Location Note
1201 International Affairs Building
420 W 118th Street, 12th floor
This is a hybrid (in-person/virtual) event. Registration required for attendance. Please note that all attendees must follow Columbia’s COVID-19 Policies and Guidelines. Columbia University is committed to protecting the health and safety of its community. To that end, all visiting alumni and guests must meet the University requirement of full vaccination status in order to attend in-person events. Vaccination cards may be checked upon entry to all venues. All other attendees may participate virtually on Zoom or YouTube.
Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute for a presentation by Yana Prymachenko, moderated by Mark Andryczyk. This event is free and open to the public.
Battlefield confrontations are only one element of the war in Ukraine. Russian hybrid aggression preceded a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This hybrid war had multilevel dimensions including interpretation of the past. During 2014-2016 Russia disseminated historical fakes that had to present Ukraine as an artificial and failed state. Covering the situation in Ukraine, Russian media uses the frame of WWII, which is extremely ideologies in contemporary Russian public discourse. The Russian-supported campaign in Donbas is predicated as a “Little Patriotic War” — a repetition or re-enactment of “The Great Patriotic War.” What other historical fakes were used by Russia? How have these fakes affected reality? What impact have they had in Ukraine and abroad?
Yana Prymachenko (PhD) is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In the fall of 2022, she joined the History Department at Princeton University as a Visiting Scholar. Her research interests vary greatly, ranging from Soviet culture of the 1920s-30s, the history of the Second World War, memory politics in Russia and Eastern Europe, to the study of Soviet propaganda and informational wars. She made a significant media contribution to promoting historical knowledge in the public sphere. Her current research focuses on the mediatization of history and historical fakes in media.
