Decolonial Processes in Modern Ukrainian Literature: the Disclosure of the Soviet Man Image

The period of colonization of Ukraine by the Soviet Union left a severe trauma, which, despite the active post-colonization processes over the last 30 years, still influences our contemporary reality. In modern Ukrainian literature, this period manifests itself mainly through the image of the Soviet man. The article shows the representation of the Soviet man, his functioning, and his transformations in modern Ukrainian literature. By analyzing the traumatic memories and identity crises of the literary characters in Dom’s Dream Kingdom (2017) by Victoria Amelina and Cecil the Lion Had to Die (2021) by Olena Stiazhkina, it demonstrates a paradigm shift in approaches to decolonization. 

The article was developed during the “Memory, War and the City. Shaping Collective Remembrance and Re-Articulation of Past in Ukraine in European Contexts” course at the Invisible University for Ukraine, guided by Tetiana Vodotyka and prepared for publication in collaboration with Kateryna Osypchuk (CEU) and Nadiia Chervinska (CEU). The article was supported by the Open Society University Network (OSUN) and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). The paper was originally published in the fifteenth volume of the City: History, Culture, Society academic journal.1

In the Ukrainian literary process of recent years, themes concerning the identity of people born in the Soviet Union are perhaps the most vividly presented. The identity crisis in the novels Dom’s Dream Kingdom (2017) by Victoria Amelina and Cecil the Lion Had to Die (2021) by Olena Stiazhkina, in one way or another connected with the Soviet Union, raising the issues of national, linguistic, religious, and local identities. Also, all of these works partially touch upon the problems of forgetting and memory (both personal and cultural), trauma (in particular, military and of Holodomor), and acceptance/rejection by the community of others.

Yurii Kahanov describes the way to create a personality who would not cause trouble and is beneficial to the authorities.2 Social factors (family, educational institutions, mass media) created an environment in which it was difficult to form an alternative opinion, especially for the second and third Soviet generations (born in the 1930s and 1960s, respectively), who had no alternative experience. Stanislav Kulchytskyi says that they were grown “in test tubes.”3 Kahanov says that most citizens developed dual loyalty and dual identity: in public, they were conscientious builders of communism, but in private life, they treated it as a spectacle that must be endured. However, modern Ukrainian society is heterogeneous, and even after more than 30 years of independence, we observe nostalgia for the USSR, inertial adaptations, paternalism, and deformation of national identity.

Homo Sovieticus as a (Stereo)Type. The Influence of Urban Space on the Formation of the Character’s Identity

The very term homo sovieticus was coined by the Russian writer Alexandr Zinoviev. In 1982, he wrote a novel with the same name, in which he sarcastically described his compatriots who emigrated but did not get rid of the conformism inherent in Soviet society.4 In the Ukrainian language, there is a similar pejorative term, “sovok” (derived from the Russian “Soviet Union”). It denotes a group of people or a person who advocates russophile ideas, supports modern Russian politics, and has nostalgic feelings for the Soviet Union.5 The public discourse has formed a certain stereotype about the older generation: most people are stuck in the past, do not accept changes, support Soviet ideology, and do not have a defined national identity. One of my objectives is to find out whether modern Ukrainian writers support this stereotype and how they make sense of their experience of Soviet people in the context of colonial trauma. 

The action of the selected works takes place in different years, before and after gaining independence, and this helps the older characters to reveal themselves by reflecting on their “old life” and the changes that led to independence, which represents their vision of identity and values of Soviet people. The strategies these people choose reflect society’s reaction in concrete examples. As for the representatives of the younger generation, we see their growth and manifestation of themselves, and their beliefs mainly formed after independence.6

Essential factors in the construction of local identity are a place as a specific space of meanings, values, and norms significant for one particular person; primary socialization in an intimate environment; interaction within a small community; collective memory (substantial events and personalities in the historical development of the place).

In our case, the identity of the characters is formed in the city’s space. The works present cities in different parts of Ukraine—Donetsk in the East and Lviv in the West. These parts of Ukraine have different sociocultural conditions and degrees of Soviet influence. The territorial proximity to Russia is also essential; proximity means intercultural ties that affect traditions, language, and attitudes towards the Soviet authorities. As William Blacker puts it, analyzed texts are texts about the city—it plays a significant role in forming the characters’ identities.7

Dom’s Dream Kingdom by Victoria Amelina

Figure 1

Victoria Amelina was a modern Ukrainian writer, a member of the Ukrainian PEN, and a public figure. After the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war, together with the Truth Hounds organization, she documented war crimes in the de-occupied territories. Victoria died from a Russian missile attack on Kramatorsk on June 27, 2023. She won the Joseph Conrad Literary Award and was a European Union Prize for Literature finalist.8 Her debut novel was published in 2015. In 2017, the novel Dom’s Dream Kingdom was published by the Old Lion Publishing House. 

In Amelina’s novel Dom’s Dream Kingdom, we can see the representation of the different generations and people that could be labeled homo sovieticus. Older people most often fall under this stereotype, while the younger generation—raised in the Soviet Union—has problems with self-identification, and the youngest generation—born and raised in independent Ukraine—is more conscious of national identity issues. 

The concept of home is central to the novel. It appears as a chronotope, a locus, a topos, an image, and a through-and-through metaphor. The main characters of the novel are Tsilyk’s family and their dog. The story is told on behalf of the poodle Dominique, or Dom. It is a play on words: the name “Dom” is phonetically identical to the Russian word “dom,” which means “home.” In the novel, much attention is paid to the language issue; it becomes one of the cornerstones of national self-identification  The author illustrates her mental categories through the narrator-Dom. In the mind of a dog, the concept of home is inextricably linked with the memory of a place: “Home is where you are remembered—scattered like fragments of frozen rivers above the Earth […] Our home, as long as it is with us. And we are all always in this house—each at his own depth.”9

Liliia Tsilyk, the grandmother of the family, is shown as a character who does not know who she is. Some people called her “local,” but she does not  perceive herself as part of Lviv-city society; others referred to her as an Azerbaijani and  “foreign, Russian,” and when she married a Ukrainian pilot, people in Russia called her offensively “hohlushka.”10 The “true Lviv ladies” with a strongly expressed regional identity, alienated her the most:  they have clocks that measure the particular Lviv time hanging on the walls, and crucifixes that “forgive the sins of everyone who owns the walls on which they hang,”11 making them feel more worthy than others. Liliia Tsilyk’s identity cannot be attributed to the stereotypical image of homo sovieticus. The Soviet Union and its legacy did not become part of her identity, just like the city in which she settled, and she never fully understood her roots. One of these “ladies” was Mrs. Vira, her younger daughter’s mother-in-law. Mrs. Vira still remembered the times before the Soviet occupation. The basis of her identity was the space taken away. Mrs. Vira lost touch with her regional identity because she was defined primarily by her place of residence—the “walls” that were taken from her once the apartment she grew up in was made “communal.” She strove to compensate for this trauma all her life, creating legends she passed off as precious memories.  Mrs. Vira had a notebook with the Lviv recipes that linked her to family memory and local identity: she had been collecting these recipes all her life, trying to recreate the taste and smell of dishes prepared at her home before the arrival of the Soviet power, when her parents disappeared without a trace. The so-called “Golden September” (the entry of the Soviet troops into the territory of Poland, which then included Western Ukraine) brought a year of repression, during which about 10% of the population was persecuted for political reasons.12 More than a million people were tortured in prisons or went missing. 

Amelina’s concentration on physiological and sensual images may be evidence of a decolonial turn of Ukrainian literature in the post-Maidan period.

As Tamara Hundorova writes, extrapolating the theory of Walter Mignolo and Roland Vasquez into Ukrainian realities, decolonial aesthetics is oriented towards the “liberation of sense and sensuality.”13 Since 2009, aesthesis as a new practice based on aesthetics has been developing in Ukrainian culture. Hundorova defines aesthesis as “the manifestation of the invisible, devalued by modern aesthetics, which is a way of colonization.” She continues that “for aesthesis, the method of resistance is re-existence, which is asserted based on sense, taste, daily aesthetic and bodily practices; aesthesis means, firstly, the decolonization of sense and sensuality.”14 It is exactly what we see in the descriptions of the physiological sensations in the book.

Since the dog is a narrator, we see the world through his eyes, or rather we smell it through his nose. Sensations and smells carry not only information but also convey the memories of events, which despite having been long erased, can be smelled by the dog. The dog Dom can also sense national self-determination. If Mrs. Vira collects specific Lviv recipes, Liliia has many chaotic records of recipes from different cuisines of the world—Azerbaijani, Armenian, Russian, and Ukrainian. The narrator ponders what would happen if “she suddenly took it upon herself to rewrite all these recipes, with a loud title, the way Mrs. Vira does, what kind of collection would it be? ‘Nobody’s recipes’? ‘Socialist recipes’? ‘Recipes from everywhere and nowhere’? Yes, it would be good—from everywhere and nowhere. That’s how Tsilyks smell.”15 The main difference between these two women is that “Big Ba traveled alone, and Vira kept holding on to the city that passed from hands to hands.”15

Notably, the book depicts the recipes of various national cuisines without simplification.16 As Olena Stiazhkina says in her study of Soviet gastronomic practices, The Taste of the Soviet, in the USSR, authority strove for the unification of national cuisines while appropriating all their best achievements.17 Since cuisine was also a colonized space, it is not only one of the manifestations of aesthesis. It is also a direct demonstration of a decolonial approach; the characters’ awareness of themselves, their roots, and rejection of deliberate generalization. It is normal for Ms. Vira, a middle-class intellectual, because the Soviet regime brought only grief into her life, but for Liliia Tsilyk, the wife of a Soviet soldier, it is quite atypical as if she is trying to collect and find her local and national identity through the cuisine.

Ivan Tsilyk, a military pilot who is used to hiding his true thoughts and emotions “because of duty,” may seem like a typical representative of homo sovieticus. However, his image is much more complex. Once, his daughter saw him in a crowd of nationalist youth marching down the street with Ukrainian flags. Yet, on the facade, he said that “it would be better for people to do something more useful.”18 Similarly, he did not seem to like Dom and always pretended to be strict with him, although, he was petting him. There turned out to be a rational explanation for this—the shame and childhood trauma of the Holodomor.19 Iryna Skybii in her article “The Material World of Children during the Holodomor or What Saved Their Lives”20 says that nature was one of the resources that saved children and their families from famine—they used to hunt wild birds, mainly sparrows, frogs, hamsters, and domestic animals. “In these years, dogs and cats disappeared from city streets and village yards, because most of them also became an alternative source of food in times of famine” (translation—D.P.).21 Amelina’s novel shows the friendship between a child and a dog, and then a tragic moment of betrayal for survival. The memory of his sister and his dog was so traumatic that Ivan buried it very deeply. He could not erase the memory of the dog: “The colonel thinks he has forgotten. But no, here is this dog, and grandmother Marusia, and the body of his sister—in completely transparent eyes.”22

All his life, the colonel hid bread crusts in an old chest—any, even stale and moldy ones. He miraculously survived the Holodomor, and the anxiety of the possible lack of food haunted him constantly. He even taught his youngest granddaughter to pick up crumbs from the table and put them in her mouth. Fears have also grown into his identity, including the demonization of America as an aggressor: “Ivan was afraid of a big new war. But the promised war either never started or broke into several small wars and imperceptibly ended on TV. America was equally the country from which fighter jets with a white star flew into the sky of Ivan Tsilyk—to fight against the red star, not for life. And even the voice of this very America from the radio shell could not eliminate the memories.”23 Subconscious fear remained with him all his life, so he tried in every way to protect himself and his children. Even in the “nationality” column in the documents, he entered his eldest daughter Tamara as “Russian” and the younger Olha as “Ukrainian,” as if following the established idea of ​​Ukraine and Russia as older and younger brothers. Marusia, Olha’s daughter, the youngest member of the family, was also registered as Russian at birth even though her mother and father were Ukrainian: “The column ‘nationality’ never, it seems, disappeared in the USSR, only became invisible and insignificant if you write ‘Russian’ there. It seemed simpler even in the late 80s. It was right…”24 Ivan Tsilyk lived his entire life as a citizen of the Soviet Union. Even after Ukraine gained independence, he did not publicly recognize himself as Ukrainian—his origin scared him, so he tried not to think about it. Ivan Tsilyk is a deeply traumatized person who cannot be called homo sovieticus fully, because he understood how much grief the Soviet Union had caused and condemned it.

The younger generation is represented by Tsilyk’s daughters, Tamara and Olya. They have different attitudes toward their identities. Tamara feels like a “minority” in Lviv whose residents consider the Soviet period of life an occupation. She identifies herself as a Soviet person, the daughter of a Soviet colonel,  although she sincerely does not understand who the Soviet people are: the victors of fascism or the occupiers, and how it can be combined. Furthermore, she is convinced that it would be better if there were no nationalities and borders. After Ukraine gained independence, she sought happiness abroad but returned to Ukraine and continued to live here, not bothering with politics. Tamara is not a homo sovieticus to the full extent. However, she also does not have a clearly defined local or national identity. She does not think much about other categories like national identity and would like to live in the Soviet for purely pragmatic reasons. This is connected with the trauma that haunts almost all Tsyliks— the absence of a home.

Olia also cannot define her national identity: “Maybe she is from Baku? […] Or maybe she is from a village in Zabaikallia, where she completed first grade? Or maybe from some Saratov, where she had never been because her grandmother also fled from unknown troubles along the Volga to the Caspian Sea. Or maybe Olia is from Ukraine?”25 None of her life milestones are tied to a specific place. Although her Soviet and then Ukrainian passport stated that she was Ukrainian, “these flags are foreign to her, the language is foreign, and this city is suddenly foreign, but, as for most Soviet people, almost always together with the adjective ‘Banderivskii.’ Even though Olia studied in Ukraine, her education was in Russian, so she does not know Ukrainian. Russian forms her linguistic identity, so when she has to teach at school, she sincerely thinks that everyone knows Russian and does not understand why one should make it difficult. Hence, both sisters do not associate themselves with the local group where they live.

Their daughters, Masha and Marusia, represented the youngest generation, born in the eighties. Olia’s daughter Marusia grew up as a conscious citizen of Ukraine and even participated in the Revolution of Dignity. Her older cousin Masha, Tamara’s daughter, has a more complicated background. She considered the Federal Republic of Germany her home throughout her childhood and adolescence, and then she fled to St. Petersburg because she never considered Ukraine her home and did not think about her national identity. Although she did not want to return to Lviv and initially lived with her aunt in Donetsk, she moved back because she had nowhere else to go.

Religion is also an important factor in the formation of identity. Depending on the generation, it manifests in different ways. The Soviet Union adhered to the anti-religious position, but Mrs. Vira was a believer. She even invented a legend that she named her son after Saint Yura, whose church she attended throughout her pregnancy, although her son was born in the sixties when Yuri Gagarin flew into space, and it was the peak of popularity for this name. Creating a myth of her own life was for Mrs. Vira a way to make it meaningful, to erase from her memory the moments she was ashamed of and thus show her otherness. Yet, the Tsilyks did not get along with religion even after the disintegration of the Soviet Union—Olha turned to Mary in despair only, when it seemed to her that Madonna saw everything and would punish her for dishonest actions.

Revealing the characters’ life stories and their often hidden actions, the novel shows that self-determination and self-awareness matter more than age and origin.

It is worth mentioning the generalized image of a Lviv resident in Ukrainian society. In 2014, Oleksiy Musiedzov conducted sociological research in which he derived a generalized and, one might say, rather stereotypical image of a Lviv resident.26 According to his results, a “true Lviv resident” can be characterized as a “nationalist-traditionalist” and “citizen-intellectual.” The first type of Lviv citizens has the following determining signs: Ukrainian, respects elders, family, traditions (conservatism, clericalism), folk art (buys embroidery), purity (goes to church). The second type of Lviv citizen has the following determining signs: a person who leads an urban lifestyle (cafes, restaurants, theater), differs in language and culture (coffee, gvara), and is proud of being a part of this city. Lviv residents, on the one hand, are autonomous individualists, and on the other, care about “what people will say.”

Native Lviv residents are roughly portrayed like that in Amelina’s book. In her novel, city space (and community) is represented as a foreign space for Tsilyk’s family. For some passionate city lovers like Mrs. Vira, Lviv is conversely a space that is a defining part of her identity. Language and attitude to religion became national identity-forming factors and simultaneously factors that made it impossible to form new local identities as part of the Lviv community. In addition to personal factors, this is also facilitated by the peculiarities of Lviv’s urban culture.

Cecil the Lion Had to Die by Olena Stiazhkina

Figure 2

Olena Stiazhkina is a Ukrainian writer, publicist, professor of history, and member of the Ukrainian PEN. She is the founder of the social movement “Deoccupation. Return. Education” and the author of more than ninety scientific publications published in Ukraine and abroad.27

Оlena Stiazhkina’s novel Cecil the Lion Had to Die tells about the events from 1986 to 2015. The place of action is the Donetsk region, a part of “Donbas,” which the Russians came to “liberate.” The initial date of the novel is chosen intentionally—it coincides with the year of the Chornobyl disaster, which proved that the Soviet system had outlived itself and could no longer perform state and social functions. Tamara Hundorova considers the Chornobyl disaster to be the beginning of the creation of new literature and belated postmodernism on Ukrainian soil.28

The place also matters. In one of the interviews, the author herself noted that her story could begin in Kharkiv or Dnipro. Still, it starts on the steps of the Donetsk maternity hospital, and from the first lines, the reader sees the “Titanic” bar that emerges in the frame.29

After all, reading the novel seemingly starts a countdown to Russian expansion and transforming a once flourishing city into ruins.

In the novel, language acts as a marker of identity. The book is written in two languages—​Ukrainian and Russian. This artistic technique conveys the gradual departure from the Soviet identity and the acquisition of a new Ukrainian. The plot centers around four children born on the same day and their families—Kornienkos, Pahutiaks, Nefiodovs, and Lishkes,—who chose different existential paths when the Soviet Union collapsed. Bohdan Kornienko and Anhelina Pahutiak agreed to give the children quite ridiculous names in exchange for “a color TV, a carpet, two strollers, two beds, membership cards of the ‘Soviet-German friendship’ society and an apartment in a new building, which was rented out a year later.”30 The boy Kornienko was named Ernest, with an extra letter “e” inside, and the girl Pahutiak was named Thelma. All the families remained connected as if by some kind of forced friendly family relationship.

A unifying element of different families is the German Heinrich Fink. He did not know his origin: his mother said that they were Baden or Prussian Germans; he did not have a home because he grew up in Kazakhstan, where the Germans from Donetsk were sent before World War II; he studied in Zaporizhzhia because his father, a front-line soldier who fought on the side of the Red Army, as a German, a representative of the aggressor people, was sent there to work as a sort of apology. Fink moved to Munich but visited Ukraine twice a year until he had to take care of little Dina, the daughter of Nefyodov and Anhelina Pahutiak. In the novel, she represents the ideas of a new conscious generation of Ukrainians. With her, Fink switched to the Ukrainian language and rediscovered his Ukrainian roots. 

Living in Munich with Khrystyna, a Ukrainian from the diaspora who speaks Ukrainian with her relatives, helped Heinrich Finke undergo an identity transformation. Influenced by Ukraine’s independence, societal changes after the Revolution of Dignity, and the patriotism of his student Dina, Fink evolved from a German trying to be useful because of his status into a German of Ukrainian origin. He begins learning the language, shedding Soviet-imposed stereotypes, and reflecting on his new identity.

The Nefiodovy family consists of mother Tania, father Andrii, and son Oleksii. Tania Nefiodova represents the transformation of homo sovieticus into “vatnik.” All her life, she wanted her home and family to be perfect, and everyone to envy her. However, after an unsuccessful marriage, her husband’s betrayal, and divorce, she had to start a new life at fifty. In March 2014, the woman suddenly realized that she was Russian and even regretted that she had not marked this day in the calendar to celebrate as her second birthday.31 Tania and her husband Vitia both are vata, but the one thing that distinguishes them is that Tania wanted the Soviet Union back and Vitia had republican views and wanted to build an empire with its capital in Donetsk. 

Andrii Nefyodov is an example of an average person who stopped being “comfortable” and began to think about his own life. At first, he was a “surname person”—not his parents nor wife or friends called him by his name, only by his surname. He lived most of his life in an unhappy marriage with Tania, which reminded him of the sanatoriums for children with mental disorders where he spent his childhood. Only after the birth of his and Anhelina’s daughter, did he start understanding his needs. He began to think about his life not only as an individual but also as a citizen of a country that no longer exists, rethinking the lyrics of songs, the meaning embedded in them, which was imperceptibly inculcated in people, and admitting: “How, sometimes, you get stuck on such a thing—because it sits, lurking—and then you want to hide from yourself.”32 He, too, experienced an identity crisis and “killed” his inner homo sovieticus. His daughter Dina played not the last role in this, because Andriy wanted a better future for her, which required changes that would start with him.

Lyokha (Oleksii) Nefyodov has changed most radically—as his name demonstrates, from Lyokha to Oles’. He rethought his life after the start of the war. At first, he helped Ernest take animals out of the occupied territories; then he went to war on the side of Ukraine. After his return, he experienced two crises at once. The first was an identity crisis (linguistic and national): “Sometimes he is still Lyokha. But more often–Oles. He signs letters as Oles, as Oles greets and introduces himself, and responds if someone shouts his name on the street. He remains Lyokha when he sleeps, gets lost, wants to hide, and gets out of bed to make a special appearance—as mom used to say, ‘out and about’—the look: ‘life goes on’”. And the second is a crisis of self-acceptance, getting used to losing an arm. He consciously became Oles, positioning himself as a Ukrainian and using Ukrainian in his life. However, a part of “Lyokha” remained in his consciousness, breaking out in moments when he could not fully control himself or was overcome by strong emotions.

Lishke’s family consists of father Petro, mother Mariia, and daughter Halyna (Haluska, Haska). Petro may be called a typical homo sovieticus. He never thought about the origin of his surname or his place in life and family; he just wanted everyone to be proud of him. His unprestigious profession (trolleybus driver), and then his addiction to slot machines, which led to debts, did not contribute to making his daughter and wife proud. All of his life, he felt guilty for not giving them the material benefits he could and for not knowing the Ukrainian language, which his grown-up daughter Haska loved. When the shelling of Donetsk became more frequent, he continued to transport people on his trolleybus route, and for the first time in his life, he thought he was doing something heroic. At the end of his life, he finally felt like an earnest person who could change something. He said about the shellings: “It will be funny if you die from our ‘fire in response.’” And added: “Well, at least it’s not offensive.”33 However, the mortar shell that took his life was also staged by the Russian “fighters.”

His wife, Mariia, is an antagonist of Tania Nefyodova. In contrast to Tania, she found herself and performed her newly acquired identity at the war front after her identity crisis. Like her husband Petro, she felt like a “little person” all her life, “not three-dimensional.” Mariia did not see her purpose and did not think about anything more than feeding her family and protecting her husband-gambler. She just never thought about her needs and wants. When the war started, Mariia decided to connect her hobby with life and go to the front as a sniper, which was more of a protest against her former self and the ways she lived. A sofa was the last thread, which tied her to her old life and nostalgia for the Soviet Union. In Soviet times, a sofa, for many people, was an object of luxury, not a necessity.34 Shooting the couch is a symbolic way of saying goodbye to the Soviet past and the creation of a new identity for Mariia: “Mariia broke imaginary ‘plates’ with ‘Red Moscow’ perfume, which could be used to poison cockroaches, pans bottoms which had to be rubbed to a shine because that’s what good housewives do, stockings with holes sewn in the heels, covered with nail polish so that the tear does not go. […] She kept shooting at her past life, at what she considered life.”35 After this identity crisis moment, she went to serve in the Ukrainian army, because Russia or the so-called DNR was precisely the successor of all Soviet values ​​that Mariia shot with the sofa.

Their daughter Halyna is a mediator of all characters. She always called herself Ukrainian, although she came to full awareness of her identity in adulthood and switched to Ukrainian language. She wrote a book about life in Donetsk, their strange family history, and the war. However, she is also traumatized by the society in which she grew up, and identifying as Ukrainian is her choice against it.

Kornienko’s family consists of father Bohdan and son Ernest. The mother, Alla, died in the hospital after giving birth. Bohdan lived in the past, missed his wife, and did not want to change his lifestyle. In 2015, after the Revolution of Dignity and the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, he emigrated to Moscow to his mother, who had lived there for a long time. In a letter to Haluska, he admitted that “when you live for memories, the past always wins.” Living out of time, he did not even notice that the summer of 2014 had come, when it was necessary to choose a side. He simply chose not to die in Donetsk. However, the new community did not accept him, because of the fricative “g,” a letter inherent in Ukrainian pronunciation, and the fact that he was “khokhol,” as Russians called Ukrainians with contempt. As a stranger among others, “stubborn khokhol”36 became his new identity. He experienced a sense of belonging to a different nation, Ukrainian, and even shame for his behavior. Bohdan Kornienko is a man with a split identity who has never been able to find himself.

Ernest grew up without proper parental attention and love. As a child, he had imaginary conversations with Disney’s characters and Babá, a character of city folklore. When Ernest became an adult, his childhood love for cartoons did not disappear: “He still likes cartoons, not horror films. Cartoons, sex, and animals.”37 Actually, because of his love for animals, he stayed in Donetsk when the war started. His vet services were often used by the occupiers because they had animals they loved more than their wives and battle companions.38 His activities were a cover for helping those who could not leave the region—pensioners, animal shelters, and patients of a psychological hospital. “Tomorrow” has become his time category: a “big tomorrow,” in which the victory of Ukraine, decommunization, and renaming of streets figure as the most significant goals, and a small “tomorrow,” which consists of everyday goals. He thinks of himself as a “coward, greedy, and foolish,”39 but he carries many people on his shoulders.

Pahutiak’s family consists of the mother Anhelina and her daughter Thelma. Dina, Nefiodov, and Anhelina’s daughter were born later. Thelma was a partisan like Ernest but in a different way. Her reason for rebelling against the occupiers was not even Euromaidan but more the fact that Russia supported the “sadist Assad,” who tortured the Syrians.”40 She did not feel Ukrainian and spoke Russian all her life but decided to go underground. After her disappearance, she became a “manifesto of universal absence.”41 

Her mother, Anhelina, remained in the occupied city, hoping to find the daughter. Andriy Nefyodov helped her in this, but due to their complicated relationship, he did it covertly, traveling around the morgues and hospitals of Dnipro, delivering DNA samples, in the hope that Thelma is still alive.

The voice of the new generation, more traumatized by Russia than the Soviet past, is Dina, the daughter of Nefyodov and Anhelina, who was only eight in 2015. Dina is still a child but already has a firmly formed national identity. She sees that her extended family has traumas, the main one of which is “moscalization,” so she pitifully calls them “my native old ruins.”42 Dina is the only one who was not directly affected by the existence of the Soviet Union but by its consequences, one of which is the Russian-Ukrainian War. She understands everything, thinks in adult categories, and even enters into a confrontation with the “vata” teacher. Finally, Dina unites at least part of this family. When Dina learned that Oleksii had lost an arm in the war, she removed the arms from her dolls as a sign of support. This is also one of the manifestations of aesthesis, that is, the display of a physiological state as a category of interaction with the world.

The four families have Russian, German, and Ukrainian surnames. However, none of the characters focus on their origins, and they know nothing about their ancestors. For example, Anhelina learned that she was born in the village of Hrevt in the Lublin province only when it became necessary to bury her grandmother, and for this reason, she decided that she was Polish. Only ten years later, her daughter Thelma will tell her that these are Ukrainian Boyky’s43 lands. The complete forgetting of one’s past and ignorance of history is one of the key problems for the characters of the older generation depicted in the novel. Olena Styazhkina emphasizes this point, creating images detached from their roots. Only urban legends and fragments of family history connect them with the past. Their children, born five years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, each went their way to learn about the world and acquire new values.

Olena Stiazhkina’s work is a trauma novel. On each family the Soviet Union left an imprint: some inherited Soviet names, some received a feeling of inner disunity, some inherited the trauma of their parents, which in one way or another affected their upbringing.

However, it is notable that Ernest, Thelma, Haska, and Oleksiy have no warm feelings for the Soviet past. On the contrary, the events of the Russian-Ukrainian war forced them to choose a side, and they chose Ukraine. 

In general, with the change in socio-historical circumstances, each of the characters of the older generation experienced at least one identity crisis dictated by the Soviet past. The main characters can be divided into those who killed their homo sovieticus (Andriy Nefyodov, Petro Lischke, Mariia Lischke, Heinrich Fink, Anhelina Pahutiak), and those whose inner homo sovieticus won and was transformed into “vata” (Tania Shvets, Vitia Shvets, Bohdan Kornienko). 

The city plays a big role in the formation of characters. In particular, city legends. Babá and her “partner” Shubin are characters from the region’s folklore. Shubin is supposedly the patron saint of boys and miners, and Babá is “in charge” of all the others. They supposedly punish bad people and do good deeds for good ones. The legend says that once they were real people from this area and, after death, became guardian spirits. Shubin and Babá are rather heterodiegetic observers: although sometimes intervening in the fate of people, Shubin is a Russian-speaking spirit, has a Russian surname, but does not have a place he comes from. Babá is a local ghost—people could even show where her house stood, confiscated back in the days of the Russian Empire for her anti-imperial activities. Babá resembles the archetypal Great Mother, and has a clear pro-Ukrainian position: she is wary of the “eastern wind” (an obvious allusion to Russia that is located to the east of Ukraine) and intends to Ukrainize Shubin.

Returning to the Decolonial Discourse

The literature of the post-Maidan period (after 2013) became qualitatively different from the literature written previously: a stratum of military literature appeared, and questions of national identity, understanding of the past and its connection with the present are raised more and more often. Can we talk about the transition from post-colonial to decolonial processes in Ukrainian literature?44

In his book Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the Discourse of Empire from Napoleonic to Postcolonial Times, Myroslav Shkandrii wrote that “The term ‘postcolonial’ generally refers to the socioeconomic and cultural crises that have been caused by generations of imperialism and colonialism.”45 In the article “Empire as Discourse,” Mykola Riabchuk defined the state of contemporary Ukrainian culture as a struggle between imperial and anti-colonial discourses.46

Polish political scientist Witold Mazurczak wrote that many authors perceive decolonization as purely removing political influence and external forms of dependence. Still, for colonized states, the economic, social, and, most importantly, cultural influence of the metropolis exists.47 He did not extrapolate this to Ukrainian soil, but this is done, for example, by Oksana Zabuzhko in her essay Complex of Ithaca, in which she explored the nature of decolonization as “returning of the nation to its own home,” the re-possession of “itself” and all “that is its own,” from the soil to history and culture.48 Olia Hnatiuk, reflecting on this essay, wrote: “Zabuzhko transfers this metaphor [the journey of Odysseus—D. P.] to the field of postcolonial studies and argues that subjugated people resemble an exile, and decolonization is a return home. Returning means establishing one’s subjectivity and therefore taking responsibility; this, in turn, leads to the ultimate need to reassess one’s positions, firstly, one’s attitude to heritage.”49

These approaches provide ground for asserting that Ukraine is a part of the imperial and colonial discourse (albeit without fulfilling the conditions of the presence of “big water” and complete economic dependence). Agnieszka Matusiak developed the thesis about changing the post-colonial paradigm of perception to the decolonial. In her opinion, independent Ukraine had three important decolonial turns: the Orange Revolution of 2004, the Revolution of Dignity in 2013, and Russia’s war against Ukraine since 2014. Moreover, she calls the last two events a “decolonial turn,” which “catalyzes the transition to a situation of decoloniality, that is, the decolonization of knowledge and being.” The main difference between decolonial and postcolonial optics is the point of view of events: “In the decolonial project, in contrast to postcolonial optics, it is not about moving peripheral values ​​to the place of central ones, but about the development of new trans-values ​​that make it possible to performatively cut oneself off from the imperial-colonial binary logic.”50

In the works of Olena Stiazhkina and Viktoria Amelina, we can fully see these “trans-values,” which represent and, most importantly, make sense of the traumatic experience in a new way.

To a greater or lesser extent, each of these characters has experienced trauma that arose due to the Soviet policies. The search for ways to overcome trauma and its consequences is a trans-value that is neither peripheral nor central. Dom’s Dream Kingdom by Victoria Amelina narrates about the detachment and peculiar absence of the Motherland, which manifested itself not even with the collapse of the USSR, but already during its existence because it was considered one big homeland for many nations. In Olena Stiazhkin’s novel Cecil the Lion Had to Die, the identity crisis of the characters caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union is transforming and seems to receive a continuation in the events of the Russian-Ukrainian war. 

Both writers do not support the established stereotypical image of homo sovieticus as an older person “brainwashed by propaganda” and longing for the return of the Soviet Union. Instead, they show that regardless of age, the system of life coordinates, which is built on an understanding of traumas (or ignoring them), and critical thinking (or its absence) determines a person’s place in society.

Local identity is shown in these works from different angles. Someone clung to it very strongly, growing up on urban legends (like Ernest in Stiazhkina’s novel), and someone did not become a part of the city and community (almost the entire Tsylik family in Amelina’s novel). However, the city, which is associated with home, is crucial in both novels as a factor in identity formation. It does not matter whether characters have prototypes. Every Ukrainian man and woman has a grandfather or grandmother who longingly remembers a sausage for 2.20 roubles or whose family members were killed by the Soviet authorities. It is absurd that these two experiences, formed by the same historical circumstances, co-exist in modern Ukrainian society.

The postcolonial perception of reality can be described as “Yes, we recognize that we have been traumatized by the colonial past and we learned to live with it.” The decolonial one as “Yes, we know exactly what traumas the colonial past gave us, and we will find ways to combat them.” Understanding one’s national, linguistic, religious, and local identity, as well as historical memory, “living through” traumas (both personal and societal), and transformation (or not) of personality in the works of modern Ukrainian writers of the post-Maidan period demonstrate to us that the decolonizing transition successfully takes place.

See the full publication here.

  1. Diana Pidburtna, “Decolonial Processes in Modern Ukrainian Literature through the Disclosure of the Soviet Man Image. City Space as One of the Identity-Forming Factors”. City: History, Culture, Society, № 15 (1) (15 December 2023): 26–48. [↩]
  2. Yurii Kahanov, Konstruiuvannia “Radianskoi Liudyny” (1953-1991): Ukrainska Versiia (Homo Sovieticus Identity Construction (1953-1991): Case of Ukraine) (Zaporizhzhia: Inter-M, 2019). [↩]
  3. Stanislav Kulchytskyi, “Kahanov Y. Konstruiuvannia ‘Radianskoi Liudyny’ (1953-1991),” Ukrainskyi Istorychnyi Zhurnal, no. 6 (2019): 206–17. [↩]
  4. Aleksandr Zinovʹev, Homo Sovieticus (Paris: Julliard/L’Age d’Homme, 1982). [↩]
  5. The word came to Ukraine together with the Russian intervention in March 2014. The group of vatnyks is often denoted by the noun “vata.” [↩]
  6. Diana Pidburtna, Decolonial Processes in Modern Ukrainian Literature through the Disclosure of the Soviet Man Image. City Space as One of the Identity-Forming Factors. City: History, Culture, Society, № 15 (1) (15 December 2023): 26–48. [↩]
  7. Uilleam Bleker, MIKS: misto, istoriia, kultura, suspilstvo, no. 8 (1) (2020): pp. 45-53. [↩]
  8. “Victoria Amelina,” Eurozine, March 31, 2022, https://www.eurozine.com/authors/amelina-victoria/. [↩]
  9. Amelina Viktoriia. Dim dlia Doma. Lviv: Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva, 2017, 381 [↩]
  10. Amelina, Dim dlia Doma, 79. [↩]
  11. Amelina, Dim dlia Doma, 167. [↩]
  12. Roman Krutsyk, Demianiv Laz. Henotsyd Halychyny (Kyiv: Vydavnychyi dim “Prostir”, 2009). [↩]
  13. Tamara Hundorova, Iak Mizh Soboiu Hovoriat Peryferii, Abo Ukraina, Evrotsentryzm i Dekolonizatsiia, Tamara Hundorova,” Krytyka, accessed January 9, 2023, https://krytyka.com/ua/articles/iak-mizh-soboiu-hovoriat-peryferii-abo-ukraina-evrotsentryzm-i-dekolonizatsiia#footnote-14/ [↩]
  14. Hundorova, 20-26. [↩]
  15. Amelina, Dim dlia Doma, 77. [↩] [↩]
  16. Food in the Soviet Union was only “fuel” for refueling the body; taste became a secondary matter, and reflected, for example, in “The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food”—unified soviet cookbook written by scientists from the Institute of Nutrition of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR. [↩]
  17. Olena Stiazhkina, Smak Radianskoho: Yizha Ta Yidtsi v Mystetstvi Zhyttia i Mystetstvi Kino (Seredyna 1960-kh – Seredyna 1980-kh Rokiv) (Kyiv: Dukh i Litera, 2021), 31. [↩]
  18.  Amelina, Dim dlia Doma, 64. [↩]
  19. During the years of this artificial famine, he was saved because of a dog. It is easy to guess from the story that the dog was eaten; thus, he and his mother survived. But the younger sister did not. [↩]
  20. Iryna Skubii, The Material World of Children during the Holodomor or What Saved Their Lives. Studii Holodomoru, May 12, 2020. [↩]
  21. Ibid [↩]
  22. Amelina, Dim dlia Doma, 376. [↩]
  23. Amelina, Dim dlia Doma, 196. [↩]
  24. Amelina, Dim dlia Doma, 80. [↩]
  25. Amelina, Dim dlia Doma, 116. [↩]
  26. Oleksii Musiedzov, “Identychnist ta misto: dosvid odnoho doslidzhennia,” Ukraina moderna, November 5, 2016, https://uamoderna.com/blogy/oleksi-musiezdov/identychnist-ta-misto. [↩]
  27. “Olena Stiazhkina,” Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva, accessed April 4, 2023, https://starylev.com.ua/old-lion/author/olena-styazkina. [↩]
  28. Tamara Hundorova, PisliaChornobylska biblioteka: Ukraiinskyi literaturnyi postmodern (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2005). [↩]
  29. Sofiia Cheliak, “Chomy smert leva Sesila mala sens, a kiborhiv – ni?” – Interviu z Olenoiu Stiazhkinoiu,” June 25, 2021, https://suspilne.media/142001-comu-smert-leva-sesila-mala-sens-a-kiborgiv-ni-intervu-z-olenou-stazkinou/. [↩]
  30. Olena Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens (Lviv: Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva, 2021), 14. [↩]
  31. Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens, 178. [↩]
  32. Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens, 215. [↩]
  33.  Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens, 175. [↩]
  34. Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens, 147. [↩]
  35. Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens, 148. [↩]
  36. Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens, 168. [↩]
  37. Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens, 223. [↩]
  38. Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens, 224. [↩]
  39. Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens, 228. [↩]
  40. Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens, 187. [↩]
  41. Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens, 188. [↩]
  42. Stiazhkina, Smert Leva Sesila Mala Sens, 230 [↩]
  43. An ethnographic group of Ukrainians residing in the mountainous regions of the Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Transcarpathia of Ukraine [↩]
  44. Jan Kieniewicz, Ekspansja, kolonializm, cywilizacja (Warszawa: Wydawn. DiG, 2008). [↩]
  45. M. Shkandrij, Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the Discourse of Empire from Napoleonic to Postcolonial Times. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001, 278. [↩]
  46. Mykola Riabchuk, Imperiia yak dyskurs, Krytyka, accessed January 9, 2023, https://krytyka.com/ua/articles/imperiya-yak-dyskurs/ [↩]
  47. Witold Mazurczak, “Kolonializm – Dekolonizacja – Postkolonializm. Rozważania o Istocie I Periodyzacji.” Przegląd Politologiczny, no. 3 (2016): 131. [↩]
  48. Oksana Zabuzhko, Khroniky Vid Fortinbrasa: Vybrana Eseïstyka 90-KH (Kyïv: Vyd-vo Fakt, 2001), 93. [↩]
  49. Oleksandra Hnatiuk, Proshchannia Z imperiieiiu: Ukraïnsʹki dyskusiï Pro Identychnistʹ (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2005), 390. [↩]
  50. Agnieszka Matusiak, and Andriii Bondar. Vyiity z movchannia: dekolonialni zmahannia ukraiinskoï kultury ta literatury XXI stolittia z posttotalitarnoiu travmoiu. [↩]