The Shaping of the Calendar of State Holidays and Memorable Dates in Post-Soviet Ukraine

Abstract

The article discusses the shaping of the calendar of state holidays and memorable dates in contemporary Ukraine. I outline the stages along which the shaping of the calendar went, and examine the place of the holidays and memorable dates in the context of politics of memory. The formation of the national calendar should be necessarily viewed against the backdrop of contested historical narratives in Ukraine, and I further focus on the current state of the holiday system and the main patterns of treating the former Soviet holidays by state institutions responsible for the production of memory politics. Special attention is paid to the holidays that play an important part in generating or strengthening a myth about the origins of the modern Ukrainian state. Finally, I discuss issues related to the emergence of new calendar events having to do with the Euromaidan or recent conflicts in Crimea and the East of Ukraine, and address the importance of the Holodomor Remembrance Day as one of the key dates in terms of politics of memory in Ukraine.