Cultural PostCan Ukraine cancel Russia’s imperial history? Odesa debates decolo…

Can Ukraine cancel Russia’s imperial history? Odesa debates decolonization

“Awareness and treatment of imperial trauma are paramount in this time-consuming and difficult psychological process,” Tetiana Pylypchuk, director of the Kharkiv Literary Museum, told a rapt audience in Odesa, capturing the central dilemma of Ukraine’s decolonization debate.

According to Kostyantin Doroshenko, a Ukrainian art critic, author, a podcast host, “Tsarist Russia attempted to create a tradition of the succession of the Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov dynasty from Kyivan Rus. Soviet ideology adopted this dynastic version of history. The doctrine ‘Three peoples — Three brothers’ labeled Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian peoples as ‘brotherly’ and recognized the supremacy of the Russian people. The Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples were considered ‘Russians with local deviations.’”

Ukrainians need to free themselves from mental occupation and must stop viewing their culture as secondary. Decolonization must start from the bottom, not the top, noted the speakers.

At present, a mental boundary must be established: Russian and Ukrainian cultures are dissimilar, just as the countries’ histories.

“Ukrainian and Russian histories differ dramatically. The Moscow state tradition was formed by its proximity to the Golden Horde, while the Ukrainian state tradition was influenced by the Galician Principality, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Commonwealth. By the time Bohdan Khmelnytsky unified Ukrainian lands with Muscovy, Ukraine was already a part of European civilization, intellectually and socially. Ukrainian folk tradition and culture have remained different from the Russian for centuries,” commented Kostyantin Doroshenko at the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

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