Derussification of Ukraine as cities remove symbols and culture from Soviet era

Kharkiv is one of the cities in Ukraine eliminating traces of the country's Soviet past by removing Russian art, symbols, books and language.

Transcript

00:00 Few cities in Ukraine are making as much effort as Kharkiv, a city with a Russian-speaking

00:05 tradition to erase their past. Hundreds of streets with Soviet names have been renamed.

00:10 Dozens of monuments demolished and countless books written in Ukrainian have replaced Russian

00:15 ones on bookshelves.

00:16 "For people, it's like a psychotherapeutic act, these books perform. That is, a person

00:24 is protected by reading that there is Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian art, there is a state

00:31 Ukraine, that there are prominent artists, artists, architects, sculptors, public figures

00:39 among Ukrainians. That is, all this is about us. In fact, in order to gain this identity,

00:48 people buy these books."

00:51 Kharkiv was traditionally a majority Russian-speaking city, but the outbreak of war caused many

00:56 citizens to turn to Ukrainian.

00:58 "I would say something in Russian, but it's like something unpleasant in the mouth, like

01:05 something rotten."

01:14 After a year and a half of war, it's difficult to hold a calm debate on the use of the invader's

01:18 language.

01:19 "I don't know, people lived here with this Russian language. Sometimes it was strongly

01:24 imposed. And it happened that, by their own will, not by their own will, people spoke

01:31 Russian to a greater extent. And if we talk about the fact that it was often done by force,

01:38 the settlement of the Russian language here, I doubt that it should be used as forcibly

01:43 as it is. Then we are no different from each other."

01:47 Fueled by Russian bombs and by Ukrainian authorities, the war has accelerated a de-Russification

01:52 process that began after the fall of the Soviet Union.

01:57 "We are not afraid. We are not afraid."

02:00 (whooshing)