Listen, hear and speak: what was discussed at the third Congress of Culture in Lviv

[ad_1]

The motto of the Congress of Culture, which took place after a two-year break in Lviv, was “UKRAINE! UNMUTED: Ukraine takes a voice.” Speaking in the language of the document, the politician “Vision of Ukraine 2030: Social and Humanitarian Sphere”, created by the “Resuscitation Package of Reforms” coalition together with the School of Political Analytics and 50 independent public experts under the editorship of Professor Yevhen Bystrytskyi and presented at the Congress, “in conditions of unprecedented interest from the world audience to Ukraine, opportunities have been created for the promotion of Ukrainian culture abroad.” The emphasis on the Ukrainian presence in the world through culture was heard on all three days of the Congress: understanding our culture makes it easier not only for those who left and somehow have to position themselves in a foreign environment, but also for those who remained, because the support of a fighting Ukraine in the world directly depends from what is known about us – both in the countries that are considered to be the drivers of progress, and in those countries that, due to inertia, continue to be classified in the second or third order. I will focus on this external focus, which was presented in several panel discussions, which – despite the rather veiled titles – carried clear practical messages. We will discuss three of them: “Whirlwind or a zone of settlement? Politics of (non)return” (moderator Iryna Podolyak), “Birdwatching: how the image of Ukraine has changed abroad” (moderator Alim Aliyev) and “At first there was a question. How to build solidarity matrices in the regions of “mutual ignorance”” (moderated by Ivanna Skyba-Yakubova). As you can see, the curators laid a certain “ornithological” aspect in the names so that certain phenomena could be more easily associated. Congress of Culture UKRAINE! UNMUTED took place in Lviv. Photo: Vitaliy Grabara In the framework of the first discussion, the speakers talked about the different layers of the problem of returning Ukrainians home: from the need to create national reintegration strategies to the impossibility of predicting the security situation, which is a determining factor when making a decision to return home. Psychotherapist Roman Kechur from UCU very clearly formulated the position of Ukrainian migrants, most of whom are uncomfortable abroad, they dream of returning to Ukraine, but the problem is that few of them imagine that they will not return to the Ukraine from which they left. Former Deputy Minister of Culture Halyna Grigorenko noted that “people should not just return to the community. A person will only return to a community in which there is a cultural infrastructure.” The representative of the President in Crimea, Tamila Tasheva, added that in the case of Crimea, the return should be accompanied by the return of the memory policy. Read also: Imported Ukrainian theater: How our theatergoers spread Ukrainian culture and the truth about the war abroad “People from emigration want to return to the past, but this is impossible, – said Kechur. – We must return to the dream. We lived in illusions for 30 years, we said that lived in a bad country. And it turned out after February 24, 2022 that we lived in the best country. People return to their old place when: a) they are attracted by their own place, its appearance, smell; b) when they are attracted by people. Therefore, these two pedals on our bike must work to return.” The participants noted that the security threshold is different for each family: relatively speaking, to return, whether it will be a complete victory, or when the hot phase of the war ends, or, for example, there will be a guarantee of missile security for specific regions. At the same time, Roman Kechur is sure that since clearly not everyone will return, “other people should be invited, they should be adopted, changing at the same time.” Alim Aliyev moderated the section “Birdwatching: how the image of Ukraine abroad has changed”. Photo: Vitaliy Grabara On the other hand, those who stay abroad and plan to stay there, turn into a lot of ambassadors of Ukrainian culture in their countries of residence. It doesn’t always go smoothly. The participant of the second mentioned discussion, Eva Yakubovska, who lives in Berlin, talks about the constant need to defend the rights of the Ukrainian community against the power of “Russian-speaking Germany”. She recalled that in May 2022, the authorities in Berlin equated Russian aggressive symbols with Ukrainian ones, fearing mass fights during the May 8 and 9 celebrations. Moreover, the “Russians” remained unpunished because they had symbols on their T-shirts that “could not be removed”, and it was easier for the police to detain someone like her with a yellow-blue bracelet than to disperse a bunch of bikers with the so-called symbols. “LDNR”. This year, through the court, Ukrainians succeeded in lifting the ban on using Ukrainian symbols, which is a clear achievement, but in the imagination of Germans, only representatives of Russian (including Russian-speaking Germans and Jews) have access to Soviet memorials, such as Treptov Park and in the Tiergarten area, despite that the contribution of Ukrainians and Belarusians to the victory of the Eastern Front was also enormous. However, as Yakubovska notes, if earlier the Germans put us in the bag of the imaginary “Ostoyrop”, now the image of Ukraine has clearly begun to emerge. Read also: Congress of Culture supported Yulia Fediv for the post of Minister of Culture Wroclaw Mayor’s Advisor on Ukrainian Affairs Olga Hrebor noted that February 2022 was a turning point for Poland as a state and as a society. Until the conditional February, there was a labor emigration in Poland, part of which preferred to completely dissolve in society, so that even by the accent it would not be clear that you are from Ukraine. By this, these people greatly disappointed the Ukrainian autochthonous community (descendants of those deported by the Vistula operation), the “old guard” who lived a measured life: the church, the school, the Shevchenko holiday. Olga and her associates often dealt with issues of legalization of Ukrainians, she had enough time to organize cultural events, literary and feminist meetings. After February 24, 2022, a mass of people flooded into Poland, which forced both the state and the state to quickly change the legislation, which facilitated the legalization of Ukrainians, but not only them (in Germany, according to Jakubovska, after such changes, their conditions significantly improved organization “Russian-speaking Germany”). The new wave of Ukrainians in Poland also brought samples of the new Ukrainian culture, which cannot but please. Another interesting change in the attitude towards Ukrainians was noted by the Czech journalist Apolena Ryhlikova. Before the great phase of the war, Ukrainians in the Czech Republic had a rather consumerist attitude: a Ukrainian woman will take good care of an old mother or a child, a Ukrainian man will build a house cheaply and well. Now, looking at the intelligent faces of the new arrivals, the Czech notes that the refugee may not be poor and untidy, he is here because there is a war at home. And he begins to ask where exactly the person is from, what he did at home, why he had to leave, what he feels. Analogies with the suppression of the Prague Spring of 1968 play a significant role in Czech empathy towards Ukrainians. Participants of the Culture Congress in Lviv. Photo: Vitaliy Grabara And actually at the third discussion, an opinion was voiced that confirms this trend. Its moderator, Alim Aliyev from the Ukrainian Institute, emphasized that a foreigner would rather reject the call of a Ukrainian politician: “Hear us! You must help us!”, but would more likely listen to a personal story through which he would build a bridge to the tragedy and pain of our people. This discussion, I would like to remind you, was about how to become understandable for peoples further away from us, who – as Russian propaganda likes to emphasize – are in the majority and with it in the issue of confrontation between the West and Ukraine, which the West supports. You can’t tell from the votes at the UN, but the situation in many countries is shaky and you have to work with them carefully. International journalist Natalka Humenyuk warned against careless exploitation of the concept of colonialism: for each nation it meant something different, and a person in Africa or Asia will not be able to make an associative line right away, because how can a “white Christian nation” be colonized by someone. But this understanding must be communicated somehow. Kateryna Botanova, who, like Humenyuk, participated online, emphasized that we ourselves must change our approaches to the heritage of distant peoples. If we want the world not to look at the history of Ukraine through Russian eyes, then we ourselves should not read the history of those peoples from the stories of their colonizers, but what their land speaks. However, there is an important context of who ruled in that country: if the French do not go with English narratives, and if the Germans do not go with French ones. If Indonesia is the largest Muslim country, then go to it with the Muslim background of Ukraine – the history of the Crimean Tatars, who, like the Ukrainians, suffered from Russian arbitrariness. After all, if we want the name of our capital to be read as Kyiv, then we should not be surprised that someone on another continent does not know the history of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as the beginning of the return to democratic life in our part of Europe. Listen, hear – and then speak. Read also: What is the “Fifth Kharkiv” and why does it need Yuriy Shevelyov The political document mentioned at the very beginning was presented as part of a separate event of the “Renaissance” International Foundation – an advocacy dialogue of public experts and representatives of the authorities “Reforms and restoration of the humanitarian sphere of Ukraine: institutions of culture and national memory”. The document can be read in its entirety at the link, and the perspectives of the institutions of culture and national memory until 2030 were presented by Olena Zabolotna and Yaryna Yasinevych. And in theses voiced by them, there are many answers to the challenges that were sounded at the discussions of the Congress. We must become present in the world, and we must do so quickly, while there is a window of opportunity. In short, at least in relation to Europe, we must promote Ukraine in the European space of memory – through the presence of the Holodomor and war crimes of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine in the expositions of key world museum and memorial institutions, through a new image of the modernized Ukrainian state, and to spread information about historical lessons and importance of the Ukrainian struggle experience for building a collective system of defense of democracy. We must “…strengthen the international activity of the Ukrainian scientific and cultural community, involve universities and museums in the development of events abroad, which are aimed at deconstructing stereotypes planted by Russian propaganda; involve foreign specialists in the study of the history of totalitarianism, Russian imperialism, and Ukrainian history on the basis of, in particular declassified archives of the Soviet special services”. Join all possible educational and cultural projects, displacing the dominance of Russian women and favorable attitude towards Russian culture. This should lead to the rejection of the dominant Russian-centric views on Ukrainian history and its return to the European context. Looks fantastic? No, the future existence of Ukraine on the map of Europe and the world depends simply on these specific steps. And this will be done through the opportunities and means of culture. The voice of Ukraine will be heard. Congress of Culture UKRAINE! UNMUTED in Lviv was organized by the Institute of Cultural Strategy and the NGO “Virmenska 35” with the support of the Lviv City Council, the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, the International Renaissance Foundation, ZMIN Foundation and the Lviv Polytechnic. Roman Kabachii, senior researcher of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War. Publications in the “View” section are not editorial articles and reflect exclusively the author’s point of view.

[ad_2]

Original Source Link