Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Toward the Transnational Memory of Holodomor: The Famine Commemorative Genre and the Ukrainian Diaspora Memory Studies 18.1(2025):22-43
This article traces the emergence of the public memory of Holodomor by focusing on the history of Famine commemorations outside of the Soviet Union from 1933 till 1983. By following Jeffrey K. Olick’s call for a dialogical analysis of memory genres, it attempts to unravel the complex cultural mechanism through which commemorations of the Famine evolved not only through their interactions with immediate political context but also in response to earlier commemorations. Two Famine commemorative genres informed this process: that of national mourning and that of anti-Soviet protest. Drawing on my multi-sited and multilingual research, this article argues that the process of creating the public memory of the Holodomor has been transnational, multidirectional, and path-dependent. The framing of the Famine as the Holodomor, a genocide against Ukrainians, was an outcome of negotiations that occurred across time and space. Ukrainian diaspora members, it is further argued, played a prominent role in this process.
Silenced Archive of the Holodomor: The Ukrainian Civil Committee for Saving Ukraine, Transnational Humanitarianism, and Networks of National Compassion East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies 10.2(2023): 83-113
It is a commonly held contention among scholars that the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932–33—denied by the Soviet authorities while it was happening—received no relief in the form of organized international humanitarian aid. Thus, accounts of the famine rarely (if ever) feature a humanitarian narrative. By analyzing the activity of the Ukrainian Civil Committee for Saving Ukraine (Ukraїns'kyi Hromads'kyi Komitet Riatunku Ukraïny), this article challenges such views, as it situates interwar famine-related humanitarianism within the context of small-scale ethnic aid committees working in the interests of the starving across Europe. The records of the Ukrainian Committee stored at the National Library of Poland, as a group, constitute the “silenced archive of the Holodomor”—namely, scattered evidence of the famine that has been affected by displacement and erasure. Analyzing these largely understudied materials, this article argues that the official denial of the famine triggered the deployment of a transnational humanitarian narrative based on what the author calls “national compassion”—a moral duty and obligation uniting Ukrainians across borders. The article, moreover, points to the importance of situated knowledge, information networks, and documentation as tools in countering acts of violence and the power of repressive regimes.
Russia’s Night Wolves, Migrating Memory and Europe’s Eastern Frontier European Journal of Sociology 62.1(2021): 71-103
The article examines the controversy triggered by the “Victory Tour” of Russia’s high-profile biker organization, the Night Wolves, to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany. The tour provoked important questions about the relationship between European borders and the politics of World War II commemoration. The article argues that the international public discourse around the Night Wolves illuminates how state borders are being transformed both as hard, territorialized borders and as “soft,” symbolic boundaries. The analysis compares how print and online media in Russia, Poland, and Germany framed the Night Wolves’ tour across Europe. It emphasizes the construction of borders as a narrative project and maps the symbolic boundary-drawing strategies mobilized by various actors. It shows how cross-border commemorative tours can serve as a tool of transnational memory politics that shapes the very meaning and salience of state borders and regional divisions.
The Spaces of Nostalgia(s) and the Politics of Belonging in Contemporary Chernivtsi, Western Ukraine East European Politics and Societies, and Culture 33.1(2019): 218-237
This article explores ways in which Habsburg nostalgia has become an important factor in contemporary place-making strategies in the city of Chernivtsi, Western Ukraine. Through the analysis of diasporic homecomings, city center revitalization, and nationalist rhetoric surrounding the politics of monuments, I explore hybrid and diverse ways in which Habsburg nostalgia operates in a given setting. Rather than a static and homogenous form of place attachment, in Chernivtsi different cultural practices associated with Habsburg nostalgia coexist with each other and depending on the political context as well as the social position of the “nostalgic agents” manifest themselves differently. Drawing from my long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that in order to fully understand individuals’ attachment to space, it is necessary to grasp both the subtle emotional ways in which the city is experienced by individuals as well as problematize the role of the built environment in the visualization of collective memory and emotions of particular groups. The focus on changing manifestations of the Habsburg nostalgia can bring then a better understanding of the range and scope of the city’s symbolic resources that might be mobilized for various purposes.
Book Chapters
“The Afterlife of Secret Police Files and the (Re)reading of Famine Documents in Ukraine.” In Interrogating the Interrogators: History, Politics, and the Opening of Soviet Secret Police Archives in Ukraine, edited by Michael David-Fox and Vanessa Voisin. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press, Kritika Historical Studies, to be published in 2025.
Memory, Monuments and the Project of Nationalization in Ukraine. The Case of Chernivtsi. In The Burden of the Past: History, Memory and Identity in Contemporary Ukraine, edited by Anna Wylęgała and Magdalena Głowacka, 167-182. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Colonial Factor Hidden in the City Center Revitalization. Chernivtsi as an Imperial Formation. In Diversity and Local Contexts: Urban Space, Borders and Migration, 93-109. edited by Jerome Krase and Zdenek Uherek. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Handbook Entry
Tours and Tourism, co-authored with Virág Molnár and Franziska Konig-Paratore. In Handbook of Memory Activism, edited by Yifat Gutman and Jenny Wüstenberg, 381-384. London: Taylor & Francis. Routledge.