Soviet Memorial Culture and Its Legacy in Transcarpathia: Monuments to Soldiers-Liberators, Partisans, and Volunteers

The Zakarpattia region was the last of all Ukrainian territories to be incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR/USSR. The "reunification" initiated the processes of Sovietization, during which the new communist authorities made great efforts to correct the historical memory of the region and to form the Soviet identity of the local population.

During the seminar, Pavlo Leno proposes to trace the implementation of the Soviet memory policy. This can be reflected on the basis of archival documents that were previously classified as "top secret," such as memos or reports from the authorities responsible for local memory policy. The researcher will focus on how official commemorative and toponymic changes were reflected at the unofficial (grassroots) level. To do this, he will analyze his documents, oral testimonies and memoirs of participants and witnesses of these events, and visual materials.

During the seminar, we will also talk about the peculiarities of such interdisciplinary research and the possibilities of studying Soviet memory policy in Transcarpathia.