From Kyiv to Constantinople: The Byzantine Legacy and Ukraine’s Decolonial Identity

For centuries, Moscow claimed the mantle of the Third Rome, systematically erasing Kyiv’s roleas the original heir to Byzantine civilization. This lecture reconstructs that long history of symbolic appropriation and traces how Ukraine – through monuments, military tradition, literature, and memory politics – is now reclaiming what was taken. The Russo-Ukrainian war isnot only a war of territory; it is a war over who inherits the legacy of Byzantium.

Yana Prymachenko is a historian of Ukraine and Eastern Europe specializing in Soviet history, memory politics, propaganda, and Ukrainian cultural history. A Senior Research Scholar at the Institute of History of Ukraine (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), she was displaced by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and subsequently held visiting and teaching appointments at Princeton University. She is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages at Columbia University. She is the author and co-author of numerous books and over one hundred scholarly and journalistic publications in Ukrainian and English.

Moderator: Dr. Vitaly Chernetsky (Shevchenko Scientific Society/U of Kansas)

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