Ukraine might have knocked down the Lenin statues and stripped the Soviet names from the streets, but the architecture of memory still winds its way through public spaces, sometimes in contested ways, sometimes provoking protest, and sometimes settling into history and pseudohistory.

I always read the plaque; I’ll read the captions in art museums. But I usually find myself in limited company. For the most part, the plaques interpreting statues and monuments tend towards a parsimonious, narrow characterization of history. As such, plaques often fall beneath the radar, or register only enough to justify a passing glance.

That’s why I was fascinated by the consistency of attention shown to the plaque at the People’s Friendship Arch complex in Ukraine. The granite stele (shown in the photograph in profile in the background) commemorates the Pereyaslav Council. Though distant in time, the Pereyaslav Council represents a locus of competing memory narratives. In the 1654 Council, the Cossacks declared allegiance to the Russian tzar. Maps of the period show a constant ebb and flow of empires criss-crossing Ukraine. But due to its context – an event that, to Russians, represents the unification of slavic peoples under the Russian banner – the commemorative statue attracts substantial attention.

During my time in Ukraine, I visited the People’s Friendship Arch complex every weekend. I enjoyed the liveliness of the streets closed to traffic on Sundays, when families full of bounding kids would yell over the scratchy audio blasted by the omnipresent crew of hip hop dancers. I’d walk through the main plaza, which in 2014 hosted ice forts and gunfire. Now, wrought iron memorials dot the Maidan. Every so often, I encountered concrete strafed by bullets. From the main street, I’d wander through the maze of under-the-street malls serving as pedestrian underpasses. Right by the People’s Friendship Arch complex, the mall unraveled into an underpass dotted with both official murals and street memorials. Notes to martyrs of the Euromaidan, or entreaties to Russia to release Ukrainian prisoners, or simply the ubiquitous emblem and flag of Ukraine. I’d emerge, blinking, from the dark tunnel. I’d step out into the wan Ukrainian sunlight. There, near the street memorials to the war with Russia, lay steles commemorating unity, and a pair of statues commemorating friendship.

The plaque still displays the Soviet line. But Ukrainians take it upon themselves to correct the history, to dispute the version of memory promoted in this space. Ukrainians regularly spray paint the plaque. “Glory to Ukraine!” “To the independence of Ukraine!” “Our Ukraine.” On the arch above, activists have installed a crack. The rainbow connecting nations has been fractured. In lieu of removing the monument, for the moment at least, Ukraine has opted to make the confrontation visible in public space.

In this photo, I was interested in the two people walking underneath the monument, echoing the pair of sculptures commemorating Soviet friendship. On a daily basis, from defining terms to making choices about language to altering street signs and memorials, Ukrainians navigate a fraught history.

Walking through the complex, I caught snippets of both Ukrainian and Russian. A fair few people considered themselves Soviets, or Russians, caught in a country of artificial political borders. Yet people in the same demographic categories just as often expressed a profound affection for the Ukrainian state and optimism about Ukraine’s future. The sentiments expressed in these Soviet-era memorials can coexist in the minds of some Ukrainians with nationalist aspirations. The memorials are situated uneasily in collective memory, drawing attention, activism, and condemnation, but also affection. The architecture of memory retains its continuity, even as the political circumstances change the parameters for engagement with that history.

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