Authors

Discussion

The legacy of the Second World War, known as the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union and independent Ukraine before 2015, played a significant role in shaping Ukrainian identity. The full-scale Russian invasion on 24 February 2022 accelerated the reassessment of the memory of the Second World War and the Soviet Union’s contribution to the defence of Europe against Nazism. The socio-political, cultural, and historical contexts in which Soviet-era military monuments existed have undergone radical changes.

In June 2022, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine established a Сouncil on de-Russification, decommunization, and decolonisation, which was to coordinate the dismantling of Soviet monuments. Along with the dismantling of Soviet military monuments, the reformatting of the Second World War-related sites of memory was actively underway.

This paper examines the transformation of Ukraine’s Second World War Memoryscape after the Russian aggression of February 2022, with particular attention given to the changes that have occurred at sites of memory in Kyiv. This city is home to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, which serves as a vivid example of how the ongoing military conflict has reconceptualized the institution, expanding the chronological scope of the museum’s exhibits to include the present.