Russian language and culture have been among the main protagonists (and victims) of the dramatic war starting in Ukraine in 2014. The defense of Russian language and culture claimed by Russian authorities, the genocide of Russian-speakers in Donbas voiced by the separatist groups in East Ukraine, the identification of Russian language and culture as the enemy’s language for the sake of the defence of Ukrainian territorial integrity: all of these narratives have been used in the political discourse in order to frame the role and status of cultural practices as part of a full-fledged war narrative.
In this event, Marco Puleri (Department of Political and Social Sciences) and Sara Polidoro (Deparment of Interpretation and Translation) will discuss about the different faces of Russian language and culture for Ukraine with Elena Kostioukovitch, a Ukrainian Russian-language writer, essayst and translator based in Italy. She is best known for translating Umberto Eco’s major works into Russian, thus bridging Italian and Russian cultures. In her Italian-language book “Kyiv. Una Fortezza sopra l’abisso” (Kyiv. A Fortress over the Abyss, 2025), Kostioukovitch goes through the modern history of Ukraine through the lenses of her family history and her hometown, Kyiv. Among the main questions that will be at the core of the book discussion, we may mention: How Russian language and culture have developed in Ukraine in historical perspective? What does it mean today to speak and practice Russian in everyday life? How today’s Ukrainians refer to the legacy of Russian language and culture in times of war?
The event will be held in Italian, with English-language translation.
