Ukrainians are interested in culture again

It was late at night on May 7, 2022, when a Russian missile hit a museum that was once home to the 18th-century Ukrainian poet and philosopher Hryhori Skovoroda.

“The roof was completely blown away, the walls burned and only Skovoroda's statue survived. That this happened is a miracle,” says Nastya Ishchenko, deputy director of the museum in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine.

According to the UN cultural organization Unesco, it is one of 432 cultural sites that have been damaged in Ukraine since the large-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022.

The destruction of such large parts of their culture has not only further distanced Ukrainians from the Russian-dominated cultural space that they had shared for decades under Soviet rule.

In addition, it also awakened a hunger for a culture of one’s own, which one daily newspaper described as a “Ukrainian cultural boom.”

In total, 139 religious sites, 214 buildings of historical or artistic interest, 31 museums, 32 monuments, 15 libraries and one archive were affected.

The management of the Hryhoriy Skovoroda Museum knew it could be under attack and had evacuated most of its valuable artifacts to a safer location.

Since there was no other potential target near the museum, Ukrainians believe the bombing was solely due to its cultural significance.

Ukrainian museums in the Russian-occupied territories face a very different problem. The full extent of the looting by Russian troops came to light in the last days of the occupation of the southern city of Kherson.

Entire truckloads of works of art and historical artifacts were taken away by the Russians – supposedly for “safekeeping.”

The Kherson Art Museum says it has identified 120 works of art that were taken to Crimea, another occupied territory of Ukraine. But the total number of artifacts the museum has lost is more than 10,000.

The Russians removed exhibits for propaganda purposes from some museums in the occupied parts of Ukraine. For example, an exhibition on the modern history of Ukraine in Berdyansk was replaced by an exhibition glorifying the “special military operation” – the Kremlin's official name for the war against Ukraine.

Last May, another aspect of modern Ukrainian culture was attacked: the Faktor Druk printing house in Kharkiv, which is used by almost all Ukrainian book publishers.

Not every cultural building was deliberately attacked, although the attack on Factor Druk, in which seven people were killed and 50,000 books were destroyed, was widely considered a targeted attack.

Other buildings were hit because they were located near other buildings or to make them unusable for Ukrainian officials or troops.

One publisher described the destruction of books at Factor Druk as a moral decline in society. And the disappearance of numerous cultural sites in Ukraine has put pressure on Ukraine's social fabric.

They are crucial for the cohesion and resilience of communities in times of war, says the head of the UNESCO office in Ukraine, Chiara Dezzi Bardeschi.

“I've found that communities are really hungry for culture and their cultural centres. They recognise the importance of culture to the community and need it for resilience. Culture is very important for healing from trauma,” she tells the BBC.

Ukraine's acting Minister of Culture, Rostyslav Karandeyev, believes that Russia is deliberately attacking the country's spiritual and historical symbols: “Not only military targets and critical infrastructure, but also everything that allows Ukrainians to speak of their own identity and statehood.”

As part of this policy, Russian forces have removed and destroyed Ukrainian books from schools and libraries in the occupied territories, he told the BBC.

But despite all this gloom, Nastya Ishchenko of the Skovoroda Museum believes that Ukrainians have also begun to appreciate more the things threatened by the Russian invasion.

“It's like a relationship: to understand what you've lost, you have to let it be taken away,” she says. “We are not connected by aggression or anger, but by cultural values ​​that each of us will pass on to future generations. That's a ray of hope for us.”

The newspaper describes the performances of bands, artists and authors, the premiere of new plays and the packed theaters.

The numerous volunteers from Ukraine have not only provided vital food, supplies of clothing and medicine, but also musical instruments.

“Children said the music helped them emotionally. It took them to a place where they don't hear bombs or sirens. It helps them enormously,” said UK-based musician Irina Gould on the BBC podcast Ukrainecast.

“For them, the best medicine is to simply escape reality and live in a world full of beauty and happiness.”