Yevgenia Belorusets

Since early 2014, beginning with the annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas, more than 1.5 million so-called “internally displaced persons” have been registered in Ukraine. Adding to their feelings of disorientation, clouds of propaganda swirl, saying who is to blame for their situation. Meanwhile, these displaced people develop fantastic, surprising ways of thinking, which have the power to change our perspectives on the conflict. While at the IWM, I plan to finish work on a book based on conversations with people who lived amid the war in the Donbas and saw their communities be occupied by separatist groups. One of the key questions of my book is how talking about personal history can help deconstruct propaganda and ideologies. Documents and photographic records of life emerge alongside surreal and factual retellings of what happened here.

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.