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A recent event that I’m sure fully counts as culture war is the official removal in Odessa of the monument to the city’s founders, mainly Catherine the Great. The justification, which is rather easy to predict, is that Catherine was a perpetrator of Moskal imperialism who repressed Ukrainian patriots (supposedly they already existed back then), committed cultural genocide and erased Ukrainian nationhood (which obviously we’re also supposed to believe existed back then). There isn’t much to comment on this, I think (though I’ll again point out that Odessa would never have existed in the first place without Catherine), but an educated redditor was eager to point out* the curious fact that the removed monument is actually a replica erected in 2007, largely as a response to the events of the so-called Orange Revolution, as the original was removed (and supposedly destroyed) by the Soviets in 1920. So yes, it was originally removed as an imperialist relic, by powers that the Ukrainian authorities claim later perpetrated genocide specifically against Ukrainians because they were Ukrainians i.e. it was an incident between opposing factions of Ukraine deniers. This is where we’re at, which actually doesn’t surprise me that much because I believe we’ve been in a clown world for a long time.
*https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/zyccgk/catherine_the_great_statue_taken_down_in_odesa/
I am mildly interested in how the quest for Ukrainian nation building will develop my lifetime. Right now they manage to co-opt two very opposing sets of political and philosophical schools, largely due to wartime mobilisation censorship and patriotism. On the one hand the Ukrainian identity is being based on 19th/early 20th century style blood and soil rhetoric. The defenders of white Christian (even pagan) Europe against eastern orc hordes. Unspoiled real Slavs against the crypto-Tatar Muscovites. Real European Christians unlike those Eastern Orthodox peasants. On the other hand their only hope for national survival in this day and age is to tightly integrate with the “GAE”. So the Ukrainian army puts up EU flags in newly reconquered territories. Their parliament is busy rushing through gay agenda bills. Their politicians are making deals with Blackrock and learning the ropes of the WEF circuit.
But when the war ends these two stories cannot coexist for long. You cannot arm neo-nazi battalions while going through the EU integration process. You cannot outright ban one of the largest churches as well as the linguistic communities in your country and try to enter the Schengen area. It’s not for nothing that half the EU funded ads targeted to my demographic on social media has some visible minorities (ie blacks) posing as proud Europeans. The nationalist Ukrainian state, if it ever stops being such a poor corrupt shithole and enters the EU, will have to cope with millions of African/South Asian/Middle Eastern immigrants as well as the European Court of Human Rights rulings which will not tolerate the blood and soil rhetoric in practice. It’s ridiculous contradictions all over and makes me profoundly sad that so many young brave people are dying for a political project doomed to fail if it ever succeeds.
Something has to give in at some point. I don’t know what but I am not very hopeful about the results.
Ukraine is majority Orthodox. The main internal religious conflict is between the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, long considered schismatic by other Orthodox churches but currently considered canonical by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and some other local Orthodox churches, and Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), which is - as the name say - still at least formally connected to the Moscow Patriarchate and considered the only canonical church in Ukraine by a number of other Orthodox churches and in the process of being banned (not a good move in my opinion).
I'm not sure what this refers to. The Ukrainian parliament was given a petition on legalizing same-sex civil unions and Zelenskyy gave verbal support for studying the issue in August, but insofar as I've seen, this has not processed since and is still evidently considered somewhat uncertain. The war has almost certainly made Ukrainians more positive about LGBT+ affairs (unsurprising, considering how strongly Russia has counterposed itself against that issue), but it doesn't seem anything is, at least, being rushed through.
I share a bit of your concern here with respect to freedom of religion, but it's worth noting the actions of the Russian Orthodox Church (statements by Kirill, most notably) are quite relevant to the current war. It's not really a comparable situation to, say, the Vatican in WWII.
How so?
There've been reports of Russia using the Orthodox Church as a network for its spies:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/world/europe/orthodox-church-ukraine-russia.html
https://orthodoxtimes.com/orthodox-church-of-russia-acquired-properties-in-norway-next-to-military-bases-in-recent-years/
And Russian Orthodox Church was basically taken over by state during USSR and even before it was strongly supporting Russian state.
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow is also supporting Russian invasion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch_Kirill_of_Moscow#Support_for_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine,_2022
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