Russian attacks on Ukrainian culture and identity backfire

On Tuesday a Russian missile hit Babi Yar in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. At least five were killed. In the same place in 1941 Nazis executed more than 33,000 Jews over the course of two days. There was a memorial to this on the site. And so, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s professed aim to “de-Nazify” Ukraine involved the bombing of a monument to the Holocaust.

When it comes to any war the fate of cultural artefacts matters immensely. In this instance it was another reminder of the baseless, absurd and offensive justification for Putin’s invasion. But more than that: when these things are destroyed – intentionally or not – so are symbols of a nation’s memory and identity.

There was a fire in a museum in the town of Invankiv, about 50 miles northwest of Kyiv. On Monday, Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs said that about 25 paintings by celebrated Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko, who died in 1997 at the age of 88, were destroyed. And since, Ukraine’s minister of culture has asked Unesco to strip Russia of its membership of the organisation. Prymachenko’s paintings – said to have been praised by Picasso – are vivid gouaches, depicting fantastical creatures and figures in traditional Ukrainian dress.

But no matter the physical destruction wrought, preserving and championing its cultural heritage is another arena in which Ukraine is putting up an inestimable fight. And the images of the nation depicted by Prymachenko are proving robust and beloved enough to survive more than a burning building. In the wake of the fire the paintings are now ubiquitous across social media. And if the museum was targeted on purpose – which has not been confirmed – it has emerged as a remarkably counterproductive move. Prymachenko is perhaps more famous and admired than ever.

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Iconoclasm is a long held feature of conflict – even Ireland is in possession of looted artefacts from the days of empire. But Isis’s destruction of the Temple Bel, the Temple of Baal Shamin, the Arch of Triumph and other ruins in Palmyra, Syria in 2015 should stand out in our memories most potently. While Isis held the ancient city it beheaded Khalid al-Asaad, the site’s head of antiquities, because he refused to reveal the location of a hidden statue.

Such barbarism and inhumanity was not unexpected of an organisation like Isis. But it told us much about their mission, beyond the relentless campaign of brutality. Palmyra was a meeting point of Greek, Roman, Persian and Islamic art. It was a wonderful and much vaunted architectural gateway between East and West, a definitional cultural melting pot. Its destruction, and the cruelty that came with it, was symbolic of a wider ideological project.

What happens to culture can tell the story of a country for longer than anything else. It seems Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, perhaps the most admired man in Europe, is hyperconscious of the importance of imagery in the war effort he is leading.

Putin justifies his claims over Ukraine by arguing it is not a real country, never once in possession of “real statehood”, and in fact part of Russia’s “history, culture, spiritual space”. But if Putin is so insistent in his rhetoric that Ukraine is a Potemkin nation and a flimsy visage concealing what is rightfully Russia, then Zelenskiy has done a remarkable job demonstrating how that is not the case.

Putin may be driven by an obsession with Ukraine and Russia’s shared ethnic heritage. But when Zelenskiy pleaded for peace in a televised address he appealed to culture to demarcate his nation: “Neighbours always enrich each other culturally. But that does not make them a single whole. It does not dissolve us into you. We are different, but that is not a reason to be enemies.” It was a confident and self-assured assertion of statehood, and perhaps one that might confound someone of Putin’s sensibility.

When Zelenskiy told the world that he would not flee Ukraine, he posted a video of himself in front of the Gorodetsky House, an art Nouveau building by polish born architect known as “the Gaudi of Ukraine”. The building is huge with a truly odd facade bearing elephants, rhinos and frogs. It is also situated opposite Zelenskiy’s office. Perhaps, then, it is sheer coincidence that the building has become the iconic setting for his social media dispatch.

But as the LA Times put it, there is something more significant with the choice of such a unique building: “He could be nowhere else. Gorodetsky House exists only in Kyiv.” And so the building occupies a spot in the growing list of symbols for Ukraine’s defiance. And it too has become a means for Zelenskiy to remind the world that Ukraine is not an artificially contrived entity but its own country with its own unique heritage.

There is an irony: any attempted destruction of cultural sites in Ukraine serves as a reminder of Ukraine’s cultural distinctiveness, and the heritage in grave danger. Art Nouveau buildings and folk paintings represent something far greater than themselves.