Ukrainian Energy: Memory and Materiality in Overcoming Soviet Oil Heritage

• In Event: Ukraine’s Political Economy & Wartime Politics

Abstract

Ukraine's energy heritage is a colonial heritage that manifests itself through the built environment and through a geopolitical imaginary of Ukraine as a “transit country” for Russian gas to Europe. This paper puts the development of Ukrainian energy in the context of the country's broader decolonial commemorative and nation-building activities. Ukraine's efforts to overcome material and symbolic energy heritages provide a unique example of post-oil nation-building.

Authors

• Amanda Zadorian, Oberlin College

• Nathan Mark Hutson, Kyiv School of Economics