2004
Volume 1, Issue 1
  • E-ISSN: 2666-5050

Abstract

Abstract

The memorial complex of Savur-Mohyla was constructed in 1963 to honour the Soviet soldiers who fell during the “Great Patriotic War.” In 2014, the hill became a contested site of memory between Ukraine and the selfproclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DPR). Since August of that year, pro-Russian authorities have controlled the site, casting the Ukrainian army as the “ultimate perpetrator” and portraying the “Russian people of Donbas” as the “absolute victims” resisting Kyiv’s so-called “fascist invasion.” This paper argues that the ontological categories of “absolute victim” and “ultimate perpetrator” were neither randomly constructed nor fabricated . Instead, the occupying authorities reconstructed the Savur-Mohyla memorial to draw a direct parallel between the events of 2014 and those of 1943, when the Red Army liberated Donbas from Nazi Germany. This research qualitatively analyses a corpus of 271 articles and speeches on Savur-Mohyla produced by DPR authorities between 2014 and 2022. The objective is to demonstrate how pro-Russian authorities in occupied Donetsk used the memory of the Great Patriotic War as the means for shaping the notions of “absolute victims” and “ultimate perpetrators.”

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2026-03-01
2026-03-11
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