Was Pushkin an Imperialist?

Alexander Pushkin was born in June 1799. Every year his anniversary is widely celebrated. Photo by the author

When “cancel culture” becomes a cancelled culture

As we know, with the outbreak of any military conflict, human culture is the first to come under attack. The current war in Ukraine is no exception. Destroyed museums, burned libraries, lost archives and architectural monuments, even as terrible as it looks in the 21st century, churches and monasteries. This is all a picture of modern warfare. To this has recently been added another detail: demolished monuments. The war on monuments has become a visible part of “cancelling Russian culture” in Ukraine and an element of a broader phenomenon: cancel culture in the West.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Ukraine has been gradually getting rid of Russian and Soviet cultural heritage and this struggle symbolically reflects the confrontation on the front line. The first to be hit was the Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin.

Ternopil authorities in Western Ukraine removed the statue of Alexander Pushkin in April as other regions in Ukraine have started to question why monuments from Soviet (and pre-Soviet) times remain after Russia invaded the country in February.

“Pushkin doesn’t have anything to do with what we need to build here in Ukraine, like our own culture,” says one of the activists, who works as an IT manager in Ternopil.