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Commemoration of the Tatarbunary Uprising: Resolution of the Izmail City Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) in 1949
The Tatarbunary Uprising—a peasant uprising organized by the Bolsheviks from September 15 to 18, 1924, in several villages in the Budzhak region, centered in Tatarbunary and aimed at destabilizing Romania’s domestic political situation—became one of the key themes in the Stalinist regime’s construction of official memory in the region. Commemoration of the event began in the early days of Soviet power. The 25th anniversary celebration became one of the most significant local political and ideological campaigns of 1949, marked by large-scale memorial, cultural, educational, and propaganda events. The proposed document is a local regulatory act that sets out measures to commemorate the Tatarbunary Uprising on its 25th anniversary. The joint resolution of the...
Volhynia in 1943 in Mykola Androshchuk’s “Notes of an Insurgent”
These memoirs, written by one of the organizers of the UPA in the Mizoch district, were first published in 2011 as part of the Chronicle of the UPA series. Rivne-based researcher Ihor Marchuk, who edited the series, discovered the typescript in the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine, where it was titled Notes of an Insurgent [1]. The author of the memoirs was born on December 8, 1913, in the village of Derman 1, Dubno powiat, Volhynia governorate. In the 1920s, after the village became part of Poland, it belonged to the Mizotch gmina in Zdolbuniv powiat, Volhynia voivodeship. In the 1930s, the Androshchuk family moved to the Ozery khutir...
Memoirs of UPA Fighter Maksym Skorupskyi (“Maks”) on Volhynia in 1943
The source text presented here is an excerpt from the much larger memoirs of Maksym Skorupskyi, an active figure in the Ukrainian nationalist underground, born in Antonivtsi (now Kremenets district, Ternopil oblast). In these memoirs, he recounts his experiences in the underground, first with the OUN(m) and later with the UPA. The narrative begins in 1939 and ends in May 1944, when Skorupskyi, fearing he might fall victim to the OUN’s Security Service purges, decided to escape the UPA and head farther west. According to Skorupskyi, these memoirs were originally written in 1944, but he edited and published them in Chicago in 1961. By then, he likely had some temporal distance from the...
“The Tatarbunary Uprising” in the Context of Soviet Memory Politics: From the Minutes of the Izmail Oblast Architectural Commission Meeting of December 28, 1949
The minutes of the Izmail Oblast Architectural Commission meeting on December 28, 1949, record the discussion of the initial design for a monument to the “heroes of the Tatarbunary Uprising” in the village of Tatarbunary. A joint resolution of the Izmail Oblast Executive Committee and the Oblast Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) mandated its construction to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the event. The monument was placed in the village center during a solemn rally on September 18, 1949, at a grave prepared by Soviet authorities for the reburial of the fallen insurgents. This document exemplifies the practical application of Soviet monumental propaganda principles in the postwar era. The criticism...
Yona Oliker’s Testimony on the Holocaust in Volhynia
Another essential perspective for triangulating sources about World War II events in the village of Zelenyi Dub comes from the Jewish populations of Mizoch and Shumsk—the two largest shtetls situated equidistant from the village. In fact, no Jews lived in Zelenyi Dub itself. To understand how they came to be in the area during the German occupation, it's helpful to draw on Tim Cole’s interpretive approach. In his study of the Holocaust, Cole proposed examining it through the lens of landscapes: both the real and mental maps that Jews carried during the violence [1]. As German occupation policy evolved, these mental maps shifted in the perceptions of Jewish community members—some areas were seen...
A Soviet-Style Commemoration: Celebrations Marking the 150th Anniversary of Alexander Suvorov’s Death in the Izmail Oblast, 1950
The source presented here is an internal party report on preparing and executing celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of Alexander Suvorov’s death—a large-scale commemorative event held across the Soviet Union on May 18, 1950. In addition to all-Union and republic-level festivities, local ceremonies honoring the Russian commander’s victories against the Ottoman Empire also played an important role in commemorating him. In this context, the Izmail Oblast occupied a special place in the celebrations, particularly the city of Izmail, which Soviet discourse of the time described as the “city of glory of Russian arms.” The commemoration practices in the Suvorov District deserve special attention; the district’s association with the general led local party and...
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New residential neighborhood Sykhiv, 1989 postcard
This postcard showcases the Sykhiv residential district in Lviv. The district’s name originates from the village of Sykhiv, which occupied this area from the 15th century until large-scale development began in the second half of the 20th century. The photograph was taken in the early 1980s, during the peak of the district’s construction. This is suggested by the completed street section in the image, while most of the trees in the foreground were recently planted, and the flower beds remain unlandscaped. The postcard was published in 1989 as part of a series depicting various city views.
‘Fashion Show’ in late Soviet Pokrovsk, photo by Mykola Bilokon
This image, taken by Mayak photojournalist Mykola Bilokon, shows a woman on a catwalk demonstrating some of the clothing manufactured by ‘Rainbow’ sewing factory in Krasnoarmeisk (today’s Pokrovsk), in the Donetsk region. The woman is dressed in a floral print, dagger-collared, button-down dress and woollen, belted, armless cardigan and wears a contemporary backcombed hairstyle and makeup. An audience made up of different generations of Pokrovsk residents watches the show. Their clothing and hairstyles also demonstrate the changing fashions of the 1970s and 1980s. While some women in their 40s and 50s (born in Stalinist 1930s and 1940s) wear knee-length, possibly homemade, patterned floral dresses and headscarves, some younger members of the audience wear...
Privatization and Economic Transformation in the Post-Soviet Space: The Photo Archive of the Druzhkivka Newspaper Okno, 1990s
The photographs presented here from the archives of the newspaper Okno [literally “window” — tr.note] document the creative work of its editorial staff, who sought to critically reflect on the realities of Ukraine’s economic transformation in the 1990s through artistic and allegorical means. Founded in 1994 by local entrepreneurs, the newspaper positioned itself in opposition to the old communist nomenclature, which still retained control over local government bodies and capitalized on the widespread disappointment and confusion following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The founders of Okno were the insurance company ASKO-Donbas Pivnichny (established in 1991) and its affiliated printing company PrimaPress. The emergence of the paper ended the local authorities’ monopoly over...
“Bringing Education to a Remote Corner”: A Competition Photograph by Marko Zalizniak, 1929
Marko Zalizniak (1893–1982) was a rural amateur photographer best known for his images from the front lines of World War I and for documenting collectivization in the villages of what is now the Pokrovskyi District of Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. The opening of a primary school in his home in the Romanivskyi khutir in 1927 can be seen as a prologue to his 1929 competition photograph, which will be discussed below. The following year, the residents of the khutir decided to construct a separate school building at their own expense. The new school opened in 1928, timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of the October Revolution. Soon afterward, the Soviet authorities took the...
Celebration at the Stadium of the Ukrainian Sokil-Batko, Lviv, 1934
The event captured in the image takes place at the stadium of the Ukrainian Sokil-Batko, likely during the third and final Regional Sokil gathering in 1934. The first Ukrainian gymnastic society, Sokil (Sokil-Batko [Father Falcon]) was founded in Lviv on February 11, 1894. The model was the charter of the Czech Sokol (1862, founded by Miroslav Tyrš). The goal of the society was fostering national unity, strength, and dignity among Ukrainians while also promoting endurance, agility, entrepreneurship, and discipline. Beyond gymnastics, Sokil placed significant emphasis on firefighting and tourism. The society’s first chairman, serving until 1900, was the renowned architectural engineer Vasyl Nahirnyi. By 1900, Sokil had expanded its activities across Galicia, leading...
Title Pages of Never Published Editions of the DP Journal KHORS, 1945-1951
The idea of the Ukrainian DP-creation KHORS as a movement and a journal was kept alive for many years, even though the journal’s publication, initially planned as a quarterly, could never be realized beyond a first edition in 1946. The title pages listed here were never published, but they can provide interesting insights into the senses put into KHORS by its creators, its design, and the materials used. In 1945, immediately after the war, Ukrainian artist Halyna Mazepa drew the first cover with simple paint on a piece of cardboard. Its design was intended to reveal the idea of the future edition. The journal’s title is written in wheat, an important symbol in...
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A Wedding in a Working-Class Family, a 1964 TV report by Lviv Television
The wedding newsreel was filmed in Lviv in 1964 for a television news program. Unfortunately, the audio has not survived to the present day. This prompts important questions: why wasn’t the sound preserved, and how should such a source be studied? The video was recorded on 16-millimeter film, with the audio likely captured on magnetic tape. Evidence of an audio recording exists in the form of fragments of speeches and greetings to the newlyweds (05:00), (05:25), (05:50), which were emphasized during editing and required sound. At the time, audio was typically saved on special magnetic tape that could be reused multiple times, but the recordings deteriorated quickly. Although 35-millimeter film, which could...
Amateur Media and Life in Cheryomushky
In addition to the official media (ekklesia)—the imagined narratives and myths presented through theatrical performances, films, and other sanctioned representations consumed by Soviet citizens in the agora (for instance, in cinemas as part of the public sphere, or via television as a window onto it)—there also existed a private sphere (oikos). But how can we uncover what everyday life was like for ordinary people? One valuable source for accessing this lived reality is amateur film recordings, which captured fragments of daily life in cheryomushky and khrushchovkas. The Soviet Union maintained a unique ideological system that simultaneously restricted and encouraged amateur media. The state promoted amateur filmmaking through official clubs—such as those...
TV News from a Lviv Television Studio in the 1960s
The task of popularizing the Soviet government’s approach to solving the “housing issue” in the Ukrainian SSR was entrusted not only to trade unions and their media—such as construction or architectural magazines—or to artists working in theater and cinema, but also to television. A television studio in Lviv was established in 1955, and by 1957 it was already actively producing local news. These broadcasts typically featured several short stories, each lasting from one to three minutes, focused on the region’s economic and cultural development. When not aired live—live broadcasts being made possible through the use of a mobile television station—the news segments were filmed on 16 mm film by traveling television crews. The...
The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!, a 1975 Soviet Film
In 1969, Soviet playwrights Emil Braginskiy and Eldar Riazanov wrote the play Enjoy Your Bath! Or Once Upon a Time on New Year’s Eve, which quickly became a favorite in Soviet theaters. In the early 1970s, the decision was made to adapt it for television, leading to the premiere of the two-part TV movie during the New Year’s holidays of 1975–1976. Much like the 1959 Moscow operetta about the Cheryomushki neighborhood, a popular theatrical plot was reimagined in a new medium—this time, not through cinema but television. Unlike the 1963 film musical Cheryomushki, the adaptation took the form of a television movie enriched with numerous musical interludes, which became widely popular after its...
Moscow, Cheryomushki, a 1959 Soviet Operetta
On December 24, 1958, the premiere of the three-act operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki took place at the Moscow Operetta Theatre. The music was composed by the renowned Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and the production was widely referred to in the media as the “Shostakovich operetta.” The official opening followed on February 24, 1959, and the work was met with favorable responses from both audiences and critics. The libretto was written by prominent Soviet playwrights and screenwriters Vladimir Mass and Mikhail Chervinsky. The stage production was directed by Vladimir Kandelaki and Leon Zaks, with Grigori Stoliarov as conductor, Georgi Kigel as set designer, and Halyna Shakhovska as choreographer. Two years after the premiere, Shostakovich’s friend,...
Cheryomushki, a 1963 Soviet Film
In 1961, the USSR’s cinematic authorities approved the idea of adapting the operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki into a film, and the search for a director began. The creators wanted someone with a musical background, so they turned to Herbert Rappaport, a professional musician. Rappaport had gained experience in musical cinema through his participation in Grigori Kozintsev’s Don Quixote (1957, Lenfilm), a renowned Soviet film that received international awards. Interestingly, Rappaport—an ardent admirer of the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler—enjoyed the music of the operetta. His idea to adapt the play into a film received support from Nikolai Rabinovich, professor at the Leningrad Conservatory and chief conductor of the local symphony orchestra, who became the conductor...
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The Volhynia village of Zelenyi Dub during World War II: an interview with Antonina Huk
This testimony is from Antonina Huk, the grandmother of the author of this commentary. The interview, recorded in 2021, is one of six conversations with her about the events of World War II in Zelenyi Dub, Volhynia. During the interwar period, the village belonged to Buderazh gmina in Zdolbuniv powiat, Volhynia voivodeship of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with a population made up of roughly equal numbers of Polish and Ukrainian residents. Antonina, born in 1931 in the neighboring village of Ruska Huta, moved to Zelenyi Dub as a young child and, by 1943—the height of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict in the region—was a 12-year-old girl. Antonina Huk’s account of the past does not unfold...
Song about deportation to Siberia
At first glance, one might think this is a folk song about the end of deportations to Siberia. However, it is in fact an original composition, created by a local resident of Zastavna well known in the area — the folklorist Maria Havryliuk. Interestingly, the song was not based on Havryliuk’s own deportation experience but rather on stories she heard from a neighbor who had been forcibly sent to Siberia in the 1940s and 1950s. The way this song came into being reflects a common pattern in which experiences and events significant to an entire community are prompted to be voiced, interpreted, and endowed with meaning by that community. Consequently, such narratives are...
Roman Buchko on Soviet Film Amateurs: Excerpt from an Interview on November 1, 2012
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“Oh, in the meadow blooms the red viburnum,” a Ukrainian resistance song
This source is an audio recording of the folk version of the one of the most popular Ukrainian resistance songs. It is known by various titles: “The rifleman’s Anthem,” [Cтрілецький гімн] “The song of the viburnum,” [Пісня про калину] or “Oh, in the meadow blooms the red viburnum” [Ой у лузі червона калина]. The song’s worldwide spread was facilitated by the performance of Andriy Khlyvnyuk, the lead singer of the Boombox band, who on February 28, 2022, the fourth day of Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine, sang only the first stanza of the song. His performance on St. Sophia Square in Kyiv led to the emergence of remixes. Among the many performers are...
Legend about the “disguised emperor” during the First World War
This source is the audio recording of the legend about the events of the First World War. The storyline describes an “emperor” who was incognito inspecting his army and its provisions. The prototype for the protagonist is Franz Josef I (1830–1916), the emperor of the Austrian Hungarian Empire. This artistic image shows the elements of naive monarchism. The type of “just and kind” ruler is based on his favorable attitude to Galician Ukrainians, who he took as loyal to the Habsburgs. This social myth about the “loyal troops” consisting of Ukrainians was reflected in the prose but also in songs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Our emperor is getting old...
Grine kuzine (Green Cousin), song about emigration, 1921
The song, with a debatable authorship, was written for a Jewish theater. It was performed both in Europe and in the United States, and it became one of the most popular migrant works. The word “green” was an ironic definition of new immigrants who did not navigate well in American reality. The song “Green Cousin” raises the issue of disappointment of migrants in America, where hard work exhausts new-comers and does not bring the expected profit. The “Columbian state” appears not as a dream country where dreams come true, but a society of inequalities. Despite the hilarious music and satirical plot, the song shows the anxiety of emigrants due to the lack of...
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In this module, Viktor Drozdov analyzes the formation of the historical myth surrounding the Izmail region within Soviet memory politics and calls for a contemporary reexamination of these now-established concepts.
This module by Petro Dolhanov recounts the events of World War II in the Volyn village of Zelenyi Dub. The author analyzes the testimony of his grandmother, Antonina Huk, contextualizing it and cross-referencing it with other available source materials.
Unlike the anti-Semitic texts of any period, the caricatures — as images — allow us to grasp a particular, and due to their post-factum character, ungraspable knowledge of the past. In this module Ana Bărbulescu reassess the portrayal of the Jewish community through caricatures published in interwar Romanian press, focusing on Porunca Vremii, a notable journal of the far-right political frame that frequently employed this visual tool. Given the unique nature of these caricatures and their ability to evoke shared attitudes and stereotypes among their audience, this module examines how these images reflect and influence societal perceptions.
After the end of World War II, Soviet authorities returned to a conservative gender policy that emphasized women's maternal roles. [1] This approach was "justified" by the severe demographic losses of the war. In 1944, the honorary title Mother Heroine and the order of the same name were introduced for women who gave birth to and raised ten or more children, while the Order of Maternal Glory was created for mothers of at least seven children. In 1956, paid maternity leave for urban women was nearly doubled to 112 days, and in 1964, this benefit was extended to rural women. By 1981, paid parental leave had expanded to a full year. However, the...
The term media, used in the title of this module, is a broad and widely circulated concept, often invoked in discussions about “mass culture.” In Soviet historiography, however, media culture was referred to as “culture for the masses”—an attempt to avoid any association with the capitalist notion of culture. Yet, in both the market capitalist system and the state socialist system, the media in the 20th century brought about the emergence of a new media reality and landscape. By the 1960s and 1970s, their functions and status had grown far more significant than ever before. This module also introduces the concept of mediatization, which describes the way media influence, shape, and intertwine with...
In addressing the causes of unlawful actions committed by high-ranking officials in the 1940s and 1960s, the authorities often attributed them to the lingering influence of pre-revolutionary capitalist mentalities among certain managers. This explanation lost credibility over time, as by the 1970s and 1980s, the leadership consisted largely of individuals born and fully socialized within the Soviet Union, supposedly free from the flaws of other, non-communist societies. In this module, Viktor Krupyna uses unpublished archival materials and available source collections to examine the widespread abuse of power by Soviet officials in the Ukrainian SSR in 1945-1991, its causes, scope, and consequences.
The Soviet Union positioned itself as a society of social equality, where the elimination of human exploitation was said to have achieved harmony in class relations. The eradication of social contradictions between the “top” and “bottom” (in Soviet terminology, the “exploiters” and “exploited”) was widely promoted as an indisputable and irreversible achievement of the Soviet state. Yet, this created a paradox: while this ideal was publicly championed, the significant social gap between the people and the so-called “people's power” was a reality that remained unacknowledged. This module by Viktor Krupyna focuses on the financial privileges of the Ukrainian Soviet nomenklatura.
This module by literary scholar Olha Petrenko-Tseunova tells the story of Kateryna Biletska-Kandyba, the wife of Oleh Kandyba (known by the literary pseudonym Oleh Olzhych), a poet and member of the Ukrainian nationalist underground, head of the cultural and educational department of the Leadership of Ukrainian Nationalists (PUN) and the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) (1939-1941), and her WWII experience and post-war emigration.
The Soviet government aimed to profoundly transform the styles and structures of people’s everyday lives, encompassing housing, leisure, and work. Particularly ambitious projects were conceived and executed during the 1920s and 1930s. Workers were at the forefront of Soviet social policy, with the Bolshevik Communist Party depicted in Soviet discourse as the avant-garde of the proletariat, primarily serving the interests of the working class. Did these ideas correspond to practice, and at what cost were they realized? This will be discussed in the module by historian Roman Liubavskyi.
The early vision of amateur filmmaking in the Soviet Union was characterized by the pragmatic idea of using the new media not only for entertainment but also to involve a wide range of citizens in the production of newsreels and to create a network of correspondents across the country to cover the construction of socialism. However, despite sporadic attempts, this idea was not immediately implemented on a large scale. The lack of technology and sufficient equipment, and later the political climate of the 1930s, hindered this. It was only after liberalization and Khrushchev's reforms that the idea reappeared on the agenda.
The end of the 19th century through the beginning of the 20th century is known as the period of mass migration from Europe to other continents, when more than 55 million people changed their place of residence. In particular, this process captured the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, where a difficult economic situation, job shortages, and persecutions stirred various groups of the population to leave. Such groups included both Ukrainian and Polish peasants, and Jews from urban centers who were small-scale craftsmen or workers. Most often, they moved to the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Brazil, where labor was needed at factories or farms.
Many stories could illustrate the struggles of Ukrainian women as members of the Ukrainian underground during World War II. One is the story of Marija Savchyn, who in 1939, at the age of fourteen, joined the female youth section (iunky) of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsiya Ukrayins’kykh Natsionalistiv [OUN]), which spearheaded the Ukrainian nationalist movement. While in high school during the Second World War in Przemyśl, Savchyn joined the Ukrainian underground...
The founders of the Soviet Union believed that the basis for new forms of labor was to be an amateur initiative and talents, of which the people have an endless source, managed by “nationwide accounting and control”. The method of introducing new forms of industry management was the widest propaganda of labor achievements. Soviet ideologists habitually cited Lenin who believed that labor could change a human being under socialism and advised how to organize socialist competition. This module by historian Bohdan Shumylovych is devoted to the topic of labor in communist propaganda, using the example of the 1960s.
In the 19th century, the gender pact dividing public and private spheres, as man-owned and women-inhabited, found its most solid reasoning. In this vision, the city as the most obvious embodiment of public life, seemed to be male by default. Women in the city were taken as potentially threatened. This was evidenced by a number of prohibitions, which could include not only certain places inaccessible to women, such as universities in Lviv until the late 1890s, but also ordinary everyday experiences that they could claim only at the cost of their own reputation. In this module, historian Ivanna Cherchovych will try to look at the city from its women's experiences.
The "The City as a Stage: When Politics Takes to the Streets" project focuses on mass events in the public space of Lviv during the Habsburg period, which took place in the open air – on the streets and squares of the city. As the political center of Galicia, the "royal capital city" of Lviv was simultaneously considered the "capital of the freest part of Poland" and the "capital of Prince Lev." Political and national confrontations were concentrated here. Although the population of Lviv at that time consisted mainly of Poles and Jews, followed by Ukrainians, it was the competition between Ukrainians and Poles that was most significant. These two groups declared their...
The three stories presented in this text are dedicated to three different women united by one city. Sharing a common urban space, they experienced it in different ways, given their different social positions, status and starting opportunities. The time in which they had to live their lives was in one way or another reflected in microstories from the life of each of these women. The first story is dedicated to Maria Hrushkevych, a long-time employee of the Lviv post office, who was among the "first" women employed by the state. In the second, Maria Linchak will be talked about, who was a maid in the house of Teofil and Liudmyla Hrushkevych, a chorister...
At the time of autonomy, the General Regional Exhibition was the third attempt by Galician elites to show their achievements in the industrial, economic, and cultural development of the region. The first such attempt took place in Lviv in 1877, the second in Krakow in 1887. In turn, the next one was to open its gates to visitors in 10 years in Lviv. The official countdown to the beginning of its opening began in June 1892, when the Main Exhibition Committee was formed. The monetary fund of the exhibition was filled with donations from county communities, government subventions and the Provincial Office, the City Council of Lviv, individuals, and organizations. Most of the...
This research focuses on three women: 20-year-old Maria Shutek from Znesinnia [the area of Lychakivskyi District in Lviv, t\n], put on trial for the murder of her daughter Sofia in Lviv in May 1870; a 45-year-old midwife from Virmenska st. [Armenian street, t\n] named Klara Weisshaar, accused of complicity in the crime of abortion, which she helped to perform on a servant named Katarzyna Słodka in March 1905; and 35-year-old Elżbieta Wenne, convicted of pimping out her daughter in 1887. The stories told by these women are not the stories of victims. At least, it would be hard to call them that. These stories are about choices made, mistakes and their consequences, human...
У 1950–1960-х роках на підприємствах Радянської України поширилися практики, скеровані на удосконалення праці. Двигуном цього процесу були так звані передовики – учасники руху трудящих СРСР за комуністичне ставлення до праці та за виховання людини комуністичного суспільства.
On Sunday, September 10, 1893, at about 11 p.m., in the vicinity of ul. Rappaporta, Maria Kopańska, a maid, was attacked by four men — Stanisław Julian Starzewski, Michał Bendyk, Antoni Równy and Emil Bilo. The company was returning from a restaurant on ul. Szpitalna. As they later admitted, they "had been drinking vodka and beer" there. On ul. Rappaporta they saw Maria, who was walking home alone from a wedding. For the woman, the encounter ended in a gang rape. The court proceedings, which soon began on the victim's claim, although confirming the fact of violence, released three defendants from criminal liability. The fourth one, Emil Bilo, was never brought to trial,...
Reflections
“When Work Felt Like a Holiday”
This reflection by Dr. Nataliya Kibita (University of Oxford) is based on the three interviews from the 'Industrial biographies of the city' Urban Media Archive's collection. The collection was a part of the project “Un/archiving Post/industry”, implemented by the Center for Urban History in 2020 – 2021. The analyzed interviewers represent workers from the city's major industrial enterprises (Lviv Bus Factory, Fork Truck Plant, and Meat-Packing Plant), and cover thier work experiences during the period of 'perebudova' and the early 1990s.
Ukrainian National Communists: Naive Dreamers in the Grip of Totalitarianism
This reflection was written as part of the Eduard Zub Scholarship Program, established by the family of Eduard Zub and sponsored by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, the Charitable Foundation of the Alchevsky-Beketov Family, and V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. It forms part of a broader dissertation research project, Ukrainian National Communism in the Ukrainian SSR as a Political and Sociocultural Phenomenon, conducted at the Department of Ukrainian History, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. The research supervisor is Roman Liubavskyi, Ph.D. in History, Associate Professor, and Acting Head of the Department of Ukrainian History. This research project focuses on analyzing inter-party communication between the Ukrainian and Jewish national-communist parties in...
The Brunswick Manifesto, 1792
The Manifesto, issued on July 25, 1792, bears the name of the Duke of Brunswick, a prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and a commander of the Coalition’s army. This proclamation aimed to frighten the French with threats of total destruction and military courts in case they resisted the invading troops or tried to harm the French king. However, the Duke was not an author of the document; he only signed it with significant hesitation. Later, Brunswick openly expressed his regrets about doing so. The document was drafted by émigrés Geoffroy de Limon and Pellenc, assisted by a royalist journalist and propagandist, Jacques Mallet du Pan, dispatched by the French king. Louis XVI and the royal...
General Napoleon Bonapart’s Proclamations to the Army of Italy, 1796
The documents are two proclamations given by General Napoleon Bonapart to the Army of Italy in 1796, the first year of Napoleon’s First Italian campaign (1796-1797). The first proclamation, dated March 27, 2 days after Napoleon’s arrival at the army’s headquarters, was relatively short, but it precisely addressed the most significant issues of the soldiers. After being appointed commander of the Army of Italy (one of three French armies (the Army of Sambre and Meuse, the Army of the Rhine and Moselle, and the Army of Italy) supposed to strike Austria), General Bonapart faced the real state of his troops. The Army of Italy experienced greater hardships than the other two armies. It...
Sashko Drugli’s “Colonial History of Homophobia in Ukraine”
The video by Sashko Drugli, posted in May 2024, aims to prove that homophobia in Ukraine is a consequence of Russian colonial policies. The author suggests that homophobia has nothing to do with Ukrainian traditions and calls it a “Russian colonial import.” He does that by explaining how Russian homophobic readings of Christian writings enforced by the Russian Orthodox Church are likely to be the reason for Ukrainian Christian-based homophobia. He then brings forward an interpretation of forced celibacy in Zaporozhian Sich as an equal treatment of both homosexual and heterosexual relations. Sashko Drugli proposes that homophobia in Ukraine developed after the Russian empire defeated Zaporizhian Sich and criminalized "sodomy, which he compares...
Verka Serdiuchka and Ukrainian National Identity at Eurovision 2007
This video is a recording of Verka Serdiuchka’s representation of Ukraine in the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 with the song “Dancing Lasha Tumbai.” Verka Serdiuchka is a drag persona performed by a male Ukrainian comedian, actor and singer Andriy Danylko. The character of Serdiuchka embodies a unique cultural archetype: a strong yet simple post-Soviet woman with Ukrainian rural origins. This is usually reflected in the lyrics, her costume designs and her use of “Surzhyk,” a mixed language combining Ukrainian and Russian elements. Danylko’s persona is often labelled as a "jester", both by nationalist-leaning audiences and in some academic circles (Yekelchyk 2010). Some others refer to it as "drinking songs" with heavy use of...
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