Images of Ukrainian Cities in Wartime Narratives

Abstract

The study of wartime narratives throws light on the principal factors in the creation of images ofUkrainian cities. For the purposes of this work, a narrative is a story inboth verbal andvisual form. The analysis takes into account the time of appearance of an image and the specifics of its formation, construction, and functioning. The article examines the images of Ukrainian cities in Ukrainian narratives broadcast and available in the public space since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion. A threat to a city’s existence and the physical destruction of objects and landmarks, including symbolic ones, causes changes in the way of life and even its dismantling. This leads to the strengthening or weakening of some existing images, as well as to the emergence of new ones. The author particularly notes certain features of the images under study, such as the personification of cities, which are portrayed as combating the enemy, resisting, and revealing their character. A city’s image is assembled from a number of significant sites that are preserved and can be reproduced by individual and collective memory. Each city has a unique set of locations that are especially dear and important to the residents – sites that allow us to “read” the city as continuous history. The highest form of affinity with one’s city is a resident’s identification with it — symbolic inseparability, “growing into” each other. The heroic struggle of Ukrainian cities against the Russian aggressor would be impossible without preserving, first and foremost, their spiritual core, which is confirmed by the appearance of such epithets as “unbreakable” or “unconquered.” The borderland status of some of the studied cities is especially keenly felt. During the war, the frontier becomes not a melting pot of cultures, but a boundary between Us and Them. The wartime narratives emphasize the importance of borderland cities as outposts of Ukrainianness, fortress towns. Because of this, Ukrainianness becomes one of the dominant features of the images of Ukrainian cities, especially those close to the border. It becomes significant, vitally necessary. The preservation of this dominant factor in city images in wartime narratives (especially on the spiritual level) is an important marker of a city’s will to resist, its vital energy even in war.