Andrii Portnov

One of the brightest avenues of Ukraine, the very central street of the city of Dnipro (previously named after Empress Catherine II and Karl Marx), is named after Dmytro Yavornytsky (1855–1940), a historian who served for almost 30 years as the director of the local museum and wrote the first synthetic history of the city now called Dnipro. Andrii Portnov’s research focuses on both the academic perception of Yavornytsky’s work and his survival strategies during the regime changes in southern Ukraine, as well as the trajectories of his post-mortem commemorations and competing images. Historical works as well as literary texts, paintings, and films are part of the analysis. Special attention will be paid to the contextualization of the changing Soviet attitude toward Yavornytsky and the logic of his commemorative prominence in contemporary Dnipro.

One of the biggest Soviet industrial centers, a city of more than a million people in southern Ukraine, Dnipropetrovsk (today Dnipro), was closed to foreigners beginning in 1959 because of the secret rocket production in the city. It was also considered ‘Brezhnev’s city’ because the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was born nearby and began his career there. How was nationality, cultural and language politics performed and perceived in Soviet Ukraine in the 1960-70s? How was ‘Soviet’ connected/bordered to ‘Ukrainian’ in official discourse? How did the socialist realist novel ‘The Cathedral’ by Oles’ Honchar became an ‘anti-Soviet’ text, and what did that mean for the biggest closed city in Soviet Ukraine?

This was a Ukraine in European Dialogue Solidarity Fellowship. These fellowships are offered by invitation for notable scholars, cultural figures, and public intellectuals from Ukraine.

The Maidan and the war in the Donbas are reshaping the symbolic landscape of large industrial cities in the southeast of Ukraine. The example of Dnipropetrovsk recently being renamed Dnipro illustrates these current developments, which are not limited to “decommunisation”. We see the removal of Soviet monuments and the renaming of streets, but also the emergence of new memorial sites and commemorative rituals dedicated to the dramatic events of recent years.

This was a Ukraine in European Dialogue Solidarity Fellowship. These fellowships are offered by invitation for notable scholars, cultural figures, and public intellectuals from Ukraine.