The executive editor of Radio Kultura, channel two of Ukrainian public radio, has no doubts: despite the war, Ukraine’s cultural legacy is stronger today than it was a year ago.
Iryna Slavinska now sees that Russia has been oppressed in the past. With the invasion, Ukrainians were reminded of “things that happened during the last centuries” and the union that emerged was “important for everyone”.
It is “culture as a uniting factor” and, also around that, Iryna believes that the production of Ukrainian artists will increase in the coming years with the production of “books, songs and different types of music”.
Now, and “very important”, it is the interest generated in other countries by Ukrainian culture, which is thus “better represented abroad”, an important step for the “Ukrainian voice” to be heard.
One of these voices in Ukrainian culture -probably the biggest of them- is Taras Shevchenko and the editorial does not forget the help that he also gave to the struggle. The poet, despite having been dead since 1861, also ended up being a protagonist in this war.
One of the videos that will go down in history is the dismantling, on the outskirts of kyiv, of a Russian propaganda poster that said: “Russia will stay here forever.”
When the Ukrainian soldiers picked it up, they found another one underneath, also with a message: “If you fight, you win.” The author of the phrase? Taras Shevchenko, “the poet”, as he calls him.
Iryna Slavinska has also advocated for a boycott of Russian authors. For example, on Radio Kultura there is no music by Tchaikovsky. It is, she defends her, “an opportunity to show, discover and listen to Ukrainian classical music.”
Over the past year, Ukrainian public radio has often broadcast from an underground shelter in the basement of a building in kyiv. Those who work there came to doubt the point of maintaining a culture radio on the air in times of war. But the certainty finally revealed itself.
“We quickly realized that people needed this type of content, listening to music and good poetry.” Ultimately, “it is one of the sources of strength” in Ukraine, since “beauty and culture are very nourishing things” that can help Ukraine “fight and win.”
Source: TSF
