Soviet Shadows: The Long War Against Historical Erasure in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine is often described in territorial, political or military terms. Yet beneath the drone strikes and tank offensives lies another battlefield, one that has been contested for centuries: the struggle over historical memory. For Ukraine, the defence of national identity is inseparable from the act of reclaiming her past — a past long distorted, suppressed or appropriated by imperial forces, most enduringly by the Soviet Union. Here we explore how the legacy of Soviet historical manipulation continues to shape the modern Ukrainian state, how the current war has intensified the campaign against historical erasure, and why truth-telling is itself a form of resistance.

The Soviet Machinery of Forgetting

The Soviet Union did not merely control Ukraine through tanks and commissars. She ruled also by silencing history. Key episodes in Ukrainian memory were deliberately suppressed or recast:

• The Holodomor, the state-engineered famine of 1932–33 that killed millions, was officially denied. The archives were sealed, and any attempt to document the disaster was punished with imprisonment or death. Soviet historiography referred only to “food difficulties”, insisting on a narrative of collective misfortune rather than deliberate genocide.

  
  

• Ukrainian national resistance, from the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917–1921) to the anti-Soviet partisans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), was rewritten as treason or fascism. National heroes such as Symon Petliura and Stepan Bandera were transformed into villains in the Soviet imagination.

  
  

• Language and culture were subverted. Ukrainian was tolerated only within tightly controlled parameters, while Russian was elevated as the language of advancement and power. Historical figures were renamed, monuments were moved, archives were altered. A centralised Soviet narrative insisted that Ukraine’s destiny was always as part of a greater Russian whole.

Through textbooks, museums, propaganda films and secret police, Soviet power entrenched not merely political control, but epistemic domination — a monopoly over what could be known, remembered and taught.

Independence Without Historical Sovereignty?

When Ukraine declared independence in 1991, she inherited not just a broken economy and fragile institutions, but a deeply wounded historical consciousness. The post-Soviet period saw some attempts to revive suppressed narratives, but progress was uneven and politically fraught.

For over two decades, Ukraine remained divided between competing visions of her past. In the east and south, many continued to view the Red Army as liberators and the Soviet period as one of stability. In the west and centre, the memory of repression and resistance persisted more vividly. Moscow, through media influence and political proxies, actively encouraged this historical ambiguity — exploiting nostalgia for empire to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty.

Even within Ukrainian academia, access to archives was limited, and Soviet-trained historians often retained their positions. Independence did not automatically bring de-Sovietisation. The ghost of the USSR remained embedded in street names, statues, curricula and minds.

The 2014 Turning Point: Revolution and Reclamation

The Euromaidan Revolution of 2014 marked a decisive shift. It was not merely a revolt against corruption and authoritarianism. It was also a cultural awakening — a mass assertion that Ukraine was not Russia, and never had been. The annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Donbas crystallised this sentiment. As Russian troops crossed Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian society began to cross the psychological boundary into historical self-determination.

One of the most visible outcomes was the decommunisation programme, launched in 2015. Thousands of Soviet-era statues were removed, streets renamed, archives opened. The KGB successor agency’s files were made accessible to the public. Educational reform began to replace Soviet myths with more balanced, often painful, historical truths.

Simultaneously there was a renaissance in historical research, literature and documentary film. Ukrainian writers, scholars, and artists began to revisit the 20th century with renewed urgency — from the Holodomor to the dissident movements, from Cossack heritage to the Shoah in Ukraine.

Yet this process was not without controversy. Critics accused the state of replacing one dogma with another, of promoting nationalist myth-making in place of Soviet propaganda. Debates over the legacy of figures like Bandera remained polarising. Nonetheless, the fundamental trajectory was clear: Ukraine was actively building her own historical consciousness, one rooted in pluralism, suffering, and agency — rather than subordination.

Russia’s War of Erasure

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 intensified the battle for memory. Russia’s war was not only territorial; it was explicitly revisionist. Vladimir Putin framed the invasion as a correction of historical “mistakes” — asserting that Ukraine had no legitimate national history of her own, and that she existed only by accident of Soviet statecraft.

On the ground, this ideology was weaponised. In occupied territories, Russian forces reimposed Soviet-style control over education and media. Ukrainian books were burned or banned, teachers were replaced or reprogrammed, and new “history” textbooks were distributed that denied the existence of the Holodomor and glorified Russian imperialism. Monuments to Ukrainian figures were torn down, while those to Catherine the Great and Stalin were restored.

This systematic assault on memory parallels earlier episodes of cultural destruction: the Tsarist Russification campaigns of the 19th century, the Soviet purges of Ukrainian intellectuals in the 1930s, and the suppression of dissident voices in the 1970s. It is no coincidence that some of the most brutal acts of this war — from the razing of Mariupol to the shelling of Kharkiv’s libraries — target both people and their collective memory.

The Role of History in Ukrainian Resistance

Ukrainians today are not merely fighting for territory. They are defending a historical narrative that has been fought over for centuries — a vision of themselves as a distinct, dignified people whose right to remember is inseparable from their right to exist.

This war has led to a surge of historical consciousness. Soldiers name their brigades after medieval princes and national poets. Civilians carry fragments of family memory — of famine, deportation or resistance — as part of their motivation to fight. Ukrainian museums have digitised their collections to protect them. Local communities across the country are researching their own histories, reviving forgotten names, and restoring memorials erased by Soviet rule.

The resurgence of the Ukrainian language, the explosion of historical podcasts, and the popularity of previously censored authors all signal a society reclaiming itself not through invented myths, but through confrontation with its complex past.

History as Sovereignty

Historical memory is not merely academic. For Ukraine, it is existential. The Soviet effort to erase, distort and subjugate Ukrainian identity was one of the most enduring tools of imperial rule. The modern Russian war continues this legacy, seeking to destroy not only cities but the stories that give them meaning.

Yet history cannot be permanently buried. In Ukraine, archivists, writers, teachers and ordinary citizens are resurrecting the past — not to create heroes, but to understand themselves. This process is often messy, sometimes painful, but always vital.

The long war against historical erasure is not over. But every name restored, every truth unearthed, every monument rebuilt — these are victories, as real as any on the battlefield. They affirm that Ukraine is not a Soviet relic, but a sovereign nation, whose future begins with the honest telling of her past.