Olha Mukha: ‘We must not let the war dominate our perception of history’

Olha Mukha is a philosopher and Cultural Manager, curator and expert in communication, memory studies and human rights. Mukha is co-founder and programme director of the Ukrainian Association for Cultural Studies in Lviv, head of the educational and international department at The Territory of Terror Memorial Museum in Lviv. 

Krytyka Polityczna: Is Russia a colonial country in the Western sense?

Olha Mukha: For a long time, the West refused to acknowledge Russia’s colonial and imperial character, focusing instead on its own history. This blindness has given rise to the development of contemporary Russian imperial ambitions. This is not, though, colonialism in the traditional Western sense.

The West conquered overseas territories, with the main objective being economic exploitation. Russia, on the other hand, has always absorbed neighbouring territories, forcing their cultural assimilation. It viewed the conquered nations as akin to itself, as brothers, claiming ‘you have always been ours’. It continues to do so to this day. Western countries, on the other hand, have forgone the armed form of colonisation. They have come to terms with their history as colonisers and have since done a lot to foster the acceptance of otherness. In Russia, even liberals take issue with this.

For example?

At the beginning of the Great War (the term used by Ukrainians to refer to the period of Russia’s full-scale invasion), a Russian person suggested to the international organisation where I worked that they print a volume of Russian poetry against the war. I asked whether it would include the voices of minorities living in Russia – Buryats, Yakuts or Chuvash, for example. Genuinely puzzled at my question, he responded that such minorities do not produce poetry.

What did you say in response?

That this is a typical example of Russian cultural imperialism. Minorities in Russia have a rich literary tradition, and to overlook it is not only an oversight, but also a reproduction of colonial patterns of thinking that deny the subjectivity of ethnic minorities. It is convenient for white Russians to send the Buryats to war with Ukraine to portray them as cruel killers. It is much more difficult to see them as an integral part of Russia’s multicultural tapestry. I made it a condition that minority poetry had to be included in an anti-war anthology. Ultimately, this particular one was not produced.

Ukraine experienced many acts of Russian and Soviet colonialism – with the 1931-1932 Holodomor (also known as the Ukrainian Famine) at the forefront. But in the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s position was quite strong due to the Russian understanding of Ukraine and Belarus as “younger brothers”. Does this mean that Ukraine was also a coloniser, responsible for the crimes of the communist regime?

It is right that Ukraine’s position within the structures of the USSR was relatively strong: we had developed industry and agriculture, and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was a founding member of the UN. It is possible, therefore, to argue that Ukraine was part of the Soviet colonial system, especially given the presence of Ukrainians in the top echelon of Soviet caciques. However, it must be remembered that Ukraine had no real sovereignty or autonomy at the time, and many Ukrainians resisted Sovietisation.

Today, Ukraine is undergoing a process of reckoning with its Soviet past. This is no simple matter, not least for moral reasons. Whilst we may uncover uncomfortable parts of our own history, unlike Russia, we have the courage to face them. Russia has assumed the entire legacy of the Soviet Union without any self-reflection. In the Russian narrative, there are no Georgian or Kazakh inventors, there are only Soviets, and to be Soviet is to be Russkiy [in Russian, ‘russkiy’ means ‘ethnically Russian’].

To what extent did the collapse of the Soviet Union shape the Ukrainian debate about Russian colonialism? 

At first, virtually not at all. For intellectuals, even those in western Ukraine, it was clear. When I began my PhD in Lviv in the 1990s, it was well understood that if I wanted to amount to anything in science, I had to publish in either Moscow or St Petersburg journals. And I had to publish in Russian, of course, and that was even easier for me because I had been reading Russian translations of the world’s philosophers. By contrast, when speaking, I switched freely between Russian, Ukrainian and Polish. This changed in 2014, after the Maidan Revolution and the outbreak of war in the Donbas region. Many people from my field switched to Ukrainian, although business, for example, still spoke Russian for a considerable time. This was also when the debate on decolonisation started.

‘Whilst we may uncover uncomfortable parts of our own history, unlike Russia, we have the courage to face them. Russia has assumed the entire legacy of the Soviet Union without any self-reflection’

After 2014, there was more talk of “decommunisation”.

Reflecting on one’s own history and rewriting it is a difficult task; it is far easier to just change street names and take down memorials. At the Territory of Terror Museum, where, among other things, I work, we discussed at length what to do with said memorials. We began collecting them, because some are works of art and all are pieces of history that merit study. Was the Soviet soldier held hostage to Russian culture? Was the propaganda artist exploited by the system? Is it fair to judge the choices made by people living under communism? To encourage such reflection, you need a policy of remembrance, and that requires both time and money. The long and painful road of self-reflection is not politically popular.

That being said, after 2014, Ukraine took some major decisions that can be considered “decolonising”. It stipulated that films be dubbed in Ukrainian, and blocked many Russian TV channels, as well as the popular social network, Vkontakte.

I must admit that when I watched my first film dubbed in Ukrainian – the second part of Pirates of the Caribbean – it took me around 10 minutes to get used to it. The blocking of social network Vkontakte, on the other hand, was a major change. For one, we were taken off of the forced drip feed of Russian pop culture; not only that, we lost access to an internet where you could pirate anything and the concept of copyright was nonexistent. I was genuinely surprised at how easily people adapted.

Ukraine then turned towards Europe. I was afraid that we would simply switch from Russian to English and swap Russian cultural codes for American ones. The process did not afford us time to become better acquainted with our own history, which remains largely untold. When I started working at the Territory of Terror museum, the director encouraged us to delve into our own family histories. I discovered that my grandmother, who had died a few years earlier, had been in prison, in the building next to our museum, something she had never mentioned.

We did not have a chance to reflect on such revelations, to find the right words to talk about them, to see the shades of grey in what seemed to be black and white. No debate was had about it. And then a full-scale war broke out and we found ourselves in a very difficult situation with regards to our identity.

As it happens, I do not think anything has strengthened and popularised Ukrainian identity as much as the outbreak of a full-scale war. Today, few Ukrainians have any doubts about who “we” are and who “they” are.

Indeed, Ukrainian national identity has been significantly strengthened and disseminated by the external threat of war. Nevertheless, the process of identity shaping, both individual and collective, is complex and, in addition, intimate. It requires time and space and is difficult to accomplish under constant observation and pressure. On the one hand, the West expects Ukrainians to assume the role of victims – helpless, grateful for any help and not making demands. On the other, they are expected to be heroes – strong, steadfast and ready to make sacrifices. We gave you tanks; now, go and produce a Hollywood war blockbuster!

Ukrainians are juggling these expectations while trying to understand who they are and who they will be in the years to come. This task is further complicated by external comments and judgements that we are either behaving badly towards the Russians or not dying properly.

‘The long and painful road of self-reflection is not politically popular’

Are you alluding to a resistance to the Ukrainian “cancelling” of Russian culture?

I would not call it cancelling. On the one hand, it is a temporary boycott to show the Russians that they cannot justify aggression against other nations or deny their differences. That they cannot use their power to spread disinformation, or remain silent after carrying out war crimes.

On the other hand, it is the desire to make the world aware that the famous ‘great Russian culture’ is thoroughly imbued with imperial thinking. Take, for example, Leo Tolstoy’s Haji-Murat, a novel that depicts the peoples of the Caucasus in an Orientalist manner. Or Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from a Dead House, which perpetuates a stereotypical and negative image of Poles.

It is also a question of fair representation, as the world still looks at Ukraine through the prism of Russia. In the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam, a plaque states that the Russians liberated Auschwitz. Not the Soviets, not – to be more precise – the Ukrainians and Belarusians, but the Russians. We raised this with the museum’s director, who explained that the museum’s visitors, mostly made up of young people, are not familiar with the term “Soviets”. Similarly, Russian still dominates Slavonic studies around the world, whereas courses offering Ukrainian, Polish or Czech are few and far between.

After almost three years of full-scale war, the word “decolonisation” has entered the mainstream of Ukrainian public debate. There is an increased awareness of Russian and Soviet crimes. But what will happen when the war ends? How will the Ukrainian politics of remembrance evolve? One would postulate learning to think critically and to see history’s shades of grey. But will that be possible following the black and white experience of the war?

It will be a complex and delicate process. Ukraine will have to critically rework not only the Soviet period, but also the earlier stages of history when it was under the influence of other countries (including Poland). Learning to think critically and to see the shades of grey will be difficult. This is not something everyone will be able to do, but it is imperative that we try. Moreover, investment is needed in historical education and independent research into various aspects of Ukrainian history, including difficult and controversial ones, such as the Volhynian massacre. In our museum, we are already preparing to create a space for dialogue – with the whole world, but first and foremost amongst ourselves.

Will it be possible for us to do this after the war? It will not be easy. The war will have a lasting influence on Ukrainian society. I know that all too well. But we must not let the war dominate our perception of history. We have an opportunity to become an example of a country that has gone through the trauma of war and occupation, but has been able to develop a mature and nuanced approach to it. This is a considerable feat, but I am confident we can rise to the challenge. For that, however, we first need to survive.

👉 Original article on Krytyka Polityczna

🤝  This article is published within the Come Together collaborative project