Ukraine and Memory Politics - Dr. Serhy Yekelchyk

Dr. Serhy Yekelchyk, University of Victoria, in an interview on memory politics. This interview is part of the interview series " Expert Voices on Memory Politics" realized with the financial support of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Kanada and Erasmus+ Program of the European Union.
The interviews were recorded during the October 2022 conference "Addressing the Past - Shaping the Future.
Democratic states that respect human rights tend to remember differently than states that are ruled by right wing populist parties and authoritarian dictators. Dr. Serhy Yekelchyk provides a unique insight into the case of the Russian state. Indeed, the state has a long history of targeting historians and memory groups. In the current context of the Ukrainian war, while Putin wants to present it as a war about history (World War II), it is in fact a war about memory. What divides groups on both sides of the front is the attitude to the Soviet past and how current societies are creating their own lives in a post-community period. Dr. Yekelchyk also provides a insight into the concept of the ‘memory boom’, where history has been brought back in Europe by right-wing groups to fight democracy and challenge the EU agenda of humanitarian remembering by reclaiming traditional nationalistic narratives.
EUCAnet (Europe Canada Network) is a hub for experts primarily located in Canada that work on European and Canadian current issues from a transatlantic perspective. These experts offer commentary and expertise and are available for media interviews and public talks. We are a public outreach platform - that makes scholarly knowledge available and meaningful to the public in times when the need for evidence based knowledge and public debate is crucial. Our goal is to foster the Canada Europe Transatlantic Dialogue with the aim of supporting the process of informing public policy making.
Focus on : European Studies, Transatlantic Studies, Global Studies, Issues of Democracy, Populism, Memory Politics, Migration.
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