A month ago, even as the world was still struggling to recover from a pandemic that had already claimed six million lives, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided that the time had come to set Ukraine on fire.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
It is an understatement to say that the strong man from Moscow miscalculated his move. Russia’s economy is on the verge of collapse, its army’s losses have exposed its weaknesses, and the country’s leadership, as well as many of its institutions, are now outcasts in the world. whole.
Having failed to achieve the quick victory that his intelligence services had promised, Putin decided to play it all out by ordering his generals to step up their attacks on civilians. So, in addition to targeting hospitals, schools, shelters and residential buildings, Russian forces are now deliberately launching their missiles at museums, historical sites and other houses of culture in Ukraine.
These Russian attacks on Ukrainian cultural institutions clearly show us what Putin envisions for the country. This completely destroys, if need be, the myth of a “special operation” to protect ethnic Russians, or even that of a just war aimed at “denazification”.
Anyone who is tempted to believe Russian claims that these attacks are accidents or false flag operations must realize how much they support Putin’s deliberate attempt to create an alternate version of history, one in which Ukraine is not a nation and cannot claim statehood.
Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal national museum complex of art and culture in Kyiv, explained it this way in a recent CBC interview: “The very existence of Ukraine is problematic in the eyes of those who dream of a Russian empire, because the Ukrainian heritage occupies an important place at the heart of this empire,” she said. “The existence of Ukraine and its culture forces us to ask the question: what is Russia then? »
To attack cultural institutions and collections is to strike at the heart of a nation. Efforts to destroy Ukraine’s cultural treasures and institutions are part of a larger and concerted campaign to deny its history and erase the foundations of its identity and existence as a nation. .
Museums, art galleries, libraries and archives are repositories and custodians of a people’s stories. They allow us to remember who we are and where we come from. To destroy a nation, conquerors always seek to eliminate its collective memory and the artifacts that sustain it – and that’s exactly what Putin is trying to do.
This is why artists, as well as cultural institutions and the people who run them, must speak out, not only to add their voices to all those who condemn war around the world, but also to find ways to celebrate Ukrainian culture and to protect it and its defenders.
Across Ukraine, museum staff and volunteers strive to protect rich collections of historic art. However, the rush to save books, paintings and other artifacts left little time to think about the use of specialized packaging materials, or even temperature and humidity controlled storage.
As a recent BBC report tells us, when it becomes impossible to move collections for safekeeping, there are “attempts to quickly create a comprehensive digital inventory of works, move objects to secret locations and even , sometimes, cases of museum employees who sleep barricaded in cellars, alongside the most precious works”.
The objective of the Russian president is obviously to crush Ukraine by bombarding its people and its cultural institutions. But the courageous resistance of the Ukrainian people shows us that the flame of national identity still burns brightly within them.
As leaders in Canada’s cultural sector, we have a responsibility to protect this flame, but also to make it shine in our country and to set an example so that others do the same.
We can do this by supporting humanitarian efforts, including the settlement of refugees. We can do this by supporting our Ukrainian colleagues in their efforts to protect their cultural treasures. We can do this through our programs, by educating our fellow citizens about the people, history and culture of Ukraine. And we can do this by sanctioning Russia and the Belarusian regime, by stopping cultural and artistic exchanges with them.
Canada’s museums and heritage institutions are the guardians of our country’s culture and history. They are our reason for being, and we cannot stand idly by when we see Ukraine’s rich history crushed by a being thirsty for conquest.
Know that in this war, when cultural institutions and artists proclaim their support for Ukraine, its people, its history and its culture, they are doing much more than just wishful thinking – they are working to push back Putin.