Goncharov in the twenty-first century

Abstract

nevertheless “accept and share the Holodomor as a common national tragedy” (113). This group and their descendants, in particular in the diaspora, make up a third community of memory. The fourth community of memory came to the fore in post-Soviet Ukraine and “consciously accepted the Great Famine as historical fact and postulated it as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation” (113). This community in Ukraine – in fact consisting of various communities of memory made up of individuals, social initiatives, and public activism as well as state activities – used eyewitness accounts of the Holodomor as a primary source to document Stalinist terror. Chapter 3 develops the discussion of the various religious and secular commemoration practices among the largest Ukrainian diaspora communities, especially in North America, Great Britain, Australia, and Brazil. It details the first initiatives in North America – including the building of a major symbolic and architectural commemorative achievement and place of memory – the Ukrainian Orthodox St. Andrew Memorial Church in South Bound Brook, New Jersey, in 1965 – as well as further memorial places elsewhere; this is always done in relation to the distinct purposes of the respective local community of memory. Chapter 4 likewise chronicles memory initiatives, but it does so in the context of Ukraine since perestroika and independence. It applies the lenses of “acting out” and “working through” trauma by way of engaging in memorial activities; the choice has been between a continuous state of mourning and a more “productive” investing of past suffering with meaning, something that also results in differing symbolic representations. In Chapters 5 and 6, discussion of the meaning and symbolism of monuments is elaborated upon by iconological and visual analysis of a whole range of monuments, memorials, and burial sites in Ukraine and in the diaspora, including at the major memorial site in Kyiv, built in 2008, and at the Washington, DC memorial that opened in 2015. The author views the symbolism of many such sites as being characterized by a mixture of Orthodox sacral or iconographical, folk and pagan, as well as secular references. Whereas at monuments and memorials in the diaspora “symbols of nation, religion, and human suffering prevail” (350), sites in Ukraine tend to “memorialize both the victims of the Holodomor and Stalinist repressions generally” (350). Eternal Memory is a very useful resource for students, general readers, and researchers in the fields of Ukrainian and post-Communist memory and monument studies.