Total Recall: Russian attempts to erase the Ukrainian culture
If history is the assembled repository of records from the past, culture is the process that brings it to life. The repository can be curated, files omitted, branches deleted — reshaping what appears authoritative. In Ukraine’s case, altered archives and displaced artefacts sought to impose a different version of the past. Yet culture does not depend on a single authorised build; it restores suppressed branches and continues to generate meaning even when the record is forcibly rewritten.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Ukrainian culture faced numerous bans and censorship imposed by the Russian Empire and the Soviet authorities, yet active cultural movements and organisations continuously revived and promoted the Ukrainian language, literature, music, and arts. From secret societies and the Kyiv-based Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood in the 19th century to Prosvita and the Union of Ukrainian Women, from the modernist Executed Renaissance of the 1920s to the Sixtiers and samizdat of the 1960s–80s, Ukrainian writers, poets, artists, and activists produced books, theatrical performances, songs, and journals in Ukrainian, despite repression, arrests, and censorship, defending the right to national identity and cultural distinctiveness.
Ukrainian writers, scientists and artists were marginalised or pressured into assimilation within a Russian canon. Those who resisted often faced censorship, imprisonment, or death. A frequently cited example is the killing of composer Mykola Leontovych. His composition “Shchedryk,” later internationally known as “Carol of the Bells,” became globally recognized even as its national origin was obscured.
Following Ukraine’s declaration of independence in 1991, the imperial concept of a “common cultural space” steadily weakened. Without direct administrative control, Moscow’s cultural dominance in Ukraine receded. Recent Russian national strategy, however, signal renewed intent. Official language about “strengthening a pan-Russian civic identity based on traditional spiritual, moral, cultural, and historical values” in occupied territories indicates that cultural alignment remains a policy objective.
Beneath this phrasing lie practices reminiscent of earlier eras. In March 2021, Russian security officers in occupied Crimea detained individuals who laid flowers at a monument to the poet Taras Shevchenko. One of them, journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko, was later sentenced on charges widely regarded by observers as politically motivated. Acts of commemoration were treated as acts of subversion.
The campaign has extended beyond individuals to physical heritage. As of January 2026, UNESCO has verified damage to or destruction of 517 cultural sites in Ukraine, including religious buildings, museums, libraries, monuments, and archives. Among the affected sites are the historic centres of Odesa and Lviv, as well as Saint Sophia Cathedral and the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra – landmarks recognised for their architectural and historical significance.
Physical destruction has been accompanied by information campaigns. Russian officials have tried to deny targeting cultural sites and circulated claims that Ukraine itself is endangering Orthodox heritage. Even pop-cultural events, such as the Eurovision Song Contest have been reframed as ideological threats or even “satanic rituals”. Ukraine has been characterised as hostile to “traditional values” and labelled a “Nazi state,” with cultural policy cited as evidence. In this narrative, defence of Ukrainian identity is presented not as self-preservation but as extremism.
The assault on shrines and symbols – often described by Russian officials as elements of “Russian holiness” – reveals the deeper logic at work. Control over territory is inseparable from control over meaning. If culture encodes memory, then reshaping culture becomes a means of rewriting belonging.
The next chapter examines another dimension of this strategy – language – the medium through which memory is transmitted and identity articulated.
