If asked to name colonialism’s dominant trait, I’d say it is unification. An empire is a patchwork, with each piece having its distinct cultural, political, and administrative features and mindset. A colonial repressive mechanism promotes the illusion of a homogeneous space where everything is common: the language, the cultural norms, the traditions. Every feature, once forced upon a given group of people, must be taken by that group as something primordial and familiar.
Category: Articles
Imperial Soviet Narrative in Architecture and Urban Planning, and Politics of Colonization 🇬🇧🇺🇦
“My address is not a house or a street, my address is the Soviet Union…” Back in the day, every radio would occasionally play this cheery song. Designed by its author to “characterize an entire era,” this song was written in 1972, that is, at the peak of Brezhnev’s stagnation period.
Kyiv as a Function: Ukraine’s Capital in the Photographic Narratives of the Russian Empire and the USSR 🇬🇧🇺🇦
In the popular Soviet comedy “Kidnapping, Caucasian Style,” there was this episode: comrade Saakhov, a character representing a cunning and hypocritical official from the national periphery, teaches a naive but honest student, Shurik: “Everyone knows that the Kuzbass is an all-Union smithy, Kuban is an all-Union granary, so the Caucasus is an all-Union what?”
The Road to Change: Ukrainian Entrepreneurship between imperial Pressure and Independence 🇬🇧🇺🇦
Author: Tetiana Vodotyka, PhD in History, senior research fellow (Institute of History of Ukraine, National academy of sciences of Ukraine), … More
Soviet Mass Deportations: Guidelines for Assimilation for the Russian Authorities 🇬🇧🇺🇦🇳🇱יידיש
Author: Anna Yatsenko, researcher of memorial culture, After Silence NGO Translation: Nataliia Slipenko Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war … More
War for the sake of peace 🇬🇧🇺🇦
Authors: Oleksandra Kotliar, historian of American history, Illia Levchenko, art historian Translation: Natalia Slipenko On YouTube, it’s fairly easy to … More
Ethical Paradoxes of Russian Utopia in European Museums 🇬🇧🇺🇦
Article: Maria Nazarenko, philosopher and art critic Translated by: Tetiana Yevloyeva I recall the 2019 Rouge exhibition at the Grand … More
Breaking the Atomic Embrace 🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇹
Author: Alexej Ovchinnikov, environmental expert journalist, editor of the media-portal “Зялёны партал” (www.greenbelarus.info) Translation: Tetiana Yevloyeva On March 16, 2022, … More
“Third Rome” or The story about the Russian Orthodox Church as a weapon of “Russian world” and its love of nuclear bomb 🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇹
Author: Anna Melnychenko, theologian, methodologist of innovative education content laboratory of the MANU Centre Translated by Natalia Slipenko The Russian … More
Fifty Shades of (Neo)Colonialism in Russian Filmmaking 🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇹🇳🇱יידיש
By Yulia Kovalenko, a film critic and a Docudays UA programmer Translated by Tetiana Evloeva In a 2009 episode of … More