SUMMARY:

Taking as its point of departure the 2015 “decommunization” legislation in Ukraine, this article looks at the transformation of historical memory in that republic from the late 1980s to the present. The author argues that the new canon of national heroes developed through the gradual transformation rather than the radical rejection of Soviet historical narratives, with the Cossacks being the most successful example of a historical symbol supporting a uniting, civic identity for a new Ukraine. Two case studies are used to demonstrate the challenges of merging the nationalist mythologies preserved in the Ukrainian diaspora with the models inherited from Soviet times: that of diaspora-funded films about the Ukrainian insurgents of the 1940s and the cult of the otamans developed by a network of regional historical clubs in central Ukraine. Both projects produced highly divisive historical mythologies that often employed incongruent cultural models reusing the Soviet clichés. Both also constructed an ethnically exclusive vision of Ukraine’s past, as opposed to an inclusive, civic one. The Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine and the subsequent war in the Donbas gave a powerful impetus to the process of memory work in Ukraine, while at the same time furnishing the inclusive, multinational canon of the “Heavenly Hundred,” who died for a democratic Ukraine. However, there exists a very real danger that the process of constructing a new Ukrainian historical memory can be hijacked by radical nationalists or discredited by Soviet-style administrative feats.