Viktor Drozdov

Viktor Drozdov

Izmail State University of the Humanities


  • Research topic:
    (De) Constructing the Past: Transformation of Public Space and Commemorative Practices in Western Ukrainian Cities during the Years of Stalinism
    Period:
    July – September 2024
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Associate Professor of the Department of History and Methods of Teaching it at Izmail State University of the Humanities, Chairman of the Danube Historical and Memorial Commission. Member of the National Union of Local History of Ukraine. In 2023, he completed his doctoral studies at Zaporizhzhia National University. He is a participant of the international research project "Ukraine-Moldova: Common Historical Memory, Lessons, and Prospects" and a grantee of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Currently, he is working on the monograph "Soviet Memory Policy in the Annexed Ukrainian Territories in 1939-1953". His research interests include the politics of memory, historical regionalism, historical urbanism, and the history of Stalinism.

During his residency at the Center for Urban History with the support of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), he plans to research the tools of Stalin's memorial policy in Western Ukrainian cities and find out its consequences for urban public space. His project offers a local perspective on Soviet memory policy during the Stalinist era as a system of methods aimed at cleansing the memorial space of symbols and artifacts that contradicted Soviet ideologies; and on constructing new memorial landscapes that reflected the official interpretation of the past. The research also aims to identify specific features of Soviet commemorative practices in the annexed territories and to find out the means of ideological control over memorial and cultural institutions in the postwar decade.