Start Date
27-5-2026 11:45 AM
End Date
27-5-2026 12:00 PM
Description
The 2022 invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation under Putin marks a pivotal moment in the cultural history of Eastern Europe. Russian aggression is driven in part by the longstanding Russian imperial project to subsume Ukrainian culture as part of the Russian grand narrative of civilizational unity. This ambition is made explicit in Putin’s 2021 speech “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” where he asserts that “Russians and Ukrainians [are] one people – a single whole.” Ukraine’s rejection of this Russian colonizing and anti-European narrative, however, has been clear and unambiguous, as demonstrated in the now more than four-year determined military resistance against Russia’s armed forces and the spirited defense of Ukrainian identity and democratic values. The existential struggle to differentiate and confirm a non-Russian, non-Post-Soviet, European identity manifests itself not only on the battlefield, but also in the reaffirmation of Ukrainian identity through everyday cultural practices, including the culinary. Consider, for example, the successful application to UNESCO by Ukraine to name borsch (borscht) as an item of intangible cultural heritage. This paper offers an analysis of borsch as a marker of a distinct and threatened cultural identity in the post-Soviet era; as a profound symbol of home, hope, and resilience; and as an important gastronomical element in Ukraine’s ongoing struggle for cultural and political sovereignty.
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Included in
Borsch is Ukrainian: Food and Cultural Resistance in Ukraine
The 2022 invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation under Putin marks a pivotal moment in the cultural history of Eastern Europe. Russian aggression is driven in part by the longstanding Russian imperial project to subsume Ukrainian culture as part of the Russian grand narrative of civilizational unity. This ambition is made explicit in Putin’s 2021 speech “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” where he asserts that “Russians and Ukrainians [are] one people – a single whole.” Ukraine’s rejection of this Russian colonizing and anti-European narrative, however, has been clear and unambiguous, as demonstrated in the now more than four-year determined military resistance against Russia’s armed forces and the spirited defense of Ukrainian identity and democratic values. The existential struggle to differentiate and confirm a non-Russian, non-Post-Soviet, European identity manifests itself not only on the battlefield, but also in the reaffirmation of Ukrainian identity through everyday cultural practices, including the culinary. Consider, for example, the successful application to UNESCO by Ukraine to name borsch (borscht) as an item of intangible cultural heritage. This paper offers an analysis of borsch as a marker of a distinct and threatened cultural identity in the post-Soviet era; as a profound symbol of home, hope, and resilience; and as an important gastronomical element in Ukraine’s ongoing struggle for cultural and political sovereignty.