The book argues that religion is a system of significant meanings that have an impact on other systems and spheres of social life, including cultural memory.

The editors call for a postsecular turn in memory studies which would provide a more reflective and meaningful approach to the constant interplay between the religious and the secular. This opens up new perspectives on the intersection of memory and religion and helps memory scholars become more aware of the religious roots of the language they are using in their studies of memory. By drawing on examples from different parts of the world, the contributors to this volume explain how the interactions between the religious and the secular produce new memory forms and content in the heterogenous societies of the present-day world. These analyzed cases demonstrate that religion has a significant impact on cultural memory, family memory and the contemporary politics of history in secularized societies. At the same time, politics, grassroots movements and different secular agents and processes have so much influence on the formation of memory by religious actors that even religious, ecclesiastic and confessional memories are affected by the secular.

The article focuses on the increasing adoption of media logic and the corresponding change of habitus in the field of academic history in Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on Ukraine. Departing from both mediatisation theory and memory studies, authors consider a range of relevant phenomena from across the region, before considering in more depth the case of LikBez, a grassroot initiative of Ukrainian historians, aimed at debunking historical myths spread both inside and outside Ukraine. The amalgamation of historical knowledge and multiple media platforms to convey it, it is argued, ushers in the era of mediatisation of history. 

Reporting from the events of the so-called ‘Euro-revolution’ in Ukraine 2013–2014, the Western media were prompt to point out the excessive use of national symbols, including those connected with the memory of the Ukrainian nationalist organizations ‘OUN’ and ‘UPA’, which for some periods of time had cooperated with Nazi Germany and were involved in the killing of civilians. By using a postcolonial perspective, the article aims to explain this phenomenon, as well as a number of other elements of the politics of memory in contemporary Ukraine, such as the so-called ‘Decommunization Laws’ adopted in 2015. Special attention is paid to Frantz Fanon’s idea of ‘anticolonial nationalism’ and Homi Bhabha’s idea of hybridity and their realization in Ukraine.

The transdisciplinary collaborative project “Propaganda and management of information in the Ukraine-Russia conflict” that the authors are a part of, focuses on the Ukrainian media and uses ethnography as its primary methodology. We have been interviewing various actors involved in production of information flows in the post-2014 Ukraine: journalists, media and security experts, historians, PR-managers etc. What most of the informants pointed to was the recent shift in their perception of their role in the changes that the country is going through: they highlight their roles as activists and change agents in the society. Coming from different research fields (history and media and communication studies), we have been reflecting upon the tension between our striving at academic neutrality and the different disciplinary approaches, as well as unavoidable emotional involvement in the subject we scrutinize. 

The paper is based on auto-ethnography wherein we reflect on the challenges the researchers face when conducting ethnographic research on activists and dealing with such sensitive issues as information warfare and armed conflict. This becomes especially problematic when scholars come from the countries involved in the conflict, Ukraine and Russia. How do our feelings of guilt, shame, anger, affection, attachment, love, interact with our professional goals and with our dealing with the material? How do they influence our interaction with the informants and each other? And how can we empower our informants, while remaining in the framework of academic research?

This analysis contributes to the ethnographic studies on crisis and post-crisis societies. It continues the discussion about the role of emotions in ethnographic research, where we compare our experiences of ethical dilemmas, inspired by, e.g., Hoffmann (2007). Although this issue, in the context of Ukraine, has been partly addressed (e.g., Malyutina 2017),such an auto-ethnographic, self-reflexive work is rare in the Western scholarship that largely applies quantitative methods and focuses on the content, not people’s experiences.

In Ukraine, commemorations of the centennial of the First World War were sporadic and mainly had a grassroots character. There were no large-scale state-organized events and regional authorities were not interested in or had no resources for implementing the state’s recommendation to organize commemorations. The main remembrance of the First World War was undertaken by academic historians.

This article elucidates the role of historians in times of war and the peculiarities of popular history narratives written by historians who became activists. The article focuses on historians who call themselves “Likbez. Historical Front.” This cohort gave rise to a new professional species—activist historians—who are different from so called memorians or propagandists, who work in service of authorities. Likbez historians tried to use their power to influence and promote their activist agenda not only in the realm of memory and history but also in reformation of state institutions. I argue that for Likbez historians, securitization of the past is the main strategy employed for producing historical knowledge. Historians’ work is a part of postcolonizing process observed in Ukrainian society since the Maidan protests. As the analysis shows, popular history narratives written with an open activist agenda are a result of many compromises made by scholars in the intersection of several factors: professional ambitions, political and civic aims, social and political context, popular expectations, and market environment. In line with the increased attention to agency in memory studies, this article demonstrates that historians have a much more nuanced relation to power than straightforward opposition or co-option.

This chapter analyses how the memory of the war-time nationalist movement represented by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its military arm the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was used in the Ukraine during the most turbulent moments of its recent history, the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Euromaidan in 2013/2014. It shows how in 2004 the memory of the OUN and UPA was used with propaganda intent in the election campaign which resulted in fraud, and consequently led to mass protests. During the Euromaidan, the memory of these organizations was used primarily as a symbol of radicalism and revolution. Furthermore, it is argued that constant insecurity about the end of the ‘struggle for independence,’ i.e. fear that independence can be lost again, strengthened adherence to the heroic memory of OUN and UPA for both the political right and the political center. In this way, the heroic memory of the OUN and UPA presented a means to existential security. In this usage, this memory is full of ‘factual’ drawbacks as it neglects, ignores, and circumvents historical evidence about the atrocities committed by the OUN and UPA.

After the Euromaidan, some of the most visible changes in Ukraine took place in the areas of history and memory politics. As result of decommunisation laws, over 50,000 places have been renamed. This exemplifies the continued tendency in Ukraine to treat the past as a matter of national security.

The paper focuses on the nationalisation of history and changes in memory politics of Ukraine after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The questions of history re-writing and re-evaluating is endemic to transitional societies. The very possibility to approach certain events is a direct consequence of freedom of speech that followed the disintegration of the socialist bloc. As a case study the paper scrutinizes new conceptualisations and interpretations of history of the WWII with a special focus on Ukrainian nationalist movements that acted in Western Ukraine in 1929-1956: the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army. There have been constant attempts to place the heroic narrative about these movements into the core of a national history, yet this narrative failed to cross the invisible walls within Ukraine and the narrative purposed for the whole nation remains regional in its significance. The paper is to fill the gap in an existing debate and to show how complex the memory work is in the modern world. A lot of interferences on international, regional, and local levels make the representational take-over of a state-sanctioned view on history more difficult and complex. While the facts about the above-mentioned movements and their leaders were silenced and misrepresented under the Soviet rule, there are traces of new mythologization of these movements nowadays. This study analyzes politics of history in the post-soviet Ukraine as it is realized through erection of new monuments.

There are parallels in discussions about monuments in Ukraine and the USA. The reminder of the Soviet past (or in the American context, of the Confederacy) is an abject that is difficult to assimilate. On the one hand, the abject is our unwillingness to see the past and accept it; on the other hand, for those who associate themselves with this past, this is the threat of castration because through the negation of a given past a certain group is cast out from the space of representation. That is why it is questionable whether a monument can be inclusive at all. Which memory does the monument recall? Which past is castrated when a new monument is built? Which groups are fighting for recognition and representation? Which groups lose this right? These questions confront researchers and memory workers and are discussed in this essay.

В этой статье я подхожу к вопросу памяти об Организации Украинских Нацио- налистов и Украинской Повстанческой Армии (ОУН и УПА соответственно) в региональной перспективе. На примере одного конкретного случая построения памятника одному из командиров УПА – Климу Савуру – прослеживается, как героическая память об ОУН и УПА устанавливалась в Ровенской области. Эта область входит в один исторический регион – Волынь. Именно здесь сформиро- вались первые группы УПА в 1942 году, а также именно на Волыни произошли самые трагические события в истории УПА – убийства польского населения в 1943 году, которые потом перенеслись на Галичину. Я не рассматриваю историю самого украинско-польского конфликта (заинтересованный читатель может обра- титься к цитированной ниже литературе), а то, как история ОУН и УПА входила в культуру памяти региона, начиная с 1991 года. Памятник Климу Савуру – пример того, как место и форма памяти могут быть основаны больше на амнезии, чем на воспоминании. Как мы увидим, через про- цесс мифологизации его биографии почти все исторические факты о личности командира УПА исчезли. Единственная характеристика, на которой основывает- ся коммеморация – это архетип, который выражает ценности и интересы деяте- лей, которые занимались строительством памятника и продвижением героиче- ской формы памяти об ОУН и УПА. Такая мифологизация позволила проводить политику памяти через призывы к исторической справедливости, забывая при этом о тех несправедливостях, которые произошли под командованием этой исторической личности.

In religious studies there is a rich discussion on how social memory can be used for understanding social dimension of religion, how religious communities are constructed through memory, how religions remember, so to say (Hervieu-Leger 2000; Assmann 2006). In my presentation, I want to discuss how religion can be used for better understanding of how social remembrance functions.

Based on the analysis of interviews, participant observations, and published sources I want to see how different religious groups – Jewish, Christian (Orthodox and Catholic), Protestant – work for establishing the remembrance of the Holocaust in Ukraine. I want to see what it means for each of the group to engage in the memory work, what this participation brings for shaping the memory as well as for self-understanding and functioning of the group. My empirical material shows that religion opens the ways for building trans- and inter-national memory networks. These networks actively engage in local contexts and through a process of negotiations and adjustments create memory projects that reflect both global and local features. More concretely, I was tracing the work of Jewish memory actors from the USA and Protestant memory actors from Germany who worked on the projects of Holocaust remembrance in Ukraine. In these concrete cases, I was also looking into how local Jewish, Christian and Protestant communities were engaged in this work.

Många forskare skriver om en »conservative turn» – ett konservativt skifte – som den viktigaste förändringen i Rysslands inrikes- och utrikespolitik sedan 2000. Detta skifte karakteriseras av en negativ inställning mot utländskt inflytande och en strategi inriktad på att bevara den egna identiteten som betraktas som en motsats till andra länder, särskilt i västvärlden. En av de främsta aktörerna i detta konservativa skifte är den ryska ortodoxa kyrkan, som inte bara försöker öka den ortodoxa kyrkans ställning som en viktig del av den »ryska» identiteten i Ryssland utan också sprider sina konservativa värderingar under benämningen »ryska värderingar» utanför Ryssland, särskilt i de länder där den ortodoxa tron är starkast. I detta sammanhang är den kristna ortodoxa tron en viktig del som skiljer de ryska värderingar man propagerar för från övriga värderingar. Konservativa värderingar som sprids av den ryska ortodoxa kyrkan påverkar för övrigt lagstiftningen vad beträffar handlingar som kan kränka »troendes känslor». Till följd av det formas dagens ryska kulturpolitik i stor utsträckning av inflytandet från de konservativa värderingar som stöds av både kyrkan och staten

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian society faced a new reality. The new reality involved consolidation and transformation of collective identities. The reinvigoration of national identity led to a change in the emphasis on how the past was dealt with – many things which were regarded as negative by the Soviet regime became presented as positive in independent Ukraine. The war-time nationalist movement, represented by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), became one of the re-configured themes of history.

While most of the studies of memory of the OUN and UPA concentrated on the use of the history of the OUN and UPA by nationalist parties, this study goes beyond the analysis of such use of history and scrutinizes the meaning of this history in nation- and state-building processes in relation to memory work realized on the small-scale regional and local levels with the main focus on Rivne and Rivne oblast’. Moreover, this book focusses not only on the “producers” of memory, but also on the “consumers” of memory, the area which is largely understudied in the field of memory studies. In the book the main emphasis is put on monuments which are regarded as catalysts and symptoms of memory.

The present study showed that the OUN and UPA are used more as the metaphors of the anti-Soviet and anti-communist struggle for independence than as historical entities. This past is largely mythologized. Functioning as a myth the memory of the OUN and UPA obliterates difficult knowledge that the historical research reveals on the questionable activities and ideology of those organizations. As a result, the past of the OUN and UPA is re-imagined, re-filled with new meanings so that it is used along even with the democratic and pro-European claims in the present. It was especially well-observed during the Orange Revolution in 2004 and during the Euromaidan in 2013-2014, when the European Union’s flags were seen next to the OUN’s red-and-black flags or when the pro-European slogans were proclaimed alongside the OUN and UPA slogans.

At the same time, the results demonstrated an intricate complexity of memory work shaped by intensive dynamics of private and public, grassroots and official, local and national encounters. Although there have been attempts made by political actors to draw a direct link between the national identity, political allegiances and proposed heroic version of memory, the study showed, that such attempts did not really work. In the pluralistic context the meanings are too fluid and adherence to one version of history does not preclude adherences to other versions of history which are presented as diametrically opposite in the political sphere. As result, on the recipients’ grassroots level, the memory reveals its amalgamated characteristics.

Drawing on studies about post-colonial subjectivities and theories of remediation developed in memory studies, this book explores the changes in memory culture of contemporary Ukraine and examines the role of memory in producing new meanings under the rapidly changing conditions after the collapse of the Soviet Union up to 2014.

The book contributes to the studies of memory culture in post-Communist countries as well as to the studies of society in contemporary Ukraine.

In the essay, the author shares her reflections on the Russian fullfledged invasion of Ukraine from the position of a scholar who for many years has been working and living outside Ukraine. The essay presents the reactions of non-Ukrainian scholars and students to the war. The author questions the knowledge produced under the influences of quasi-colonial stereotypes, which is revealed through the discourses of dialogue and reconciliation that lack a deeper understanding of the Ukrainian context. The article also approaches the issue of the resilience of Ukrainian society that despite the hardships of war continues not only to fight but also to dream and work for its presence and future.

Yuliya Yurchuk and Alla Marchenko present an analysis of intellectuals’ narratives on betrayal in the most transformative period of recent Ukrainian history—the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan protests. While it was observed that after both these revolutions the people’s attitudes oscillated between two polarities of great expectations and great disillusionments, the authors analyze the narratives of betrayal through the concept of disenchantment. The analysis shows that disenchantment can be an empowering device, which serves as a push for the search for internal powers and capabilities. At the same time, the authors also observed that some groups of Ukrainian people were dismissed by intellectuals as betrayers or not sufficiently capable of acting in accordance with intellectual ideals.

The transdisciplinary collaborative project “Propaganda and management of information in the Ukraine-Russia conflict” (2016–2018) that the authors were a part of, focused on Ukrainian actors and used ethnography, and particularly interview, as its primary methodology. We have been interviewing journalists, media experts, historians, etc. Many of the informants highlighted their roles as activists and change agents in the post-2014 society. Coming from different research fields (history and journalism and media studies), we have been reflecting upon the tension between our striving at academic neutrality and the different disciplinary approaches, as well as unavoidable emotional involvement in the subject we scrutinize. The chapter is based on dialogic autoethnography wherein we reflect on the challenges the researchers face when conducting ethnographic research on activists and dealing with such sensitive issues as information warfare and armed conflict. This becomes especially problematic when scholars come from the countries involved in the conflict, Ukraine and Russia. It continues the discussion about the role of emotions in ethnographic research. We aim to contribute to several discussions: field of conflict ethnography, work in multidisciplinary research environment, and particularities of conducting interviews with activists.