Framing the present through the past: Ukrainian diaspora in France, Holodomor memory and the 2014 critical juncture

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on a rarely addressed aspect of the link between diaspora and memory construction: the use of historical analogies, i.e. the way in which the memory of a past event (the 1933 famine in Ukraine, known as the Holodomor) is used by diasporic entrepreneurs to frame current violent events (the Russian–Ukrainian conflict). Based on fieldwork conducted among the Ukrainian diaspora in France, I show that the critical juncture of 2014 was a key moment in the reinterpretation of the present through the past (and vice versa), and identify three core-framing mechanisms that construct the historical analogy: parallelism, causality and implication. This framing activity contributed to the reconstruction of the imagined Ukrainian community and its radical separation from the Russian one. More generally, the article highlights the need to understand memory and nation-building as transnational processes that are not necessarily tied to the personal histories of diasporic entrepreneurs.