Discussion
The Euro-Maidan and Russia-Ukraine conflict has substantially influenced state-affiliated identarian projects in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance (UINP), a major memory managing institution in Ukraine, and other state and non-state actors actively promoted ‘decommunisation’ agenda. Memory regime of post-Euromaidan Ukraine decisively moved away from Soviet imposed narratives, symbols and other Soviet-era legacies, initially spontaneously and from 2015 within an official politics of decommunisation (so called ‘decommunisation laws’ of 2015), fostering consolidation of a new Ukrainian identity, which is not just separate from Russian, but distinctly anti-Russian. The Ukrainian memory actors pre-2022, both official and grassroots, however, were reluctant to seriously tackle the Russian imperial heritage. Although, from 2017 on, the UINP launched a discussion on experiences of the Ukrainian territories under the Russian imperial rule. I focus on the initiated by the UINP debates about relevance of the Russian imperial past to Ukrainian history and necessity of decolonisation before the full-scale war. I argue that during 2014-2022 the UINP marginally confronted the legacy of the Russian Empire, concentrating its decolonising efforts on Soviet past. Nevertheless, the very meaning of the word decolonisation in relation to Ukraine gradually, but significantly changes, evolving from addressing Soviet past to decolonising both Soviet and Tsarist eras. While immediately after Euromaidan and up to February 2022, decolonising agenda of the Ukrainian authorities (termed as ‘decommunisation’) was mainly related to the Soviet period, tackling of the Russian imperial legacy begins more actively and seriously only after the beginning of the full-scale war. Reluctance to more seriously and systematically approach the Russian imperial past before February 2022 could be explained by a strong influence and deep roots of the Russian imperial culture in Ukraine.
