War and ‘museum front’ in a digital era: The Ukrainian War Museum during the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

Based on the extensive literature on the digital transformation of museums, this article explores how war museums can effectively use online media to fulfil their functions related to remembering, interpreting and debating war. The author focuses primarily on the context of ongoing armed conflict as war museums engage in a struggle, shaping, mobilizing and unifying narrative to support the war effort. The main part of the article is an analysis of the online activities of the Kyiv Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War during the first months of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The author analyses the online exhibitions, online projects and content of the official Museum’s Facebook profile in order to explain how the War Museum uses its digital online resources to inform the local population and the international communities about the Russian aggression against Ukraine, and mobilize them to support the war effort.

Introduction

Understanding war is the business and responsibility of an informed citizen, as Winter (2012: 150) claims, and museums remain an essential space for mediating the war experience and shaping meanings about what war is and the nature of its effects. War museums, at least since the First World War, have played a unique role in remembering, interpreting and debating war. They collect, study and display conflict-related tangible and intangible heritage to narrate and explain war experience. These institutions can be sites where moral questions about sacrifice, courage, heroism, nationhood and peace are raised. Nevertheless, they can also perpetuate nationalist, exclusionary narratives and legitimize violent conflicts (Hill, 2021; Winter, 2012). That is why their careful and critical examination, considering the contemporary digital transformation, is so important.

The ‘digital revolution’ in museums has been eagerly taken up by researchers in the fields of museum studies, communication and media studies, as well as museum professionals (Bautista, 2013; Marini and Agostino, 2021; Parry, 2010; Van den Akker and Legêne, 2016), also in areas of memorial museums related to traumatic events (Manca, 2021; Walden, 2019, 2022). Dynamically developing research tracking the relationship between digital media, war and memory shows that new technologies radically change how war and its participants are perceived, remembered and commemorated (Hoskins, 2014; Kuntsman, 2010; Makhortykh, 2020; Makhortykh and Bastian, 2022). However, studies of the impact of new information and communication technology on shaping public understanding of war in war-related museums are lacking. Also, the debate about the changing function of war museums and the representations they create rarely touches on how these institutions use digital technologies and social media (Jaeger, 2020; Raths, 2014; Van der Pols, 2014; Winter, 2012).

Therefore, in the first part of the article, the extensive literature on the digital transformation of museums will be briefly discussed in order to answer the question of how digital and social media help to fulfil the socially sensitive mission of a war museum. As will be shown, the growing hyperconnectivity encouraging decentralized, networked and participatory communication changes the identity of war museums, leading to their greater humanization (Marini and Agostino, 2021; Walden, 2022). However, sharing authority in creating war narratives remains challenging as these institutions remain heavily politicized and the representations they create are never naive and neutral (Winter, 2012).

This applies in particular to cases in which war museums operate in the conditions of an ongoing armed conflict. The existing literature on the subject mainly concerns the total wars of the 20th century (Hill, 2021; Pearson and Keene, 2017). Although individual studies focus on more contemporary contexts (Bounia and Stylianou-Lambert, 2013; Mendel and Steinberg, 2011), they do not address the weaponization of online media, which is crucial in contemporary warfare. Digital transformation creates a ‘new ecology of war’ related to, among other aspects, real-time memorialization and a wide range of actors who, by seeking personalized information and reacting immediately to events, participate in the conflict (Ford and Hoskins, 2022; Makhortykh and Bastian, 2022; Merrin and Hoskins, 2020). The objective of this study is to answer the question of how war museums navigate in these changed conditions.

The inspiration for taking up this topic was insufficient research on this subject and the observation of the impressive digitally-driven ‘museum front’, in which Ukrainian museums joined the resistance against Russian aggression. On 24 February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, astonishing international opinion with its brutality against civilians and the way it targeted schools, hospitals, train stations, theatres, museums and places of worship. From the very first days of the war, Ukrainian museums took up activities related to protecting cultural heritage and documenting cultural crimes. As could be seen in earlier conflicts in Iraq and Syria, digital solutions enable the reconstruction of endangered cultural heritage and the rapid collection of documentation regarding damaged cultural assets. ¹

At the same time, some Ukrainian museums have directly joined the war efforts, creating a mobilizing and integrating narrative to support the Ukrainian army and society in the fight, and in order to obtain international aid. When the possibility of on-site interaction with visitors was strictly limited because of the war, online media became the key to organizing and sustaining this resistance, enabling instant reaction and global reach, and using a visually and emotionally saturated message. The Kyiv Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War (War Museum) has become the main centre of this ‘museum front’ by quickly organizing online exhibitions on the unfolding conflict and using its online media to communicate with the public.

This study of the Ukrainian War Museum’s online activities during the Russian invasion aims to answer the following research questions: (1) What kind of content did the War Museum publish via its website and Facebook profile during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and (2) How did the War Museum use its digital online resources to fulfil wartime functions such as giving information about the war and acquiring domestic and international support? For this purpose, a qualitative approach was applied with the content analysis of the Museum’s official website and social media sites. It was helpful to refer to digital discourse analysis developed by Recuber (2017: 50) to analyse ‘how social life is made meaningful online’. Analysing online narratives produced by the War Museum, I focused both on how meaning is produced through digital texts and how ‘these texts might reflect larger social and cultural forces’ (p. 57).

First, I examined the textual and visual content of the Ukrainian and English versions of the Museum website between February and September 2022. For the analysis, I chose content related to the ongoing Russian invasion, focusing on the news subpage, online exhibitions and projects. I also explored the content of the Museum’s social network sites, focusing on Facebook, where I analysed all posts regarding the activities of the Museum in connection with the ongoing war in the same period. Much less attention was devoted to how virtual visitors interacted with the content posted on social media through comments and non-verbal forms of interaction. Next, referring to the theoretical reflection on the wartime functions of war museums, I analysed the manually collected materials to identify how the Ukrainian War Museum used online media during the Russian invasion. The interpretation and contextualization of digital content were enhanced by data from ethnographic and netnographic research conducted at the War Museum in 2018 and 2019.

War and museum in the digital era

Digital transformation in museums, participatory culture and the connective turn

Digital culture, permeating many spheres of contemporary life, has also influenced museum institutions. New information and communication technology affects how museum artefacts are collected, displayed, studied and communicated. On-site solutions, such as self-service information kiosks with access to archives and additional photos and videos, interactive displays and tablet audio tours enhance the connection between the visitor and museum exhibits, making the museum experience more interactive and focused on creating meaning, not just its passive reception (Marini and Agostino, 2021).

Digital technologies also enhance and extend the museum experience and function outside the museum buildings. Museums go online, using increasingly feature-rich and interactive websites and social network sites, especially the most popular ones such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. Digital activities have become especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying lockdowns. With in-person visits impossible, many museums used websites and social media to communicate with the public, attract new audiences, display their collections, and continue research and education projects (Samaroudi et al., 2020).

Both theoreticians and museum practitioners note at the same time that using new information and communication technology promotes new relationships between visitors and museums (Drotner and Schrøder, 2013; Laws, 2015; Manca, 2021; Van den Akker and Legêne, 2016). In a digital culture, as Bautista (2013: 27) notes, museums work with rather than for their community. Museums share authority and power with visitors, enabling them to co-create meaning and influence museum displays and representations. Social media is essential here since it enables direct, mass and non-hierarchical communication with diverse audiences. Through social network sites, visitors can ask questions and provide feedback on exhibitions, programming and events, and the museum can provide a quick and publicly visible answer.

Thus, new technologies facilitate the democratization of the museum space and the extension of its access, inclusiveness, responsiveness and transparency (Wong, 2011: 98). The increasing involvement of museums in participatory culture makes these institutions more than merely physical places where artefacts are collected, studied and displayed. Online media promote museums as platforms for sharing, expression and dialogue where visitors have the option to participate by selecting the content they wish to view and when and how they wish to share it (Stein, 2012).

The technology-driven shift from a curatorial perspective to a visitor-centred approach is particularly interesting in museums that create representations and understandings of the past. For Hoskins (2018), the ‘connective turn’ related to the development of Web 2.0 reality liberated memory from the traditional bounds of the spatial archive and distributed it in an increasingly dispersed mediatized way, which resulted in a multimodal hypernarrative. In addition, hyperconnectivity encouraging decentralized, networked and participatory communication shapes new memory ecologies, and new forms of commemoration (Hoskins and Holdsworth, 2015). These changes affect how museums influence the public understanding of past events, as recent studies have indicated (Manca, 2021; Manca et al., 2022). This also applies to war museums, which engage actively with digital technologies to maintain their leading role in remembering, interpreting and debating war.

Humanizing war museums in the digital era

The origins of war museums are related to the 19th-century royal armouries and collections of war trophies that dynasties or nation-states had gathered. During the era of the world wars in the 20th century, the central mission of war museums expanded to include honouring collective and individual sacrifice, and commemorating war dead. However, in late 20th-century Europe, they began to focus more on the social history of war and include the commemoration of non-combatant victims. The growing focus on the human impact of war allowed museums to critically reflect on previous representations of war and create narratives that question the view of war through the prism of the army, nation, patriotism and sacrifice. In addition, many leading war museums have engaged in educational activities, taking responsibility for shaping moral attitudes and values that would help avoid wars in the future (Duffy, 2022). ²

War museums are increasingly leveraging both onsite digital technologies and online media to create engaging, audience-grabbing exhibitions, advertise museum collections and increase their audience, including among young people (Bautista, 2013: 5). Digital solutions are radically changing the way war-related objects are displayed and communicated. Museums can use displays with photos and short videos, interactive maps and visualizations, and even hybrid or virtual reality technologies to enhance exhibits. Moreover, through visual materials and podcasts on social network sites and museum websites, it is possible to provide additional information for those who want to deepen their knowledge or cannot visit the museum in person. These solutions, unprecedentedly, allow museums to extend the realistic display of war experiences and thus increase understanding of conflict’s impact on human life, society and nature.

Digital media enable immersion in an intense and emotional experience, which may cause identification with participants of past and ongoing conflicts, and even encourage empathy for those who suffer violence and grief. Similarly, materials containing testimonies and personal stories help to show the human face of war seen not only through the eyes of soldiers but also civilian participants and victims (Parry and Thumim, 2016). In this sense, the physical and virtual space of the museum can lead visitors to ‘introspectively turn towards their own subjectivity and with that to reflect on their own ethical responsibility’ (Walden, 2019: 150).

Furthermore, new communication technologies help fulfil the ethical mission of democratization, and greater inclusiveness and accessibility of museum collections (Wong, 2011). Today, war museums are places for generating and sharing collective memory regarding armed conflicts, but they are also places where the memory of individuals regarding their war experiences is stored (see Manca, 2021). Online media, on the one hand, can facilitate contact with people who want to donate their memories or artefacts to the museum (Parry and Thumim, 2016) and, on the other hand, thanks to digital technologies, war museums can make their archives and collections available in a more accessible and inclusive way, and also disseminate new materials obtained from the public.

The use of facilities such as self-service kiosks or tablets, where people can search for information, favours a participatory culture in which visitors can actively select and share interesting information. In addition, by using the elements of interactivity and social media, museums encourage the public to comment on the exhibition and reflect critically on the phenomenon of war and specific wars (Hoskins and Holdsworth, 2015; Van der Pols, 2014). Thanks to this, visitors become aware that the interpretation of armed conflicts includes many different voices and meanings, and the boundaries between ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ are not always obvious. The ability to share memories and experiences of war and museum collections reinforces a ‘visitor-as-curator’ model, and breaks down the traditional relationship of power and knowledge within the museum. Social networks create a unique space for museum staff to share their experience of war-related objects and the challenges of representing conflict. Facilitating visitors’ understanding of creating an exhibition is conducive to sharing authority with the public.

Museums’ social media can also connect virtual communities where participants share knowledge and memories, creating new, more participatory ecologies of memory (Manca, 2021). For example, meetings with various types of experts or with participants and witnesses of wars can have an educational function, allowing for the contextualization of on-site exhibitions and providing new information. In addition, digital and online technologies create new opportunities for communities of soldiers, veterans and families of war dead for whom war museums are often a place for rituals commemorating and celebrating soldiers’ sacrifice and service. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for virtual rituals became important and museums seemed to take advantage of this situation to remain an essential commemoration space (see Manca et al., 2022).

Challenges of the connective turn within war museums

Despite many war museums engaging enthusiastically with digital technologies, this does not automatically mean abandoning the authoritative approach to creating war narratives. As research of memorial museums, compiled in a volume edited by Walden (2022: 39), suggests, ‘the “formalized, institutionalized, regimented” memory culture is still very much present in the realm of memorial museum practice, despite the “connective turn”.’ The way memorial museums engage with digital media points to the need to maintain control over the narrative in the name of the ‘never again’ ethic and to create a one-track experience promoting reconciliation and condemning violence. Thus, museums retain their position as gatekeepers and use online media, including platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, to show their authority and expertise (Walden, 2022: 47).

The challenges of the transition from the ‘era of the witness’ to the ‘era of the user’ (Manca et al., 2022) are also characteristic of war museums. Museums devoted to national history, both its moments of glory and its suffering and decline, remain an important national project and their narrative is often controlled by the state (Olzacka, 2021). In particular, state-funded museums with ‘national’ status are essential from the point of view of state history and identity politics. In addition, war museums often retain their memorial functions in the 21st century as a space where the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for their nation is remembered and celebrated. Thus, stimulating critical and independent thinking, and abandoning the ‘official’ version of history for many war museums accustomed to celebrating heroic national deeds can be challenging (Raths, 2014; Winter, 2012).

Although the connective turn brought a fundamental shift in how past and contemporary conflicts are witnessed, remembered and commemorated (Boichak and Hoskins, 2022; Kuntsman, 2010), the traditional wartime narratives of national sacrifice and patriotism, and encouraging support for the armed forces were not automatically eradicated. A number of studies (e.g. Danilova, 2015; Makhortykh, 2020) have shown that virtual war memorials and digitally driven war commemorations can constitute a democratic space, allowing ordinary citizens to manifest their disagreement with official state narratives and question the ambivalent context of many conflicts. However, they may also sustain mainstream framing and even foster the spread of nationalist sentiments.

Similarly, as recent research of contemporary museums devoted to the history of the Second World War has shown, these institutions often strengthen nation-centric narratives and patriotic education (Jaeger, 2020), which may be reinforced by modern digital solutions. This is especially true of up-to-date museums in Eastern Europe, where the experiences and legacy of the Second World War have been a central building block in creating new, post-Soviet national identities (Fedor, 2015: 243; Ukielski, 2021). Unlike Western Europe, where war commemoration is focused not on the heroization of soldiers but on mourning all war victims, some post-Soviet countries still maintain the cult of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, and the museum narrative is permeated with heroic stories about the Red Army (Jaeger, 2020: 25; Janeke, 2013). However, the tendency to maintain an authoritative and didactic narrative is also present in museums that no longer emphasize ‘national dedication’ but emphasize military professionalism, courage and endurance of service personnel, as shown by the example of a modern, digitally supported museum project dedicated to operations in Afghanistan at the British Imperial War Museum (Parry and Thumim, 2016).

War museums go to war

The need to control the war narrative is critical during an armed conflict, when the legitimacy of the state’s actions and the armed forces is crucial. The existing literature on the wartime function of museums, mainly limited to the wars of the 20th century, clearly shows that the activities of museums during armed conflict could encourage ‘emotional, physical, and financial commitment’ (Wellington, 2019: 740) to the war across the war societies involved. Many museums were drawn into the war effort during the Second World War, ‘useful for inculcating values, improving morale, and encouraging the vision of a certain post-war future’ (Hill, 2021: 6; Pearson and Keene, 2017).

As noted by Hill (2021: 6), ‘By the Second World War, though, and at least across Europe, museums’ relationship with war propaganda became more difficult.’ In the post-war Western world, museums, including war museums, avoid creating narratives that support war and create antagonisms between states and societies living peacefully within the Euro-Atlantic community (Duffy, 2022). At the same time, as shown by the examples of contemporary museums operating in societies that are experiencing or have recently experienced an armed conflict, these institutions remain an essential space for legitimizing war and mobilizing for the war effort (Bounia and Stylianou-Lambert, 2013; Mendel and Steinberg, 2011). As in the past, national and war-related museums, in particular, can shape narratives about the continuity and importance of the national armed struggle, legitimize the authorities and the army, create the image of the enemy and mobilize society on the ‘home front’. Additionally, exhibitions can influence the international community’s public opinion, perpetuating the international battle over legitimization.

In the digital era, war is also waged with digital information and images using websites, social media and communication applications (Ford and Hoskins, 2022; Merrin and Hoskins, 2020). Hence, museums can also use those digital technologies to create a mobilizing and supportive wartime narrative, as will be shown in the next part of the article.

‘Museum front’ in the Russian–Ukrainian war

The Russian war against Ukraine did not start in 2022 but eight years earlier, with the Russian invasion of Crimea in March 2014. Consistently denying their actions, the Russians annexed the peninsula and supported the uprisings of the separatists from the eastern regions of the country who created ‘independent’ Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics. Russia’s actions against Ukraine are referred to as a ‘hybrid war’, which entails a fusion of conventional as well as unconventional instruments of power and tools of subversion (Malyarenko, 2016). The Russian government skilfully used its cultural and media industries to conduct disinformation campaigns, and shape local and international public opinion (Kuzio, 2020).

Ukraine’s response to Russia’s hybrid hostile actions was to launch a military ‘anti-terrorist operation’ against the separatist people’s republics in April 2014, but also activities aimed at ensuring information and cultural security. Counteracting Russian disinformation and maintaining the unity of society have been included among the priority tasks in the security sphere. ³ Exhibitions and museum projects have become essential tools for creating and promoting Ukrainian-centric narratives, strengthening the sense of national belonging and loyalty to the Ukrainian state. At the beginning of 2015, the current director of the Kyiv War Museum, Savchuk (2015), wrote about the ‘museum front’. On that front, museums should fight to protect Ukrainian cultural heritage in difficult moments of conflict with Russia and pro-Russian separatists, and shape appropriate society attitudes towards Ukrainian culture and the state.

The newest museum projects devoted to the Russian–Ukrainian war, as I have shown Olzacka (2021), played a unique role in consolidating the national community in war-torn Ukraine. One is the ‘Ukrainian East’ project in the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War in Kyiv. ⁴ The Kyiv War Museum is a special place for Ukrainians. The museum and the surrounding memorial complex were opened on 9 May 1981 as a semi-sacred space to celebrate the Soviet Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. This place’s monumental architecture and pathos were to celebrate the strength, courage and sacrifice of those who gave their health and lives for this victory. Since 2014, the War Museum, one of the most frequently visited Ukrainian museums, has become a vital instrument for giving information about the ongoing warfare in the east of the country and mobilizing for further support for the war effort (Demel 2019; Olzacka, 2021). Furthermore, it was emphasized in the latest edition of the Museum’s statute that its mission includes ‘national and patriotic education, attachment of citizens to their historical and cultural heritage, protection of civil consent and consolidation of society’ (War Museum, 2020).

In addition to traditional exhibitions, the Museum fulfils its mission through activities in the virtual space. The War Museum is one of the pioneers of using new information and communication technologies among Ukrainian institutions of this type. The Museum tries to follow the paths of modern museology in expanding the transparency and accessibility of its collections, involvement in educational activities, and introducing modern digital solutions such as online exhibitions and interactive multimedia projects. Activities in the field of digitization were accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which also caused temporary lockdowns of cultural institutions in Ukraine. Since 2020, the ‘online museum’ has been operating on the Museum’s website, offering the possibility of virtual tours as well as access to online exhibitions. The Museum’s website also makes available books and video materials, including an extensive collection of recordings of witnesses of history, animations and podcasts.

The media created by the Museum are also posted on YouTube and Instagram. Since 2016, the Museum has been actively communicating with the public, mainly in Ukrainian, using official Twitter and Facebook accounts. In 2018, a separate Facebook profile, ‘Ukrainian East’, was created, dedicated entirely to the Museum’s activity related to commemorating the events of the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian war. Although these profiles do not have numerous followers, ⁵ the posts on the Museum’s official Facebook profile are popular among the Museum’s virtual community, as evidenced by the number of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’.

Online Museum activities during the Russian invasion (2022)

Information about the current Museum’s activities and maintaining contact with the public

From the first days of the Russian full-scale invasion, the team of the Kyiv War Museum joined the fight, which was communicated via online media. News posted on the website and social network sites gave information that, during the capital defence in February and March 2022, Museum employees wove camouflage nets, organized collections of medicines and equipment, and prepared meals and drinks for territorial defence units (War Museum, 2022a). At the same time, Museum work did not even stop for a moment. The most important mission of the Museum, as declared by its employees, has become ‘collecting, storing and presenting to the public the history and artefacts of the Russian–Ukrainian war’ (War Museum, 2022b). Collecting new exhibits has also begun. In early April 2022, when Russian troops left the vicinity of Kyiv, Museum employees began field trips to ruined towns and villages, including Irpin, Bucha and Borodianka. ‘Accompanied by the military and with unprecedented security measures, the Museum team led by director Yuriy Savchuk was one of the first to set foot on the razed land of once thriving villages’ reads an emotional post on the Museum’s website. In addition to objects and photographs, the stories of witnesses and participants of the events began to be collected.

The collected photographs, artefacts and stories made it possible to create a unique on-site exhibition, Ukraine–Crucifixion, in an extremely short time. The exhibition was available onsite for visitors from 8 May 2022. On that day, the War Museum resumed its ‘normal’ functioning. However, new information appeared on the website: ‘in case of an air siren, the entrance of new visitors to the exposition will be stopped’, and ‘visitors to the Memorial can go to the shelter with seats and water available’. In fact, the first day of the exhibition was interrupted by seven air sirens (Prykhod′ko, 2022). During wartime, the exhibition is visited mainly by Kyivans, domestic and foreign journalists, and foreign delegations. That is why the Museum maintains contact with traditional media and uses its own online resources to inform the public about activities organized around the exhibition.

The photos and video materials posted online allow those unable to visit the exhibition to familiarize themselves with its content. As with previous exhibitions of the ‘Ukrainian East’ project, through photos and short videos posted online, Museum employees indicated how a new exhibition was created and assembled. As a result, the audience could directly see the challenges of a museologist’s work in the conditions of the war. The challenges are related to the transport of objects, including heavy equipment, from areas affected by military operations, but also meetings with the families of the fallen who donate exhibits to the Museum.

In addition, online content provides information about the history of the artefacts that make up the exhibition. It helps to create a narrative in which the events are described not in a dry factual manner but through emotional stories full of personal details. For example, the eye witness stories of Russian aggression by two Ukrainian families, which form the core of the Ukraine–Crucifixion exhibition, were published on the Museum’s website and in social media with the hashtag #istoriïviǐny (#historiesofwar). The stories are available together with pictures illustrating them. ⁶ On the Museum’s YouTube profile, there are also recordings containing testimonies of civilians, including children, who suffered as a result of Russian attacks. As part of the video project entitled 37 Days of Hell, Museum employees have collected stories of people who talk ‘about the experience of surviving in difficult conditions . . . about dying in hiding, and at the same time believing in our strength and victory’. ⁷

Moreover, the Museum’s social media, according to the Museum staff, ‘has been transformed into a portal for informing and mobilizing the militant spirit’ (Facebook post of 10 March 2022). On the Facebook profile, addressing mainly the Ukrainian-speaking public, the Museum publishes posts mobilizing people to fight, illustrated with patriotic graphics, poems and artistic works from the first days of the Russian invasion. Many posts also concern the destruction and cultural crimes committed by the Russians and information about the support flowing to Ukraine from around the world. The public often reacts to these posts with emoticons – expressing solidarity, sadness, or anger. Thus, digital technologies not only enable the Museum to connect with its visitors but also make it a space where visitors can express and publicize their emotions related to the Russian invasion.

Chronicles of war online – stay informed and act

The Museum has also prepared special online exhibitions and projects in two similar Ukrainian and English versions, making them more accessible to a broader audience. The online exhibition Kyiv: One-Day Report. March 8, 2022, is available through the Museum’s YouTube profile, and takes the form of a short, less than 5-minute video. ⁸ It contains photos ‘taken at the Kyiv railway station, checkpoints, in the roads and streets blocked by the barricades, residential areas, near the destroyed buildings’ by Museum employees in March 2022 during the military operations on the streets of Kyiv. The material also contains a short description of the situation and a quote from the speech by Vitali Klitschko, the Mayor of Kyiv, clearly a mobilizing one:

Today, Kyiv is, without exaggeration, the outpost of freedom and security of the whole Europe. Russia is rushing to the heart of Ukraine, the capital of our state. It attacks Kyiv. But we will never give up! We stand! Ukrainians have proved to the world they will fight for their land and their freedom!

The second exhibition, Look! Mariupol, is available as a subpage on the Museum’s website. ⁹ It is divided into four parts – two of them make reference to a collection of photos, and the two remaining ones to a text description. The exhibition consists of 42 photos taken by journalist Vyacheslav Tverdohlib, a Mariupol native who lived in basements during the blockade. Despite the risks, the photographer, who escaped the city in tragic circumstances, took all the footage himself. The description under the tab saying ‘City-martyr, city-fortress, city-hero’ explains why Mariupol had a key strategic importance in the Russian–Ukrainian war. It also presents the latest history of the city, which had already been occupied in spring 2014 by pro-Russian separatists and then liberated by Ukrainian forces. The visual material complements the comparisons made in the project description – comparisons to Warsaw in 1944 and the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2016. Raw photos show the scale of the damage by juxtaposing photos of buildings before and after the bombing.

The next tab is entitled ‘The city is destroyed yet alive.’ It is illustrated by photos of people queuing for water and food, playing music in the street and preparing to evacuate the city. One particularly telling photo shows a smiling snowman made by a girl whose mother was waiting in line for food. It shows that, despite the terror of war, Ukrainians want to live and do not give up. The effects of the humanitarian catastrophe in the city are presented on the slide with the brutal description ‘From the beginning of the siege, March 2, 2022, in the city of Mariupol the Russian hordes killed more than 22 thousand people.’ At the same time, the aim of the project is not only to inform but also to mobilize people to act. Finally, the exhibition contains an appeal to the global community, directed by the Mariupol City Council:

We ask the global community to recognize the actions of the Russian Federation in Mariupol as the genocide of the Ukrainian people. We ask the global community to unite its efforts for deblocking the international humanitarian aid for Mariupol.

The Chronicles of War project, on the other hand, does not go beyond a dry, factual description. As part of this project, from 24 February to 11 September 2022, each of the 200 days of the war was ‘counted down’. Every day, an infographic about Russian army losses with official data from the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine was posted on the Museum’s website. ¹⁰ It was supplemented with a specific description of the events at the front, the humanitarian situation and actions taken by the allies in the international arena. The description was illustrated by photos showing the destruction of Ukrainian cities, the suffering of civilians and refugees, Ukrainian combatants and losses inflicted on the enemy. The project aimed to inform the public about the ongoing warfare in a manner devoid of judgment and commentary, allowing for the creation of an objective narrative.

It contrasts with the language that Museum staff use to contact Ukrainian visitors through social media. For example, in the Chronicles of War project, the description giving information about the events of the eighth day of the Russian aggression, 3 March 2022, is dry and informative:

The goal of the Russians was the destruction of Kharkiv. The enemy was also hitting transformer substations and city infrastructure. At night, the Russians launched an air strike on the town of Izyum in the Kharkiv region. The bombing killed at least eight people, two of them were children.

On the same day, a Ukrainian-language post appeared on the Museum’s Facebook profile: ‘The enemy turns beautiful Kharkiv into ruins. These photos prove that Russia is today’s Hitler’s Reich.’ Emotional language makes it easier to build an image of the enemy as merciless and cruel, as well as to portray Russians as the new ‘Nazis’ and the Ukrainians as their innocent victims.

Never again? Weaponizing history

In the conditions of the ongoing war, the Museum uses the memory and heritage of past atrocities, giving them a new integrating and mobilizing potential. The online project, ‘Parallels’, is a clear example. It started on the Museum’s official Facebook profile less than a week after the beginning of the Russian invasion and took the form available through the Museum’s website on 18 April 2022. ¹¹ The project consists of 18 sets of 2 photos, which have been given a common name – one comes from the Museum’s collection and presents the events of the Second World War, and the other represents the ongoing war. As we read in the emotional description of the exhibition:

The terrible deja vu. The horrible mimicry of war. The images of the past that were not meant to return! They came to life. This happens. Right now. To us. This is real. The uncertain and fragile understanding of the future.

The parallels presented in the project are shocking. The set entitled Crimes presents two photos of abandoned, dirty children’s shoes with the captions ‘Personal belongings of the Jews murdered by the Nazis in the Babyn Yar. Kyiv. 1941’, and ‘The shoe of a one-year-old child killed by the Russian missile attack in Malyn. Zhytomyr region, 2022.’ In the set entitled Victims, we can see two photos of bodies abandoned on the side of the road with the captions ‘In the streets of Nazi-occupied Kyiv. 1941’, and ‘In the streets of Bucha. 2022’. However, the project aims to show not only the suffering but also the courage of Ukrainians and their will to fight. In the Revenge set, people can see two photos of rockets signed ‘For Ukraine’, one dated 1943 and the other 2022, and in the Love set, the photos of two couples in military uniforms, one from Volhynia from the 1940s, and the other from Kyiv in 2022.

The project is based primarily on visual material, using very sparing verbal descriptions. The strength of its mobilizing message lies in the awareness that the events we learned in history lessons as ‘unimaginable evil’ have become a fact again. Despite the hope that the atrocities of war will never happen again, and that memory and moral education may stop humanity from atrocities and genocide, Ukrainians again feel ‘fear, uncertainty, despair, anger, and exhaustion’, as one can read in the project description.

Virtual commemoration

The Museum’s Facebook profile has also become a place to honour and commemorate new Ukrainian heroes. This is achieved by posts devoted to soldiers honoured with the highest state award, the title of a ‘Hero of Ukraine’. Also, as in the case of previous activities on the ‘Ukrainian East’ sub-page, posts commemorating the days of fallen soldiers’ birth and death are occasionally published. They constitute a form of celebration and ‘heroization’ for those who were somehow connected with the Museum’s virtual community, e.g. Museum employees and supporters, soldiers, and volunteers involved in creating exhibitions.

Moreover, from 16 March to 30 September 2022, the Museum voluntarily implemented the tasks resulting from the Decree of the President of Ukraine No. 143/2022, ‘On a nationwide minute of silence for those killed as a result of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine’. According to the Decree, all Ukrainian mass media, state administration, diplomacy and educational institutions should implement a minute of silence at 9 am to honour compatriots who died as a result of the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. To commemorate the fallen soldiers and civilians, the Museum published a daily post marked with the hashtag #khvylynamovchannia (#oneminuteofsilence), accompanied by occasional graphics or video material. This form of digital commemoration was not only a way of honouring the fallen but also consolidating the online Museum community. The public reacted to these posts with emoticons, primarily expressing sadness and solidarity, which proves that new technologies used by the Museum enabled the expression of mourning to be shared publicly via the Museum’s social media.

Conclusions

Today, the new ecology of war related to digital connectivity, the explosion of information and real-time memorialization (Boichak and Hoskins, 2022) means that war museums operate in a wholly new and hitherto unknown environment when creating representations of ongoing conflicts. As Hoskins and Holdsworth (2015: 4) noted, this ‘new immediacy of memorialization is caught up in the politics of memory of the twenty-first century, in legitimizing or delegitimizing ongoing warfare’. An example of online activities of the Ukrainian War Museum during the Russian invasion (2022) showed how the Museum has been using online digital content to shape a narrative that legitimizes the actions of the Ukrainian government and armed forces, and mobilizes the national and global community for the war effort.

Being active online allows the Museum to connect with the public and share the results of its work when onsite collections are unavailable. The use of online media allows instant response to events and promotion of visual materials, including photos, videos and graphics, which attract the attention of visitors and affect their emotional evaluations. With their help, the Museum, for example, can emphasize and demonstrate the inhumanity and cruelty of the enemy, promote the heroism of the fighting soldiers and civilians, and commemorate and honour their effort and sacrifice. It impacts maintaining high morale and ‘fighting spirit’, as well as the international community’s involvement in helping Ukraine.

Particularly interesting is how the Museum weaponizes the memory of the Holocaust and the legacy of the Second World War. It should be noted that, from the beginning of the Russian–Ukrainian war, tropes and images from the Second World War were intensely politicized and weaponized (Vushko, 2018). The Russian authorities used it to explain Russia’s right to ‘protect’ Russians in the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine from, as the Russian propaganda puts it, Ukrainian ‘neo-Nazis’. Aggression against Ukraine was, and still is, narrated and justified as a continuation of the Great Patriotic War against fascism. Also, Ukrainian political leaders began to make sense of the events by drawing an analogy to the history of the Second World War (Klymenko, 2020; see Makhortykh and Bastian, 2022).

From the beginning of the Russian invasion, the War Museum has used its authority and knowledge to make use of history for current political and military ends through emotional language and visual material. Monitoring the English-language version of the online content means that, by seeking parallels between past atrocities and the present war, the Museum calls not only for the mobilization of Ukrainian society in order to fight -but also to stir the conscience of global public opinion. The Museum uses transnational forms of remembrance of the Holocaust, like the ‘Never Again’ motto, referring not only to a specific historical event but – more broadly – to the ethical narrative condemning the genocide, to mobilize actions facilitating the defeat and trial of Russian war criminals and the restoration of justice.

Finally, it is important to note that this study is limited mainly to the ‘level of representation’ and does not delve into the ‘level of interaction’, i.e. how virtual visitors interacted with the content posted on the Museum’s website and social media (see Makhortykh, 2020). A preliminary analysis of user reactions showed that, apart from the reaction of ‘liking’ and sharing, the content posted on the War Museum’s Facebook profile did not provoke vigorous discussions or strong comments. However, whether this results from virtual visitors maintaining the Museum narrative, self-censorship, or censorship of comments by Museum employees has not been established. Such studies would require a different methodology (see Manca et al., 2022) and would be complicated to conduct while hostilities are still ongoing.

Future research will benefit from focusing on users’ reactions to the online contents of war museums, especially when considering the participatory nature of modern wars and the role of personalized content in creating war representations and news (Boichak and Hoskins, 2022; Makhortykh and Bastian, 2022). It should also deepen the conceptualization and understanding of the challenges related to the digital transformation of war museums and focus on non-Western cultural and political contexts, which are often neglected, including those of museum studies.