Transformations of Public Memory in Berdiansk after 2014

• Published in: Місто: історія, культура, суспільство
• Date: 2025
• Main Author: Minko, O.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Інститут історії України НАН України 2025
• Subjects: Пам'ять та місто
• Online Access: https://nasplib.isofts.kiev.ua/handle/123456789/212066
• Journal Title: Digital Library of Periodicals of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
• Cite this: Transformations of Public Memory in Berdiansk after 2014 / O. Minko // Місто: історія, культура, суспільство. — 2025. — № 17(1). — С. 7-35. — Бібліогр.: 56 назв. — англ.

Berdiansk is a Ukrainian city on the Azov Sea shore in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. With almost 200 years of colonial history, this city currently living under Russian occupation is an excellent fit for analysing the memory transformation process in the communities of southeastern Ukraine. This paper examines the memory politics background in the southeast of Ukraine as exemplified by the changes in symbolism across Berdiansk's city space on the back of post- Maidan politics. It brings to light the context of the artificial political divide of the 2000s-2010s that grew due to Ukrainian presidents' campaigns that polarized Ukrainian society and shows how the political forces of Ukraine, affected by Russian aggressive foreign policies, manipulated the historical differences to juxtapose southeastern Ukraine to the other part of the country. The paper connects this context with the partial success of Russia in the hybrid invasion of 2014 and analyzes the response of the local communities to the decisions made during the period of political uncertainty in the region. Reconstructing the process Decomunization Laws implementations in Berdiansk, this paper demonstrates that memory coded in the toponyms, memorials and commemoration rituals be- came the epicenter of political struggle in the city. It refers to several cases of renaming of the streets, replacing the Soviet memorials (monuments to Vladimir Lenin, Felix Dzerzhinsky and others) with the themes and images of Ukrainian national history after 2014. Changes that took place year-over-year in the commemorational events on the 8th and 9th of May chosen as an example of difficulties that followed the transformational processes on the level of the public remembrance practices. An important place is drawn for the Working Group headed by Research Institute of Urban History that tried to securitize the city from ideological threats of Russian hybrid invasion, using different methods to influence public opinion on the matter of Russian and Soviet heritage in the public space of the city of Beridansk. In addition, paper describes the transformation of memory sites under occupation and imagines potential commemoration frameworks for the liberated Berdiansk. The author discusses the replacement of the vertical type of decision-making in the field of Memory Politics with practices attentive to the historical diversity of southeastern Ukraine and Berdiansk in particular. Also, it considers the danger of massive destruction of the city's heritage during possible military operations and develops the approach based not only on the memory of human experiences but on the memorializa tion of the environmental catastrophes caused by Russia. The considerations for symbolical transformations in Berdiansk draw on the Content Analysis method. Some data comes from the interview with the Research Institute of Urban History Director, Prof. Victoria Konstantinovna, who helped implement decommunisation laws. While analysing the relations between Ukrainian memory politics and Russian colonial policy, the author used de/postcolonial optics.