On a latest afternoon in Kyiv, a professor of literature and a slapstick comedian obtained collectively to speak about Russian colonialism, a topic that has turn into a preoccupation amongst Ukrainian activists, cultural figures and bookstore homeowners.
The moderator of the dialogue, which was recorded for a brand new podcast for Ukraine’s nationwide public broadcaster, was Mariam Naiem, a graphic designer and former philosophy scholar who has turn into an unlikely professional on the subject.
“This conflict is simply the continuation of centuries of Russian colonization,” mentioned Ms. Naiem, 32, referring to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “It’s the identical playbook.”
Russia’s lengthy cultural and political domination of Ukraine, first by its empire after which the Soviet Union, had left an indelible mark, the podcast visitors agreed, as they lamented being extra fluent in Russian poems and movies than in their very own nation’s cultural treasures.
The objective of the podcast, Ms. Naiem mentioned, was to resolve this drawback and “discuss our private and social path of decolonization.”
It might have appeared an odd second of cultural introspection in a war-battered nation with pressing issues like repel Russian troops advancing along the front line.
However Ms. Naiem and lots of Ukrainians say that to know Russia’s conflict in Ukraine — and its path of razed cities, displaced children and looted museums — it’s essential to look at how Russia has lengthy exerted its affect over their nation.
The daughter of a Ukrainian mom and an Afghan father, Ms. Naiem is emblematic of a brand new era of Ukrainians who, since Moscow invaded in February 2022, have been making an attempt to rebuild their identification freed from Russian affect. A lot of this effort has centered on analyzing Russia’s historical past in Ukraine and highlighting its colonial imprint.
Ms. Naiem has emerged as a number one voice on this motion. She studied philosophy on the Kyiv-based Taras Shevchenko Nationwide College and has additionally accomplished a stint as a researcher with Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy at Yale College.
Final yr, she hosted an award-winning podcast on the theoretical foundations of Russian colonialism. Along with the brand new podcast she is at present recording, she is now writing a e book to assist Ukrainians “decolonize” themselves, she mentioned.
“She has significantly influenced me intellectually,” Mr. Stanley advised Babel.ua, a Ukrainian on-line information outlet, final yr. He added that she satisfied him that Ukraine’s post-colonial historical past was not being studied sufficient and that “it needs to be modified.”
That’s not a straightforward process. To name Russia a colonial empire is to problem a long time of scholarship that has shied away from viewing Russia’s historical past by a colonial prism. Russia’s shared historical past with Ukraine is advanced and fewer marked by relations of racial hierarchy and financial subjugation typical of colonialism, many students have argued.
However Ms. Naiem and others say Russia’s centuries-long efforts to impose its language on Ukraine, occupy its territory with settlers and rewrite its historical past from Moscow’s perspective are all hallmarks of colonialism.
Ms. Naiem mentioned it took the conflict for Ukrainians to take inventory of this legacy and at last start to “decolonize” themselves. She cited the instance of the many people who have switched from speaking Russian to Ukrainian.
“That is precisely a decolonial act,” she mentioned.
Whereas many Ukrainians have devoted their time to raising money for the army or rebuilding destroyed houses, Ms. Naiem’s activism has been extra mental, centered on deconstructing Russian influences, together with people who formed her.
She was born right into a Russian-speaking household in Kyiv in 1992. Her father was a former training minister in Afghanistan who left Kabul after the Soviet invasion in 1979. She has two brothers, Mustafa, a number one determine of Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan revolution, and Masi, who misplaced an eye fixed preventing Russian troops in 2022.
When she grew up in a newly unbiased Ukraine within the Nineteen Nineties, the nation’s cultural scene was dominated by Russian music, TV reveals and books.
At college, courses have been in Ukrainian, however “it wasn’t cool” to talk it within the playground, she mentioned. Russian literature was additionally “cooler” than Ukrainian literature, she recalled pondering, “extra mysterious, extra sophisticated.” A number of the novels she learn belittled Ukrainians as uneducated individuals.
“Turgenev pushed me to think about myself extra Russian than Ukrainian,” Ms. Naiem wrote on Instagram two years ago, referring to the Nineteenth-century Russian novelist. “As a result of I didn’t need to be that humorous Ukrainian.”
It took Ms. Naiem a few years, and lots of new books, to shake off these views.
Through the pandemic, she buried herself in “Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism,” a e book by the Polish American scholar Ewa Thompson that argues that writers like Pushkin and Tolstoy helped legitimized Russia’s colonial ambitions.
“I noticed that centuries of colonialism had seeped into my thoughts,” Ms. Naiem mentioned.
After the Russian invasion, she wrote about her research on her Instagram page, which is adopted by 22,000 individuals, arguing that Russia’s efforts to erase Ukrainian culture and identity are rooted in a protracted historical past of colonialism.
Her posts attracted consideration and persuaded her to unfold the phrase additional. Along with her podcasting, she has given interviews to Ukrainian media on colonialism and crammed her Instagram web page with more posts, questioning, for instance, the place of Mikhail Bulgakov, a Kyiv-born Soviet author who ridiculed Ukrainians, in Ukrainian faculty curricula.
The response has been overwhelmingly constructive.
On a latest afternoon at a music competition in Kyiv, a passer-by thanked her for her efforts, one in every of a number of those that day who advised her that they had realized lots from her podcasts.
Nonetheless, a lot of her time stays spent making an attempt to persuade those that speaking of Russian colonialism is related.
Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian thinker, mentioned the subject had lengthy been considered with skepticism.
Not like Western colonies, which have been usually far-distant, abroad locations, Russian colonies have been adjoining territories, he mentioned. Russian colonialism additionally by no means made racial exclusion a core coverage, he added. As a substitute, it was based mostly on the no-less violent “concept of sameness,” that means that the colonized ought to give up their identification and undertake the norms of the colonizer.
Mr. Yermolenko mentioned colonial motives have been evident in President Vladimir V. Putin’s declare that Ukrainians and Russians have been “one individuals.”
“Folks lengthy didn’t need to hear about Russian colonialism,” Mr. Yermolenko mentioned. “Solely now are we sort of seeing the primary steps of mental debunking.”
Since Russia’s invasion started, some students have described it as a “colonial war” or one in every of recolonization. President Emmanuel Macron, who himself has needed to confront the legacy of French colonialism, has accused Russia of being “one of many final colonial imperial powers.”
Ukrainian authorities have additionally launched efforts to interrupt freed from Russian influences, similar to toppling Soviet-era statues and banning Russian place names. However they’ve stopped in need of calling it a technique of “decolonization,” to Ms. Naiem’s frustration.
“We’re doing the cake with out the recipe,” she mentioned. “We want the recipe.”
Nonetheless, she is happy {that a} dialogue about Russian colonialism has taken root.
On a latest afternoon in central Kyiv, Ms. Naiem stepped into a big bookstore and stared at a protracted desk coated with not too long ago revealed books.
“Let’s see what number of are about colonialism,” she mentioned.
“This one, this one,” she mentioned, as she grabbed e book after e book — one on Russia’s dominance of Ukrainian cultural life, another about rebellious Ukrainian writers of the Nineteen Sixties — and piled them up on a nook of the desk.
After a couple of minutes, the pile had grown to 21 books.
