Vitaly Chernetsky
Professor
Department
of Slavic, German, and Eurasian Studies, University of Kansas
United States
Ukraine’s spirited resistance in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion after February 24, 2022, came as a surprise for many international analysts. Many in the global expert community had to admit they knew little about Ukraine and had a habit of recycling uncritically absorbed stereotypes and ideological talking points, many of them of Russian imperialist origin. This realization prompted serious reflection, reckoning with the fact that the broader field of global and international studies, in all its aspects, from politics and economics to the cultural sphere, had a long history of marginalizing Ukrainian topics and ignoring or dismissing Ukrainian voices. In other words, the failure to understand Ukraine and appreciate its concerns testified to the existence of an entrenched pattern of epistemic injustice towards Ukraine.
Epistemic injustice is a relatively recent term in philosophical discourse that has been receiving an increasingly broader application, including situations related to colonialism and its aftermath. With advances in critical epistemology, we have become much more sensitive to the ways in which structures of knowledge systems and social power can marginalize or silence some perspectives or reveal gaps in collective interpretive resources. Within the discourse on epistemic injustice, pre-emptive testimonial injustice is identified as a particularly problematic variety. It describes the situations when it does not even occur to those in privileged positions that somebody speaking from a different position has anything of value to contribute; they pre-emptively dismiss the viewpoints and knowledge production stemming from that position. This is something that both Ukrainians and representatives of other cultures that were oppressed and marginalized within the context of the Russian and Soviet Empire had been dealing with at length.
The shocked realization, in the tragic circumstances of the war, of the extent of this problem led to spirited efforts to bring about change. These efforts came from both directions. In countries all over the globe, multiple events and projects were organized with the goal of listening to, platforming, and centering Ukrainian voices. Within this trend, countries of the Baltic Rim and East Central Europe have been the clear leaders. On the Ukrainian side, writers, filmmakers, musicians, visual artists, and other cultural producers, as well as intellectuals inside and outside academia embraced the responsibility of serving as informal ambassadors of Ukraine as a culture with rich historical heritage and contemporary innovative practices.
As the global community learns more about Ukraine and its recent cultural renaissance, the lessons of the 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity stand out in prominence. Those months of protest highlighted the remarkable capacity for horizontal self-organization. Ukrainian civil society, in its rapid maturation, showed abundant energy deployed in volunteerism and crowdsourcing of intellectual efforts, fundraising, project planning and execution. In the cultural sphere, it included efforts across multiple artforms to document, reflect, and analyze the experiences of the revolution and of Russia’s subsequent invasion of Ukraine that began in late February 2014 in Crimea. Among the most impressive developments was a flowering of new Ukrainian cinema that began with the efforts to document the revolution. Over the subsequent decade, cinema has been at the forefront of transformative global recognition of the importance and value of Ukrainian voices.
In the internal transformation of the Ukrainian public sphere, the influx of experts with volunteer and NGO background into state cultural institutions, such as the Mystetskyi Arsenal, a museum and exhibition complex, and the Dovzhenko Centre, Ukraine’s premier film archive, has been a crucial factor. Many of these new cultural initiatives have also faced unfortunate and damaging pressure from the entrenched parts of state bureaucracy resistant to change. But notwithstanding those obstacles, these institutions’ impact, both domestically and internationally, through their research activities, public programming, and publications has been extensive. For instance, the Dovzhenko Centre’s efforts led to a profound rethinking of the place of Ukrainian cinema within twentieth-century film history, from the silent film era onwards.
One of the greatest successes in the global-facing efforts of Ukrainian cultural sphere is represented by the Ukrainian Institute, a new cultural diplomacy institution founded in 2017. Its robust efforts kicked into an even higher gear in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Among its most memorable successes has been the series of public events at the 2022 Venice Biennale that placed Ukraine and its war resistance in the broader context of decolonization and war’s impact on art and society, as well as the Carnegie Hall concert marking the centenary of Shchedryk, the celebrated Ukrainian choral composition.
The efforts of new Ukrainian institutions also led the older diasporic Ukrainian organizations to find new voice and mission in stimulating public awareness of the richness of Ukrainian culture past and present, indispensable for developing and maintaining broad and lasting public support for Ukraine assistance efforts. Among the most impressive examples of such reinvigoration are the Ukrainian Institute London and the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US. Recognizing and supporting this effort also meaningfully counters anti-intellectual messages that sometimes arise in the context of supporting Ukraine; while direct and concrete military assistance is indispensable, cultural diplomacy makes global integration of Ukraine stronger and long-lasting and is crucial for assuring its future victory.