Strategic and Tactic Commemoration in Ukraine after 2022

• In Event: Remembering the Present: Memorialization of Russo-Ukrainian War in Memorials, Museums, Literature and Rituals I

Abstract

Ukrainian memorial culture before the 2014 developed mainly in context of the Soviet memorial standards. The beginning of Russian aggression in 2014 didn’t radically changed the situation. But in 2022 the country inheritor of USSR attacked Ukraine under the slogans of fighting fascism. The rejection of the Soviet Memorial language by the Ukrainian Society appeared inevitable. The question of the language of commemoration appeared acute due to the high level of request for the new memorials. The first projects of memorials appeared in spring 2022, immediately after the Kyiv region liberation. The active process of new memorial language elaboration involved the local communities, Artists, specialists in Memory Work etc. From 2022 the sharp discussions focus social attention not only at the language of memorialization, but also at the appropriate design of the memorial processes. The State bodies turned out to be unprepared to the wave of the memorial requests, the grass-root memorialization met the active critics from side of the professional community. During the years of the full-scale invasion the notions of Strategic and Tactic commemoration were included in circulation by the memory culture platform Past / Future / Art. In my report I will observe the practices of the Tactic commemoration and the efforts of building the base for Strategic commemoration. I will reveal the reasons of the Tactic commemoration initiatives and the main forms of it. The steps of Strategic commemoration development are reflected in the documents of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Ministry of Culture, and the State Agency of the Tourism Development. In my report I will observe the initiatives of the civil-military collaboration in the field of memory and the professional Laboratories of Memorial Practices.

Author

• Oksana Dovgopolova, Kyiv School of Economics (Ukraine)