GRANTEE
I plan to write a book dedicated to multiple aspects of the history of Bykivnia, a mass grave site where the NKVD carried out executions, as a place of memory. One of the chapters will explore the familial memory of the 1930s repressions through the family of Yanuarii Bortnyk––his granddaughter and great-granddaughter. I also hope to find those who privately honored the memory of their relatives in Bykivnia or continue to do so.
In another chapter I plan to focus on the personal stories involved in revealing the memory of the mass repressions: at the end of the 1980s, journalist Leonid Kiselyov published a series of notes on Bykivnia in Vechirniy Kyiv and Literaturnaya Gazeta (Moscow). To find out how he managed to publish these materials and why he took interest in this topic I would like to interview his family and friends.
The third part will be dedicated to Bykivnia as a physical space. I have planned a couple of interviews with current residents of the Bykivnianska hromada , Ukrainian memory platform Memorial employees, and participants of the archeological examination of the Bykivnia forest that took place in the 1990s–2000s.
The project will result in one of the possible understandings of Bykivnia as a place of memory, adverse attention, or intentional neglect. I want to answer the question of what the current memory of repressions is and how it changes amid the full-scale war, the most traumatic event of Ukrainian history.