When Ukraine declared independence in 1991, it achieved political sovereignty. But the legacy of the empire did not disappear with the proclamation of statehood.
For centuries, the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union sought to weaken Ukrainian historical memory and subsume Ukrainian identity into a broader imperial narrative. Memory is more than knowledge of the past. It answers fundamental questions: Who are we? Where does our culture come from? And which civilizational space do we belong to?
Over the following three and a half decades, Ukraine gradually separated its national identity from that of the imperial center within which Ukrainians had been forced to exist for generations.
Literary scholar and professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Vira Aheieva puts it succinctly: “We were a colony that never lost its identity, at least its cultural identity.”
Cultural resistance survived in family memory, language, literature, music, art, religious traditions, and architecture. After 1991, that resistance gained the opportunity to become part of public life. Museums and memorial sites were established or restored, Ukrainian publishing expanded, independent media emerged, and festivals and international cultural projects created new platforms for Ukrainian voices.
Yet Russia’s cultural presence remained powerful.
When an Empire refuses to leave
Ukraine had formally separated from Russia in 1991, but for years Moscow retained significant influence over the country’s information and cultural space.
Cultural scholar Mariam Nayem describes these relations through the lens of neocolonialism – the continuation of dependency through informal mechanisms. Russian television, books, music, and cinema remained widely accessible in Ukraine, while parts of the media and publishing industries continued to operate within a Russian-language cultural framework.
Music was a telling example. In 2013, Ukrainian-language songs accounted for only about 5% of radio airplay, while Russian-language music represented more than 40%. This was about more than entertainment. Cultural space also shapes how a society understands itself, its history and the world around it.
2014: A point of no return
The Revolution of Dignity and the beginning of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014 marked a decisive shift. Increasingly, Ukrainian society came to see culture not simply as a symbolic sphere, but as part of the struggle for national agency.
In 2016, legislation introducing quotas for Ukrainian-language music and programming on radio took effect. At least 35% of songs played on radio stations had to be in Ukrainian, while at least 60% of broadcasters’ spoken content had to be in the Ukrainian language. Within several years, Ukrainian became significantly more visible across television and radio, while Ukrainian music experienced a remarkable revival.
This was more than a language-policy success. It helped create a cultural environment in which a new generation of Ukrainians could encounter their own language, artists and narratives as the norm rather than the exception.
Three revolutions, one civilizational choice
Over three and a half decades, Ukraine experienced three major waves of civic mobilization: the Revolution on Granite, the Orange Revolution, and the Revolution of Dignity. Each transformed not only the political agenda but also a deeper question: What kind of country do Ukrainians want to live in?
Freedom was at the heart of that choice.
Culture both reflected and shaped these transformations. The language people spoke, the books they read, the music they listened to, the historical figures they remembered, and the cultural symbols they embraced increasingly became expressions of a broader civilizational choice.
Ukraine was moving away from the Russian imperial sphere and toward Europe.
Culture as a matter of security
For years, culture was often treated as secondary to political and economic priorities. The full-scale war changed that perception dramatically.
Russia is not fighting only for territory. It is also fighting for the right to define who Ukrainians are, what their history means, and whether a distinct Ukrainian nation exists at all.
“People save those whose culture they know, not those whose children are crying in the ruins,” Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko argues. Her comparison between Notre-Dame and Kyiv’s Saint Sophia Cathedral illustrates the importance of international cultural visibility.
When Notre-Dame burned in 2019, the disaster was immediately understood as a global cultural tragedy. When Saint Sophia Cathedral came under threat after Russia’s full-scale invasion – and when the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra was damaged in the summer of 2026 – Ukraine has repeatedly had to explain the significance of its heritage to international audiences.
As Zabuzhko notes, many people around the world remain unaware that Saint Sophia Cathedral is roughly a century older than Notre-Dame and is one of the great monuments of Byzantine architecture, founded before the Christian Church split into Eastern and Western traditions.
Who should explain to the world that Saint Sophia Cathedral, the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, Ukrainian Baroque, the modernist art of the 1920s and 1930s, and the work of Ukrainian composers, artists and writers belong to European history?
The answer is clear: Ukraine itself.
2022: Culture moves to the front line
Russia’s full-scale invasion dramatically accelerated Ukraine’s cultural self-identification.
In spring 2022, Ukraine survived the battle for Kyiv. As the country resisted Russia’s invasion, international attention to Ukrainian culture grew rapidly. Ukrainian artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, and theater companies gained new platforms around the world.
Ukraine increasingly began presenting itself not as a peripheral culture seeking recognition, but as an integral part of Europe’s cultural landscape.
The shift was fundamental.
From cultural resistance to cultural agency
Over 35 years, Ukraine’s cultural transformation cannot be measured simply by the number of museums opened, books published, or festivals held.
The deeper change lies in how Ukraine sees itself.
The country has moved from having to prove that Ukrainians are not Russians to asserting the right to explain to the world who Ukrainians are.
From cultural resistance to cultural sovereignty.
From protecting a threatened cultural identity to actively shaping and sharing it with the world.
During the full-scale war, and despite it, Ukraine is also addressing a challenge articulated 25 years ago by the country’s celebrated poet Lina Kostenko in her manifesto The Humanitarian Aura of the Nation, or the Defect of the Main Mirror.
“To fix ourselves in the consciousness of humanity as the paradox of a young state with a thousand-year-old culture, which had until now been blocked by historical circumstances.”
That may be one of the most important achievements of Ukraine’s 35 years of independence: not simply to preserve its cultural identity, but to claim its place in the world on its own terms.