic time, delay is no longer neutral, and historical ac-

tivity becomes inevitable. In this sense, history is not

simply recorded or interpreted but actively shaped

by actions taken at a critical moment.

Ukraine stands today where all of Europe stood at

its own birth: vulnerable and threatened, but pro-

foundly alive. This is Ukraine’s Christmas — not a

moment of comfort, but of incarnation. Life is born

not in palaces, but in stables; and tyrants, like Herod,

search for it to destroy it. To live under the constant

sightline of death is not a metaphor for Ukraini-

ans — it is a daily reality. And yet, this is precisely

the space in which identity is claried, values are

sharpened, and meaning emerges.

So why is Ukrainian Studies necessary right now?

Ukraine is not a ‘conict’. It is not a ‘grey zone bet-

ween Russia and Europe’. And it is not a ‘post-Sovi-

et space’. The Ukrainian people are a civilisational

entity whose existence disrupts the imperial logic of

Russia. That is why Russia has continuously sought

to erase Ukraine — linguistically, culturally, histor-

ically. To leave scorched earth behind. After all, a

free, European, democratic Ukraine is an existential

trauma for the Russian imperial psyche. It is a phan-

tom pain. And historically, the response to this pain

has been genocide. They already did this in 1932–33

and 1947, and they continue the tradition of terror

and elimination of Ukrainians and their cultural

heritage today.

WE ARE LIVING

IN SUCH A MOMENT NOW

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and its

sphere of inuence shrank to its smallest size since

the 18th century. Russia perceives NATO and the

entire model of collective agreement as an existen-

tial threat. The fact that Ukrainians, until recently

a ‘brotherly people’, have rejected Russian civilisa-

tion in favour of the West is a powerful and possibly

fatal blow to the Kremlin. The annexation of Belar-

us and Ukraine and the incorporation of the Baltic

and Central European countries, including Poland,

into its sphere of inuence are political goals of the

Kremlin in its eort to push NATO as far away from

its borders as possible.

WHY DO WE HAVE TO ACT NOW?

Europe is making a choice: whether to be pres-

ent now in history’s creation, or to retreat once

again into concern, neutrality, and ‘strategic am-

biguity’. This manifesto argues that establishing

Ukrainian Studies at the world’s leading univer-

sities and cultural institutions is not an academ-

ic luxury but a strategic necessity for Europe’s

survival, moral coherence, and intellectual de-

colonisation.

Oleksandr Shtepan is a Ukrainian expert in strategic communication and branding.

He previously served as an adviser and speechwriter to Ukraine’s third president, Viktor Yushchenko.

6 7DЇASPORA JOURNAL

For decades, Europe failed to understand this — not

because of a lack of evidence, but because of distort-

ed interpretive frameworks. Russian imperial narra-

tives dominated Slavic studies, cultural diplomacy,

opera stages, philological departments, and analyt-

ical centres. ‘Great Russian culture’ functioned as

a form of anaesthetic soft power, yet Russian tanks

often followed immediately behind ballet pointe

shoes. Ukrainian Studies dismantles this illusion.

A comprehensive study of Ukraine compels engage-

ment with uncomfortable truths. First, that Russian

imperial violence is not an aberration but a system.

For years, Europe outsourced its understanding of

Eastern Europe to Mos-

cow, resuling in

distortions and

a profound mis-

understanding of the problem’s essence. As a result,

academic neutrality in the present moment can

amount to complicity in the destruction of a Euro-

pean people before the eyes of the world.

Today, Ukrainian Studies represent an act of Eu-

rope’s intellectual self-defence and a guarantee of

the preservation of Ukrainian identity. A nation is

sustained not only by territory. It endures through

language, memory, culture, and meaning. Russia

understood this better than Europe. It recognized

Ukraine as an ancient and integral nation. That is

why the empire banned the Ukrainian language

and Ukrainian publishing, executed intellectuals,

starved peasants to death, and abducted and reed-

ucated Ukrainian children into mankurts who

lost their native roots. The strategy was

simple: destroy historical memory,

and the nation will dissolve in time.

Language is not a tool but a treasury

– a repository of historical experience.

When language is destroyed, histo-

ry is amputated. Ukrainian Studies

is tasked with restoring what im-

perial violence sought to erase:

historical consciousness

The global institutionalisation of Ukrainian Stud-

ies will demonstrate that Ukrainian culture is not a

derivative of Russian culture, but self-suicient and

European; that Ukrainian history is not an appendix

to Russian history and that Ukrainian identity is nei-

ther invented nor provisional.

This matters not only for Ukrainians, but for Europe

itself. A Europe incapable of protecting the cultural

sovereignty of one of its largest nations cannot cred-

ibly claim to be a community of values.

materialised in language.

8 9DЇASPORA JOURNAL

Ukrainian Studies oer Europe a new optic – a way

to understand authoritarianism, resilience, and

democratic processes forged under pressure. At a

time when Europe faces populism, disinformation,

and democratic fatigue, this knowledge is not pe-

ripheral. It is vital.

Ukrainian Studies did not survive the 20th century

thanks to the state. It survived thanks to people. The

Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, the United States,

the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia es-

tablished institutions when Ukraine was unable to

do so. The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute

(HURI), the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Stud-

ies (CIUS), and the Ukrainian Free University in

Munich (UFU) were all founded, nanced, and sus-

tained by communities that understood culture as a

frontline. Today, Ukrainian Saturday schools across

the United Kingdom and Europe are not nostalgic

clubs. They are micro-laboratories of contempo-

rary Ukrainian studies. Children from Mariupol,

Kharkiv, and Kherson now study Ukrainian lan-

guage, culture, and history in London, Nottingham,

and Edinburgh. They not only process trauma but

cultivate expertise. Ukrainians worldwide under-

stand Russia not from textbooks, but from lived re-

ality.

Just as African, Indigenous, and postcolonial stud-

ies reshaped global humanities, Ukrainian Studies

compel Europe to confront its own blind spots.

THE UKRAINIAN DIASPORA AS A

LIVING ECOSYSTEM

Ukrainians are not merely victims of history. They

are experts in how to survive under imperial rule.

Over three centuries, Ukrainians have learned to

adapt without surrender, to resist without losing

their humanity, to create culture under the threat

of total prohibition, to build horizontal democratic

structures under vertical oppression, and to take to

the squares in defence of dignity even when state in-

stitutions collapsed.

This is not abstract knowledge. It is lived experi-

ence – from Cossack councils and the traditions of

Magdeburg Law, through the Holodomors and the

Executed Renaissance, the dissident movement, the

Maidans, and today’s existential war. In contrast,

Russian political culture remains authoritarian and

vertically subordinated, governed by carceral codes.

It seeks a tsar, not a social contract. Ukrainians, by

contrast, have always relied on the community, not

the ruler.

This is not about cancelling Russian

culture. It has already demonstrated its

inability to restrain evil and crime, and

today the cultural presence of Russians

on the world stage serves more as an el-

ement of propaganda and evidence of

the inert thinking and naivety of West-

ern civilisation; moreover, it refuses

to associate it with the brutal murders

committed by the Russian authorities.

The issue is ending Russia’s monopoly

on knowledge.

The task is not boycott but displacement

through the restitution of stolen and

appropriated discoveries and names –

for example, noted Ukrainian cultural

activists Kazimir Malevich, Alexander

Archipenko, and Sonia Delaunay – and

through airming that Ukrainian cul-

ture is as European as Polish, Czech,

or German culture.

UKRAINIAN STUDIES AS STRATEGIC

KNOWLEDGE THE WORLD NEEDS

For decades, the European academic community

reproduced Russian imperial hierarchies: Russian

literature as ‘universal’, Ukrainian as ‘regional’; Rus-

sian history as ‘state-building’, Ukrainian as “na-

tionalist”. This was not scholarship but epistemic

violence.

Ukrainian Studies is part of a global movement to

decolonize knowledge – to dismantle the assump-

tion that empires possess a monopoly on narrative.

To exclude refugees from academic knowledge

production is to waste the most authentic source

of contemporary Ukrainian Studies. Universities

must cease viewing Ukrainian refugees merely as

beneciaries and recognize them as co-creators of

knowledge.

UKRAINIAN STUDIES AND THE

DECOLONISATION OF KNOWLEDGE

10 11DЇASPORA JOURNAL

This is a pivotal moment — recognising Ukraine’s

potential as an integral part of the European brand.

This is a moment of deconstruction of imperial pol-

itics. After the collapse of the USSR, the inuence

of the KGB on the entire post-Soviet space remained

virtually unchallenged. Hybrid information and

political warfare aected two generations of Ukrai-

nians — but on 24 February 2022, it all ended. For

Ukraine, this war is a chance to break free from

Russia’s imperial orbit. Once and for all. And this is

Ukraine’s only chance to remain on the geopolitical

map of the world. A change in narrative and a ho-

listic paradigm of perceiving Ukrainian culture as

part of European civilisation is needed. A better un-

derstanding of Ukraine’s political heritage and the

inner energy of the Ukrainian people will acceler-

ate the process of Ukraine’s integration into Europe.

This ongoing war demonstrates the unbreakable

spirit of Ukrainians, who not only perfectly under-

stand the nature of evil, but also bravely resist it.

This manifesto states unequivocally: Ukrainian

Studies represent a new model for the growth and

modernisation of European security. The war in

Ukraine is not regional. It is a Russian-European war,

with Ukraine on the front line. The fall of Ukraine

would mean the redrawing of European borders, the

appearance of Russian troops near Poland, Hunga-

ry, and Romania, and the expansion of cooperation

with authoritarianism and despotism. European lib-

eral democracy would not survive a single day after

Ukraine’s defeat. To understand Ukraine is to un-

derstand the logic of Russian escalation, the futility

of ‘peace negotiations’ without deterrence, and the

historical patterns of Russian deception. This new

knowledge will be a cornerstone in a stronger West-

ern diplomatic front.

Ukrainians know these patterns. Ukrainians are the

foremost experts on Russian imperial behaviour. Ig-

noring this knowledge is not shortsightedness but

negligence. Russia will not survive defeat—and it

will not retreat. Through defeat, Russia will destroy

itself from within. This is why it is crucial to prevent

their consolidation on the battleeld. Russia under-

stands only the language of force.

UNIVERSITIES AS ETHICAL TUNING

FORKS

Universities are not neutral marketplaces of ideas;

they are moral institutions.

At decisive moments in history, universities either

legitimise violence through silence or elevate cour-

age through action.

The establishment of Ukrainian Studies at leading

universities — with departments, research centres,

language programs, scholarships for refugees, and

partnerships with schools in the diaspora – is a test

of academic integrity.

It signals that Ukraine is recognised as a subject,

not an object; that knowledge will no longer pass

through imperial lters and that culture is under-

stood as a strategic domain of national security.

Therefore, call upon universities and cultural insti-

tutions to:

1. Establish centres for Ukrainian Studies as inde-

pendent, interdisciplinary units.

2. Create endowed professorships in Ukrainian

identity, history, language, culture, and politics.

3. Integrate the Ukrainian language into full degree

programs and specialisations.

4. Engage refugees and diaspora scholars as experts

and instructors.

5. Build partnerships with Ukrainian Saturday

schools and community organisations as living hubs

of knowledge.

It is precisely at this decisive moment that a Euro-

pean Ukraine is being born — within a new, free

family of nations. By studying Ukrainian studies

worldwide, we are strengthening European unity

together.

12 13DЇASPORA JOURNAL

arly literature (Quinn 2022). For example, a study by

Bixenstine (1987, 105-114) explored the resemblance

of depicted costumes to ethnographic records of tra-

ditional Ukrainian attire. Thus, the original title was

giving a wrong impression of the illustrated dancers

representing Russian culture and tradition. While

there may be little signicance in this when a paint-

ing is lying in storage, the potential impact becomes

substantially more adverse when the artwork goes

on display. The National Gallery welcomed over 3.2

million visitors in 2024 (The National Gallery 2024),

and if the title hadn’t been changed, each one of

those people would potentially have stopped to ad-

mire Ukrainian dancers, just like I did, only to think

that they were contemplating an example of Russian

WHY IS IT NECESSARY TO CHANGE

THE TITLE?

sia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February that

year (Quinn 2022). This change received a varied re-

sponse from the public: some were encouraged by

it, highlighting the need to correct the misrepresen-

tation of national culture, while others were critical,

concerned with the politicised distortion of the orig-

inal idea of the artist.

The rst reason for this is a correction of the public’s

idea about Ukrainian and Russian national heritage.

The change of this painting’s title was not a purely

political move but, as also mentioned by the National

Gallery’s spokesperson, was widely covered in schol-

WHY CHANGE

THE TITLE

National Idetity

ad Cultural

Appropriatio through

the Lens of Art

DIANA POSTAVKA

uring one of my visits to London, I had the

chance to spend a few hours in the famous

National Gallery. Whilst exploring one of the mag-

nicent impressionist halls, my eye was caught by

a painting hanging in the middle of the wall. In

places like this, where every corner is lled with a

masterpiece, it’s hard to imagine something stand-

ing out so sharply. It wasn’t the form or technique

that sparked my attention; it was the subject. Several

women in the foreground were depicted in an ac-

tive dancing motion. Dressed in loose white shirts,

long bright skirts, and red boots, with red necklaces

around their necks and ower wreaths with colour-

ful ribbons in their hair, their appearance clearly

resembled traditional Ukrainian costume. Turning

my head to the object label, I was not surprised to

learn that this was ‘Ukrainian Dancers’ by Edgar

Degas. I looked back at the painting and then let my

gaze slide around the room. I felt a warm sense of

pride, realising that a troupe performing tradition-

al dances of my country had inspired the work of a

famous French impressionist, and now was admired

by thousands of gallery visitors every day.

Doing further research on this artwork later, I was,

however, very much surprised to nd out that the

title ‘Ukrainian Dancers’ was only assigned to this

painting in April 2022. Before that, it was titled

‘Russian Dancers’, reecting the original name ‘Les

Danseuses Russes’ given to the painting by Degas.

A spokesperson for the National Gallery revealed to

The Guardian that the title of the work “has been

an ongoing point of discussion for many years,” and

the change process was accelerated following Rus-

14 15DЇASPORA JOURNAL

pied or colonised in the past, as dominating states

often appropriate signicant cultural attainments.

Critics of this title change were quick to label it a dis-

tinctly politicised move, but the truth is that art is

never free of politics. Our surroundings shape our

views, opinions and ideas, so it is unreasonable to

expect that any output of the human mind will not

be inuenced by such external factors. In addition,

artworks aren’t just pictures hanging on a wall, and

art galleries are not just places where these pictures

are kept. Every museum and gallery serves an educa-

tional purpose and thus has a responsibility to pro-

vide its audience with information that best reects

the accumulated knowledge around the subject. The

adjustment of the original name of the artwork is,

therefore, not an unprecedented practice: galleries,

on many occasions, have updated titles to remove

oensive terms and colonial language, as well as to

contextualise the subject matter and correct gener-

alisations. A prominent case is the 2015 initiative in

the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where the whole

collection was reviewed to update unethical termi-

nology (Hooton 2015). Such changes are necessary

for art to t in with and reect contemporary society.

cultural heritage. This issue was also recognised by

the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Holding another work from the same series, the

MET updated the title even though the work is not

currently on view (The MET n.d.). In contrast, the

Houston Museum of Fine Arts, which also holds

two works from this series, kept the title of ‘Russian

Dancers’, while highlighting the Ukrainian origin of

the depicted women in the label description (MFAH

n.d.). While this solution seems to balance between

the two viewpoints, its eectiveness in addressing

the issue of viewers’ perception can be questioned.

On average, gallery visitors spend 27 seconds look-

ing at a single work of art, meaning that the ma-

jority of visitors rarely read labels beyond the

painting title (Smith 2001, 229).

Yet, even with such a small

amount of time allocated per

work, a painting can leave

a memorable impression

on visitors’ minds, so it’s

important to make sure

that this impression is

not misleading.

The second issue high-

lighted by this title change

is the geographical gen-

eralisation of cultural heri-

tage and artistic achievement.

When Degas created his work, cir-

ca 1899 (The National Gallery n.d.),

Ukraine did not exist as an independent state,

and most of its current territory was under the

Russian Empire. This explains why, in the origi-

nal name ‘Les Danseuses Russes’, the artist did not

correctly recognise the national identity of the danc-

ing troupe whose performance he encountered in

Paris. The lack of state sovereignty, however, cannot

rewrite the belonging of cultural heritage and tra-

ditions to a specic nation. Throughout the centu-

ries, Ukraine was split under the control of dierent

states, and yet our people managed to nourish and

preserve their unique identity despite all odds. This

title change, nevertheless, unveils a wider problem

of the prescription of historical, artistic and scien-

tic contributions made by Ukrainian people to the

heritage of the state that controlled their territory

at the time. Ukraine is not the only one facing this

problem: it is familiar to any nation that was occu-

16 17DЇASPORA JOURNAL

Bixenstine, Lisa. 1987. “Edgar Degas’ Russian

Dancers Series (1897–99): Their Dating, Pastel Tech-

nique, and Their Context within His Late Period

(1885–1908).” The Ohio State University.

Hooton, Christopher. 2015. “Museum to Rename

Any Artworks with Oensive Titles.” The Inde-

pendent, Accessed December 14, 2025. https://www.

the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/art/news/

museum-to-rename-any-artworks-with-oensive-ti-

tles-a6772616.html

MFAH (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). n.d.

“The Russian Dancer.” Accessed December 17, 2025.

https://emuseum.mfah.org/objects/40670/the-rus-

sian-dancer

Quinn, Ben. 2022. “National Gallery Renames De-

gas’ Russian Dancers as Ukrainian Dancers.” The

Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artand-

design/2022/apr/03/national-gallery-renames-de-

gas-russian-dancers-as-ukrainian-dancers

Smith, Jerey. 2001. “Spending Time on Art.” Em-

pirical Studies of the Arts 19 (2).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met). n.d.

“Dancers in Ukrainian Dress.” Accessed December

15, 2025. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/

search/459097

The National Gallery. 2024. “National Gallery

Anniversary Attracts 4.7 Million Worldwide Visits in

2024 and Over 159 Million Digitally.” Accessed De-

cember 20, 2025. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/

about-us/press-and-media/press-releases/nation-

al-gallery-anniversary-attracts-4-7-million-world-

wide-visits-in-2024-and-over-159-million-digitally

The National Gallery. n.d. “Ukrainian Dancers by

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas” Accessed December

14, 2025. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paint-

ings/hilaire-germain-edgar-degas-ukrainian-danc-

ers

Putting this case into a wider perspective, it isn’t

merely a title change. This is a prominent example

of the international eort to address cultural appro-

priation and facilitate the restoration of Ukrainian

national identity on the world stage. The main

signicance, however, lies in how this case can be

relevant for other countries, serving as a model for

reclaiming national achievements and correcting

generalised mislabelling. To sum up, many lessons

can be learned from Ukraine regarding the preser-

vation of national identity, and I hope this one will

help us build a world where, when walking into a

gallery or museum, we can see the culture of every

nation represented and credited correctly.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

18 19DЇASPORA JOURNAL

THE CURIOUS CASE

OF THE ‘USEFUL’

AND ‘NONUSEFUL’

JEW Ebedded Doublethink i

Russia Culture

BENYA PYATSKI

A young child walks home from school and asks his mother,

‘Mom, why does everyone at school call me a “Zhid”’?

The mother replies, ‘Just be patient and wait’.

Years later, the child comes home from college and asks the same question.

The mother replies, ‘Just be patient and wait’.

After nishing university and obtaining a PhD, he still comes home and asks his mother the same question.

The mother replies, ‘Just be patient and wait’.

Finally, one day, he wins the Nobel Prize in Science, and people start to call him a famous

Russian scientist.

On the fth day of Chanukah, I was very kindly given

a gag gift by the Ukrainian Society of Northumbria

University. What I received was something bizarre

and something I had previously only encountered in

an obscure Reddit post - it was a Ukrainian ag, red

on black instead of blue on yellow, bearing a Jewish

Star of David at its centre. The ag (without the star)

is commonly associated with the Ukrainian Insur-

gent Army (UPA) and the Organisation of Ukrainian

Nationalists (OUN); two nationalist movements op-

erating primarily in western Ukraine from the 1920s

to the 1950s that sought independence from

the Soviet Union through partisan

warfare. The OUN was explicitly

antisemitic from its inception and

carried out pogroms (organised mas-

sacres of Jewish settlements). The

UPA, though not initially antisemitic,

frequently redirected anti-Bolshevik,

anti-Russian, and anti-Polish resentment towards

Jewish populations, especially during periods of

collaboration with the Nazis (Державний Архів

Львівської Області, document 21; Zhukov 2007).

The ag, however, actually predates both organ-

isations and has a longer history as a war ag of

Ukraine (a role it continues to full to this day) (Vo-

loshanenko 2024). Its association with the OUN and

UPA, though, has become a major target of Russian

propaganda in an attempt to justify the invasion of

Ukraine as a campaign of denazication. Indeed,

it is not contradictory in Russian media to portray

Ukraine as both Nazi-run and part of a grand Jewish

conspiracy aimed at undermining Russian Ortho-

doxy and seizing power. So, although placing one of

Judaism’s core symbols on a ag associated with his-

torically antisemitic groups is ironic in and of itself,

this is only surface-level irony. The deeper irony is

that this ag serves as a near-perfect visual sum-

mary of the Russian worldview toward Jews, forged

through nearly three centuries of oppression, forced

assimilation, and paradoxical ideology.

Even more egregiously, Russian Foreign Minister

Sergei Lavrov openly stated in 2022 that ‘the fact

[that Zelenskyy is Jewish] does not negate the Nazi

elements in Ukraine’. Lavrov went on

to claim that Hitler himself had

‘Jewish blood’ and that ‘for

some time we have heard from

the wise Jewish people that

the biggest antisemites were

Jewish’ (NBC News 2022).

The absurdity of saying that

the architect of the Holocaust

was Jewish is obvious. What

is often overlooked, however, is

Lavrov’s deliberate phrasing. Call-

ing the Jewish people ‘wise’ in the

same breath was not a slip of the

tongue — it reects Russia’s deep-

ly embedded, self-serving cultural

mechanism for categorising Jews

into ‘useful’ and ‘non-useful’.

WHY WRITE THIS?

20 21DЇASPORA JOURNAL

‘USEFUL’ AND ‘NON-USEFUL’ JEWS

Russian culture does not simply recognise Jews as

Jews. Instead, it divides them into categories: ‘useful’

Rossiyane and ‘non-useful’ Zhids. A ‘useful’ Jew ceas-

es to be Jewish in the public imagination as their Rus-

sication is complete; a ‘non-useful’ Jew becomes a

problem. Zelenskyy, as a Jew who is not useful to

Russia, becomes a Zhid. He is therefore also a Nazi,

and as per statements by Vladimir Putin in 2023, ‘a

disgrace to the Jewish people’ (Meduza 2023). At the

same time, because he is Ukrainian, he is a Khokhol,

a derogatory Russian term for Ukrainians. Ukraini-

ans, in turn, become Zhidovski-Khokhlovski Nazis.

This perception of Ukrainians is perfectly reected

in the ag that I was given. As absurd as this may

sound, this self-contradictory line of thought is seen

as completely logical in the Russian worldview. So

where do these constructs come from? As with most

things in Eastern European Jewish history, it is com-

plicated, violent, and old.

CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE NOW

RUSSIAN. DO NOT RESIST.

The rst time a large Jewish population came un-

der Russian imperial control was after the partitions

of Poland from 1772 to 1795. With the new territory

came millions of Jews who had populated it since the

Middle Ages. To get them under control, the empire

created the Pale of Settlement, restricting perma-

nent Jewish residence to a dened region spanning

modern-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Ukraine,

and Moldova (Encyclopaedia Judaica 2007). By the

early nineteenth century, around 5 million Jews

(about 40 per cent of the world’s Jewish population)

lived within the borders of the Russian Empire (Że-

browski n.d.). The Pale, however, was a harsh reality

where Jews faced systematic exclusion, forced Rus-

sication, and nearly a century of pogroms. Central

to this system was the categorisation of Jews into

‘useful’ and ‘non-useful’, formalised in 1851 (Ency-

clopaedia Judaica 2007). Initially, ‘useful’ Jews were

wealthy merchants and individuals essential to lo-

cal commerce; the rest of the Jewish population was

deemed ‘non-useful’ and therefore posed a problem

for Russian hegemony (Jewish Virtual Library n.d.).

The solution to it — forced transformation.

By the order of Tsar Nicholas I, beginning in 1825,

Jewish boys were forcibly conscripted into the

military starting at age twelve (although a dispropor-

ties were forced to

police themselves;

khapers (snatchers)

were Jews employed to

kidnap Jewish boys for

the state (Petrovsky-Shtern

n.d.). These Russied

Jews enforced the will

of the state onto oth-

er Jews, causing

immense trauma,

internal distrust,

and long-last-

ing divisions

within Jewish

communities. Those not conscripted were

expelled into shtetls (segregated villages) or

agricultural colonies (Jewish Virtual Library

n.d.). Jewish life was suppressed through bans

on, among other aspects, traditional clothing

and pe’ot (traditional Jewish sidelocks). Most Jew-

ish soldiers who refused conversion were treated as

expendable assets and sent as ill-equipped front-

line infantry to be used as cannon fodder (Petro-

vsky-Shtern n.d.).

In the 1840s, Nicholas I expanded his policy of forced

assimilation through state-run Jewish schools, fund-

ed by extortionate taxes levied on Jewish communi-

ties themselves. Jews who completed these programs

received the right to live outside the Pale and pursue

higher education and enjoyed a higher legal status.

They were no longer Zhidy, they became Rossiyane.

That status, however, was ckle. Starting in the late

nineteenth century, Russia was facing political insta-

bility, military defeats, and revolution. In this tense

atmosphere, antisemitism reached its climax. Jews

were blamed for an imagined international con-

spiracy, resulting in the state-sponsored publication

of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the banning of

the Hebrew alphabet in 1915, mass expulsions from

Lithuania and Courland, and a new series of severe

pogroms which killed over 100,000 Jews.

Because of this oppression, Jews disproportionately

joined the revolutionary movements of 1917. Initial-

ly, Bolshevik rule abolished legal antisemitism and

loosened restrictions on Jewish life. These policies,

however, did not last. Under Soviet leadership, the

‘Jewish problem’ was reframed as one of assimila-

tion (with assimilated Jews themselves often acting

as enforcers). Judaism, Hebrew, and Zionism were

suppressed. Secular Yiddish culture was tolerated

briey, then dismantled. In 1919, Jewish communi-

ties were dissolved, their property conscated. He-

brew study was prohibited, and religious institu-

tions were shut down. Yiddish texts were forcibly

rewritten in Cyrillic to sever the language’s connec-

tion to Hebrew. Jews were compelled to speak Rus-

sian, adopt Russian names, and assimilate cultural-

ly. With the ascension of Stalin to power, Soviet Jews

became legally marked by the pyatoye (the fth line

of the passport that identied ethnicity), and post-

World War II, they were labelled ‘enemies of the

people’, purged from common society, and sent to

gulags (Correspondent 1997). Of course, exceptions

were made for ‘useful’ Jews. Post-Stalin, those who

continued Jewish life would become known as Re-

fuseniks and were labelled ‘social parasites’ and

were subsequently punished until the reforms of

tionate number were

younger). They were

placed in cantonist mil-

itary schools (specically

for underage Jews) until

adulthood and then draft-

ed for twenty-ve years

of service (ibid.). The

objective was clear

— to destroy Jew-

ish identity and

convert Jews to

Russian Or-

thodoxy. The

Tsar stated plainly: ‘the purpose of the ed-

ucation of the Jews is to bring them nearer to

the Christians and to uproot their harmful be-

liefs, which are inuenced by the Talmud’ (ibid.).

To meet conscription quotas, Jewish communi-

22 23DЇASPORA JOURNAL

the late 1980s. Throughout this period,

the categories remained; they were just more ei-

ciently enforced.

CULTURE COMPLETES THE PICTURE

State policy alone is not responsible for these ac-

tions, however. Culture nished the job. Throughout

the Soviet period, Jewish art, music, theatre, science,

and literature were translated into Russian, stripped

of their unique Jewish identity, and rebranded as

national products. The eects of this cultural era-

sure are still visible to this day. As a crowdfunded

source which reects the socio-cultural attitudes

of its contributors, Wikipedia serves as a perfect

example: Leonid Utyosov, born Leyzer Iosifovich

Weissbein and Mark Bernes, born Menakhem-Man

Neukh-Shmuylov Neyman, were among the most

well-known performers of the rst half of the twen-

tieth century in the Soviet Union; both were Jewish,

born in Ukraine, and grew up speaking Yiddish. Yet

Russian Wikipedia describes Utyosov as an ‘ethnic

Russian and Soviet artist’, and Bernes simply as a

‘Soviet artist’. Their Jewish identities disappear.

Mullet), and ‘Крутится, Вертится, Шар Голубой’

(Тhe Blue Ball Spins and Turns) were originally

written in Yiddish, about Jewish life, and performed

by Jewish artists like Utyosov and Bernes. The chan-

son genre to which these songs belong, often con-

sidered quintessentially Russian, in fact comes from

the Jewish-Ukrainian culture of the late nineteenth

and early twentieth centuries.

By contrast, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson

— the founder of Chabad — born in Ukraine and

raised speaking Yiddish, is labelled explicitly as Jew-

ish. His father was executed, his family persecuted,

and he ed the Soviet Union. He was not useful for

Russian culture and hegemony, and although fa-

mous, neither Russian Wikipedia nor the Russian

people consider him Russian.

Even iconic ‘Russian’ songs such as ‘Мурка’ (Mur-

ka), ‘Шаланды Полные Кефали’ (Barges, Full of

24 25DЇASPORA JOURNAL

So, what does this have to do with Ukraine? The

historical relationship between Ukraine and the

Ashkenazi Jewish population is long, enduring,

and reciprocal. Jewish culture became ingrained

in Ukrainian culture just as Ukrainian space and

language shaped Jewish life. A clear example is

the stereotypical Odesite. Odesites are known for

speaking a distinctive dialect of Russian marked by

Yiddish-inuenced grammar, pronunciation, and

rhythm, including the famously unrolled ‘r’. They

are also known for a style of humour deeply associ-

ated with Jewish tradition, so much so that an entire

genre of jokes revolves around an Odesite named

Rabinovich (a stereotypically Jewish surname). This

cultural fusion persists even within the Jewish dias-

pora today. When my local Rabbi, whose family left

Ukraine over a century ago, learned that my family

had come from Berdychiv, he exclaimed that it was

good luck to meet a Jew from Berdychiv, showing a

sentiment rooted in shared cultural memory rather

than religion alone. Linguistically, this relationship

culminated in the creation of Ukrainish, a hybrid of

Ukrainian and Eastern Yiddish which became the

most common dialect of Yiddish in the early 20th

century and the standard for Yiddish theatre, litera-

ture, and academia (Katz n.d.).

UKRAINISH

This deep cultural integration led, in the Russian

imagination, to an association between Jews and

Ukrainians. Within the existing Russian framework

of Rossiyane and Zhidy, Jews, whose culture had

become an integral part of Ukrainian life, were re-

cast as a corrupting force, producing Khokhols - the

‘non-useful’ Ukrainian counterpart to the ‘non-use-

ful’ Jew. This logic surfaced explicitly for the rst

time following the Second World War. Soviet propa-

ganda emphasised alleged Jewish and Zionist par-

ticipation in the UPA, particularly during the early

1950s purges of Soviet Jews, when supposed links

between Jewish and Ukrainian nationalism were

fabricated and amplied through hoaxes and staged

‘revelations’ (Romerstein 2004).

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

So where does that leave us? It leaves us with a Rus-

sian worldview shaped by centuries of forced assim-

ilation, cultural extraction, and deeply embedded

ideological hypocrisy. One in which Jews and Ukrai-

nians are understood not as peoples, but as func-

tions. Within the framework of Russkiy Mir, culture

and identity are judged not by origin or truth, but

by perceived usefulness. Jewish culture and Jews

deemed to be ‘useful’ may be absorbed, renamed,

and celebrated as Russian, while Jewish culture and

Jews deemed ‘non-useful’ are to be marginalised,

criminalised, painted as a threat to the Russian iden-

tity.

Thus Ukraine, whose culture was deeply interwo-

ven with Jewish life, becomes suspect. Jews become

corrupting agents and Ukrainians — their product.

By this logic, Jews can be Nazis, Nazis can be Jews,

and Ukrainians can be both not

because reality supports it,

but because deemed

usefulness is the

only category

that matters.

The ag I was given is not a contradiction. It is a con-

clusion. It represents a worldview in which logic is

irrelevant, history is selectively rewritten, and iden-

tity is conditional. In Russia this is not viewed as

‘irony’ — it is a tradition.

26 27DЇASPORA JOURNAL

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Yuri, Zhukov. “Examining the Authoritarian Mod-

el of Counter-Insurgency: The Soviet Campaign

Against the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.” Institute

for National Strategic Studies, Sept. 2007, https://

web.archive.org/web/20170204005053/http:/scholar.

harvard.edu/files/zhukov/files/2007_Zhukov_SWI.

pdf?m=1360038945.

“Річчя Відновлення Незалежності України.”

Державний архів Львівської області, https://web.

archive.org/web/20170105084537/http:/www.ar-

chivelviv.gov.ua/materials/exhibitions/do-21-richch-

ja-vidnovlennja-nezalezhnosti-ukrajini/1146/.

Волошаненко, Вікторія. Синьо-Жовтий

Прапор — Наш Оберіг, Маркер і Ідентичність”.

Кропивницький Історик Про Український Стяг.

2024, https://suspilne.media/kropyvnytskiy/820265-

sino-zovtij-prapor-nas-oberig-marker-i-identicnist-

kropivnickij-istorik-pro-ukrainskij-stag/.

“Zelenskyy, a Jewish Nazi”: The Use of An-

ti-Semitic Tropes by Russian Propaganda Against

Ukraine. https://en.detector.media/post/zelenskyy-

a-jewish-nazi-the-use-of-anti-semitic-tropes-by-

russian-propaganda-against-ukraine. Accessed 31

Dec. 2025.

YouTube. https://www.youtube.com-

watch?v=A0PY72pWXRI. Accessed 31 Dec.

2025.

“Https://Www.Jewishvirtuallibrary.Org/the-

Pale-of-Settlement.” Jewish Virtual Library,

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-

pale-of-settlement. Accessed 31 Dec. 2025.

“Anniversary of the Pale Settlement Decree.”

Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, https://www.jhi.pl/

en/articles/anniversary-of-the-pale-settlement-de-

cree,243. Accessed 31 Dec. 2025.

“Https://Www.Jewishvirtuallibrary.Org/Rus-

sia-Virtual-Jewish-History-Tour.” Jewish Virtual

Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/rus-

sia-virtual-jewish-history-tour. Accessed 31 Dec.

2025.

The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Eu-

rope. https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/244. Ac-

cessed 31 Dec. 2025.

The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Eu-

rope (n.d.). https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/235

Romerstein, Herbert. “Divide and Conquer: The

KGB Disinformation Campaign against Ukrainians

and Jews | the Institute of World Politics.” The Insti-

tute of World Politics, November 2004. https://web.

archive.org/web/20230405190737/https://www.iwp.

edu/papers-studies/2004/11/01/divide-and-conquer-

the-kgb-disinformation-campaign-against-ukraini-

ans-and-jews/.

Meduza. “Putin Says Zelensky ‘Isn’t Jewish but

a Disgrace to the Jewish People’ — Meduza,” 2023.

https://meduza.io/en/news/2023/06/16/putin-says-

zelensky-isn-t-jewish-but-a-disgrace-to-the-jewish-

people.

Correspondent, J. “Ethnicity Line Axed from

Russian Passports.” The Jewish News of North-

ern California, October 31, 1997. https://jweekly.

com/1997/10/31/ethnicity-line-axed-from-rus-

sian-passports #:~:text=Although%20commu-

nist%20leaders%20spoke%20of,of%20educa-

tion%2C%20work%20and%20politics..

28 29DЇASPORA JOURNAL

RECLAIMING

HISTORY How Russia is

Odesa? Balacing

Betwee Epire ad

Autooy

DANIIL MALITSKYY

Odesa is one of the largest and most signicant cit-

ies in Ukraine today — a bustling port on the north-

ern shore of the Black Sea, often described as a city

of opportunity, a multicultural metropolis, and

the “Southern Palmyra” (Lecke and Sicher 2023, 3).

Starting in 1794, the city experienced an era of rapid

growth and transformation, which continued up un-

til the end of the 19th century, a period that shaped

much of modern Odesa.

Yet, the city’s past has increasingly become the sub-

ject of political appropriation. Russian political and

media discourse persistently portrays Odesa as an

inherently Russian city, founded by Catherine II,

built by the Russian empire, and populated primar-

ily by Russians. This narrative, repeatedly used in

oicial statements, textbooks, and wartime rheto-

ric, presents Odesa’s urban history as evidence of a

A CONTESTED PAST

Russian claim to the city. However, such claims rely

on a simplied reading of the past, which conates

imperial governance with cultural ownership and

ignores the complex conditions under which Odesa

emerged.

Focusing on the period between 1794 and 1859, this

article discusses the historical extent of imperial au-

thority in the city and the forces behind its growth.

Particular attention is given to the porto franco re-

gime, introduced in the early 19th century, which

granted Odesa extensive tax exemptions and trade

privileges, substantially reducing imperial control

over local commerce. By reclaiming Odesa’s early

history from reductive imperial narratives, it is pos-

sible to challenge contemporary claims of Russian

ownership. A look at the city’s past shows that its

prosperity did not emerge under tight Russian con-

30 31DЇASPORA JOURNAL

trol, but from a curbing of that control. This unique

lack of Russian authority is, in fact, what allowed a

diverse set of communities, economic actors, and

expertise to form in the rst place, leading to the

creation of one of the most important port cities on

the shores of the Black Sea.

Most of Odesa’s early planning was done by foreign

professionals in Russian service, creating a cosmo-

politan air that would dene the city in the years

to come. Among the most inuential gures were

José de Ribas, a Spanish-Irish oicer in the Russian

Army and Franz de Volan, a Dutch military engi-

neer. Both perceived themselves as successors to the

great architects of classical antiquity, and both were

inuenced by the ideas of urban order, rationality,

and beauty which stemmed from the Enlighten-

ment. The worldview of these two men and their

military backgrounds deeply impacted Odesa’s ini-

tial urban form. De Ribas personally surveyed the

coastline in search of a suitable harbour site, while

de Volan drafted the rst city plan; envisioning a civ-

ic core with designated spaces for a theatre, an ex-

change, leisure clubs, and restaurants (Dobrolubsky

et al. 2016). The plan consisted of two intersecting

grids angled to align with the shoreline as well as

prevailing winds, creating a rational yet harmoni-

ous layout inspired by Vitruvian notions of cosmic

order. Streets were to be paved with volcanic stone

imported from Vesuvius, a symbolic gesture that

echoed contemporary fascination with antiquity

following the excavations of Pompeii.

By 1859, the city had undergone a dramatic

transformation. Its centre was dominated by

neoclassical architecture largely designed by

foreign professionals. One of them was the Ital-

ian architect Francesco (Franz) Boo, whose works

include the Vorontsov Palace, the Exchange Com-

mittee, and the Potemkin Stairs (Navone 2022).

Boo’s Palladian and Neoclassical designs became

emblematic of Odesa’s architectural identity, but

he was far from alone. The Swiss architects Bernar-

dazzi and Jean-François Thomas de Thomon, Aus-

trians Fellner and Helmer, and Italians Giovanni

Frapolli, Giorgio Torricelli all played central roles in

shaping the city’s urban landscape. The prominence

of these gures underscores a broader truth: Odesa’s

emergence as a major port city was not the product

of any coherent Russian architectural or cultural

programme, but instead one of sustained reliance

on foreign expertise operating within a loosely gov-

erned imperial periphery. This raises a question

which extends beyond planning: to what extent did

this cosmopolitanism also characterise Odesa’s pop-

ulation?

Following a series of successful military campaigns

against the Ottomans (1787-1792), the Russian Em-

pire encouraged large-scale migration into newly ac-

quired territories in the northern Black Sea region.

Under Catherine II, settlers were oered incentives

that were exceptional by contemporary standards:

These ambitions far exceeded the material reality of

the early settlement. Corruption and misappropri-

ation of funds undermined de Ribas’ oice. When

the Duke de Richelieu, a French nobleman and pol-

itician who ed France during the Revolution, ar-

rived in 1803, Odesa remained largely undeveloped.

As the Marseille merchant Charles Sicard observed,

“The city was only sketched out; there were very few

houses, small, poorly built, and uncomfortable…

and only one jetty harbour” (de Montclos 2016, 37).

Richelieu himself reportedly struggled to nd suit-

able lodging among the earthen huts which still

dominated the town (Herlihy 1986).

CONSTRUCTION: FOREIGN MINDS

AND IMPORTED VISIONS

Despite these conditions, Richelieu’s arrival

was a turning point. He invested in greenery

across the city (street vegetation as well as

parks and botanical gardens), invited more

foreign experts to assist with the city’s de-

velopment, and founded the Richelieu

Lyceum. The lyceum quickly became

one of the most respected education-

al institutions in the Russian Empire,

attracting students and faculty from

across Europe and transforming Ode-

sa into an intellectual and commer-

cial hub.

POPULATION:

INCENTIVES FLOW, PEOPLE FOLLOW

32 33DЇASPORA JOURNAL

intelligentsia ed the aftermath of the French Rev-

olution, and many others arrived as runaway serfs

(predominantly from Ukrainian territories). Jew-

ish migrants, constrained elsewhere by the Pale of

Settlement, also found Odesa to be a haven for res-

idence and commerce. This powerful combination

of opportunity and relative freedom produced a re-

markably multicultural population. In 1803, the city

counted approximately 4,500 inhabitants (Herlihy

1986, 34), with Greeks forming the largest foreign

community, a position later surpassed by Jews (Sif-

neos 2018, 34-36). By 1859, Odesa’s population had

increased to around 116,000, accompanied by the

formation of several suburban districts. This rap-

id growth made Odesa the third-largest city in the

Russian empire, after St. Petersburg and Moscow,

and the largest city within the territory of modern

Ukraine (Herlihy 1986, 232).

Oicial demographic statistics, however, obscure as

much as they reveal. In the context of the Russian

empire, ‘Russian’ often functioned less as a marker

of ethnic or national identity than as an administra-

tive or social designation. Language use, legal status,

and self-identication within an imperial frame-

work could all result in classication as Russian,

regardless of origin. Consequently, census gures

frequently overemphasised the Russian population,

masking the city’s heterogeneous composition. By

mid-century, Odesa had evolved from a small en-

clave of foreign administrators and traders into a

densely populated metropolis shaped by migrants,

fugitives, working-class communities, and merchant

dynasties. This demographic transformation not

only fuelled economic growth but also reshaped the

city’s urban form, density, and social geography.

free land, freedom of religion, and exemption from

military conscription (Gervits 2024, 34). These free-

doms, rarely available in the Russian interior, were

designed to accelerate development in a frontier

zone which the empire lacked the capacity to popu-

late and administer directly.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, much of Eu-

rope was marked by political unease and economic

uncertainty, while Odesa remained comparatively

stable and open. As a result, the city attracted mi-

grants from all over Europe and the empire itself.

Every community had a dierent reason for com-

ing: Greeks sought economic opportunity and relief

from Ottoman governance, members of the French

In the rst half of the nineteenth century, Odesa’s

physical size nearly tripled, yet it remained a rela-

tively compact and dense city. The most signicant

addition to the urban fabric beyond the city’s core

was Moldovanka, a predominantly Jewish neigh-

bourhood which developed rapidly and informally.

Often described as impoverished and unsafe, Mol-

dovanka stood in sharp contrast to the city’s neo-

classical origins. A clear spatial boundary separat-

ed it from the rest of the city: Staroportofrankovska

Street. Unlike the carefully designed city centre,

streets and blocks in Moldovanka reected the pres-

sures of accelerated migration and the practical

needs of a growing population rather than classical

ideals of order.

Oicially incorporated into Odesa in 1820, Mol-

dovanka had existed as a suburb prior to that, its

name deriving from an earlier Moldovan settlement

founded by refugees escaping Ottoman rule (Rich-

ardson 2008, 110). Despite widespread deprivation,

it was full of civic infrastructure. Moldavanka con-

tained public squares and green spaces, bordered

Dukovskyi Garden to the east, and housed one of

the city’s largest medical institutions, the Jewish

GROWTH:

WHEN MIGRATION DRAWS THE MAP

Hospital (now City Clinical Hospital No. 1). Its grad-

ual absorption into the city illustrates how Odesa

grew naturally, at its own pace rather than that of

the empire. Such informal urbanisation would have

been diicult in the more tightly controlled cities

of the Russian interior. In Odesa, the cosmological

and classical principles that underpinned the city’s

initial plans gave way to pragmatic adaptation. Yet,

Moldovanka’s growth is also a testament to the city’s

historic attraction to outsiders. Odesa drew migrants

not because it oered comfort, but because it oered

access to work, trade, and relative freedom under a

milder form of imperial oversight. Economic oppor-

tunity, combined with exible administration and

regulation, allowed neighbourhoods like Moldo-

vanka to become integral components of the city’s

urban system.

34 35DЇASPORA JOURNAL

Merchants and entrepreneurs played a crucial role

in Odesa’s nineteenth-century development. From

1803 to 1859, private capital was the primary source

of funding for much of the city’s construction. It be-

gan with Count de Richelieu’s initiative to allocate

free plots of land on the condition that buildings be

completed within two years (Herlihy 1986, 36). This

policy stimulated investment and ensured rapid ar-

chitectural growth. A particularly signicant insti-

tution in this process was the Exchange Committee,

an organisation established in the 1840s which rep-

resented the interests of traders before local authori-

ties. By 1859, the Committee had become an interme-

diary between Odesa’s business community and the

Belge, Boris, and Katja Wezel. “Entangled Com-

petition: Globalization, Imperial Domination,

and Local Development in the Port Cities of Riga

and Odesa.” Slavic Review, Vol. 81, no. 3 (2025):

https://resolve.cambridge.org/core/journals/slav-

ic-review/article/entangled-competition-global-

ization-imperial-domination-and-local-devel-

opment-in-the-port-cities-of-riga-and-odesa/

D86D921E6DCE95C7562983AFE2B71244.

Dobrolubsky, Andrey, Nadia Ieksarova, and Vlad-

imir Yeksarov. “Smart port city of Odessa: brilliant

embodiment of Vitruvius’ theories of beauty.” Vit-

ruvio, Vol. 1, no. 1 (2016): https://polipapers.upv.es/

index.php/vitruvio/article/view/5157.

Gervits, Maya. “Plague, Quarantine, and Environ-

mental Design in Nineteenth Century Odesa.” Plan-

ning Perspectives, Vol. 39 (2024): https://www.tand-

fonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02665433.2023.2204494.

Herlihy, Patricia. “Odessa: Staple Trade and Ur-

banization in New Russia.” Jahrbücher für Ges-

chichte Osteuropas, Bd. 21, H. 2 (1973): https://www.

jstor.org/stable/41044735.

Herlihy, Patricia. Odessa: A History, 1794–1914.

Harvard University Press, 1986.

Herlihy, Patricia. Odessa Recollected: The Port

and the People. Academic Studies Press, 2019.

Lecke, Mirja, and Efraim Sicher. Cosmopolitan

Spaces in Odesa: A Case Study of an Urban Context.

Academic Studies Press, 2023.

Montclos, Brigitte. “Les Chemins d’Odessa

Civilisation et architecture à Odessa.” Cahiers

slaves, no. 14 (2016): https://www.persee.fr/doc/cas-

la_1283-3878_2016_num_14_1_1135.

Navone, Nicola. “Ticino architects in Odesa.”

Swiss National Museum, September 29, 2022. https://

blog.nationalmuseum.ch/en/2022/09/ticino-archi-

tects-in-odesa/?utm.

Puryear, Vernon J. “Odessa: Its Rise and Interna-

tional Importance, 1815-50.” Pacic Historical Re-

view, Vol. 3, no. 2 (1934): https://www.jstor.org/sta-

ble/3633378?seq=1.

Richardson, Tanya. Kaleidoscopic Odessa: Histo-

ry and Place in Contemporary Ukraine. University

of Toronto Press, 2008.

Sifneos, Evrydiki. Imperial Odessa: People, Spac-

es, Identities. Brill, 2018.

(Puryear 1934, 195-196). Although temporarily dis-

rupted by the Crimean War, this sustained peri-

od of growth consolidated Odesa’s position as the

largest grain-exporting port in the Russian empire.

Although Odesa began with only a few trade con-

nections in 1803, due to the porto franco regime,

that foundation grew into a thriving port economy

by 1859. The city’s resulting wealth transformed its

economy and reshaped its architecture, with mer-

chants investing heavily in rebuilding and mod-

ernising its central districts.

The true history of Odesa’s nineteenth-century de-

velopment challenges claims that portray the city as

an archetypal product of Russian imperial design.

Between its oicial founding in 1794 (which is dis-

puted since several settlements already existed be-

forehand) and the end of the porto franco regime

in 1859, Odesa emerged not as a model imperial city

under central authority, but as a space where impe-

rial control was partial, negotiable, and frequently

absent. Its growth relied on exceptional administra-

tive practices, economic freedom, and sustained re-

liance on foreign expertise and private capital rather

BIBLIOGRAPHY

municipal government, facilitating communication

between the two and lobbying for the development

of commercial infrastructure (Belge et al. 2025, 536).

Economic data documents the scale of Odesa’s com-

mercial success: in 1803, the port exported approxi-

mately 87,700 tons of grain, a gure that increased

almost tenfold to over 826,000 tons by the late 1850s

than direct state planning or investment. The city’s

cosmopolitan character was neither accidental nor

decorative. It was produced by policies that prior-

itised exibility over regulation, accommodation

over discipline, and opportunity over uniformity.

Migration ows, informal urban expansion, and the

prominence of non-Russian professionals were not

just deviations from an imperial norm, but the very

mechanisms through which the city functioned.

Seen through this lens, Odesa’s prosperity appears

inversely related to the intensity of Russian inter-

vention. Where the Russian state governed lightly

(through tax exemptions, delegated authority, and

permissive regulation), the city ourished. Where

order was imposed unevenly, as in suburban dis-

tricts like Moldovanka, life adapted pragmatically

rather than collapsing.

Odesa’s success thus grew not from Russianness,

but from the limits of Russian power and the space

those limits created for mobility, enterprise, and plu-

ralism. Reclaiming this history is of immeasurable

importance today. In an era where urban pasts are

often exploited to legitimise territorial expansion

and normalise violence, Odesa’s early development

oers a counter-narrative to imperial appropriation.

The city’s success as a European port on Ukrainian

soil is due specically to the absence of imperial

control, resulting in a municipal ethos dened by

pragmatism and openness.

TRADE:

GRAIN MOVES AND REVENUE ARRIVES

36 37DЇASPORA JOURNAL

MYTH IN THE CITY

Urbanis i Kyiv uder Orthodox

Cosology ad Marxist Ideology

DARIIA HRYSHCHENKO

his article examines how myth operated as a

generative force for the urban formation of

Kyiv at two transformative and ideologically diver-

gent moments: the 1830s, when the city was re-

imagined as a ‘Holy City’ within the Orthodox

cosmology of the Russian Empire and the peri-

od between 1923 and 1930, when Soviet plan-

ners sought to implement the Marxist idea

of proletarian ascendancy. Myth, as Roland

Barthes conceives it, functions as a ‘sec-

ond-order semiological system’ through

which ideology is naturalised and ren-

dered self-evident (2014, 223). In urban-

ism, this process manifests materially, as

metaphysical narratives and ideological

doctrines are translated into the or-

ganisation of streets, the placement of

monumental structures, and the hierar-

chy of spatial ensembles.

Mircea Eliade’s notion of the axis mundi further

illuminates this translation: through separa-

tion and socially produced space sacred and

cosmologically signicant points of orienta-

tion in the city give physical form to the link

between earthly and transcendent order (Eli-

ade 1959, Lefebvre 1991). In Kyiv, both periods

reveal how ideological myth, whether sacred

or secular, functioned as a spatialising

force, producing urban syntax that leg-

ibly inscribed authority and or-

der onto the cityscape.

In the 1830s, the Russian imperial administration

pursued an agenda of urban mythmaking in Kyiv,

mobilising Orthodox-Christian cosmology to legit-

imise political power. The Polish November Upris-

ing of 1830–31 had exposed the fragility of Russian

control over the western provinces, where Polish

elites retained disproportionate inuence (Bilenky

2018,17). Kyiv, with its diverse population of Poles,

Ukrainians, Jews, and Russians, became a stage

upon which imperial authority could be spatially

reairmed (Liber 1992, 12). By order of Tsar Nicholas

I, planners and architects sought to materialise the

myth of Kyiv as inherently ‘Russian Orthodox’ and

‘holy’, appropriating its historical connection to the

Baptism of Kyivan Rus in 988 and framing the city as

a ‘New Zion’ (Tolochko 2004, 250-253; Bilenky 2018,

4). This myth was implemented through spatial hi-

erarchy: the divine, the Tsar, the clergy, and subjects

were inscribed into urban form through elevation,

centrality, and visibility. The city’s natural topogra-

phy (hills on the Right Bank of the Dnipro River and

at plains on the Left) was used to reinforce this hi-

erarchy. The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a prominent cave

monastery, situated atop a hill on the Right Bank,

functioned as an axis mundi, establishing a visual

and symbolic centre that dominated both skyline

and consciousness. Pilgrimage routes to the Lavra

ascending from Podil, the merchants’ district within

the city, and the towns of Vasylkiv and Bilogorod-

ka from the outside translated this cosmology into

bodily experience.

The picturesque ensemble of churches scattered

across the hills along the Dnieper further rein-

forced the Orthodox vision of sacred geography

and was widely recognised as iconographic (Bilenky

2018, 20). While it could be argued that Kyiv lacked

a spatial diagram reecting the transition from the

square, signifying earth, to the circle, signifying the

divine, this critique primarily applies to the peri-

od between 1700 and 1800, when Kyiv was dened

by the three separate settlements of Pechersk, the

Old Town, and Podil (Kostof 1991). By the 1830s, the

imperial urban programme sought to consolidate

these areas through expansion inland on the Right

Bank. The introduction of a Roman-inspired grid,

which was used to assert the idea of the ‘holy mili-

tary city’ adapted to the hilly topography, balancing

the irregular terrain with a rationalised spatial order

in divine discourse (Bilenky 2018, 90). The grid func-

tioned not only as a mechanism of practical urban

organisation but also as an instrument of imperial

control and surveillance, transforming sacred to-

pography into a legible civic hierarchy (Beebeejaun

2021).

38 39DЇASPORA JOURNAL

Within this framework, the placement of key struc-

tures articulated the mythological and political nar-

rative. Churches dominated the skyline, asserting

religious supremacy; the Palace occupied another

hill but remained subordinate in scale and prom-

inence, maintaining the theological hierarchy of

God over Tsar. Podil, the mercantile district located

along the lower riverbank, was deliberately margin-

alised in elevation, reinforcing social and cosmolog-

ical ordering. The centripetal organisation around

the palace consolidated the urban pull toward a

mythologically sanctioned epicentre, producing a

city in which belief became geometry, and imperial

authority assumed the guise of cosmic inevitability.

The 1830s plan thus enacts what might be described

as ritual spatiality, in which movement, perspective,

and built form collectively reinforce the narrative of

Orthodox cosmology and imperial legitimacy.

A century later, between 1923 and 1930, Kyiv became

the site of an analogous, yet ideologically inverted,

exercise in urban mythmaking under Soviet author-

ity. The Soviet state sought to materialise the Marx-

ist myth of proletarian ascendancy, conceiving the

city as a medium through which socialist ideology

could be naturalised and experienced spatially. The

reconguration of Kyiv during this period replaced

vertical sacred hierarchies with horizontal collec-

tivism: churches were demolished or repurposed

(including Lavra, which was turned into an antire-

ligious museum in 1929), and industrial plants were

constructed chaotically under ‘Temporary Building

Regulations’, along new axes until 1934 when Kyiv

became the capital of the Ukrainian SSR, and the

General Plan of Kyiv was developed in 1936 (Ponom-

aryova and Ryan 2021). These industrial complexes

asserted the primacy of production over transcen-

dence, and the symbolic and functional centre of the

city shifted from the ecclesiastical ridge of the Right

Bank towards the industrial and administrative

nodes of newly built districts, stepping away from

the square aspiration of the imperial ‘Holy City’.

The Soviet approach to spatial order retained a se-

lective continuity with imperial techniques, particu-

larly in the use of centralisation and grid-based plan-

ning. Key administrative and ideological buildings

from the imperial period were often repurposed to

signify the authority of the proletariat over the bour-

geoisie. Yet, unlike the verticality of the 1830s, new

districts were laid out away from the Right Bank’s

hills, emphasising horizontality and uniformity and

consequently embedding the myth of proletarian

equality into the city’s morphology (Lissitzky 1984).

The grid, inherited from earlier imperial plans, was

reinterpreted as a rationalist instrument for revo-

lutionary eiciency rather than imperial control,

reecting the Marxist privileging of functional and

collective logic over symbolic hierarchy (Lissitzky

1984). Despite this transformation, the spatial im-

print of prior myths persisted, as historical churches

and streetscapes continued to punctuate the skyline

and inform urban legibility (Bilenky 2018).

Soviet planners articulated ideological myth

through both the location of these structures and

how people interacted with them. Palaces of Culture,

administrative buildings, and factories were con-

structed in each respective district, with the main

administrative centre located to the west of the pre-

existing Palace, diminishing its status to reect col-

lective production and civic participation, creating

an almost ritualistic urban experience similar to the

pilgrimage routes of the 1830s. In both cases, move-

ment through the city enacted belief, whether in

the divine order or in socialist transformation. The

shift from sacred verticality to secular hori-

zontality exemplies the implementation

of myth, illustrating the capacity of ideolo-

gy to shape not only what is built but how

it is inhabited, perceived, and navigated.

A comparison of the two periods underscores both

divergence and continuity in the urban deployment

of myth. In the imperial period, vertical hierarchy

and ecclesiastical dominance codied the cosmic

order and legitimised Tsarist authority, while in the

early Soviet era, horizontal collectivism and indus-

trial centrality naturalised the authority of the pro-

letariat. Both periods, however, conceived the city as

a ‘cosmos in miniature’, in which order, hierarchy,

and a symbolic centre were essential for the distri-

bution of ideological narratives.

40 41DЇASPORA JOURNAL

Both regimes utilised grid-based planning, yet while

the imperial grid functioned as an explicit instru-

ment of surveillance and control, the Soviet grid was

portrayed as rational urban design for functionality.

Both periods utilised monumental architecture to

signify authority, whether through gilded domes,

palaces, or industrial plants. In both cases, the city

became a semiotic system where ideology was en-

coded through geometry.

The persistence of myth across regimes also reveals

the layered nature of urban semiotics. Structures,

routes, and visual hierarchies instituted in one ideo-

logical system leave enduring traces which subse-

quent regimes either incorporate or displace. The

historic churches in the skyline of the cityscape con-

tinued to inform perception and movement even as

new ideological layers were added in the Soviet pe-

riod. This interplay between continuity and rupture

demonstrates that urban form is a medium through

which power, ideology, and belief are enacted ma-

terially.

Ultimately, a comparative analysis of Kyiv’s urban

form in the 1830s and 1920s illustrates how myth

functions as both an instrument and a product of

urban planning. In both cases, architecture mate-

rialised myth, whether divine or proletarian. The

city became a diagram of ideological cognition, a

tangible representation of cosmological and politi-

cal narratives. Kyiv’s urban fabric, therefore, exem-

plies how belief can assume geometric form, pro-

ducing a space which legitimises authority, shapes

experience, and renders ideology understandable.

The distinct approaches of these two periods, while

ideologically opposed, converge in their recogni-

tion of the city as a canvas for mythic inscription,

demonstrating the enduring role of semiology in

the study of urban form and the production of ideo-

logical space.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barthes, Roland. 2014. Mythologies. Paris: Con-

temporary French Fiction.

Bazhan, Mykola Platonovych, and Akademiia

Nauk Ukraïns’koï RSR. 1969. Soviet Ukraine. Edited

by Mykola Platonovych Bazhan. Kyiv: Editorial Of-

ce of the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia, Academy

of Sciences of the Ukrainian S.S.R.

Beebeejaun, Yasminah. 2021. “Provincializing

Planning: Reections on Spatial Ordering and Im-

perial Power.” Planning Theory 21(3).

Bilenky, Serhiy. 2018. Imperial Urbanism in the

Borderlands: Kyiv, 1800–1905. Toronto: University of

Toronto Press.

Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane:

The Nature of Religion. New York: Harcourt.

“Heaven Round, Earth Square.” 2025. Ortho-

dox Arts Journal.

Kostof, Spiro. 1991. The City Shaped: Urban

Patterns and Meanings through History. Lon-

don: Thames and Hudson.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of

Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Liber, George O. 1992. “Periphery and Center.”

In Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and

Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR 1923–1934.

Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lissitzky, El. 1984. Russia: An Architecture for

World Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Malakov, Dmytro. 2008. Prybutkovi budynky

Kyieva [Revenue Buildings of Kyiv]. Kyiv: Kyiv Na-

tional University of Construction and Architecture.

Ponomaryova, Anna, and Brian D. Ryan. 2021.

“Will Kyiv’s Soviet Industrial Districts

Survive? A Study of Transformation, Preservation,

and Demolition of Industrial Heritage in Ukraine’s

Capital.” Journal of Planning History 20(3).

Tolochko, Oleksii. 2004. “Kyievo-rus’ka spadsh-

chyna v istorychnii dumtsi Ukraїny pochatku XIX

st.” In Ukraїns’ki proekty v Rosiis’kii imperiї, edited

by V. F. Verstiuk, V. M. Horobets’, and O. P. Toloch-

ko, 250–331. Kyiv: Naukova dumka.

42 43DЇASPORA JOURNAL

THE ARKA SVOBODY

UKRAYINS’KOHO

NARODU

ANNA-MARIIA BRYNCHAK

n Kyiv, monuments tell stories about the past.

The Arka Svobody Ukrayins’koho Narodu (Arch I

of Freedom of the Ukrainian People), hereafter re-

ferred to as the Arch, is a notable example. Built

under Soviet rule in 1982 as the ‘People’s Friendship

Arch’ to symbolise Russian-Ukrainian unication,

the Arch’s meaning has shifted signicantly since

Ukraine’s independence. Rather than being an out-

dated edice, it now serves as a prominent site for

historical remembrance, representing the ongoing

struggle between Ukrainian and Russian ideologies

while simultaneously expressing fundamentally

opposing views of the two nations’ past and present

relationships.

A Site of Meonic Cotest ad the

Reconguratio of Power i

Moder Ukraie

The Arch is a modern battle of narratives. By chang-

ing its name and appearance after Russia’s full-scale

invasion, Ukraine confronted the Arch’s Soviet her-

itage and asserted its narrative of sovereignty. This

strategy has helped Ukraine demonstrate its iden-

tity and challenge Russian eorts to impose histori-

cal unity and legitimise its invasion. This essay will

examine concepts of memory and power, discuss

the Arch’s Soviet history, and explore changing atti-

tudes before and after 2022. Finally, it will show how

the Arch’s transformation serves as a form of resis-

tance and continues to shape power dynamics.

44 45DЇASPORA JOURNAL

MEMORY, POWER, AND SYMBOLISM

To understand how sites like the Arch function

now, we must consider ideas from memory studies

and political theory. Collective memory is a crucial

idea which goes beyond the individual and refers to

groups of people recalling the past collectively. Jan

Assmann (2008) describes collective memory as a

dynamic, ongoing process in which groups actively

create and revise their shared sense of history. It is

about how societies as a whole choose to remem-

ber, emphasise, and forget — a process which is

frequently impacted by contemporary problems

and perspectives. The process of creating col-

lective memory is tightly linked to power

dynamics. As Birgit Molden highlights,

collective memory is a space where dif-

ferent groups compete (2016). Powerful

groups, such as states, typically want

to establish a dominant, oicial nar-

rative of history, which Molden re-

fers to as ‘mnemonic hegemony’. This

is their attempt to shape how history is

perceived and used; however, this is rare-

ly the only narrative. Other groups some-

times generate ‘resistant pasts’ — alternate

methods of remembering that contradict the

dominant narrative and establish dierent

identities or interpretations of events.

SOVIET FRIENDSHIP

The Arch, built in 1982 during the Soviet era as the

People’s Friendship Arch, was unveiled as part of the

ceremonies for the USSR’s 60th and Kyiv’s 1,500th

anniversaries. It was built to represent the ‘unica-

tion of Ukraine with Russia’ and highlight their rela-

tionship within the context of the Soviet Union. This

message was conveyed through the Arch’s design: its

rainbow-esque form was joined by sculptures, in-

cluding a bronze group of Russian and Ukrainian

workers holding a Soviet Order of Friendship of

Peoples. This visual reinforced the Soviet ideology

of fraternal unity among the republics, focusing on

Russian-Ukrainian ties and the nations’ supposed

shared destiny. Building such a monument in Kyiv

aimed to embed this narrative into the city’s collec-

tive memory and enforce loyalty to the Soviet state’s

vision. The goal was clear: reinforce Moscow’s cen-

trality within contemporary thought and suppress

any narratives of an independent Ukrainian identity.

SHIFTING PERCEPTIONS

Following Ukraine’s declaration of independence in

1991, the symbolic meaning of the Arch underwent

signicant re-evaluation amid the changing land-

scape of Ukrainian collective memory. According to

Assmann, collective memory is actively produced in

the present, and the truth of a sovereign Ukrainian

state required a departure from the previous Sovi-

et historical narrative (2008). As a result, the Arch

evolved from a symbol of oicial Soviet mnemonic

hegemony into a contested site, with aspirations for

a separate national identity challenging its original

meaning.

Monuments, museums, and historical sites are im-

portant places for these power struggles over collec-

tive memory to play out publicly. They are overow-

ing with political symbolism, serving as physical

reminders that evoke specic stories, identities, and

feelings about the past. Governments and other

groups frequently use these symbols to push for

their own goals or reinforce particular ideologies.

When various groups disagree or actively contest

the meaning of these sites, “mnemonic battles” oc-

cur — direct clashes over what the past means in the

present. The Arka Svobody Ukrayins’koho Narodu,

with its heated history and growing symbolism, pro-

vides a compelling case study for these theoretical

concepts. Analysing the deliberate changes made to

the Arch’s name and design, as well as the reactions

they provoked, help us see power dynamics at work

and fully understand how dierent groups attempt

to dominate the story of the past to inuence the

present and future.

46 47DЇASPORA JOURNAL

THE INTENSIFICATION OF THE

BATTLE: THE IMPACT OF THE 2022

FULL-SCALE INVASION

The full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022

drastically changed the mnemonic landscape,

heightening disputes over sites like the Arch. With

Russia’s open aggression and denial of Ukrainian

sovereignty, the Arch’s original meaning of ‘eternal

friendship’ became not only obsolete but oensive.

This crisis turned long-simmering tensions over

Soviet symbols into an urgent need for reinterpre-

tation. The invasion accelerated decommunisation

and derussication across Ukraine (Betlii, 2022;

Kovalchuk, 2024). Soviet-era monuments now stood

as intolerable reminders used to justify aggression.

In 2024, the УІHП (Ukrainian Institute of National

Memory) declared the Arch to be a symbol of Rus-

sian imperial policy, an example of growing public

recognition of the monument’s problematic history.

Now, the physical presence of the Arch, previously

a potentially ambiguous relic, became an essential

platform for expressing Ukraine’s determination to

control its own historical narrative and physically

depart from the past which Russia sought to exploit.

As a result, the invasion created a new, urgent imper-

ative for actively transforming the site, addressing

false narratives, and reconguring the power rela-

tions ingrained in the urban landscape.

Crucially, this period saw the formation of more

resistant pasts within Ukrainian collective mem-

ory and saw increasingly aggressive public action

against Soviet monuments, including vandalism (Li-

ubarets, 2017). These acts, which began with short-

term artistic installations and grew into more overt

visual protestations, were grassroots mnemonic bat-

tles. They mattered not only as acts of destruction

but also as intentional eorts to dispute the original

Soviet narrative of the monuments and oer alter-

native histories. These unoicial contests revealed

shifting power over memory control and interpre-

tation, leading the government to consider decisive

actions against the Arch.

The decades leading up to the full-scale invasion in

2022 were marked by a complex dynamic regarding

the legacy of Soviet monuments. While large scale,

state-driven decommunisation initiatives were not

always applied to symbols, places like the Arch be-

came sites for implicit and explicit contestation. The

monument’s continued physical presence empha-

sised the ongoing struggle between inherited Soviet

symbols and the emerging independent Ukrainian

historical consciousness.

POWER RELATIONS PRODUCED IN

THE PRESENT

The contestation and intentional re-recognition of

the Arch have radically transformed the dynamics

of power which surround this central site of memo-

ry in modern Ukraine. What was once a monument

meant to symbolise Soviet strength and a narrative

of Russian-Ukrainian unity is now a concrete sym-

bol of Ukrainian sovereignty and a site for asserting

a separate national identity.

This shift represents a substantial rethinking of who

has the authority to dene the past and its relevance

in the present. Through the oicial renaming of the

Arch and other visual interventions, the Ukrainian

state and society are actively opposing and decon-

structing Russian mnemonic hegemony inscribed

in the urban landscape.

48 49DЇASPORA JOURNAL

CONCLUSION

The Arka Svobody Ukrayins’koho Narodu provides

a compelling case study for the interaction between

collective memory and power dynamics. Original-

ly designed as an instrument of Soviet mnemonic

hegemony, the Arch became a focus for anti-So-

viet feelings after independence. The 2022 inva-

sion served as a catalyst, bringing the fallacy of the

original narrative to light and resulting in decisive

changes. Ukraine’s strategic changes, renaming and

redesigning the Arch, reect a powerful cultural

counter-oensive. These activities are more than

just decommunisation. They are political declara-

tions of sovereignty, the recovery of an historical

narrative, and a symbol of opposition to Russia’s

weaponisation of history.

By replacing the previous narrative of friendship

with one of freedom, Ukraine has seized the ability

to shape its collective memory independently. This

directly challenges Russia’s ambitions to preserve

its sphere of historical and cultural inuence. Thus,

the Arch’s transformation is more than just a simple

renaming, it is also about taking control of a part of

Ukraine’s national narrative which was previously

determined by Moscow.

The power relations which have resulted are com-

plex. First, the power to dene national identity has

shifted. The Arch, which now represents Ukrainian

freedom, contributes to a collective memory empha-

sising independence, resilience, and a distinct break

from the Soviet past. This reinforces Ukrainian na-

tional sovereignty, countering Russia’s notion of his-

torical unity. Second, the shift reinforces Ukraine’s

assumption of authority over its land and symbols.

Decisions about the Arch are now made in Kyiv,

with the interests of the Ukrainian public in mind.

Finally, the Arch becomes a visible marker of resis-

tance. Its altered state serves as a daily reminder of

the ongoing struggle against Russian aggression and

as a symbol of deance, shaping both internal and

international perspectives.

VIET MONUMENTAL HERITAGE (2009–2015)’,

Український історичний збірник, (19), pp. 324–333.

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Molden, B. (2016) ‘Resistant pasts verses mne-

monic hegemony: On the power relations of collec-

tive Memory’, Memory Studies, 9(2), pp. 125-142.

Salo, E. (2023) ‘The Weaponization of Heritage:

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fare’, Texas Journal of Law and Political Science, 16,

pp. 708-. Available at: https://heinonline.org/HOL/

P?h=hein.journals/tjlpp16&i=708 (Accessed: 18 April

2025).

Sklokina, I. (2024) ‘World War II Monuments

in Ukraine: Protection, Dismantling, Reuse since

2022’, kunsttexte.de - Journal für Kunst- und Bild-

geschichte, (1), pp. 1–15. doi:https://doi.org/10.48633/

ksttx.2024.1.102638. (Accessed: 12 May 2025).

УІНП (Ukrainian Institute of National Memory).

(2024) Пояснюємо висновок Експертної комісії

УІНП про Арку дружби народів. Available at: uinp.

gov.ua/pres-centr/novyny/poyasnyuyemo-vysno-

vok-ekspertno… (Accessed: 12 May 2025).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Assmann, A. (2008) ‘Transformations

between History and Memory’, Social Re-

search, 75(1), pp. 49-72.

Betlii, O. (2022) ‘The Identity Politics of Heritage:

Decommunization, Decolonization, and Derussi-

cation of Kyiv Monuments after Russia’s Full-Scale

Invasion of Ukraine’, Journal of Applied History,

4(1-2), pp. 149-169. https://doi.org/10.1163/25895893-

bja10031

Kotsur, Lesya. “Очищення публічного простору

України від російських ідеологем ‘братнього на-

роду’ та ‘возз’єднання’ після 24 лютого 2022 року.”

Kреативний Потенціал Економіки Культури у

Повоєнній Відбудові України, 2023, pp. 101–5, icr.

org.ua/wpcontent/uploads/2023/11/Book_2023_Con-

ference_15.06.2023.pdf#page=10 (Accessed: 12 May

2025).

Kovalchuk, T. (2024) ‘Derussication Of The

Public Space In Ukraine As Conditioned By The

Full-Scale Russian-Ukrainian War’, Intermarum

History Policy Culture, (14), pp. 144–159. https://doi.

org/10.35433/history.112074.

Liubarets, A. (2017) ‘VANDALISM as a TOOL

for UKRAINIAN POLITICS of MEMORY of SO-

50 51DЇASPORA JOURNAL

the burden in my chest,

when I speak my other half…

it wears me down —

I cannot rest,

but I can’t live without it.

where I belonged.

the wings I get,

when I speak the tongue of songs…

the longing feeling brings me back,

to the place

to bring about what’s inside.

the weight I lose,

when both my voices join in tune…

the chains around me loosen up,

the best of both

is just enough

JUST ENOUGH

KIR A SANTALOVA

52 53DЇASPORA JOURNAL

THE RIGHT TO

KNOW AND

THE DUTY

TO REMAIN

SILENT

Journalis

i Ties of War

ANASTASIIA HRYSHCHENKO

ne untimely published frame or sentence

within a news item can cost someone their

life, disrupt a military operation, or act as evidence.

Military journalism is one of the most important

and, simultaneously, dangerous professions in the

world. These people act as the eyes and ears of the

world, where chaos reigns, to provide society with

objective information. However, this duty is always

situated between physical and psychological surviv-

al, which places a broader range of tasks on media

workers that go far beyond the usual formulation of

a report.

Journalism is one of those professions in which eth-

ics play a key role. It is characterised by a high lev-

el of social responsibility, since the work inuences

public opinion, and the main focus of their material

is often the individual. The main goal of journalis-

tic ethics is to ensure the objective and comprehen-

sive distribution of information. It establishes rules

of professional conduct that help journalists act

in accordance with public interest, maintain trust,

and resolve ethical conicts that may arise. It is also

important to note that ethical norms should shape

responsibility towards the public and inuence the

internal convictions and moral principles of each

journalist (Ivanov 2006, 16-21). Thus, in general, eth-

ics should cultivate in journalists a high level

of self-awareness, an understanding of

the importance of their work, and

the impact it has on society.

54 55DЇASPORA JOURNAL

Armed Forces and the media under martial law

(Ministry of Defence of Ukraine 2022). It denes

what information must not be disseminated to pre-

vent the leaking of restricted-access data and ensure

the security of Ukraine. Some of these include:

1. Names, composition, and locations of military

units

2. Data on combat plans, losses, and movements

of equipment

3. Results of operations, if not oicially published

4. Photos and videos depicting equipment, ar-

ma-ment, and air defence positions

5. Data about special units and intelligence (Min-

istry of Defence of Ukraine 2022)

The order contains separate provisions that regulate

the work of journalists in the combat zone. Namely,

a journalist has the right to:

1. Receive, store, use, and disseminate general in-

formation about the preparation and actions of de-

fence forces

2. Cover the results of completed operations only

with the command’s approval (Ministry of Defence

of Ukraine 2022).

Additionally, the duties of a media representative

are as follows:

1. Acknowledge that they do not have the right to

disclose information that constitutes state or oicial

secrets

2. To move within the combat zone only by an

agreed route and for an agreed period

3. To carry a body armour vest, helmet, rst aid kit,

and know how to provide rst aid

4. To wear identication markings “PRESS”

5. To not perform actions incompatible with civil-

ian status

PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS

IN CONFLICT ZONES

Most states issue documents that set out standards

of ethical conduct for journalists. However, the basis

of journalistic regulation does not derive from legal

norms, but from professional and ethical self-reg-

ulation through recommendatory documents.

Among them is the Declaration of Principles on

the Conduct of Journalists, adopted at the Second

World Congress of the International Federation of

Journalists in 1954 (International Federation of Jour-

nalists (IFJ) 1954), which serves as an international

code for members of trade unions in more than 140

countries, including Ukraine (the National Union of

Journalists of Ukraine and the Independent Media

Trade Union of Ukraine are members of the Inter-

national Federation of Journalists).

At the same time, ethical principles enshrined in

international agreements acquire concrete meaning

only within national media systems, where they are

adapted to the political, legal, and social realities of

each country. It is therefore important to consider

how these norms function at the state level, par-

ticularly under conditions that radically change

the usual model of journalistic activity. In Ukraine,

journalistic ethical codes do not have legal force and

function as instruments of professional self-regula-

tion. Ethical codes are complicated during wartime,

as conict may arise between professional duty and

national interest. Amidst the conditions of war, rig-

id adherence to journalistic standards can pose a

threat to human life or national security, which, in

turn, calls into question the very possibility of carry-

ing out journalistic activity in such conditions, since

even a minor disclosure of operational information

may be used by the enemy. The state may apply

military censorship to mitigate these threats, signi-

cantly limiting the professional work of journalists.

Therefore, when covering events related to hostili-

ties, journalists must adhere to particular standards.

Under these conditions, abstract ethical principles

become increasingly practical and call for clear, con-

crete guidelines. That is why, during the rst month

of the full-scale war in Ukraine, several documents

appeared with practical recommendations regard-

ing journalistic activity. Order of the Command-

er-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine No.73

of March 3, 2022, regulates interaction between the

56 57DЇASPORA JOURNAL

6. To submit materials for verication and remove

information prohibited from disclosure upon re-

quest

7. Acknowledge that the Armed Forces are not re-

sponsible for the safety or insurance of media rep-

resentatives (Ministry of Defence of Ukraine 2022).

It is also worth emphasising that the anonymity of

combatants and witnesses within the conict zone

is of critical importance, since the disclosure of iden-

tity may pose a threat. Identication of a person by

rst and last name is permissible only in the absence

of safety concerns. Thus, the priority for a journal-

ist in conditions of armed conict is personal safety

and the preservation of life.

THREAT AND PREPARATION

The threat faced by journalists in combat zones goes

far beyond moral responsibility and professional

limitations. The reality of war turns every careless

decision and violation of safety rules into a poten-

tially unavoidable risk. According to the Institute

of Mass Information, Russia committed 870 crimes

against journalists and media workers in Ukraine

from February 24, 2022, to October 2025, including

killings, abductions, shelling, holding in captivity,

damage to newsrooms as a result of military actions,

cyberattacks, blocking of the information space,

and attempts to impose propaganda (Sluga Narodu

2025). The total number of media workers killed up

until November 2025 amounts to 118 journalists, 15

of whom were killed while performing their profes-

sional duties (ibid.). In addition, about 29 Ukrainian

media workers are currently held in Russian captiv-

ity (ibid.).

Therefore, providing military journalists with ap-

propriate training is necessary to ensure safety

and reduce the risk for other individuals in combat

zones. Although documents regulating journalistic

activity under martial law do not provide security

guarantees, there are certain actions journalists can

take to enhance their safety.

PHYSICAL PREPARATION

In conict zones, journalists face the risk of physical

violence; therefore, in emergencies, it is necessary to

stop work in time and move to a safe place. Military

journalists must always be provided with protective

equipment and must understand the region that

they are in to develop an evacuation plan in advance.

It is advisable to undergo rst aid training and learn

to navigate using maps. Reporters are at especially

high risk of attack because combat conditions make

it very diicult to hold perpetrators accountable,

hindering the recording, collection, and documen-

tation of evidence and the identication of those re-

sponsible. Local networks of journalists, local com-

munities, and security experts help reduce danger

in such situations (Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

2015). In addition, many international organisa-

tions provide journalists with essential support and

equipment (personal protective equipment, satellite

phones, secure communication devices, specialized

GPS trackers), including Reporters Without Bor-

ders, Free Press Unlimited, and others.

It should be noted that despite the existence of cer-

tain educational initiatives, such as the Network for

Border Crossing Journalism programs (Network for

Border Crossing Journalism 2025), as well as UNES-

CO (2023) and IWPR training in security journalism,

Ukraine still lacks a systematic, structured, and in-

stitutionally guaranteed model of journalistic train-

ing for work in combat conditions.

58 59DЇASPORA JOURNAL

DIGITAL SECURITY

When working in conditions of armed conict, mil-

itary journalists need to have a clear plan for how to

maintain communication with the outside world. It

is essential to have several phones or satellite com-

munication devices and to ensure that all devices

have additional power sources (Committee to Pro-

tect Journalists 2012). It is also important to have a

trusted person outside the combat zone who is fa-

miliar with the area where the journalist is located

and monitors the situation (ibid.). Only encrypted

messengers should be used, and data storage should

be carried out in a secure environment using up-

to-date cryptographic protection tools and access

control (ibid.). Backup copies must be created, as

equipment can be lost (ibid.). It is imperative to store

sensitive data, such as source contacts or other in-

formation that could endanger others, in secure lo-

cations (ibid.). Journalists should prepare alternative

means of communication in case of internet or mo-

bile network shutdowns to restore contact with the

editorial oice more quickly and determine further

steps in an emergency (ibid.). All aspects of work

during war are dangerous, so the primary task is

to anticipate and, therefore, mitigate risk. Through

preparation, analysis of potential threats, and the

ability for quick decision-making when critical,

journalists can ensure their own safety and increase

eectiveness in uncertain conditions.

60 61DЇASPORA JOURNAL

PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT

Even with proper physical and digital preparation,

journalists do not remain fully protected from the

consequences of war. Beyond physical threats lie

psychological consequences: fear, sadness, guilt,

nightmares, and anxiety, reecting a wide range of

work-related mental health issues experienced in

combat zones (Feinstein 2004). Journalists, unlike

police oicers or military personnel, do not under-

go systematic training to respond to violence. This

leads to heightened vulnerability to the psycholog-

ical impact of professional activity in conict zones.

Traumatic events can lead to clinically dened con-

ditions, the most common of which is post-trau-

matic stress disorder (PTSD) (ibid.). PTSD is often

accompanied by depression or substance abuse.

Studies in Iraq have shown no statistically signi-

cant dierence in PTSD and depression levels be-

tween journalists embedded within the military and

those working independently, as both groups were

frequently exposed to dangerous situations (ibid).

While many journalists demonstrate resilience in

the face of such challenges, a notable proportion

experience signicant psychological strain or burn-

out, highlighting the occupational risks inherent to

reporting in conict zones.

The duration, intensity, and nature of armed conict

directly aect the psycho-emotional state of journal-

ists. In this context, the psychological consequences

of the activity of media workers during the full-scale

war in Ukraine are marked. The 2402 Foundation

published a comprehensive study on mental health

and resilience among Ukrainian media workers

(Daily Humanity 2025). The most common reactions

to professional workload among journalists are

stress, anxiety, and burnout, indicating the intense

pressure experienced by media workers in their dai-

ly work (ibid.). This may be related to on-site safety

as well as information overload, deadlines, and au-

dience pressure (ibid.). In addition, depression, fear,

anger, and feelings of guilt are quite common prob-

lems associated with covering complex topics, indi-

cating chronic stress and burnout (ibid.).

It is appropriate to note that half of journalists do

not suiciently trust their newsroom managers to

discuss their mental health (Daily Humanity 2025).

In cases where support does exist, it is mostly pro-

vided irregularly and without a comprehensive ap-

proach. Overall, more than a third of journalists do

not feel safe in their newsrooms, and support from

management often depends on personal willing-

ness rather than oicial policy (ibid.). The absence

of appropriate procedures and unequal access to as-

sistance indicates the importance of implementing

unied comprehensive measures, such as formal

support procedures and training managers to work

with emotional stress and emotionally exhaust-

ed employees. Despite the growing interest of the

journalistic community in the topic of emotional

vulnerability, some journalists still do not seek sup-

port. This indicates many systemic problems — the

topic of mental health remains taboo, and access to

appropriate assistance is limited by nancial factors,

lack of time, and insuicient awareness (ibid.).

62 63DЇASPORA JOURNAL

CONCLUSIONS

In the current context, it is necessary to prepare

journalists to work with violent material, as well

as for media organisations to develop eective sup-

port mechanisms. To prepare military journalists,

it is advisable to introduce more mandatory train-

ing programmes, namely, training in psychological

resilience and in conditions close to combat, regu-

lar consultations with psychologists, rehabilitation

measures, and peer support programmes.

Ethical, security, and psychological aspects deter-

mine the quality and safety of military journalism.

Adherence to ethical norms is complicated by mar-

tial law but remains critically important to prevent

harm to the military and the state. Journalists must

also undergo special training and have support, as

they constantly encounter traumatic events. There-

fore, the combination of ethical standards, security

requirements, and psychological resilience is one of

the main conditions for the professional activity of

military correspondents.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). 2012. Jour-

nalist Security Guide: Reporting Safely in a Crisis.

New York: Committee to Protect Journalists. https://

cpj.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/guide.pdf

Daily Humanity Team. 2025. Mental Health and

Resilience among Journalists. Report. Authors: Olha

Khan, Kateryna Serhatskova, and Larysa Kalyk.

Feinstein, Anthony. 2004. “The Psychological Haz-

ards of War Journalism.” Nieman Reports. Accessed

January 9, 2026. https://niemanreports.org/app/up-

loads/2024/03/04summer.pdf

International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). 1954.

IFJ Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Jour-

nalists. Accessed January 9, 2026. https://research.

tuni.fi/ethicnet/country/ifj-declaration-of-princi-

ples-on-the-conduct-of-journalists/

Ivanov, V. F. 2006. Journalist Ethics: Lecture

Course. Kyiv: Vyshcha Shkola. Ministry of Defence

of Ukraine. 2022. Order of the Commander-in-Chief

of the Armed Forces of Ukraine No. 73, March 3,

2022 (as amended). Accessed January 9, 2026.

https://mod.gov.ua/diyalnist/normativ-

no-pravova-baza/nakaz-golovnokomandu-

vacha-zsu-vid-03-03-2022-roku-73-zi-zminami

Network for Border Crossing Journalism. 2025.

“Media Camp on Frontline Reporting Takes Place

in Ukraine.” Accessed January 9, 2026. https://n-

ost.org/news/media-camp-on-frontline-reporting-

takes-place-in-ukraine

Reporters Without Borders (RSF). 2015. Safety

Guide for Journalists: A Handbook for Reporters

in High-Risk Environments. Paris: Reporters With-

out Borders. Sluga Narodu (Servant of the People).

2025. “Russia Must Be Held Accountable for Crimes

Against Ukrainian Journalists — the Verkhovna

Rada Addressed the World.” Accessed January 9,

2026. https://sluga-narodu.com/rosiia-maie-vidpo-

visty-za-zlochyny-proty-ukrainskykh-zhurnalis-

tiv-verkhovna-rada-zvernulas-do-svitu/

UNESCO and Institute for War & Peace Re-

porting (IWPR). 2023. “UNESCO and IWPR Train

Ukrainian Journalists in Conict Reporting.” Ac-

cessed January 9, 2026. https://www.unesco.org/en/

articles/unesco-and-iwpr-train-ukrainian-journal-

ists-conict-reporting

64 65DЇASPORA JOURNAL

THE TRANSFORMATION OF

PUBLIC SENTIMENT IN UKRAINE

AND ITS STRATEGIC IMPACT

ON THE WAR WITH RUSSIA

he Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022

triggered an unprecedented surge of patriotism

and social cohesion, which directly contributed

to the failure of Russia’s planned blitzkrieg and the

emergence of a protracted conict. Understanding

the behaviour of the Ukrainian state — its refusal

to capitulate, its pursuit of a Euro-Atlantic orienta-

tion, and its readiness for prolonged resistance —

requires more than a purely military perspective;

it is essential to consider the evolution of collective

perceptions, societal expectations, and the role of

public opinion.

From a theoretical standpoint, this situation can

be analysed through a combination of legitimacy

theory, social movement theory, and neoclassical

realism. Legitimacy theory explains how a gov-

ernment’s strategic exibility, including decisions

on mobilisation and negotiations, is constrained

by public approval and the need to maintain trust

and credibility (Albrow and Easton 1966; Linz 1978).

Social movement and framing theories highlight

the inuence of activists, independent media, and

public discourse in shaping perceptions of war and

inuencing state behaviour (McAdam and Tarrow

2013; Oberschall 1978). Neoclassical realism, in turn,

emphasises how asymmetric external pressures —

from allies such as the United States and adversaries

such as Russia — interact with internal legitimacy to

determine strategic choices and the scope of opera-

tional decisions (Ripsman et al. 2016).

In this context, public opinion in Ukraine func-

tioned simultaneously as a resource and a constraint

for state decisions. The rise of pro-Ukrainian senti-

ment created a sociocultural environment in which

maximalist rhetoric and demands for the full resto-

ration of territorial integrity became dominant. At

the same time, mobilisation policies and positions

on negotiation were shaped not only by the realities

of combat, but also by the imperative to preserve

societal legitimacy. Activists and independent me-

dia amplied public expectations, while external

political pressures, including unpredictable actions

by the United States and diplomatic tensions with

Donald Trump, compelled Kyiv to adjust its rhetoric

and strategic options.

Thus, Ukraine provides a clear example of how pub-

lic opinion, media inuence, and the external diplo-

matic context interact to create complex dynamics

that actively shape the strategic decisions and con-

duct of the state during wartime. This framework

allows for a comprehensive understanding of the in-

terplay between societal expectations, institutional

capacity, and international constraints in determin-

ing wartime policy.

LIUBOMYR SEMENIUK

66 67DЇASPORA JOURNAL

In the year before Russia’s full-scale invasion, the

Armed Forces of Ukraine numbered approximately

246,000 personnel (PIK 2025). This baseline is im-

portant, as it demonstrates the limited peacetime

size of the armed forces before the legitimacy shock

caused by the invasion. In 2022, following the decla-

ration of martial law and general mobilisation, the

number of Armed Forces personnel increased to

around 700,000 — almost three times higher than

during the period from 2014 to 2021 (PIK 2025). From

the perspective of legitimacy theory, this rapid ex-

pansion was made possible by an exceptional level

of societal consent, driven by the perception of an

existential threat and the consolidation of national

identity. This level of manpower remained largely

stable throughout 2023.

Debates on increasing the pace of conscription in-

tensied in December 2023, following public state-

ments by the then Commander-in-Chief Valerii

Zaluzhnyi regarding a new mobilisation law, which

included the gure of 400–500 thousand additional

conscripts (Radio Svoboda 2023). These statements

resonated strongly within the Oice of the President

amid an escalating institutional conict. Strength-

ening mobilisation measures was widely perceived

as politically costly and socially unpopular, despite

their military necessity. The Oice appears to have

adopted a strategy aimed at minimising political

costs by shifting responsibility for unpopular deci-

sions to the armed forces and the Ministry of De-

fence.

In January 2024, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

stated in an interview with Channel 4 News that

there was no immediate need to mobilise 500,000

people, citing the lack of suiciently detailed justi-

cations:

‘Personally, I don’t see the need to mobilise half a

million people yet. I haven’t seen enough clear de-

tails today to say that we need to mobilise half a mil-

lion’, Zelenskyy said (Channel 4 News 2024).

This statement illustrates the gap between military

assessments and political communication, where

public messaging is shaped less by operational re-

quirements than by considerations of public accept-

ance and political legitimacy.

On May 18, 2024, the updated Mobilisation

Law No. 10449 entered into force. It introduced

mandatory updates of military registration data

within 60 days, lowered the draft age to 25, abol-

ished conscription, and expanded enforcement

powers for the police and military registration oic-

es (President of Ukraine 2022). While legally neces-

sary, these measures intensied societal tensions by

expanding coercive elements of mobilisation, there-

by testing the limits of wartime legitimacy.

MOBILISATION Mobilisation remains a highly contentious issue, po-

larising society, undermining trust between citizens

and the state, and serving as a lever of pressure both

domestically and externally. According to a Kyiv

International Institute of Sociology (2024) survey,

approximately 54% of respondents expressed read-

iness to mobilise if necessary. This apparent con-

tradiction — high abstract support for mobilisation

combined with resistance to concrete enforcement

mechanisms — highlights the distinction between

symbolic consent and practical compliance.

At the same time, public opinion data indicate grow-

ing fatigue and increasing openness to negotiations,

which further constrains the political space for co-

ercive mobilisation policies (Razumkov Centre 2024;

Ukrainska Pravda 2024). Although Ukraine retains

a mobilisable reserve, the political leadership has

so far perceived the situation as not enabling large-

scale operational breakthroughs by Russian forces.

Persistent problems such as ineective mobilisation

practices, the absence of clear service terms, contro-

versial military decisions, and managerial fragmen-

tation continue to undermine defensive eective-

ness. Well-known volunteers, bloggers, and military

gures — including Serhiy Sternenko, Taras Chmut,

Andriy Biletsky, and Yuriy Butusov — have publicly

articulated these shortcomings. From the perspec-

tive of social movement theory, such actors function

as informal accountability agents and frame entre-

preneurs, articulating grievances and mobilising

public pressure in the absence of institutionalised

opposition during wartime (McAdam and Tarrow

2013; Oberschall 1978).

Overall, this dynamic illustrates how legitimacy op-

erates not merely as passive public approval, but as

an active constraint shaping the timing, framing,

and institutional allocation of responsibility for mo-

bilisation decisions.

68 69DЇASPORA JOURNAL

After halting Russian advances in the summer and

achieving successful counteroensives in Kherson,

Kharkiv, and parts of the Donetsk region in the fall

of 2022, public expectations increased substantially.

Ukrainian authorities responded by adopting and

amplifying maximalist rhetoric. A notable exam-

ple is the presidential decree of September 30, 2022,

which eectively prohibited direct negotiations with

the Russian president (President of Ukraine 2022).

At the end of 2022, a survey conducted by the

Kharkiv Institute for Social Research indicated that

76% of respondents opposed any compromises for

peace, while 95% supported the full restoration of

territorial integrity (LB.ua 2022). During this period,

negotiation-oriented discourse remained marginal.

Through a state-aligned media ecosystem — in-

cluding Telemarathon broadcasts, loyal blog-

gers, and anonymous Telegram channels — vic-

tory-centred narratives were actively promoted.

Public statements by senior oicials, such as

Mykhailo Podolyak’s comments regarding

the rapid return of Crimea, reinforced these

expectations (Ukrinform 2022).

Following the failure of oensive opera-

tions in the summer of 2023 and the transi-

tion of the war into a protracted stalemate,

public opinion began to shift.

NEGOTIATION PROCESS

The negotiation process became not only a foreign

policy instrument but also a signicant domestic

political factor contributing to societal polarisation.

Negotiations began in the early months of the in-

vasion and initially focused on humanitarian cor-

ridors and prisoner exchanges; however, no agree-

ment on ending the war was reached. Following the

liberation of northern Ukraine and the exposure of

Russian war crimes, Ukrainian public opinion shift-

ed decisively against negotiations. Moreover, the Is-

tanbul framework was widely perceived domestical-

ly as incompatible with prevailing notions of a just

peace.

Surveys conducted in September–October 2023

showed that 21% of respondents supported negoti-

ations as an immediate means of achieving peace,

while 63% opposed them (Ukrainska Pravda 2024).

The year 2024 marked a turning point in attitudes

toward negotiations. This shift illustrates a key

principle of legitimacy theory: a state’s negotiating

exibility is constrained not only by military reali-

ties but also by the need to maintain domestic legit-

imacy and public support (Albrow and Easton 1966;

Linz 1978).

According to a National Democratic Institute survey

in May 2024, 57% of respondents supported enter-

ing negotiations with Russia (KIIS 2024; Razumkov

Centre 2024). Nevertheless, the military and po-

litical leadership maintained a largely maximalist

position, as reected during the Global Summit on

Peace in Ukraine in 2024 — a largely symbolic initia-

tive with limited immediate political consequences.

In the same period, Vladimir Putin publicly articu-

lated his conditions for ending the war, including

Ukraine’s withdrawal from four regions (BBC

News Russian 2024).

The intensication of negotiation discourse

coincided with Donald Trump’s election as

U.S. president and the subsequent increase in

American pressure on Kyiv to initiate a peace

process. Given Ukraine’s asymmetric depend-

ence on U.S. support, the government gradu-

ally adjusted its rhetoric from the notion of

‘victory’ toward the concept of a ‘just peace’,

without abandoning its core demands.

Russia, however, rejected such framing and

continued to insist on ultimatum-based condi-

tions. This conguration of external pressure,

Ukraine’s limited internal exibility, and Rus-

sia’s rigid position demonstrates that strategic

decisions regarding negotiations are shaped

not only by battleeld dynamics but also by

the interaction between external constraints

and domestic legitimacy (Albrow and Eas-

ton 1966; Linz 1978; Ripsman et al. 2016).

Support for the Ukrainian authorities has been

closely associated with President Volodymyr Zelen-

skyy. Even before the full-scale invasion, power

within the executive branch was increasingly cen-

tralised, with the President’s Oice exerting a dom-

inant role in decision-making and placing pressure

on opposition actors (Albrow and Easton 1966; Linz

1978). Under martial law, and with overwhelming

popular backing, Zelenskyy’s approval rating in

May 2022 reached approximately 90%, reecting a

broad societal consensus to support the government

until the end of the war (KIIS 2025). In this context,

public criticism of the president was marginal and

politically costly.

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

70 71DЇASPORA JOURNAL

This high level of trust opened a political ‘window’

for the concentration of power, manifested in the

creation of military administrations directly sub-

ordinate to the President’s Oice, bypassing tradi-

tional civilian structures. Following the partial fail-

ure of the counteroensive in the summer of 2023,

Kyiv faced an urgent need to intensify mobilisation

to maintain the front against Russia’s gradual ad-

vance. Nevertheless, the authorities deliberately

avoided openly taking responsibility for unpopular

decisions, instead shifting the burden onto military

structures.

Over time, society exhibited growing fatigue from

the prolonged wartime conditions, and the absence

of clear conscription rules, chaotic management,

and contentious personnel decisions exacerbated

public strain. Mobilisation policy thus operated

within a constant tension between military necessi-

ty and the imperative to maintain public trust and

governmental legitimacy. Similar dynamics were

evident in negotiations with Russia and in broader

challenges of public administration. Russia’s creep-

ing oensive maintained continuous pressure on

both Ukrainian troops and civilians.

The inability to hold national elections during war-

time further complicated the legitimacy of the gov-

ernment, providing grounds for both internal and

external critics to challenge its authority.

Russian propaganda actively exploited these vul-

nerabilities, while diplomatic tensions with the

United States — particularly under President Don-

ald Trump — created both risks and opportunities

for Zelenskyy to bolster his domestic standing by

demonstrating resilience to external pressure.

Internal governance issues, including high-prole

corruption cases involving the National Anti-Cor-

ruption Bureau (NABU), the Specialised Anti-Cor-

ruption Prosecutor’s Oice (SAPO), and Operation

‘Midas’, contributed to growing public criticism of

the President’s Oice. Zelenskyy’s reliance on the

personal loyalty of key oicials, while consolidat-

ing decision-making power, introduced additional

challenges, as certain members of his team became

focal points of public distrust. Consequently, despite

periods of increased approval following high-prole

events, levels of public distrust remained signicant,

and the 61% approval rating largely reected trust in

the wartime state apparatus rather than Zelenskyy

personally (KIIS 2025).

Overall, the Ukrainian case illustrates the interplay

between concentrated executive authority, wartime

exigencies, and public legitimacy. While centralisa-

tion enabled rapid decision-making, it also required

careful management of societal expectations and

trust to maintain the authority’s perceived legitima-

cy during a protracted and high-stakes conict (Al-

brow and Easton 1966; Linz 1978).

The transformation of public sentiment in Ukraine

has had a decisive impact on the country’s strategic

choices, particularly regarding mobilisation and ne-

gotiations. Initially, the surge of patriotism and so-

cietal cohesion enabled the government to pursue

maximalist military objectives, reinforcing public

support for the defence eort (Albrow and Easton

1966; KIIS 2025). Over time, however, the active seg-

ment of society — though always a minority—has

consistently shaped the political mainstream (Ober-

schall 1978; McAdam and Tarrow 2013). The author-

ities respond to this dynamic with policies and deci-

sions, adjusting the pace and scope of mobilisation

(PIK 2025) or framing negotiation strategies in line

with perceived societal expectations.

Yet, the combination of managerial shortcomings,

centralised ‘handmade’ governance, and the desire

to maintain political authority into the post-war pe-

riod generates additional challenges, creating fric-

tion between operational needs on the frontlines

and political responsiveness to public sentiment

(Albrow and Easton 1966; Linz 1978).

Public attitudes have also inuenced domestic le-

gitimacy and Ukraine’s international position.

High-prole corruption scandals, the inability to

hold elections during wartime, and the reliance on

personal loyalty networks within the President’s Of-

ce constrain decision-making and complicate pub-

lic trust. These internal dynamics, combined with

external pressures from allies and adversaries, shape

both domestic credibility and diplomatic position-

ing. Ukrainian strategic decisions, whether in mo-

bilisation, negotiation, or governance, thus illustrate

that public sentiment is not merely a backdrop but

an active determinant of policy (Albrow and Easton

1966; Linz 1978). At the same time, the state’s reactive

approach, bounded by governance limitations and

political calculations, can generate new obstacles

and diiculties on both domestic and international

fronts (Oberschall 1978; McAdam and Tarrow 2013).

CONCLUSION

72 73DЇASPORA JOURNAL

At the same time, the active part of society can pro-

vide the state with an additional source of mobilisa-

tion potential, legitimacy, and stability, but this very

support can also narrow the government’s room for

manoeuvre, limiting strategic exibility, especially

in the negotiation process, when public expecta-

tions turn into political constraints.

Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. (2025).

“Динаміка довіри Президенту В. Зеленському в

2019–2025 роках”. https://kiis.com.ua/?lang=ukr&-

cat=reports&id=1542&page=1

LB.ua. 2022. “Українці вважатимуть пере-

могою…”. https://lb.ua/society/2022/12/23/540169_

ukraintsi_vvazhatimut_peremogoyu.html

Linz, J. J. 1978. The Breakdown of Democratic Re-

gimes: Crisis, Breakdown, & Re-equilibration. Johns

Hopkins University Press.

McAdam, D., and Tarrow, S. 2013. Social Move-

ments and Elections: Toward a Broader Under-

standing of the Political Context of Contention. Uni-

versity of Minnesota Press.

Oberschall, A. 1978. Theories of Social Conict.

Annual Review of Sociology, 4.

PIK. 2025. “Як змінювалася чисельність ЗСУ за

роки війни з Росією: статистика” https://pik.net.

ua/2025/10/02/yak-zminyuvalasya-chyselnist-zsu-za-

roky-vijny-z-rosiyeyu-statystyka/

President of Ukraine. 2022. “Decree No. 679/2022:

On Ukraine’s Response to the Russian Federation’s

Attempt to Annex the Territories of Ukraine”. https://

www.president.gov.ua/documents/6792022-44249

Albrow, M. C., & Easton, D. 1966. “A Systems

Analysis of Political Life”. British Journal of Sociol-

ogy, 17(2).

BBC News Russian. 2024. “Путин выдвинул

свои условия для прекращения войны в Украине

накануне саммита мира в Швейцарии”. https://

www.bbc.com/russian/articles/c9rre20dw7lo

Channel 4 News. 2024. “Zelenskyy on Trump, Pu-

tin and How the War Could End: Full Interview”.

https://www.channel4.com/news/zelenskyy-on-

trump-putin-and-how-the-war-could-end-full-in-

terview

Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. 2024.

“Opportunities and Challenges Facing Ukraine’s

Democratic Transition [National Democratic In-

stitute survey report]”. https://kiis.com.ua/ma-

terials/pr/20240801_n/May%202024%20Oppor-

tunities%20and%20Challenges%20Facing%20

Ukraine%E2%80%99s%20Democratic%20Transi-

tion%20%28English%29.pdf

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Radio Svoboda. 2023. “Залужний прокоментував

дані про мобілізацію 400-500 тисяч людей”. Ra-

dio Svoboda. https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/

news-zaluzhyy-mobilizatsiya/32747967.html

Ripsman, N. M., Taliaferro, J. W., & Lobell, S. E.

2016. Neoclassical Realist Theory of International

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мадянами вступу України до Європейського

Союзу та НАТО, ставлення до іноземних держав

та мирних переговорів”. https://razumkov.org.ua/

napriamky/sotsiologichni-doslidzhennia/pidtrym-

ka-gromadianamy-vstupu-ukrainy-do-yevropeisko-

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alti-pro-vilnij-krim.html

74 75DЇASPORA JOURNAL

IN UKRAINE

A Cautionary Tale for Deocracy

OLEKSANDR DIACHENKO

midst the ames of war and revolution,

Ukrainian society has demonstrated a sin-

gular resilience to outside threats. Going back

as far as 2004, civil society has been the last line

of defence for democracy and accountabili-

ty, counteracting the weakness of Ukraine’s own

governmental institutions. Moreover, society’s un-

precedented mobilisation in the face of the full-

scale invasion also demonstrated its ability to be

the ultimate guardian of the very existence of the

Ukrainian state. But it is the threats from within,

especially those that hide in the guise of domestic

politics, which constitute the ultimate test to stabili-

ty and security. This essay will demonstrate that the

crisis of political hegemony is one of these issues

and has been central to Ukraine’s political trajecto-

ry. In addition to being a compelling case study of

political hegemony, Ukraine also functions as a lens

through which the widening gap between politics

and lived experience can be examined.

As argued by Volodymyr Ishchenko, Ukraine’s

post-Soviet political instability can be understood in

terms of Gramscian terminology (2024). For the pur-

poses of this essay, Gramsci’s concept of hegemo-

ny is understood as domination through ‘consent’.

This consent is created by what is (and is not)

included in the discourses advanced by the

dominant classes in the cultural and political do-

mains — through the way in which reality is inter-

preted by the ‘mainstream’, dominant narratives

(Femia, 1986: 23-29).

These discourses determine and are themselves de-

termined by the socio-moral grammar or ‘modes of

thought’ in the society, leading to the lasting absence

of objective interests of the subaltern (‘invisible’)

groups from the society’s symbolic order. Understand-

ing the origins and composition of the Ukrainian

elites is thus indispensable for the account of the

hegemony in Ukraine.

The collapse of the USSR produced a class of ‘po-

litical capitalists’ who converted privileged access to

state power and resources into economic dominance

through patronage networks, drawing on assets accu-

mulated under state socialism (Hale, 2015; Gorbach,

2024: 43-45). To preserve this advantage, they had

strong incentives to block economic liberalisation

and resist competition from bigger and more ei-

cient Western capital. This conguration generated a

structural opposition between the political capitalists

on one side, and the emerging middle class aligned

with transnational enterprises who stood to gain

from Ukraine’s economic opening on the other side

(Ishchenko, 2024: 307).

Therefore, the two political blocs that came to

dominate Ukraine’s politics from the dawn of

the new millennium represented the higher stra-

ta of society. Their higher-class nature thus pre-

vented settling of the discursive eld in the ‘left-

right’ ideological axis. Rather, Ukrainian politics

were organised around the issues that got natu-

rally articulated in the elites’ eorts to keep (or

76 77DЇASPORA JOURNAL

The peculiar hegemonic order of Ukrainian so-

ciety thus oers a valuable lesson for an attentive

observer. Because of these tendencies the griev-

ances of Ukraine’s lower class were systematically

overlooked, a class whose interests lacked an ‘in-

dependent ideological articulation and political

representation’ within the narratives of the two

tion, pro-European discursive expression, and large-

ly overlooked the material grievances of the lower

class. In this way the crisis of representation, pro-

voked by the highly non-representative hegemon-

ic order, deprived the protests of their potential to

highlight the grievances that were fundamental to

their very ignition and perpetuated the non-repre-

sentative character of the Ukrainian political main-

stream.

This crisis of representation, and its enduring na-

ture, is best understood through Claude Lefort’s

notion of the insurgent side of democracy, or what

he called ‘la démocratie sauvage’. Lefort’s frame-

work complements Gramsci’s concept of hegemony

by situating it within moments of social rupture. In

this line of thinking, signicant protest movements

are useful to the extent that they redraw the borders

of the existing symbolical order and its conventions

(what Lefort called ‘the political’), allowing for in-

clusion of the issues previously unlit by the light of

conventional discourses — usually, the very issues

that provoke the extra-institutional political act

of protest (Zicman de Barros, 2024: p. 8-9). In the

Ukrainian context, the combination of structural

factors of the post-communist political game dis-

make) the country suitable for their economic

interests by either liberalising, modernising, West-

ernising, or seeking economic and cultural stability

through unity with Russia (Ishchenko, 2024: 307-8).

This stands in contrast to both Western democracies

and some post-communist states in Central Europe,

where the ‘left-right’ axis remains signicant. From

this perspective, Ukraine’s political conguration

appears to be a rather post-modernist case: one

where the Lefortian ‘markers of certainty’ – or the

appeal to certainty, that the ‘meta-narratives’ that

the traditional ideologies oer in their claims to ul-

timate good (and which to this day, at least nominal-

ly, live on in the West) – were dissolved completely

(Zicman de Barros 2024, 4; Lyotard 1984, xxiv). The

post-communist disillusionment with ideology

as such, as well as the structure of its elites, made

Ukrainian society resilient to the moral and histori-

cal necessities of conventional ideologies, and made

its politics turn around the valence issues of the

economy, corruption, or quality of state services.

dominant political blocs (Ishchenko, 2024: 307).

The two Ukrainian revolutions of 2004 and 2014

illustrate this well. Both protests were to a great

extent products of long-term material anxiety, pro-

voked by economic insecurity, exposure to corrup-

tion, and hindered prospects for social mobility.

Disproportionately aecting the lower economic

strata, these issues constituted an important under-

lying driver of these protest movements. However,

since both movements were ignited and organised

by the ‘Western’ block of Ukrainian politics (the

one representing economic interests of the middle

class, allied with what Ishchenko calls ‘the transna-

tional capital’), they gained respective anti-corrup-

cussed above, as well as the post-Leninist lack of

ideological spectrum, produced a hegemony that

pushed the interests of Ukraine’s lower class to the

margins of the political discourse (Ishchenko, 2024:

307-311). In the absence of a traditional ideology, a

condition of epistemic injustice emerged, leaving

marginalised groups without the interpretive frame-

works required to understand their structural disad-

vantage or to articulate demands for change (Frick-

er, 2007). All of these factors allowed the revolutions

to remain embedded within a broader, post-materi-

alist ‘middle-class’ agenda, with the interests of the

lower classes largely subsumed into these narratives

rather than articulated explicitly despite the pro-

tests’ cross-class character and membership. Both

protests thus failed to ignite a truly revolutionary

change when it came to life conditions for most peo-

ple, but brought about a change in the political elites

that kept the redistribution issue largely untouched,

setting the trap that would lead both post-protest

governments to devastating defeat in the subse-

quent elections (Ishchenko, 2021).

Ukraine is thus a peculiar example of a society

where a large shake-up, which led to a landslide po-

litical change on the surface, failed to broaden the

78 79DЇASPORA JOURNAL

This metamorphosis pushed the left away from

representing the economic interests of the work-

ing and low-earning strata. Instead, it produced

a political system in which both sides represented

liberalism after 1980 led to a self-accelerating rise of

wealth inequality; one that, according to a consider-

able part of economic scholarship, inevitably leads

to deeper economic (and hence social) stratication

if not addressed. Particularly after 2008, growing

economic inequality started being noticeable ‘on

the ground’. The fact that some scholars started

noticing and studying the ‘losers of globalisation’

in the West, while the ‘cost of living crisis’ entered

the vocabulary of public discussions, shows that the

neoliberal model of development did not necessar-

ily elevate everybody in a tide-like fashion, and that

many were in fact left behind.

The issue stayed on the margins due to the fact that

the criticism of neoliberalism and austerity was ei-

ther absent or very weak. One cause of that was the

fading momentum of social-democratic and moder-

ate leftist economic thought in the political debate

of the end of the twentieth century, which further

contributed to the ‘subalternisation’ of the lower

economic stratum.

From this perspective, Margaret Thatcher famously

mentioning Tony Blair as her biggest achievement

is an ironic but quintessential event: it symbolised

naturalisation and universalisation of neoliberalism

as the convention across the political spectrum, and

the creative impotence of the centre-left at oering

economic alternatives. This way, the hegemony that

represented intellectual and economic elites with

neoliberalism as a largely undisputed convention

naturally left no space for the issues of economic in-

equality on either side of mainstream politics.

The decades following World War II can still be de-

scribed as a period of traditional ideological align-

ment: the less educated and poorer working classes

were represented by the left, while the more educat-

ed and aluent population aligned with the right.

Over time, however, various socio-economic and

socio-cultural processes (the discussion of which is

captivating but lies beyond the scope of this essay)

gradually reversed this tendency. As a result, what

Gethin, Martínez-Toledano and Piketty (2022) de-

scribe as ‘multi-elite party systems’ emerged, with

the left voicing the post-material narratives of intel-

lectual elites, and the right representing the materi-

al interests of economic elites.

dierent factions of the elite: one primarily intel-

lectual, the other primarily economic. Obvious-

ly, it was not due to the disappearance of the low-

er socio-economic class; in fact, the issues that

concerned this class the most started to reemerge

at the dawn of the millennium. Inequality was in-

deed addressed during the Trente Glorieuses, the

thirty-year economic boom which followed the Sec-

ond World War, for a number of reasons. However,

starting from the neoliberal turn of the 1980s,

through the Eurocrisis and nancial crisis of

2008, it signicantly intensied. As Piketty

(2014) discusses in his groundbreaking Cap-

ital in the Twenty-First Century, the fall of embedded

hegemonic agenda in a way that included one of

the root causes of the shake-up itself. However, as

I will attempt to demonstrate now, this case might

not be that unique: the awareness of the function-

ing of Ukrainian hegemony, and its crisis of repre-

sentation, has utility outside of the context of our

country, for what is true about the crisis of hege-

mony in Ukraine is also largely true in the West.

One could even argue that Ukraine has merely her-

alded the ‘vicious cycle’ that European democracies

entered roughly a decade ago. The crisis of hege-

mony in Europe, however, has deeper roots, tracing

back to the erosion of class-based politics in the sec-

ond half of the 20th century.

80 81DЇASPORA JOURNAL

As shown in the case of Ukraine, a hegemonic or-

der that does not address important issues has a

tendency to accumulate frustration. By the same

logic, the growing trend of falling support for

mainstream parties is often explained by their

failure to address the issue of inequality. Unable to

express itself among the mainstream political sup-

ply, the disappointment of the disadvantaged vents

through the only outlet that is available — in the

case of post-2008 Europe, such an outlet has been

consistently oered by the far-right.

These political forces base their rhetoric on feelings

of frustration and indignation, as well as perceptions

of a general decline in living standards. The fact that

they attract a large portion of the lower-class vot-

ers shows just how bad a job the mainstream does

at representing them. The growing support of the

far-right should thus primarily be seen as a mat-

ter of alienation from mainstream politics brought

about by the crisis of hegemony.

The solutions oered by the far-right are, however,

doomed to fail for the same reasons that those of-

fered by their mainstream opponents currently do.

Leaving the inhumane, xenophobic bigotries aside

and assuming a purely pragmatic lens, the crucial

thing that is absent in the rhetoric of the far-right

is tackling the root causes of frustration, which is

the growing wealth inequality resulting in a falling

quality of life.

Quite the opposite as for various reasons, these po-

litical forces usually adopt an even more extreme

neoliberal agenda. In a way suggested by Ishchenko

(2021) in his analysis of Ukraine’s political economy,

the ‘vicious cycle’ is thus propelled and perpetuat-

ed: non-addressed causes of subaltern frustrations

in the narratives of both the mainstream and rad-

ical parties are likely to lead to a cycle of upheav-

als and power turnaround, destabilising democ-

racies and alienating more and more people from

conventional politics.

Here again, the Lefortian perspective proves useful:

a shake-up that does not redraw the conventional

symbolic order to include the issues necessary for its

sustainability is doomed to amplify the frustration.

Similar to Ukraine, what has for a long time been

missing from any major political narrative in the

West is a coherent, inclusive progress project that

would oer a way forward while accounting for

the needs of various economic and social classes,

treating the material issues seriously and explicitly.

An additional but vital implication of this analy-

sis is the unstable grounds on which geographi-

cal cleavages often rely. What frequently reaches

public debate as ‘Polska A vs. Polska B’ or ‘West

vs. Ost Deutschland’ should be approached with

great caution, as it may be a disguised crisis of rep-

resentation that becomes more visible if one ac-

counts for all the inconsistencies of such a blunt

deterministic approach (Ishchenko, 2024 299-304).

Any distribution of meanings into narratives is a

result of a country’s own historical path, structur-

al particularities, and decisions of political actors.

The lesson that Ukraine, and in particu-

lar, its unity in the face of Russian threat and

overwhelming grassroots resistance in its East‚

oers to a broader public is to be cautious of

one’s own society’s “conventional” mental map-

ping. Oftentimes, such shortcuts oer no clarity

and little truth.

Ultimately, the case of Ukraine oers a valuable tes-

timony to the functioning of Gramsci’s hegemony in

the political domain; it shows how destabilising its

crises can be for a political system.

Its self-perpetuating nature, enabled by the installa-

tion of dominant interpretative frameworks in soci-

ety and politics that privilege a certain interpretative

framing, provides a basis for systematic overlooking

of vital societal issues.

What this essay demonstrates is how the roots of he-

gemonic order, and ultimately of what is included

and excluded from it, are to be sought in the struc-

ture and origins of the dominant elites. The pecu-

liar path of the Ukrainian elites and their impact

on the society’s modes of thinking and behaviour

is but one of the factors that make Ukraine such a

treasure trove for anybody interested in the topic of

political hegemony.

REFERENCES

Fricker, M. 2007. ‘Epistemic Injustice: Power and

the Ethics of Knowing’. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Femia, J.V. 1987. ‘The Concept of Hegemony’

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Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process’.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gethin, A, Martínez-Toledano, C. & Piketty, T. 2022.

‘Brahmin Left Versus Merchant Right: Changing

Political Cleavages in 21 Western Democracies, 1948–

2020’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 137(1).

Gorbach, D. 2024. ‘Ukrainian Political Economy’,

in The Making and Unmaking of the Ukrainian

Working Class: Everyday Politics and Moral

Economy in a Post-Soviet City, Berghahn Books,

New York.

Hale, H.E. 2015. ‘Patronal Politics and the Great

Power of Expectations’, in Patronal Politics: Eurasian

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Problems of International Politics. Cambridge

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Ishchenko, V. 2021. ‘Ukraine in the Vicious Circle

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ukraine-in-the-vicious-circle-of-the-post-soviet-

crisis-of-hegemony/

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Lyotard, J.F. (1984 [1979]), ‘The Postmodern

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82 83DЇASPORA JOURNAL

THE CRIMEAN

TATAR S A Unique Idigeous

Comunity i Ukraie’s

Past, Preset ad Future

ANDRII KUZMA

rimea’s complex history is a representation of

competing imperial interests, ranging from

Their distinctiveness is reected in their historical

continuity, political organisation, and demographic

presence. Through their study, we can trace not only

the history of Crimea itself but also broader regional

power shifts and evolving social sentiments. The

Crimean Tatars are a unique, predominantly

Muslim people who have maintained their identity

despite centuries of Orthodox imperial rule and the

atheistic policies of the Soviet Union.

To this day, research on this community remains

limited, largely as a result of systematic policies

pursued by the Russian Empire and later the Soviet

Union that aimed to suppress and erase the nation.

This legacy of neglect persisted into the early years

of Ukrainian independence, when the signicance

and distinctiveness of the Crimean Tatars were not

yet fully recognised. Consequently, this essay aims

to deepen the understanding of the Crimean Tatars

by familiarising a wider audience with their history

and contemporary situation. To achieve this, I will

begin by dening the Crimean Tatar identity, decon-

structing the prevailing Russian myths regarding

their Golden Horde origins and the alleged ‘betray-

al’ of the Cossacks. The analysis will then examine

the two historical occupations of Crimea, with par-

ticular attention given to the events of 1944, widely

regarded as the darkest chapter in the history of the

Crimean Tatars. Subsequently, I will examine the

dynamics of Crimean Tatar autonomy within sover-

eign Ukraine, covering the rst 23 years of indepen-

dence and the period from 2014 to the pres-

ent. Finally, I will oer reections on the

future of the Crimean Tatars, addressing

critical issues that, despite their plausi-

bility in the event of a prolonged Rus-

sian occupation, remain overlooked in

oicial state discourse.

CRIMEAN TATARS: IDENTITY AND

ORIGINS

The Crimean Tatars (Qırımtatarlar) are the largest

of Ukraine’s indigenous peoples of Turkic origin,

having formed on the Crimean Peninsula and in the

Ukrainian steppe, with their own language (Horban

2019/2025). The Crimean Tatar language has experi-

enced a few alphabetical shifts, from Arabic script

to Latin, then forcibly under the Soviet Union, to

Cyrillic (Beketova 2025). Their language is Turkic,

included in the Altai family of languages within

the Kipchak-Polovtsian subgroup, and recognised

by UNESCO as a language in danger of extinction

(United Nations n.d).

A persistent Russian narrative, emerging under

Catherine II, claimed that the Crimean Tatars were

merely descendants of the Golden Horde, specif-

ically Tatars from Central Asia. While this inter-

pretation may hold relevance in terms of historical

statehood, it fundamentally misrepresents and over-

simplies the distinct ethnic identity of the Crime-

an Tatar people. Russia constructed this myth to

portray the population as non-historical migrants,

thereby undermining their indigenous status and

territorial rights. However, contemporary scholar-

ship demonstrates that the Crimean Tatar ethnos

began forming as early as the 11th century, rooted

in the Turkic peoples already present in the region

(Bekirova et. al. 2020, 35). Although ancient tribes

are not direct relatives of the modern Crimean Ta-

tars, archaeological nds of Cimmerians, Taurians,

Scythians, and Huns, along with Greek and Italian

settlements, underscore the diversity of Crimean

life long before any Mongol arrival (ibid., 17-31). This

evidence suggests that while the Golden Horde in-

uenced Crimean statehood, ethnic Crimean Ta-

tars inhabited the peninsula for centuries prior. The

term ‘Tatar’ served as an external label for Eastern

nomads rather than a precise ethnic descriptor.

Today, three main sub-ethnic groups of Crimean

Tatars are recognised: the highlanders (Orta Yu-

lak), the steppe dwellers (Nogays), and the southern

coast population (Yali-Boylu) (Abdulaieva 2025). Ac-

cording to a 2015 census conducted after the occupa-

tion began, over 275,000 Crimean Tatars remained

in Crimea, while a signicant portion had already

been displaced to mainland Ukraine (Dostim 2015).

the Golden Horde to the Soviet Union. Today, the

peninsula remains under illegal occupation, having

initiated the 2014 military confrontation between

Ukraine and Russia, which eventually escalated

into the largest European war since World War II.

Crimea holds both immense strategic importance,

due to its military assets and bases, and profound

symbolic value as a historical resort destination

dating back to the Russian Empire. Crimean Tatars

constitute one of the most distinctive indigenous

communities preserved on the Crimean Peninsula.

84 85DЇASPORA JOURNAL

THE CRIMEAN KHANATE AND THE

FIRST OCCUPATION

The Crimean Khanate emerged as an independent

state following the fragmentation of the Golden

Horde in 1441, established under the leadership of

Haci Giray and other prominent Crimean clans (Ab-

dulaieva 2025). In 1475, after the Ottoman conquest

of Genoese colonies in the Northern Black Sea re-

gion, the Turkish Sultan gained inuence over the

Khanate’s leadership, establishing a vassal status

under the Ottoman Empire, headed by Meñli I Gi-

ray as commander of the eet and army (Sizarev

2020, 85). The debate surrounding Crimea’s status

over the following centuries is particularly com-

pelling; as Roman Pochekaev notes, the Khanate

functioned as a ‘privileged’ vassal of the Ottoman

Empire, retaining substantial political autonomy

(2019, 77). Because the rights and obligations of the

‘contracting parties’ were never clearly codied, the

level of dependency often uctuated based on the

personal relationship between the rulers in Istanbul

and Crimea (ibid.).

During this era, Ukrainian Cossacks frequently

interacted with the Khanate. The relationship be-

tween Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Islam III Giray is

concealed in myths, especially regarding the alleged

‘betrayal’ in 1651 (Shurkhalo 2021). While Cossacks

and Tatars launched numerous successful joint cam-

paigns against the Poles in the mid-17th century, the

Tatar withdrawal during the Battle of Berestechko

followed devastating elite losses in combat, which

shows a military defeat of Cossacks and Crimean

Tatars (Pilipchuk 2015, 137). Russian historiography

later reframed this event as a betrayal to align with

imperial designs on Crimea.

In 1768, the Ottoman Empire and the Khanate, as a

vassal, went to war with Russia, resulting in the 1774

Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji. Under this treaty, the Rus-

sian Empire was mandated to withdraw its troops,

and both Russia and Turkey recognised Crimean

independence (Hrabovskyi 2006). However, Russia

violated the agreement, continuing military-politi-

cal interference until it eectively annexed Crimea

in 1783 (ibid.). By 1791, following another conict, the

Treaty of Jassy saw Turkey formalise its recognition

of Crimea’s incorporation into the Russian Empire

(Hrabovskyi 2006). From the late 18th century on-

ward, Crimean Tatars faced systemic oppression,

including the destruction of mosques, the renaming

of historical sites, the introduction of serfdom, and

the alienation of local lands managed personally by

Prince Potemkin (Abdulaieva 2025).

POST-IMPERIAL TRANSITIONS AND

THE SECOND OCCUPATION

The collapse of Russian Tsarism oered the Crime-

an Tatars a brief window of freedom. During this

period, the rst political party, Milli Firka (National

Party), was established, and the Kurultai (national

assembly) was convened. On December 13, 1917 the

Crimean People’s Republic was proclaimed under

the leadership of Noman Çelebicihan (Abdulaie-

va 2025). However, by December, Bolshevik control

over the Crimean eet rendered the republic large-

ly symbolic (Gabrielyan et. al. 1998, 33). By 1921, the

Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

(ASSR) was established within the Russian SFSR

(Abdulaieva 2025). The later period of relative devel-

opment ended on April 17, 1938 — a dark day when

Stalinist terror resulted in the execution of dozens of

cultural and political gures on fabricated charges

of ‘bourgeois nationalism’, following arbitrary,

20-minute trials (ibid).

1944: THE YEAR OF GENOCIDE

The harrowing brutality of 1944 remains a global

historical tragedy, oicially recognised as geno-

cide in many countries (Richardson 2024). In May

of that year, just one week after liberating Crimea

from German forces, Soviet authorities orchestrat-

ed the forced deportation of the Crimean Tatar

population to Central Asia (Hamarniuk 2015). The

operation was conducted with extreme speed using

overcrowded cattle cars, lacked adequate provisions,

and resulted in the forced separation of families

(Abdulaieva 2025). According to the Crimean Tatar

National Movement, 238,500 people were deported,

86.4% of whom were women and children (Consul-

ate of Ukraine in Edinburgh 2016). Up to 46% of the

population perished during the deportation and

subsequent years of exile (Abdulaieva 2025). It was

not until 1989 that the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

recognised the deportation as illegal and criminal

(ibid.). In the following years, Moscow encouraged

the resettlement of nearly 30,000 Russian (73%) and

Ukrainian (26%) households to replace the indige-

nous population (Kononirenko 2017, p.58-62).

86 87DЇASPORA JOURNAL

23 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE

While the rst Kurultai took place in 1917, the second

assembly was held on June 26, 1991, shortly before

the Soviet collapse (Abdulaieva 2025). Two months

later, following Ukraine’s independence on August

24, over 200,000 Crimean Tatars returned home in

one of the community’s largest waves of repatriation

(OSCE 2013, 11). Since then, Ukrainian interaction

with the Tatars has been split between two funda-

mentally dierent eras: pre-2014 and post-2014.

In the years following independence, Ukraine’s po-

litical elite largely ignored the Crimean issue and

thus failed to see the emerging collision of Russian

and Ukrainian cultures (Kravets 2024). Ukraine re-

mained politically and value-dependent on Russia,

leading to inadequate policies toward the Crimean

Tatars. A rare positive development was President

Kuchma’s 2003 initiative to prepare for the 60th

anniversary of the genocide (Radio Svoboda 2003).

While Kuchma was later remembered as a ‘friend of

the Tatars’ (Obozrevatel 2010), relations shifted un-

der Viktor Yushchenko and worsened signicantly

under Yanukovych, whose administration conduct-

ed ethnic purges within local governments (Osman

2014).

TURNING POINT: THE 2014 OCCU-

PATION AND MODERN RESISTANCE

On February 20, 2014, Russia began its occupation of

Crimea (Krukovska et al 2023/2025). In response, the

Ukrainian Parliament passed a 2014 resolution guar-

anteeing the rights of the Crimean Tatars, recognis-

ing the Mejlis (parliament analogue) and Kurultai

as representative bodies, and protecting their right

to self-determination within Ukraine (Belitser 2016,

86). Further legislation restored the rights of deport-

ed persons and oicially recognised the genocide,

a strategic response to the renewed repressions of

Russia in Crimea against the indigenous population

(Belitser 2016, 87).

The mass repression since 2014, particularly fol-

lowing the 2022 invasion, is extensively document-

ed (Belitser 2016, 93-99; Solomko 2024; Kotovych

2024/2025; Abdulaieva 2025). Approximately 50,000

Crimean Tatars have ed the peninsula due to re-

ligious persecution and disproportionate conscrip-

tion; in some villages, up to 70% of men received

summons (Solomko 2024). PACE (2016) Resolution

2112 recognised these systematic violations of rights.

Between February and September 2022 alone, Rus-

sian forces conducted 25 searches and 108 deten-

tions, with Crimean Tatars making up 104 of the 138

individuals arrested for opposing the occupation

(Abdulaieva 2025).

In contrast, on mainland Ukraine, the community

thrives. Jamala’s 2016 Eurovision victory brought

their culture to a global stage (Horban 2019/2025).

Today, Crimean Tatars freely practice their culture,

language, and religion, and open businesses that in-

troduce Ukrainians to their heritage (ibid.). The 2021

Law on Indigenous Peoples oicially recognised

them alongside Karaites and Krymchaks (Verkhov-

na Rada of Ukraine 2021). High-prole gures such

as Tamila Tasheva, who represents the Crimean Ta-

tar community at the presidential level (Kotovych

2024/2025), and Rustem Umerov, former Minister of

Defence of Ukraine (2023–2025), illustrate this rep-

resentation.

Initiatives like the Crimea Platform (Abdulaieva

2025) and the 2025 Congress of Indigenous Peoples

serve as critical tools for policy planning for after

de-occupation (Yanko & Chornovalova 2025). Fur-

thermore, Crimean Tatars serve in the Ukrainian

Defence Forces (Solomko 2024), and international

conferences highlight the connection be-

tween Ukraine and the Global South

through Crimea’s Islamic heritage

(Kotovych 2024/2025).

88 89DЇASPORA JOURNAL

FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

It is diicult to speak with any certainty about the

future in Ukraine, including the prospects for the

Crimean Tatars, due to the war. Global experience

regarding interaction with indigenous populations

is extensively diverse (Belitser 2016, 45-53), and

should be drawn upon by Ukraine, as such a status

requires signicant state protection. A great exam-

ple of this preservation could be the creation of ad-

equate state-funded representative bodies that can

inuence local decision-making.

Presently, various scenarios exist for nal peace

agreements, in which the question of Crimea is

especially sensitive. In a scenario of prolonged oc-

cupation of Crimea, or a US-pushed propos-

al regarding Ukraine’s oicial renunciation

of Crimea (Sabbagh and Savage 2025), the

Crimean Tatars would lose a range of op-

portunities. This is because the Ukrainian

law on indigenous peoples denes certain

advantages that can only be realised on the

Crimean Peninsula, or specically in Sevasto-

pol (Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine 2021, 1-2).

Now, there are no such discussions

within Ukrainian society, as they

would contradict the widely accepted

understanding of Ukraine’s state sover-

eignty. While ideas regarding actions fol-

lowing de-occupation are being explored,

alternative scenarios are currently not under

consideration. However, establishing such a

dialogue would carry practical value for de-

veloping future internal policies concerning

Crimean Tatars already on Ukrainian territory,

as well as the potential repatriation of the pen-

insular population to the mainland should such

a request arise. Ukraine, recognising the Crimean

Tatars as its indigenous people, must consider pro-

tection options even following a potential loss of ter-

ritory, as this is the only way to ensure the preserva-

tion of this community.

CONCLUSION

Historically, Russia has fabricated myths about

Crimean Tatar origins and their relations with

Ukrainian Cossacks, using the Khmelnytsky case

to serve imperial interests. At the same time, the

Crimean Tatars’ history, status, and future remain

highly politicised. Having survived multiple occu-

pations, the 1944 genocide, and prolonged exile, the

Crimean Tatars preserved a unique Muslim culture

and are now oicially recognised by Ukraine as an

Indigenous people, which entails specic state ob-

ligations. Since 2014, Ukraine has adopted a val-

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92 93DЇASPORA JOURNAL

 

Моєю мовою говорять птахи,

від неї світиться сонце.

Ластівки літають у вишині —

і я знаю, що буде сонячно.

Моєю мовою лунають пісні,

що грають роками на телебаченні.

Той самий гурт уже побачив цілий світ,

та лиш в одному місці їм було затишно.

Моєю мовою пишуться вірші

від найпрекрасніших поетів.

Моя мова має тисячі слів,

що складають сотні сюжетів.

Моя мова — це про волю,

це про стійкість духу, як палаючого вогню.

Вона — як прихід весни після зливи і туги,

вона — як ліки від сердечних мук.

Вона незламна, вона вистоїть усе,

і розповість ще безліч історій у майбутньому.

Вона — ніби теплий та лагідний день —

ти тільки до неї прислухайся.

MY LANGUAGE

MARYNA SANTALOVA

My language is sung by birds,

and it’s from her that the sun shines.

Swallows soar high above —

and from this, I know, the clouds are scoured.

Her words form many songs

that are played over, and over;

by that same band that has seen the whole world,

yet, has only one place they want to call home.

My language writes poetry

through the most talented poets;

She has countless words,

that form countless stories.

My language — she’s freedom,

resilience of the soul — on re.

She is — like spring after winter cruel and dull;

She is — what soothes an aching heart.

She’s unbreakable, she’ll withstand all

and she’ll live on to tell many more stories, new and old.

She is — as if a day, gentle and warm —

you just have to see what she holds.

94 95DЇASPORA JOURNAL

WHERE THE

RIGHT DOOR

LEADS

Learning

Ukrainia i

Cabridge

DIANA SHYPOVYCH

Every day, students walk, run, or, as I

have witnessed on at least one mem-

orable occasion, crawl through this

corridor, committing themselves to

a particular worldview by opening

one door or another.

n the long corridor of the Mod-

ern and Medieval Languages De-I

partment of the University of Cam-

bridge, I stand between two doors.

From the right comes the Ukrainian

language; from the left — Russian.

Further along the corridor, there

are numerous other doors through

which I can hear many languages of

the world.

What makes someone turn right and join the

Ukrainian language lesson? I am here to nd out.

The door opens, and Andrii, the Ukrainian language

teacher, ushers me in for the nal fteen minutes of

his beginner’s class. I give a very insightful introduc-

tion to the students — ‘Я дівчинка’ (I am a girl). ‘В

мене є собака’ (I have a dog). ‘Я люблю блакитний

колір’ (I love the colour blue). After delivering these

essential biographical details, I nally ask the ques-

tion I came for: ‘Why study Ukrainian?’

I am hit with a long, uncomfortable

cinematic silence — the type of si-

lence often reserved for existential

crises, major plot twists or, in my

case, potentially unsuccessful arti-

cle interviews. I’d like to think that

it was my commanding presence

rather than Andrii’s authoritative

encouragement which nally set o

the discussion.

This article is the outcome of many

intrusions into Ukrainian language

lessons. From speaking with An-

drii’s students, I learned that each

had a unique story behind their

decision to take the class. None-

theless, patterns emerged: some

see the Ukrainian language as a

form of solidarity and resistance.

For others, it is a tool for bonding

with important people in their lives

or a stepping stone for their profes-

sional future. And some nd sim-

ple academic pleasure in learning

Ukrainian.

96 97DЇASPORA JOURNAL

Beyond solidarity and resistance, many students

learned Ukrainian for a simpler reason: to connect

with the people around them. A boy from London

and a girl from the Czech Republic both began

studying Ukrainian while volunteering at welcome

centres for Ukrainian refugees in 2022. A practical

necessity gradually evolved into a long-term com-

mitment to maintain the relationships they had

built.

For the Ukrainian refugees themselves, their na-

tive language is a source of comfort. Through their

earnest eorts and battles with grammatical cases,

they signal to Ukrainians that someone is there to

acknowledge their culture far away from home. To

me, this is one of the most humane acts possible —

an attempt to speak the native language of another

person.

Some students had Ukrainian family connections: a

Ukrainian parent, grandparent or cousin. For them,

learning Ukrainian was a way to access a heritage

that had always felt slightly out of reach. Language

can unlock histories, stories, and relationships that

were previously inaccessible.

Many students framed learning Ukrainian as a ges-

ture of solidarity with a nation under attack. My

friend from Hong Kong explained that, coming from

a place that has also faced repression by a physically

larger power, he understands the urgency of protect-

ing cultural identity. For him, learning and speak-

ing Ukrainian is a way to stand in solidarity with his

friends, along with joining the ‘Слава Україні!’ (Sla-

va Ukraini) salute during protests. A student from

Sakartvelo in another class echoed his reasoning,

telling me that she wanted to contribute to the pres-

ervation of Ukraine’s identity and learn more about

how Ukraine’s history of struggle parallels that of

her own country.

From the perspective of these students, language

emerges as an instrument of power, where such an

everyday practice as language choice can be a subtle

but potent act of resistance, and mark one’s belong-

ing to a group which refuses to submit. I do agree

with these students — the best way to understand

fundamental events such as the Orange Revolution,

the Revolution of Dignity, and the current full-scale

war against Russia is through the language which

conveys the values Ukrainians continue to stand

for: ‘незалежність’ (independence), ‘свобода’ (free-

dom), and ‘гідність’ (dignity).

Beyond collective resistance and expressions of soli-

darity, language is also a tool for personal decoloni-

sation. A woman in her thirties told me she began

learning Ukrainian only after she left Mariupol and

came to Cambridge in 2022. She is determined to

pass this language on to her young children and end

the cycle of Russication. This story emphasises the

importance of language in preserving national iden-

tity and political community throughout the gen-

erations. The choice to reimagine oneself within a

Ukrainian cultural and national community can be

made at any point in one’s life.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

(AND THE PEOPLE)

LEARNING THE NATION

However, not all choices to join the Ukrainian

class seemed entirely voluntary. Several students

admitted they were ‘strongly encouraged’ by their

Ukrainian partners to learn the language to speak

with their parents or grandparents. As the saying

goes (that Machiavelli denitely never said), ‘the

end justies the means’, and I strongly believe that

in the grand project of Ukrainization, every tool is

acceptable.

While I am not advocating fear or intimidation as

motivational methods, one must recognise that they

can be remarkably eective in specic interpersonal

contexts.

When one class spoke enthusiastically about the

iconic ‘Львівський метрополітен імені Степана

Бандери’ (Stepan Bandera Lviv Metro Station)

meme, I understood that Andrii is giving his

students the best Ukrainian online culture has

to oer. And, of course, I eagerly await their

progression to the category of political memes

— the true window into the inner workings of

the Ukrainian soul. Some students confessed

to giving in to peer pressure exercised by their

Ukrainian friends. At stake was the understand-

ing of Ukrainian memes.

98 99DЇASPORA JOURNAL

And, of course, Cambridge would not be Cambridge

if people weren’t learning something simply because

it is intellectually stimulating. Many linguists across

dierent classes were drawn to Ukrainian as a mem-

ber of the Slavic language family. It was useful for

them to broaden their linguistic horizons and un-

derstand the broader picture of language evolution.

There was also one student who described the sheer

pleasure of discovering grammar patterns and per-

fecting his pronunciation, treating Ukrainian like a

nely crafted object to be studied and admired.

I strongly believe that such an approach matters.

Enjoying Ukrainian beyond the war, beyond trage-

dy, beyond narratives of victimhood is an essential

act in itself. Curiosity is a form of respect. When

learners treat Ukrainian as an academic delight, it

restores a sense of normality to a language too often

discussed only in the context of conict. In this sense,

Ukrainian gains ontological power: it becomes part

of the academic body, transforming from a language

of crisis to a language of ideas.

For some learners, Ukrainian was not just a mat-

ter of solidarity or emotional connection. Rather,

it was a professional asset. A priest in the class was

learning Ukrainian to communicate with members

of his parish. Another person, responsible for the

Ukrainian section of the Modern and Medieval Lan-

guages Department Library, needed the language

to avoid the hazard of shelving books upside down

or misidentifying grammar guides as poetry collec-

tions.

Then there was the woman who had spent thir-

ty-three years working as a Russian-English trans-

lator, only to retire and take up Ukrainian. Her

Ukrainian was, frankly, impeccable. As one of her

retirement hobbies, she is assisting a Cambridge re-

searcher with translating Cossack manuscripts.

I also spoke to two students who are undertaking a

module on Ukrainian language and culture as part

of their degree. Their approach was noticeably more

serious, and their Ukrainian was strong. Our con-

versations were in Ukrainian, and we even emailed

each other in the language. I believe that installing

a Cyrillic keyboard is a signicant milestone in one’s

language learning path. One of these students had

lived in Ukraine before the full-scale invasion and

hoped to return there to work and live. The other

aimed to work in defence and security, fully aware

that Ukraine now plays a central role in Europe’s

evolving security landscape.

In many students’ stories, Ukrainian emerges as a

language of the future — useful in diplomacy, re-

search, security, and cultural work. Through learn-

ing it, people fall in love with the country, its history,

and its resilience, and many begin imagining futures

that lead back to Ukraine itself.

THE CAMBRIDGE WAY

MONETISING SUCCESS

In the end, every student I spoke to had a unique

story — a personal reason for turning right and

opening the door to the Ukrainian class. Some did

so to stand with a nation under attack, treating the

Ukrainian language as a political act. Others came

in to better understand their loved ones — partners,

friends or family. Knowledge of Ukrainian was also

sought by some as a professional asset, a language of

one’s future. And many simply came for the linguis-

tic challenge and intellectual enjoyment.

TAKING THE RIGHT TURN

‘Why study Ukrainian?’ had a dierent answer for

each person that I spoke with. Yet, consciously or not,

each person who opens the door to the Ukrainian

class participates in shaping the cultural and po-

litical future of a country currently ghting for its

existence. In that corridor, turning right could be

just a direction. But for many who make the choice,

turning right also becomes exactly that — the right

choice.

100 101DЇASPORA JOURNAL

OUR TEAM

ADMINISTRATIVE

EDITORIAL

DESIGN

1. Ulrich Poehlmann

2. Dariia Hryshchenko

3. Benya Pyatski

Editor-in-Chief

Artistic Director

Operations Director

7. Rowan Soeiro

8. Matilda Molodynski Stokes

9. Aneliya Stanislavova

10. Iona Henderson

15. Jaylyn Wong

16. Maryna Santalova

11. Anastasiia Turkot

12.Dmytro Strilets

13. Al Wood

14. Ginevra March

17. Jane Bielasheva

18. Viktoriia Pavlenko

19. Yurii Voloshchenko

Editorial Assistant

Copy Editor

Editorial Assistant

Graphic Designer

Web Designer

4. Daniil Malitskyy

5. Aleksandra Butkovska

6. Anna Kondratenko

Production Manager

Circulation Manager

Recruitment Manager

1 2 4

1817

1615

102 103DЇASPORA JOURNAL

IMAGE CREDITS

Cover

2-3

4-5

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20-21

22-23

Anastasiia Turkot

gailhampshire on Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https:

//creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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Benya Pyatski

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All images are used in collages and/or processed by Dїaspora graphic design team

30-31

40-41

42-43

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OSCE Parliamentary Assembly on Flickr,

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Mstyslav Chernov/Unframe on Wikipedia

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Benya Pyatski

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104 105DЇASPORA JOURNAL

There are over fty Ukrainian student societies

across the UK, but the University of Edinburgh’s

Ukrainian Society stands out. What began with a

small group of friends organising a few fundraisers

has grown into a diverse community of over two

hundred people who are dedicated to the spread of

Ukrainian culture abroad.

Everything written in this and all subsequent issues

of Dїaspora is the product of many generations of

Ukrainians. Through repression, occupation, and

enslavement, our culture has persisted and it is now

ready to bloom again.

Our mission is to preserve and carry on the

knowledge of ourselves and our country as we know

it. My grandfather Petro passed away during the

creation of this issue. His teachings made me the

man that I am today, and he and all those who came

before us deserve the credit for our achievements.

Heritage is our backbone; unity and will are our

strengths.

LETTER FROM

THE EDINBURGH

UNIVERSITY

UKRAINIAN

SOCIETY

TARAS HARASYM

PRESIDENT