День пам’яті та перемоги над нацизмом: гідне ушанування та білі плями в історії Харкова

Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism: Worthy Commemoration and Blank Spots in Kharkiv's History
For the third year in a row, Ukraine will commemorate not the Soviet-style Victory Day historically celebrated on May 9, but the Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism in the Second World War of 1939–1945, officially designated on May 8. It would seem that the historic legislation passed on May 29, 2023, which established this new state holiday, should have inaugurated a fresh chapter in researching the theater of World War II and honoring its authentic heroes and victims. Therefore, it is highly critical to evaluate how this transition is unfolding on the ground, specifically using Kharkiv and the broader Kharkiv region as a primary case study.

Throughout the years of the ongoing full-scale Russian invasion, the number of streets in Kharkiv dedicated to the memory of anti-Nazi combatants has contracted sharply, and there is a pervasive consensus that they may soon disappear entirely from the city's topography. A rare structural immunity is enjoyed only by those streets named after the soldiers of the 1st Separate Czechoslovak Battalion. Although they did not actively participate in the immediate urban battles for Kharkiv, they achieved historic prominence due to their baptism of fire near the village of Sokolove in the modern-day Chuhuiv district. As long as the Czech Republic stands as an unyielding ally in Ukraine's current resistance against Russian aggression, the names of František Král, Antonín Sohor, Otakar Jaroš, and Ludvík Svoboda will safely endure on the map of Kharkiv.

Conversely, it remains highly uncertain how much longer streets bearing the names of Andriy Oshchepkov, Oleksiy Derevyanko, and Izrail Fisanovich will survive. The latter will most likely prove more fortunate due to his specific ethnic background, as Ukraine's contemporary leadership harbors absolutely no intention of fracturing diplomatic ties with Israel. Furthermore, I anticipate that Kharkiv will soon be stripped of Kharkiv Divisions Street (Vulytsia Kharkivskykh Dyviziy), a development that would stand as a deeply regrettable historical erasure.

Every year in February, May, or August, a journalist invariably approaches me seeking to validate theories regarding the supposedly mythical nature of the actions fought by the Shironintsi guardsmen. However, upon being confronted with the hard archival realities of the engagement on March 2, 1943, they immediately lose interest. These persistent queries do not arise in a vacuum; for some reason, this specific toponym refuses to grant peace to those fighting Soviet symbolism—though in reality, they are targeting fighters who stood against Nazism. There is also 23 Serpnya (August 23rd) Street, which practically begs for an official renaming, since historians conclusively proved back in 2013 that this calendar date bears no authentic correlation with the actual liberation of Kharkiv.

The structural devaluation of the memory of anti-Nazi combatants in Kharkiv extends far beyond street renamings: the systemic dismantling of memorial plaques, the removal of portrait busts, and the painting over of public murals actively complement the broader purge of the Soviet past. Intriguingly, the municipal administration turns a blind eye to these actions. In the immediate future, we are unlikely to witness a genuine ideological stance from the mayor regarding these events; while the war rages on, local elections remain a distant prospect. Meanwhile, the city administration could have seized the initiative to engineer a progressive municipal policy for preserving the memory of anti-Nazi fighters—an approach capable of serving as a model framework across contemporary Ukraine.

The establishment of a dedicated Museum of Kharkiv's History is today more critical than ever, particularly since counting on a institutional renaissance for the Kharkiv Historical Museum is entirely unrealistic. Founding a specialized municipal museum stands as a primary imperative for exploring the city's complex biography and, crucially, safeguarding its cultural identity at a time when the demographic composition of the population is undergoing drastic shifts. Within such a museum, a meticulously curated World War II department would be of paramount importance. Its brief would encompass compiling an exhaustive, day-by-day chronology of military events and gathering the raw written testimonies, personal memoirs, and photographic archives of Kharkiv residents who inhabited the occupied city between 1941 and 1943. Among other initiatives, it could present a modernized, post-Soviet perspective on the anti-Nazi resistance inside Kharkiv. Executing such a project requires nothing more than political will from the municipal leadership.

In point of fact, as early as 2013, I began advocating for the systematic development of historical military tourism within Kharkiv, modeled after successful frameworks in Western Europe. For international researchers exploring World War II, Kharkiv represents an extraordinary asset due to the immense strategic engagements of February–March and August 1943, which saw elite SS Panzergrenadier divisions deployed in full force. French, British, and American historians are profoundly fascinated by these operations. Naturally, they exhibited little desire to visit Ukraine when local victories were celebrated exclusively under Soviet red banners, and when the acronym "SS" triggered an ideological shock equivalent to how "NKVD" resonates with contemporary Ukrainians.

Following the conclusion of the current war and Ukraine’s potential integration into the European Union, Kharkiv could actively leverage this opportunity to pioneer military history tourism, catering to affluent foreign researchers eager to examine these iconic battlefields first-hand. Naturally, establishing this sector demands extensive ground-work that stretches far beyond basic tourism infrastructure. It requires the preservation of authentic memorial locations across Kharkiv and the wider region that faithfully reflect the specific engagements of 1943.

I do not mean a fabricated military display akin to what was formerly titled the National Memorial Complex “Marshal I. Konev Height,” known today as the National Museum of Military History of Slobozhanshchyna. There is absolutely nothing there capable of engaging an international historian. A foreign guest would find it infinitely more compelling to stand on the exact urban intersections where a tank company from the SS Panzergrenadier Division "Leibstandarte" under von Ribbentrop collided in close-quarters combat with the batteries of the Red Army's 595th Separate Anti-Tank Artillery Regiment.

Designing such authentic memorial nodes requires rigorous, original scientific research. It demands that the state actively finance deep archival investigations into these operations, rather than merely applauding publishers who churn out basic photo albums depicting city views from 1941–1943. Without direct administrative funding, the few remaining military historians capable of aggregating, parsing, and documenting urban life under World War II occupation cannot execute full-scale, authoritative research. It is precisely the comprehensive, modern, and large-scale nature of research that matters; only then will manufactured dates and mythical narratives dissolve on their own, allowing historical reality to fall into place.

Regrettably, the history faculties of Kharkiv’s premier universities will prove entirely superfluous in this process. Their academic staff remain completely detached from the cutting-edge historiography of World War II; on the rare occasions that foreign specialized volumes pass through their hands, they are processed as basic publications lacking any critical apparatus, peer-reviewed commentary, or robust reference tools. Consequently, the daily reality of occupied Kharkiv between 1941 and 1943 is still viewed primarily through the distorted prism of Soviet ideology. While isolated chapters of that era—specifically the horrors of the Holocaust—have received dedicated study, the remainder of the occupation remains a massive historical blank spot.

Scattered independent attempts to direct public attention toward daily life under the occupation have triggered severe ideological fractures within society, a direct consequence of the total lack of authoritative, state-sanctioned research that the city administration should have long since commissioned to establish definitive historical truths. Even financing the translation and reprinting of foundational studies and volumes compiled by Western European military historians would be exceptionally timely in Kharkiv today. Fresh scholarship dissecting the operations of 1943 is published in Western Europe multiple times a year, yet these books are completely absent from the city’s major public libraries. A dedicated municipal museum must maintain its own publishing department tasked with disseminating verified historical data regarding Kharkiv across all eras.

Finally, we must confront the monumental task of properly commemorating the war dead. As early as 2010, regional authorities possessed a concrete operational window to engrave newly uncovered names of fallen soldiers onto memorial steles, yet rapid shifts in political power permanently stalled the project. Why am I so deeply invested in this matter? This is not merely about honoring other nationalities drawn from the former USSR. Out of approximately half a million soldiers who perished across the Kharkiv region, at least a third—if not a full half—consist of individuals natively conscripted from these exact territories. They are our direct countrymen, ancestors, and forebears.

The military operations across the Kharkiv region were uniquely brutal and unyielding, encompassing multiple front-level and army-scale defensive and offensive campaigns where casualties routinely numbered in the tens of thousands per engagement. A massive percentage of these individuals remain classified as missing in action to this day—a tragic reality driven primarily by administrative indifference to historical memory. Sprawling mass graves exist containing the remains of several thousand soldiers, yet not a single individual surname is engraved upon their accompanying memorial steles. We see the exact same crisis within Kharkiv proper. In 2013, we formally proposed compiling an expanded, cross-referenced registry of the fallen interred at the Memorial Complex of Glory, which holds many native Kharkiv residents. Predictably, bureaucrats systematically dismiss such initiatives as inconvenient.

Left with no alternative, I was forced to drive these initiatives independently, rallying friends, colleagues, and associates. Prior to the 2022 invasion, I succeeded in publishing several specialized volumes, releasing multiple documentary films, and launching public exhibitions dissecting the Eastern Front operations within the Kharkiv region. However, the realities of the current full-scale war have entirely displaced the modest research efforts that survived up until 2022. I, alongside other independent military historians, have been forced to suspend our investigations into World War II history. While halting our historical tracking is deeply regrettable, we must acknowledge that public and institutional interest in that past war has collapsed to an absolute nadir.

Ultimately, the most vital imperative—one we continuously urge upon the Kharkiv municipal administration—is to permanently cease celebrating City Day on August 23, an entirely mythical, fabricated, and unhistorical calendar date. Yet, the city authorities offer zero response to these formal appeals. Emulating the regional capital, adjacent district centers and large community hubs—including Bohodukhiv, Nova Vodolaha, Zlatopil (formerly Pervomaiskyi), Lozova, Zachepylivka, and Zmiiv—blindly sustain this artificial tradition, linking their primary municipal holidays to unhistorical liberation dates.

Consequently, attempting to advance historically accurate timelines and preserve the authentic memory of the struggle against Nazism is exceptionally challenging today. The current war leaves no structural space for public dialogues or commemorative actions regarding a past conflict, which is increasingly perceived as secondary amid the cataclysms unfolding on the territory of contemporary Ukraine. Whether this cultural shift is justified or not is something we will only uncover when the time comes to address the mass burials of those killed and missing in our current, ongoing defense against the Russian aggressor.

“Kharkiv Fortress” is an ongoing historical series by Andriy Paramonov, a dedicated researcher of Sloboda Ukraine's history. Read the author’s full column on MediaPort.