A scholar in Ukrainian and Russian affairs discussed his new books exploring how Ukrainian artists have used their creations to protest the war with Russia and amplify their country’s culture at the Elliott School of International Affairs on Tuesday.
Blair Ruble, a former distinguished fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars — which President Donald Trump shuttered by executive order in March in an effort to reduce “federal bureaucracy” — said Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine inspired Ukrainian artists to use their talents to celebrate their culture and defy Russian President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on Ukrainian cultural institutions. Henry Hale, the director of the program on Ukraine and the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian studies at GW, moderated the discussion.
“These stories show the manner in which the arts and their creators have empowered Ukrainians to confront Russian aggression,” Ruble said. “Adaptable Ukrainians in every genre have kept creating, no matter what the Russians have thrown at them.”
Ruble discussed the first three volumes of his series of books “The Arts of War,” with each volume exploring one year of art and artists in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The three volumes, with a fourth coming next summer, contain over 150 essays from the war’s first three years, Ruble said.
Ruble said the essays document the response of Ukrainian artists to the war and the ways in which Ukrainians have explored their identity and country’s history and culture through the arts.
He said at every level of Ukrainian society, artists have used the war as a tool for self-expression. Ruble said puppeteers in Kiev have helped children “come to terms” with trauma from the war, street artists have spray painted Ukrainian imagery, and slogans of Russian defiance across the country and fine art museums and opera houses have continued to open their doors, despite threats of bombs and missiles daily.
“At a more universal level, these stories reveal how art endures,” Ruble said. “It’s politics and ego that are fleeting.”
Ruble said by the summer after Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian arts institutions — which initially shuttered at the onset of the war — returned to stage full-scale theater, opera and ballet productions to entertain and bring together Ukrainians facing a long war ahead.
“The existential focus on survival transformed into a culture of resistance, as everyone settled in for what looked like, and has become, a long war of attrition,” Ruble said.
Ruble said institutions like the Lviv Organ Hall, which is located in Ukraine’s west, away from the war taking place in the east, began attracting international touring musicians to play concerts for its residents to distract them from the war and encourage them to resist Russia. He said other arts institutions located closer to Ukraine’s border with Russia, like the Kharkiv Opera and Ballet, constructed full-scale auditoriums underground to stage productions safe from Russian drone and missile strikes.
“Each new production represented a statement of defiance to the Russian invasion, collectively and individually,” Ruble said.
Ruble said Ukrainian artists have also supported troops at war by visiting war zones to put on performances for morale and also made their case abroad by touring internationally in cultural fixtures, like Ukrainian ballet companies or orchestras.
“The international community is paying far more attention to Ukrainian arts, both past and present, than ever before,” Ruble said.
He said throughout the war, Ukrainian culture has become “more integrated within itself,” as Ukrainians fleeing west have mixed and combined cultures with those in the east. Ruble said the war has actually lessened divisions among Ukrainians as they become more unified against Russian invasion and share culture and art during the war.
Ruble said one of the most stark changes during the war among artists was the rejection of the Russian language in favor of Ukrainian, the language predominantly spoken across the country, especially among younger Ukrainians. He said some Ukrainian operas and orchestras have stopped performing music written by Russian composers or music with Russian lyrics, despite nearly a third of the country previously speaking Russian as its first language.
He said even plays written by Ukrainians which contain Russian characters are now preceded with warnings that they contain spoken Russian language.
“This culture has reinvigorated the Ukrainian language,” Ruble said.
Ruble said Putin has taken note of Ukraine’s seemingly increased cultural unity since the war began and has attacked cultural institutions “unrelentingly,” through both physical and psychological means. He said the Russian military in 2022 bombed Kharkiv’s opera house and concert hall and has since removed the Ukrainian language from school curriculums in its occupied territories and prevented displays of Ukrainian culture and pride in an attempt to decrease cultural unity and morale.
He said Russia’s attempts to bring down Ukrainian artists and culture has only entrenched Ukrainians more in their fight against the invasion. He said Russia’s tactics of attempting to insert its own culture into Ukraine have largely failed because they have been too “heavy handed” — attempting to enforce culture and norms Ukrainians no longer see as their own.
“All the stories I present point to a Ukrainian contemporary culture that is programmed to resist and to sustain itself in the face of Russian onslaught,” Ruble said.
