Local Memory of Tragedy amidst a War of Memories: A Case Study of the 2nd of May Events in Odesa, Ukraine

The present thesis addresses the local memory of the 2nd of May events in Odesa, Ukraine, a culmination of fights between supporters and opponents of the Maidan government that obtained power in February 2014. The respective street clashes in Odesa killed six individuals, while 42 lost their lives in a fire in the Trade Union Building. At the surface, these clashes were a contraposition between groupings favoring a Ukrainian nationalistic vector and their opponents desiring pro-Russian policies. However, the local element of these clashes seems to transcend this binary approach. Situated in memory theory, the present thesis addresses the way the memory of these events among Odesans fits into the spectrum spanned by a pro-Ukrainian and a pro-Russian frame of interpreting history. Through a month of field work, during which 41 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Odesans, the thesis answers the central research question: “How do individual and collective memory regarding the...Show moreThe present thesis addresses the local memory of the 2nd of May events in Odesa, Ukraine, a culmination of fights between supporters and opponents of the Maidan government that obtained power in February 2014. The respective street clashes in Odesa killed six individuals, while 42 lost their lives in a fire in the Trade Union Building. At the surface, these clashes were a contraposition between groupings favoring a Ukrainian nationalistic vector and their opponents desiring pro-Russian policies. However, the local element of these clashes seems to transcend this binary approach. Situated in memory theory, the present thesis addresses the way the memory of these events among Odesans fits into the spectrum spanned by a pro-Ukrainian and a pro-Russian frame of interpreting history. Through a month of field work, during which 41 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Odesans, the thesis answers the central research question: “How do individual and collective memory regarding the 2nd of May events in Odesa interact?”. The thesis identifies four narratives regarding the 2nd of May events: a pro-Ukrainian, an ‘old-Odesan’, an apolitical, and a pro-Russian narrative. Analysis of these narratives provides the following conclusions. Firstly, the use of history as an argument to explain for the present varied widely. Some built their perception of the present events on analogies to events dating to World War II, while others situate their memory more in relation to contemporary events. Secondly, the absence of an authoritative source of information regarding the 2nd of May events is identified, leading to a construction of the interviewees’ memory on personal accounts and hearsays from others. This has resulted in wildly divergent accounts and theories of what happened on the respective day. Thirdly, the specific character of the 2nd of May events, which consisted of two largely disjunct sets of events, is argued to facilitate the inclusion of narratives regarding these events into coherent storylines for both conflicting sides. Fourthly, the different layers of identification that are expressed through the different narratives are analyzed. It is argued that shared belief systems account for shared memories in a more overarching way than membership of specific social groups does. The negotiation of the city of Odesa throughout the different narratives is analyzed in a closing argument.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

Local Memory of Tragedy amidst a War of Memories: A Case Study of the 2nd of May Events in Odesa, Ukraine