Authors

Anastasiya Pshenychnykh¹;  ¹ Loughborough University, UK

Discussion

Since the RF’s invasion into Ukraine in 2022, the latter has been forgetting not only its Soviet and communist past, but also cutting out any Russian roots. It led to de-Sovietization and decommunization, which this time grew to the scale of de-Russification, decolonization, de-Belorusization in Ukraine and the EU. At the same time, on the territory occupied by the RF the opposite policies on monuments have been implemented. The RF’s forces launch de-Ukrainization, re-erection and restoration of Soviet monuments, as well as negotiations on installing Imperial figures. Another practice is de-Ukrainizing non-occupied Ukrainian territories by shelling heritage assets. 

The clash of Ukraine's and RF's ideological perspectives fuels battles over monuments on the spot and on media. Reverse perspectives of the rivals construe polarizing interpretations of events concerning monuments on social media. This research aims at analyzing the battles of spectacles over monuments on social media, namely Telegram, during the Russo-Ukrainian War, resulting in rescaping physical space, affecting memory and creating a perspectival divide. The main objectives are mapping and establishing specificity of practices exercised on monuments in different regions, investigating Ukrainian and Russian perspectives concerning monuments on Telegram, examining multimodal – verbal and visual – images created on Ukrainian and Crimean channels.