Displaced Borderlands: Civilizational Belonging in the Narratives of Kharkiv Residents Relocated to the European Union after February 2022

Conceptual Framework

Three decades after the publication of Samuel Huntington’s influential article “The Clash of Civilizations?,” civilizationalist politics are on the rise. ⁸ In the West, a conservative discourse of Christian values frames a negative response to globalization and juxtaposes Europe to an inherently alien Islamic civilization. ⁹ In post-Soviet Russia, civilizationalism serves different political purposes, drawing on nineteenth-century Slavophilism, the Eurasianism developed in the 1920s–1930s in the Russian emigration, and the ideas of Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee who forecasted the decline of Europe. A replacement for the discredited political dogma of Marxism-Leninism, the idea of Russia as a “state-civilization” provides the ruling elites with a post-imperial identity and the sense of a world mission. ¹⁰ In the logic of “ontological security,” civilizationalism is an answer to the perceived Russian traumas of the collapse and territorial disintegration of the Soviet Union. ¹¹

Russian civilizationalism exists in two major forms with distinct but overlapping historical roots: Eurasianism and the “Russian World.” Eurasianism, which draws on the intellectual tradition of some Russian émigré intellectuals, was reinvented after 1991 as a broad geo-cultural concept embracing both the European and the Asian origins of the Russian identity. ¹² Initially, it served to accommodate the multinational composition of the Russian Federation and as a vague ideology behind integration projects in the post-Soviet space. ¹³ Certain forms of Eurasianism, not necessarily pro-Russian and anti-Western, were also embraced by the national elites of Kazakhstan and even Ukraine. ¹⁴ At the same time, a radical and aggressive form of neo-Eurasianism hostile to the Euro-Atlantic West was developed by Russian revanchist nationalists such as Aleksandr Dugin. Two versions of Eurasianism—the pragmatic official and the radical populist—have converged since Moscow shifted its priorities from post-Soviet integration to neo-imperial expansionism and direct confrontation with the West.

The “Russian World,” like neo-Eurasianism, developed in the 1990s in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union and aimed at reconnecting with Russia’s pre-Soviet past and its diasporas. ¹⁵ Institutionalized in the following decade by several state programs, think tanks, and foundations, the “Russian World” became an instrument of Russia’s soft power in the globalized world appealing in particular to its “compatriots” (sootechestvenniki), understood as people affiliated to Russian language and culture to various degrees. The Kremlin version of the “Russian World,” focused on the Russian-speaking populations in the “near abroad,” inspired several policy instruments, from support of the Russian language to passportization and repatriation programs. ¹⁶ The related concepts of “East Slavic” and “Orthodox” civilization were crafted to justify the reunification of the former Slavic core of the Soviet Union, namely Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Having developed into a highly conservative and, since 2014, openly revanchist and ethnic concept, the “Russian World” opposes its values to the “decadent” Western civilization (“Gayropa”) and legitimizes the redrawing of “artificial” post-Soviet borders that allegedly divide the “single Russian people.” After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, civilizationalism was once again reinvented in Russia: by fighting against Western hegemony, Russia allegedly protects the plurality of world civilizations and, at the same time, strives to regain control over Ukraine, a part of Russia kidnapped by the West and turned into an “anti-Russian project.”

For Huntington, who associated civilizations with world religions, Ukraine was a “cleft country” divided along the civilizational fault line between Western (Catholicism) and Eastern (Orthodoxy) Christianity and thus prone to internal conflict and territorial dissolution. In the same logic, Huntington considered a military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, both predominantly Orthodox countries, highly unlikely. Both predictions turned out to be false as religious identity proved far less important than Russia’s neo-imperial ambitions and its geopolitical conflict with the West. Rather than being a cause of the conflict, civilizationalism became Moscow’s weapon for strengthening its influence over Ukraine by using the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian pseudo–non-governmental organizations (NGOs), mass culture, and the media. ¹⁷

In Ukraine, a country torn between two alternative projects (EU integration and Russia-led post-Soviet integration), the geopolitical choice has often been framed as a “civilizational choice.” The idea that the Euromaidan defended Ukraine’s “European choice” has been very popular in Ukrainian public discourse; “Europeanization” has become a popular frame embracing non-authoritarian rule, “dignity,” and respect for human rights and basic freedoms. ¹⁸ These values have been commonly believed to be irreconcilable with the “Russian World” (the more so since Russia declared itself a radical alternative to the liberal West). Moreover, Ukraine’s moral right to join the EU is rooted in a strong myth of collective sacrifice: Ukrainians are paying with their lives not only for their country’s sovereignty but also for Europe’s own future.

According to Kolstø, this type of discourse resonates with the historical myth of antemurale popular in East Central Europe in the late Middle Ages and early modern era. ¹⁹ The contemporary version of this myth refers not to Christianity protected from Islam but to secular “European values” defended against authoritarian Russia. In this way, it underlines civilizational differences between nations of the same dominant religion (for example, Ukraine, Belarus, or Georgia vs. Russia). Weaker groups (nations) are likely to employ antemurale arguments to distinguish themselves from stronger, overweening neighbors. The main characteristics of an antemurale nation “can be summarized as a perception of belonging to a superior civilization; a geographically peripheral position within that civilization, directly confronting an allegedly inferior civilization; a hypertrophic understanding of the differences between these civilizations; and a messianic obligation to defend, and if necessary, die for, the larger civilization to which one belongs.” ²⁰ The contemporary version of the antemurale myth, popular in war-torn Ukraine, plays an important role in reframing the identity of the frontline city of Kharkiv.

Gentile approaches Kharkiv, Mariupol, and Dnipro as geopolitical fault line cities “where divergent geopolitical preferences constitute an exceptionally profound source of discord, trumping (though sometimes overlapping with) ethnic and social class divisions as sources of potential strife.” ²¹ Typical for such cities is not religious or ethnocultural conflict, but “ideological divisions, particularly in relation to foreign policy preferences and geopolitical alignment,” which are fed by contradictory but overlapping information spaces. Popular culture, TV news broadcasting, and social media thus play an important role. Under specific circumstances, such ideological divisions can be reframed as “civilizational differences.” As the case of Donbas in 2014–2015 demonstrates, “with an appropriate treatment by political technology, and corroborated by the onset of armed conflict, geopolitical identities can rapidly morph into more resistant, if artificial, national or regional identities.” ²²

In this article, I follow the call of Hale and Laruelle to study the politics of civilizational identity by drawing on conceptual tools developed to study other forms of identity. Civilizations, they argue, should be approached as social constructs open to transformation in rapidly changing situations rather than primordial entities à la Huntington. Moreover, civilizational identity “is meaningfully expressed not only by elites but also by masses, and elite articulations can be generally expected to reflect, express, and shape mass dispositions in a complex process of mutual identity co-constitution.” ²³ Such processes of “co-construction” are reflected in the interviews with Kharkiv residents analyzed in the following sections. Following the distinction between “indirect, mediated civilizational identification” and “direct personal identification” introduced by Hale and Laruelle, I focus on the first one reflecting the civilizational belonging of Kharkiv. ²⁴ In the next section, I briefly outline the evolution of civilizational, geopolitical, and historical narratives about Kharkiv as developed by some local, national, and external “identity entrepreneurs.”

Kharkiv: Toward a Battlefield of Civilizationalist Narratives

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s independence, Kharkiv found itself at the new international border with the Russian Federation. The disintegration of the Soviet economy, the arrival of capitalism, and the crisis of the early 1990s hit the city’s industry hard and plunged the population into economic hardship nurturing nostalgia for the Soviet era. ²⁵ The provincialization of Kharkiv, which diluted the importance of a once major Soviet industrial center and research hub, the adaptation of the Russian-speaking city to the official Ukrainization policy, and the mental reorientation from Moscow to Kyiv were the main challenges faced by the local elites, drawn primarily from the “red directors” and the communist nomenklatura. Local post-Soviet elites were pragmatic in their choice of identity narratives. Kharkiv’s cultural regionalism emerged under the banner of Sloboda Ukraine, a historical region shaped by the seventeenth-century colonization of the Dyke Pole (Wild Field), a vast and thinly populated borderland between the Muscovite state, the Tatar Khanate, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. ²⁶ While most settlers were Ukrainian Cossacks, the colonization of this territory was in the geopolitical interest of Muscovy and paved the way for the Russian Empire’s triumphant expansion toward the Black Sea. The ambivalence of the “Sloboda” regional brand allowed for its various, sometimes alternative, uses: from underlining the ethnic Ukrainian character of the region to stressing the common history of Ukrainians and Russians and the traditional loyalty of the Sloboda Cossacks to Moscow. ²⁷ The non-antagonistic narrative of “Sloboda Ukraine” was instrumental not only in crafting a specific regional identity of the Kharkiv oblast but also in branding the Ukrainian–Russian cross-border cooperation, tailored according to the EU model to “normalize” relations between the two countries. In this way, the name “Slobozhanshchyna” was given to the first Euroregion jointly founded by the Kharkiv and Belgorod authorities in 2003. ²⁸

From the Russian perspective, cross-border cooperation was just a pillar of Eurasian integration aimed at consolidating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) under Russian leadership (with projects such as the Single Economic Space, EurAsEC, the Customs Union, and lately, the Eurasian Economic Union), to which Kyiv was rather reluctant to commit itself. The proto-ideology of Eurasianism that supplemented these projects—a vague promise of prosperity brought about by recreating an economic “Soviet Union”—was not appealing to the local population as an identity concept. More promising were such concepts as the East Slavic or Orthodox civilization: the first referred to the Soviet narrative of a common history and cultural proximity between Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians, and the second to the shared Orthodox faith (and the post-Soviet Orthodox revival on both sides of the Ukrainian–Russian border). This amalgam of civilizationalist narratives was glued together by the neo-Soviet discourse of the “common victory” in the Great Patriotic War. ²⁹

A new borderland, Kharkiv rediscovered its identity as a merchant city historically grown at the crossroads of important trade roots; the mentality of the Kharkivites was praised as pragmatic, entrepreneurial, and tolerant, in opposition to the allegedly more nationalist western Ukraine. Konstantin Kevorkian, a local journalist and the founder of the local TV channel Pervaia Stolitsa (First Capital), significantly contributed to the creation and dissemination of this narrative. While the “First Capital” referred to Kharkiv’s history as a capital of Soviet Ukraine, the real “golden age” of the city, for him, included the last decades of the Russian empire. ³⁰ A quickly growing capitalist metropolis, Kharkiv deserved to be proud of its pre-Soviet past. The Russian imperial past was seen as a proof of Kharkiv’s imagined Europeanness, in opposition to its gloomy post-Soviet reality. The brand of the “First Capital,” embraced by Kharkiv populist politicians, successfully crafted an apolitical version of local patriotism which later became a refuge for those unable (and unwilling) to choose between Moscow and Kyiv. ³¹

The Orange Revolution divided Kharkiv’s political elites and society. Two issues—memory politics and Ukraine’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership—fueled a new ideological polarization which, with the support of Moscow, was increasingly framed in civilizational terms. ³² Russia used the rehabilitation of the historical legacy of Ukrainian nationalists to equate any form of contemporary Ukrainian nationalism with “fascism.” Russia’s mission, de facto its new national identity, came to be defined as a fight against the permanent threat of “fascism.” At the same time, Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO contributed to the essentialization of Russia’s geopolitical identity in anti-Western terms.

In Kharkiv, where the majority identified with the Soviet narrative of the “Great Patriotic War,” the memorial to the fighters of the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army became a site of a protracted conflict. ³³ The commemoration of the Famine of 1932–1933 (the Holodomor) as genocide of the Ukrainian people committed by the Soviet regime was vehemently opposed by the Kharkiv city authorities: the new narrative of Kharkiv as an epicenter of a man-made mass famine contradicted the narrative of the “First Capital” as a center of Soviet modernization. ³⁴ Moscow eagerly supported local protests against NATO membership and the “nationalization of history.”

On the eve of signing the Ukraine–EU Association Agreement in 2013, Moscow raised pressure on Kyiv to keep Ukraine in its orbit. An aggressive propaganda campaign presented Ukraine’s Eurasian integration as the only viable alternative to the EU. For example, at a round table titled “Kharkiv—The Capital of the Eurasian Integration of Ukraine,” organized by local pro-Russian organizations with support from Russia, one local speaker argued in favor of a new civilizational role for the city:

Kharkiv can and should become a springboard, where our ideological Eurasianist counteroffensive will start from. Kharkiv was founded in 1654, the year of the Pereiaslav Treaty. It was in Kharkiv that the legendary tank T-34, the weapon of Victory, was created. It was Kharkiv that became one of the strongholds of resistance to the “Orange” putsch. Finally, it was in Kharkiv that several important Russian-Ukrainian agreements were signed recently, welcomed enthusiastically by the society. While Ukrainian nationalists run the show in Kyiv (. . .) Kharkiv should become a city where the liberation of Ukraine from the epidemy of nationalism (. . .) starts from. As in 1943, when the liberation of Ukraine from fascists began in Kharkiv. Kharkiv has everything to become a locomotive which will help Ukraine to join the Customs Union with the brotherly peoples of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and, in perspective, even the Eurasian Union. ³⁵

The Euromaidan protests mainstreamed the public discourse of Europeanization into a popular identity concept: Europe was the civilizational “homeland” of Ukrainians, but the neo-imperial Russia tried to prevent Ukraine from “returning to Europe.” With Lenin’s statues dismantled all over Ukraine, symbols of the Soviet past were conflated with the Russian empire, seen as an oppressive anti-European force denying Ukraine’s independence for centuries. In the Kremlin’s propaganda, the Euromaidan was explicitly framed in civilizational terms: as a Western plot aimed at cutting Ukraine off from the Russian civilization and undermining Russia’s traditional family-centered culture with “decadent” liberal values.

Like other cities in east and south Ukraine, in winter 2013–2014, Kharkiv saw peaceful Euromaidan gatherings followed by an escalation of street violence. “The Russian Spring,” as Moscow labeled the pro-Russian mobilization, culminated, as in Luhansk and Donetsk, in the proclamation of a “people’s republic” and the short-term occupation of the regional administration headquarters by a pro-Russian mob. In Kharkiv, however, a hybrid Russian occupation following the Donbas scenario was averted, and mayor Hennadiy Kernes, after initially flirting with Russia, took Kyiv’s side. ³⁶ During 2014–2015, most pro-Russian activists were arrested or forced to leave for Russia, while the discourse of “Kharkiv as a Russian city” was banned from the public sphere. The traumatic events of 2014–2015, frequently evoked in my interviews with Kharkivites, gave rise to theories explaining the defeat of the (pro-)Russian forces in Kharkiv (and their triumph in Donetsk and Luhansk) in cultural terms. These discourses often contributed to an othering of Donbas as part of the “Russian World” and to essentializing the new boundary between Ukraine-controlled and Russia-occupied territories. ³⁷

For local pro-Ukrainian activists, the Euromaidan failed in Kharkiv even if the city remained under Ukrainian control: the old elites, compromised by corruption and pro-Russian sympathies, stayed in power. ³⁸ The local semi-authoritarian and populist regime of mayor Kernes drew on his personal charisma and image of a good city manager. While the pro-Ukrainian civil society, which perceived Kharkiv as a frontline city close to the conflict zone, focused on the support of the army and the IDPs, the city authorities sought to avoid any public mentions of the ongoing Donbas conflict. Their attempts to protect the Marshal Zhukov monument from dismantling and their plans to erect a baroque column in imperial Russian style replacing the toppled Lenin statue appealed to the tacitly pro-Russian and Soviet nostalgic “silent majority,” which accepted, but did not embrace, the turn to the West. ³⁹ Before the invasion, Kharkiv was one of the most Eurosceptic Ukrainian cities: EU membership was supported by only 32 percent of the residents, while 27 percent favored the Customs Union with Russia and Belarus, and the rest were undecided. ⁴⁰

However, “pro-Ukrainian” in post-Maidan Kharkiv did not necessarily mean “pro-European,” as the meaning of “Europe” was contested, dividing liberals and nationalists. ⁴¹ The local Euromaidan was split along such issues as family and gender norms. The local nationalists repeatedly attacked LGBT events, thus demonstrating adherence to the same “traditional values” as the pro-Russian activists they had been fighting within 2014–2015, and the leader of the Kharkiv branch of Poroshenko’s European Solidarity, the major pro-European opposition party, publicly joined an anti-LGBT demonstration, thus alienating the liberal-minded public. As the deeply divided opposition forces failed to agree on a joint candidate, Ihor Terekhov, the former right-hand of the late Kernes, won the October 2021 local elections. ⁴² According to local historian and journalist Ihor Solomadin, the vote was a “civilizational choice (. . .) not in favor of the development of a modern European city.” ⁴³

Ironically, it was Terekhov who faced the dramatic challenge of the full-scale Russian invasion and had to accept a major shift toward a new pro-Ukrainian patriotic consensus. Giving in to pressure from below, he supported the de-Russification of the urban space and started to use Ukrainian in public communication. The city authorities enthusiastically embraced the newly established official title “Hero City of Ukraine,” awarded to Kharkiv by President Zelensky in March 2022 for its “mass heroism and resilience.” ⁴⁴ The local civil society, however, was skeptical about the hidden Soviet symbolism of the title and preferred a different symbol: Zalizobeton (steel concrete). It refers to the material used for Kharkiv’s famous landmarks of constructivist architecture. The silhouette of the House of State Industry, one of the symbols of the “First Capital,” turned into a popular logo for a city resisting the Russian invasion. ⁴⁵ A former Soviet and Russian imperial heartland, Kharkiv is now reinventing itself as a city on the eastern frontier of Europe, rediscovering its initial identity as a borderland fortress—this time in the borderlands between (European) civilization and Russian barbarism, a new Wild Field. ⁴⁶ Kharkiv’s new mission was referred to by President Zelensky: “Obviously, Kharkiv will become an outpost of freedom and power at the Eastern frontier of Europe.” ⁴⁷

Research Design and Methodology

Semi-structured interviews with sixteen displaced Kharkiv residents were conducted between August and December 2022; participants were recruited through the author’s personal networks and snowball sampling. The questions were meant to encourage participants to reflect on their personal experience (see Annex). While, in the beginning of each interview, I asked the participants if they have any associations with such notions as “European civilization” or “Russian World,” I did not impose such categories during the interview and let people formulate their own understanding of “Europeanness” and “Russianness.”

Interviews lasted from forty to ninety minutes each; six of them were conducted face-to-face, and the rest via Zoom. As male Ukrainian citizens between eighteen and sixty years of age are not allowed to leave the country due to martial law, only three interviewees were men (exempted from the ban for reasons of disability, age, or having three or more children). The age of the interviewees varied from mid-twenties to over seventy years. The destination countries included Germany (six), Austria (two), France (two), Czech Republic (two), Poland (one), Lithuania (one), Spain (one), and Denmark (one). Most of the interviewees hold a university degree, and they represent various occupations: three history teachers, one Ukrainian language teacher, one translator, two IT experts, a lawyer, an expert in reproductive medicine, a freelance photographer, a psychologist, several NGO workers, and civil society activists (including a founder of a football fan club for persons with disabilities and a representative of a gender museum). Most of them either continued their professional activities (home office, teaching online, freelance work, academic fellowship) or found new jobs. While their religious identity was not directly addressed, none of the interviewees signaled the topic of religion as personally important.

Two limitations of my research should be acknowledged: the obvious bias toward people with pro-European and Ukrainian patriotic views and the choice of the interview language. When recruiting participants, I tried to reach displaced Kharkivites of different occupations, age, and country of destination but did not ask them in advance about their political attitudes and did not search for people with ambivalent or pro-Russian views. The latter would have been more difficult to reach, and they would arguably be less eager to take part in such research and offer their views vis-à-vis a Ukrainian scholar affiliated with a German academic institution. One should not forget that “Russian propaganda” was criminalized in Ukraine shortly after the 2022 invasion. Besides, as a native of Kharkiv, I was also emotionally involved in the ongoing events and could hardly take a neutral stance. For all these reasons, the pro-Russian segment of the Kharkiv population is not represented in my study. The same concerns Kharkivites who went to Russia: as a scholar based in the EU, I did not have access to this group of displaced persons. The extent to which the choice of destination correlates with the political views of displaced persons is beyond the scope of this article. Research conducted before the invasion in Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Mariupol found that “travel experience to European countries positively correlates with pro-European attitudes and corresponds to weaker pro-Soviet sentiments,” while “pro-European attitudes, compared with pro-Soviet sentiments, are much more interlinked with international travel experience.” ⁴⁸ These findings were based on research on tourism, not forced displacement. In the latter case, such factors as availability of safe routes, existing transport connections, social contacts, and financial resources are often decisive for choosing the destination country. My small sample suggests that those who left for EU countries usually possess an above-average level of social capital: social contacts, education, command of foreign languages, often previous experience of traveling, working, and studying in Europe. Educated and resourceful, they represent the “pro-European” segment of the Kharkiv population.

The second limitation concerns the language of the interviews. Scholars have addressed the complexities of language practice and language identities in Kharkiv. ⁴⁹ The Euromaidan and the Russian invasion affected language use, particularly among Russian speakers. ⁵⁰ While language use might correlate with “civilizational identity,” this correlation was not the object of my research. My sample is not representative in its proportion of Russophones and Ukrainophones; moreover, I did not ask people about their language preferences and avoided ascribing them to such clear-cut categories. Offering participants a choice between Ukrainian and Russian at the beginning of the interview, I cared mainly about their convenience and building trust with them. Ten participants preferred interviews to be conducted in Ukrainian, and six preferred Russian. One interviewee underlined that she was raised as a Ukrainophone while several others mentioned that they had started to use Ukrainian in public more often after February 2022 (some already in 2014). ⁵¹ I believe that for the majority of those who chose Ukrainian as the language of interview, this was a performative act, a symbolic confirmation of their loyalty to Ukraine. Those who preferred Russian did it for convenience; some of them explicitly denied any connection between the Russian language and pro-Russian attitudes. My sample is too small to relate the language chosen by the interviewee with the views s/he articulated. For all these reasons, I did not indicate the language of the interviews, except for in the very few cases when it seemed relevant.

The results of my research are presented in the following four subsections: the first one shows that the differences between Ukrainians and Russians are increasingly framed in cultural terms, the second deals with the question of Kharkiv’s civilizational identity, the third analyzes multi-layered comparisons between Kharkiv (Ukraine) and Europe, and the fourth is devoted to the dilemmas of Kharkiv’s future at the border with Russia.

Ukraine vs. Russia: A Growing Cultural Gap?

It is no surprise that Russian civilizationalist metanarratives—the “Russian World,” the Slavic unity, or the Orthodox civilization—found little resonance among the interviewees. The “Russian World” was associated with the Russian invasion by one interviewee:

For me, the Russian World is what came to us in Kharkiv on February 24, to Donbas it came even earlier, it came to some other countries as well. This is an imperial, an expansionist rhetoric—and not only rhetoric—which annoys people in the whole world (female, 35).

As for “Slavic civilization,” some interviewees admitted the existence of “common Slavic roots,” not only with Russians but also with Poles, Czechs, or Serbs. And yet, Putin’s mantra of Russians and Ukrainians as “one single people” was vehemently opposed: “We are absolutely different nations. Maybe there are some common roots—Slavic, historical, I do not deny this. But the difference is big!” (male, 52). The same skeptical reaction concerns the notion of an Orthodox civilization: “In Russia, the Orthodox Church does not criticize the so-called special military operation, it even supports it, it blesses people to kill Ukrainians, and I don’t think we have anything in common with them” (female, 35).

If Russian civilizationalist narratives are avoided, then how do displaced Kharkiv residents frame their changing attitudes to Russia and the Russians? Their vernacular discourses are rarely essentializing and homogenizing: my interviewees, almost all of whom have close relatives in Russia and traveled there a lot especially before 2014, admit that Russia is diverse, big cities are different from the countryside, and St. Petersburg is undeniably a European city.

The (growing) cultural gap between Ukrainians and Russians is a recent development. Reorientation away from Russia started in 2014, when according to one respondent, Kharkiv was vaccinated against the “Russian World.” A history teacher in a college preparing young adults for a professional career in police and security forces came into contact with many families displaced from Donbas and often learned about her graduates having died in the military conflict:

Kharkiv was a frontline zone . . . you live in a peaceful city, but when you leave it, you see checkpoints, military in uniform and you understand that this is a war. It was probably at that time that we understood: we do not need Russia here, we will manage without it (female, 36).

The invasion accelerated the mental separation from Russia. Like everywhere in Ukraine, in Kharkiv, family bonds with Russians were tested during the first days of the invasion in February 2022. Speaking by phone with Russian relatives, Kharkivites mostly faced disbelief and misunderstanding from people subjected to the Kremlin propaganda, and their desperate search for sympathy and solidarity gave place to growing alienation:

We were sitting in a cellar under shelling and tried to call them. You tell them: “we are shelled,” and they say: “be patient, soon you will be liberated.” It’s hard! Therefore, I think, we will depart from each other, there will be fewer relative ties, they will not be perceived as “brotherly people.” Maybe later, you know, time heals, they will say they were wrong, but now it’s difficult to imagine (male, 34).

How is the emerging (growing) cultural gap framed in the vernacular discourses of displaced Kharkivites? Political culture appears to be the main marker of difference. For some, this difference is cultural and historical, and for others, the result of recent political developments, namely, Ukraine’s experience of successful political protests and Russia’s sliding into authoritarianism. According to one respondent, “Maybe this is Ukrainian spirit, that we cannot accept to be oppressed. This striving for freedom is probably what makes us different” (female, 65). Another stated that

sure, the Russian government has started the war. (. . .) But the fact that citizens accepted it, is the result of many years of the government’s work on peoples’ consciousness. How could it happen that their president is in power for thirty years or so? The same in Belarus. This is very strange to us, to our mentality (female, 25).

For a gender activist, differences can be seen in the historical pattern of gender relations: in Ukrainian culture, according to her, marriage was an agreement of two equal sides, and it was only with Ukraine joining the Russian empire that patriarchal power was consolidated. A radical essentialization of the cultural boundary between Ukrainians and Russians is still an exception. It can be found in the interview with a professor of history, born in the Russian North into a family of a Ukrainian political prisoner and raised as a Ukrainian speaker:

Indeed, there is a cultural gap between us, a mental chasm. They like authority, they like to have someone above, someone telling them what to do . . . And we have this striving for freedom, we’ll always have it, you cannot change it, it’s mentality. This love for freedom, Ukrainians always had it, but Russians never had and will never have it, and this is during all our history, a mental chasm, it was and it will be like that. We should not forget that and should not allow those brotherly hugs which turn into a deadly grip (female, 58).

Kharkiv: Russian, Soviet, or European?

The narrative of “Kharkiv as a Russian city,” the motto of Russian propaganda and of the local anti-Maidan in 2014–2015, is vehemently opposed by respondents, including those who preferred Russian as the interview language:

I never felt that this is a Russian city, even though many people wanted to speak Russian. It was not related to any ideology such as “we want to speak Russian because we are Russians.” It’s just more comfortable if it’s your mother tongue and not because you want to be closer to Russia (female, 31).

While some interviewees (especially those involved in pro-Ukrainian activism and the NGO sector) pointed to Russian influence in Kharkiv after 2014 (for example, via social networks and the Russian Orthodox Church), others denied it. A typical strategy is the discursive normalization and de-politicization of the city’s alleged Russianness, reducing it to neutral social aspects, such a proximity to the border:

Historically people had more ties with Russia. I had colleagues who owned dachas in Belgorod, it was not a big deal to take a local train and cross the border. People became couples, someone from Kharkiv, someone from Belgorod, so this was a social influence. Some people found jobs in Russia, in the same way as in Lviv which is close to Poland, so people work in Poland or create international couples (female, 31).

Another discursive strategy is to emphasize the uniqueness of Kharkiv and to refuse to describe it in fixed national and civilizational categories:

Kharkiv is Kharkiv. This is a large industrial center, a large student hub. This is a young city, there are a lot of universities, young people come there from other regions, from different countries to study. Well, what about Russia? Russia is Russia. No. Kharkiv is a young, beautiful, promising city (male, 52).

This discourse of Kharkiv’s uniqueness is reminiscent of the pre-war narrative of the “First Capital,” a multicultural and tolerant city open to the world whose identity is more complex than Ukrainian or Russian:

Kharkiv is intellectual and economically sustainable. Everybody travelled a lot, we had a lot of foreign companies, a lot of international business. We have many nationalities in the city, we have quite some mosques, there are also synagogues, there are Catholic churches, and we all live in accord. During the Covid pandemic, mosques helped Ukrainians, the synagogue helped Ukrainians, everyone helped each other. We don’t have it here: Ukraine for Ukrainians, we simply don’t have this, because historically, we have many different diasporas (female, 42).

Another way of avoiding civilizational categories is substituting “Russian” with (post-) Soviet. “(Post-)Soviet” has multiple connotations, but it is mainly rooted in the past and described in generational terms to refer to people over their fifties who never traveled, never left their residential areas, were educated in Soviet times, and did not learn Ukrainian. They are receptive to Russian propaganda (“grandmas watching Russian YouTube and waiting to be liberated”). “Soviet,” an equivalent of modernity in the early versions of the “First Capital” narrative, now denotes backwardness and decay. As one interviewee in her twenties admitted, Soviet for her is “poor old women in public transport” and chaotic and dirty street markets (which someone older would rather attribute to the 1990s). The (post-)Soviet condition is tantamount to a deficit of Ukrainian identity and pro-European orientation. Youth, and student youth in particular, are seen as naturally oriented toward Europe and thus important for preventing the Russian occupation in Kharkiv in 2014: “Naturally, no young people wanted a ‘Kharkiv people’s republic.’ Everybody hoped that we join the EU, that there will be new opportunities, easier to go to study, to travel, new exchange programs” (female, 36).

The university looms large in the narratives of Kharkiv as a European city; contemporary “European values” are often projected back into history:

In Kharkiv, European values and Enlightenment ideas were always present, because Kharkiv is a university city. And through Kharkiv University the city was nourished by these values. You probably know that the first university professors were Germans and other Western Europeans, they were the bearers of these values, and when they settled in Kharkiv, they opened the first pharmacies, the first hospitals, established a newspaper. Such values as freedom of speech, the value of human health or of good treatment of animals were brought to Kharkiv by Europeans. And since Kharkiv has become a university city, an educated city, a city of students, I think that it tends to belong to European civilization (female, 35).

If “Russian” is often substituted with Soviet, “Ukrainian” is usually associated with European, as one interviewee aptly formulated: “For me, Kharkiv has always been Ukraine, and Ukraine has always been Europe” (female, 58).

When confronted with controversial aspects of Kharkiv’s local politics, some interviewees admit the ambivalent identity of a city stuck between “Soviet” and “Ukrainian” (European). One NGO worker talked about two parallel Kharkivs: the first one represented by the populist and authoritarian local power, and the second one, the alternative Kharkiv of civil society activists and new cultural institutions. The dynamic cultural milieu, young artists, writers, and musicians are proof of the European and Ukrainian Kharkiv. By contrast, Sovietness is embodied in the local authorities’ political culture and the persisting corrupt, non-transparent practices rooted in the past:

For example, they cancelled the tram route on Vesnina Street one day without consulting with anyone. This is a very telling example, and this is not a European story, this is very much a Soviet story, when someone up there decides everything (female, 35).

At the same time, the re-evaluation of the ambivalent legacy of the former mayor Kernes is underway. For example, a lawyer and Euromaidan activist who criticized Kernes’ authoritarian methods and corrupt deals now admits his role in the positive changes that Kharkiv experienced in the years before the invasion. One of the most often mentioned features of Kharkiv’s Europeanness is its comfortable, people-friendly urban space and well-maintained infrastructure. Moreover, the city has lived up to this image even while being constantly shelled after February 2022:

I speak with many people, my clients, who stay in the city, and they say, the day after a missile attack, streets are cleaned, windows are closed with plywood. The new year tree is installed, never mind if only in a metro station. I think this is right, because this is a symbol of life, the city is alive and people are alive, and when those who left see that the city is alive, they want to come back (female, 32).

Experiencing Europe Firsthand

Asked to define European civilization, my interviewees often refer to a normative discourse on Europe popular in Ukraine: “European civilization stays in the vanguard of the civilized world, it promotes human rights, justice, democratic values, all those progressive values of modern society” (female, 35). Ukraine is part of this European civilization, and yet “Europe” is something Ukrainians are striving for; it is a goal rather than a reality, something they “lack” and should first “learn”:

Of course, we are Europeans! Sometimes even more than Europeans themselves. And Ukrainians want to be Europeans. What we want is this order, this law, which works everywhere, this equality, all these achievements of democracy. This is dear to our heart, this is, to be honest, what we lacked in the last years, and maybe even during the whole independence years (male, 52).

This idea of “Ukraine” and “Europe” overlapping in terms of civilizational identity but separated by a “deficit” of certain qualities, a “lack of progress,” and “lagging behind” is reminiscent of the discourse of Europeanization widespread in post-Maidan Ukraine. ⁵² And yet, the experience of everyday life in Europe, the acquaintance with the local bureaucracy and public services, and personal contacts with residents of EU countries allow for attentive observation, comparison, and reflection, making displaced Kharkivites involved in the “co-construction” of the notion of “Europeanness” in relation to Ukraine. ⁵³ Europe as experienced firsthand allows them to appreciate the obvious advantages of free travel within the Schengen area and to confirm some popular stereotypes about “German order and punctuality” or the “ability of the French to enjoy life.” A prominent place in interviews belongs to some attractive features of the “European project,” such as social security and quality of life. “Europe, I would say, is security, this is what I noticed, this is security on the roads, this is quality, quality of food. This is higher living standards, better paid labor, and maybe also better health care” (female, 31). These advantages are, according to the same interviewee, not granted but are a result of the social contract between citizens and state: “We in Ukraine are more chaotic, less disciplined, we are not used to paying taxes, we often solve issues in a not quite civilized way. Here there are strict rules, but you benefit from them. That is, you know that when you pay taxes, you will be strolling in a nice park and use public transport which runs according to schedule.” When compared to Ukraine, Europe is often associated with less poverty, an inclusive urban environment, the dignity of older people, and their active way of life. For some, this “social Europe,” which protects the disadvantaged categories of the population, contrasts with Ukrainian neo-liberal capitalism.

The displaced Kharkivites’ ability to notice and compare certain features of foreign life depends on their social experience at home, professional background, age, and family circumstances. An activist from a women’s NGO who relocated to Vienna was impressed by the more progressive gender culture in Austria. Having visited the House of Austrian History, she was surprised to see how much space was given to women in the museum’s narrative of the country’s controversial twentieth-century history. Another NGO leader who moved to Berlin with her child praised the active engagement of parents and their initiative from below in solving school issues. A young girl underlined the issue of LGBT rights and the freedom of choosing one’s lifestyle: “Here nobody cares how you dress, whom you love, you feel such a freedom in this sense” (female, 25).

The experience of living in Europe can also expose Ukraine’s virtues which were not so visible at home. For example, the European ability to enjoy leisure time and keep life-work balance is opposed to the habit of hardworking ascribed to Ukrainians; traditional stereotypes of “protestant” Europeans and “passive, lazy” Ukrainians paradoxically change places:

Prague reminds me of Ukraine ten years ago. We all were relaxed, waiting for holidays, sitting in bars. This is how Europeans live, as I see it now. Now I understand that we in Ukraine work a lot, we work hard, maybe this is even neurotic. Saturday is a holiday? No way, Sunday in the evening is holiday. This is true! Czechs are shocked! They already feel competition, they see how resourceful we are (female, 42).

This resourcefulness and flexibility become a source of pride and self-esteem which helps the displaced Kharkivites to deal with the loss and separation from home: “There is such a thirst for constructive work and creativity. Kharkiv University continues to function even now, under the current conditions. I do not know in which country in Europe something like that would be possible” (female, 35). Another respondent declared, “Having lived in Vienna, I started to appreciate our services, our quality. If one day I will have my own business, I will be proud to show that this is ‘Made in Ukraine’” (female, 25).

Ukraine’s recent progress in the digitalization of public services has become noticeable especially in contrast to some European countries such as Germany, long considered a leader of technical progress. Launched in 2020, the Diia app (Ukrainian Дія, action, also an acronym for Derzhava i Ya, The State and Me) allows Ukrainian citizens digital access to over 130 government services. Diia has been appreciated by Ukrainians who moved abroad. The same concerns banking services, gastronomy and modern coffee shops, beauty industry, sport opportunities for children, and even some medical services which, although paid for by patients, are available without a long waiting list. If Europe is associated with technical progress, a comfortable urban space, and a developed service market, Ukraine (and Kharkiv, in this case) is certainly part of it:

Maybe in the past there was a huge gap between Europe and Ukraine, but now Ukraine has become more developed and more European. That is, we used to think—oh, Europe—and it turned out it is not so much different after all (female, 25).

A Geopolitical Frontier, a Ukrainian Fortress, an Outpost of Europe?

The question about Kharkiv’s future has a very practical meaning for those whose lives have been suspended by the war. Personal security, but also collective security (which is a prerequisite of the city’s economic revival and return to normal life), security in the short term but also in the long run is where all considerations about Kharkiv’s future start:

We still hope to return. But we met a couple from Kharkiv, and they want to stay here (in Germany—TZ). They are not young, and if the same happens in five or ten years, they will have no energy to re-settle again (male, 34, father of three children).

The border location of Kharkiv looms large in the interviews as the city is still often hit by Russian missiles and drones. Proximity to the Russian border means that people do not have enough time to reach a shelter; alarms often come only after the attack. The possibility of a new invasion cannot be ruled out:

We are in a very disadvantaged situation, we are shelled, and people are of course afraid that sooner or later Russians will want to annex Kharkiv, because it is at the border, and they already cut off other eastern oblasts (female, 31).

This still can happen, according to some, by military invasion or hybrid occupation, a scenario realized in Donbas and much feared in Kharkiv in 2014–2015. A Russian occupation of Kharkiv, even a short-term one, would be the worst-case scenario:

Most important is that Kharkiv is not to be occupied, not even for a month or for a week. Because people, the city authorities, will “change shoes.” I am afraid that some people will rise from the bottom and shape Kharkiv’s agenda, Kharkiv’s culture. You will need a lot of time to wash this out. This is what happened to Luhansk (female, 44).

To avoid such grim scenarios, some believe that the EU and NATO membership for Ukraine is the only solution: “People hope that there will be reconstruction, financial help, international assistance. But all this can only happen if Russia stops to exist, or Ukraine after its victory—and there will be victory for sure—will become a NATO member” (male, 73). In this scenario, Kharkiv becomes a military hub, a stronghold of Ukrainian power at the border with Russia:

I hope Kharkiv will live, and it will become a fortress protecting the whole country, because we already have this experience, how to withstand. And this, will only make our city stronger, will make it steely, to put it metaphorically (female, 32).

The image of a “fortress” is especially popular, also because it refers to the first historical reincarnation of Kharkiv founded in the seventeenth century by the Ukrainian Cossacks as a fortress protecting the frontier of the Muscovite state against the attacks of the Crimean Tatars. Yet, for some interviewees, the perspective of becoming a fortress is unattractive:

If people realize that they live in a fortress, then there will be no students coming, nothing . . . Our huge Barabashovo market, it’s an important economic resource, but who will come there? I am not even speaking about culture, there will be no cultural development. The city will not develop (female, 36).

Similarly, for some respondents, the metaphor Zalizobeton (steel concrete) obscures the traumatic experience of people living there:

I do not like this slogan: “Kharkiv is Zalizobeton.” It causes me panic attacks. I don’t think Kharkiv is “steel concrete”; if we use metaphors, Kharkiv for me is a wounded animal, its heart is still beating but it can hardly breath. Kharkiv and the Kharkivites need to heal their wounds (female, 44).

The image of the future Kharkiv as a military outpost and a Ukrainian fortress co-exists with the image of a “European city, a city of students, a city of theatre and music festivals, of sport events,” (female, 35) open to the world, inclusive and entrepreneurial. This is the city which “can help the whole Ukraine to develop and integrate into the EU” (female, 31). This second image resonates with the narrative of the “First Capital” now cleansed from Soviet nostalgia and associated with a European future of Ukraine.

The same ambivalence can be detected in the way the border with Russia is reimagined after the end of the war. The collective trauma experienced by its residents and the security imperative shape the image of the border as a physical, cultural, and mental “wall.” Answering my question if Kharkiv can one day resume its role as a “gate to Russia,” one interviewee categorically denied:

There should be no “gate to Russia.” It must be, as Poles and Lithuanians do it now with Belarus, a wall with barbed wire and no contacts, because Russia with its ideology, cultural politics will always try to affect other nations. Russia will never give it up (female, 58).

Some interviewees admit that such a wall would be problematic to impose for several reasons: a democratic state respecting the rule of law cannot close borders; many Kharkiv residents have relatives in Russia; and borders cannot stop the flow of information in today’s world. The new geopolitical situation of a city at the border with Russia, a country which remains a security threat, is a serious challenge for Kharkiv’s future development:

Kharkiv is in some kind of dead-end from a logistic point of view. It was a Russian-speaking city at the border, and now, willingly or forcefully, we have cut ourselves off. I don’t know if this is normal, if you have a border with a state that you cannot cross. It will be dead-end (female, 31).

Conclusion

The Russian invasion of 2022 has altered Kharkiv’s urban landscape, social texture, and political self-understanding more dramatically than the Euromaidan and the “Russian Spring” of 2014, and even Ukraine’s independence in 1991. Like collective identities, narratives of geopolitical and civilizational belonging can rapidly change in such politically fluid moments, even if they are tapping pre-war historical, cultural, and political discourses. As this research demonstrates, the mass experience of displacement and life in a different political and cultural environment can intensify such changes, especially if the individual destination—the EU—coincides with the imagined collective geopolitical destination of Ukraine as a nation. The metaphor of “displaced borderlands” thus works on several levels: despite Russia seeking to reborder eastern and southern Ukraine, Kharkiv “withstands” as a Ukrainian city while many of its residents are forced to leave their homes and settle in other countries. Discourses and narratives can be displaced, too: while local protagonists of the “Russian World” left Kharkiv for Russia in 2014–2015, in spring 2022, the war forced many representatives of the pro-Ukrainian, pro-European milieu to seek temporary refuge in Europe.

Civilizationist rhetoric, in particular the narrative of collective sacrifice of Ukrainians in defense of Europe against the “Russian World,” is popular in the Ukrainian political discourse but rarely occurs in my interviews with displaced Kharkivites. Resisting or avoiding Russian meta-civilizationist discourses, residents of Kharkiv who found refuge in Europe do not embrace the homogenizing and essentializing discourses of a “European civilization.” My interviews reflect some elements of civilizationalism embedded in the historical, cultural, and geopolitical narratives about Kharkiv, Ukraine, Russia, and Europe but also show resistance to and deconstruction of civilizationalism. Ukraine’s (growing) differences with Russia are framed in political culture more than civilizationalist terms; they stem from personal experience and family contacts across the border. Similarly, the experience of living in the EU helps to de-mythologize the notions of “European civilization” and “European culture.” Seen by displaced residents from a physical distance, Kharkiv eludes firm civilizational and national categories. The language of geopolitics is conflated with chronopolitics: while the historical, cultural, and symbolic presence of Russia in Kharkiv is termed as (post-)Soviet and thus rooted in the past, its Ukrainian identity is combined with the narrative of the city’s uniqueness and filled with the promise of a European future. A city in limbo as long as the war is not over, Kharkiv’s future is subject to multiple geopolitical imaginations “from below” that blend together traumas, hopes, frustrations, fears, fantasies, and rational arguments. Whether these imaginations will be framed in civilizationist terms depends on the outcome of the Russo–Ukrainian war and a new security arrangement for Europe and Ukraine.