Authors
Liudmyla Harmash1; 1 H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University, Ukraine Discussion
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has not only reshaped the geopolitical landscape of Eastern Europe but also catalysed profound transformations within Ukrainian cultural and literary production. In the aftermath of the invasion, literature has become a crucial site of decolonial resistance—a medium through which authors renegotiate questions of voice, authenticity, and linguistic sovereignty. This paper examines how contemporary Ukrainian wartime literature performs a double act of decolonisation: dismantling inherited imperial discourses while simultaneously constructing new frameworks of national and cultural self-representation.Drawing on a corpus of prose, poetry, and hybrid testimonial texts written between 2022 and 2025, the study analyses how Ukrainian authors mobilise language as an ethical and political tool. By rejecting the former diglossic hierarchy between Ukrainian and Russian, writers reclaim the Ukrainian language as both a symbolic and epistemic space of freedom. The paper explores the aesthetics of linguistic choice, self-translation, and code-switching as acts of identity assertion. It also considers the narrative strategies—documentary realism, lyrical testimony, and metafiction—that enable authors to merge individual trauma with collective experience.The analysis situates these literary practices within broader debates on postcolonial and decolonial theory, drawing on the frameworks of Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Walter Mignolo, and Ukrainian scholars such as Myroslav Shkandrij and Tamara Hundorova. By focusing on the interrelation between language, identity, and authenticity, the paper argues that Ukrainian wartime writing functions not merely as a reflection of the war but as a transformative project of cultural sovereignty. In articulating an autonomous voice beyond the colonial matrix of power, these texts redefine what it means to speak—and to write—from the periphery of empire. 
