IN-PERSON Barcelona. Section B
Abstract
Kharkiv is the second largest city of Ukraine located just about forty kilometers of the Ukrainian-Russian border. Historically, Kharkiv went through several important transformations from its establishment as the Cossack fortress in the middle of the 17th century to the regional center of Russian imperial modernization and the capital of Soviet Ukraine (1920-1934.) Each of Kharkiv’s historical legacies left its vivid imprint on the cityscape. The process of their re-thinking and restructuring, reflected many important aspects of Ukrainian and Russian modern nation-state building since 1991. As a borderland city, Kharkiv found itself in the epicenter of the largest geopolitical upheavals of the “short” twentieth century, in particular during World War II, when the city changed hands several times and suffered greatly from the Nazi genocidal policy. Hence its comparison with Stalingrad, the Soviet Russian city which became one of the symbols of military resistance to the Nazi aggression during WWII. It is the irony of history that nowadays, Kharkiv became the main target of the Russian similar policy of destruction of Ukrainian state and identity. According to official statistics, thousands of Kharkiv’s houses, hundreds of residential buildings, kindergartens and schools, hospitals and clinics, cultural institutions were targeted by Russian missiles. In words of Kharkiv mayor, Ihor Terekhov, the whole city needs to be completely rebuilt. Various ideas and projects of Kharkiv’s post-war reconstruction, including the master plan developed recently by the British architect Norman Foster and his team, are inextricably connected with rethinking of its multiple historical legacies.
Volodymyr Kravchenko – Professor, Department of History, Classics and Religion; Director of the Contemporary Ukraine Studies Program and the Kowalsky Program, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. He is a specialist in the history of historical writing, Ukrainian-Russian relations, and border and regional studies. He is the author of about 200 scholarly publications, including recently issued monographs: “Kharkov/Kharkiv: A Borderland Capital. NY-London: Berghahn Books, 2023, 313 p. and “The Ukrainian-Russian Borderland: History versus Geography. Montreal:McGill U Press, 2022, 352 p.
Serhii Posokhov, sposokhov@karazin.ua ,V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ukraine. Serhii Posokhov holds a PhD in history and is a professor in and head of the Department of Historiography, Source Studies, and Archaeology. He participated in the international research project “Ubi Universitas—Ibi Europa. Transfer and Adaptation of University Ideas in the Russian Empire of the Second Half of the 18th–First Half of the 19th Century” (Gerda Henkel Stiftung, 2008-10). He headed the research project “CityFace: Practices of the Self-Representation of Multinational Cities in the Industrial and Post-Industrial Era” (https://cityface.org.ua/) (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2018-21). He has (co) authored 10 books and more than 400 journal and conference papers.
Yevhen Rachkov holds a PhD in history and is an associate professor at the Department of Historiography, Source Studies, and Archaeology. He served as a deputy head of the research project “CityFace: Practices of the Self-Representation of Multinational Cities in the Industrial and Post-Industrial Era” (CIUS, 2018-21). Since 2022, he has served as a coordinator of the project “СITY AND WAR: Destruction, Preservation and Rethinking of the Cultural Heritage of Large Cities in Eastern and Southern Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War” (CIUS). He has authored 1 book, co-authored 5 books, and more than 40 journal articles and conference papers.
11:30 am - 1:00 pm
Monday 15th July, 2024