Building Memory: National Identities and Monuments in Post-Soviet Ukraine

This essays describes two sites of memory of post-Soviet Ukraine: the memorials of World War Two and of the Holodomor on the Pechersk Hills in Kyiv. The analysis is introduced into the context of Soviet and later post-Soviet monument building and stresses the continuity and discontinuities in the public efforts of the Ukrainian governments to draw the attention of both national and international public opinion to a particular version of history, supporting the specific political power in Ukraine. The author stresses the importance of certain modules of communication in these monumental memorials that are taken from other memorials all around the world. Eventually the author underlines the importance of memory policies for younger nation-states.