Kharkiv Is a Dream

Hjørdis Clemmensen is a Danish anthropologist and writer based in Vienna, Austria, previously residing in Kyiv, Ukraine. She holds an M. Sc. in Cultural and Social Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on urban identity in Kharkiv. Hjørdis’s diverse career spans academia and the IT sector.Viktoriia Grivina holds two Master’s degrees in English, German and Cultural studies from Kharkiv and Tübingen University, and studied also in Bergamo and St Andrews. In 2020–2021, she participated in the (Un)Archving (Post)Industry Project dedicated to the photographic legacy of the Donbas. Vasylysa Shchogoleva, M. A., studied Architecture at the Hochschule Anhalt at Dessau-Roßlau (Germany) and at Kharkiv National University of Civil Engineering and Architecture. She worked as an architect both in Ukraine and Germany while developing her practice as a visual artist with a focus on art in public space. Bohdan Volynskyi is an architect and founder of the “dash!” Design School for Children in Kharkiv.

“Having spent many years working on books about the architecture of Ukraine and Kharkiv, I was pleasantly surprised to learn about this book by a team of three women: Hjørdis Clemmensen, Viktoriia Grivina, and Vasylysa Shchogoleva. Kharkiv is a unique, multi-layered city with a complex history, mostly known for its modernist architecture of the 1920s and '30s and the tragic fate it suffered under Soviet totalitarianism. During the current war, Kharkiv, or rather its destruction, has often appeared in the columns of publications worldwide. However, it would be unfair to Kharkiv and its people to be represented exclusively by glorifying myths created by Soviet authorities and the ruins caused by Russia’s neo-imperialist aggression. Kharkiv, like any other city, is much more than material space or architecture. Now, in the third year of continuous shelling and the 10th year since the beginning of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, locals are experiencing prolonged traumatization. The conflict has caused the death of thousands of Kharkiv residents, displacement, loss of homes, disruption of stable educational processes for children, and problems in health care. Yet, it has become clear that cities are not sustained by walls, stone, or reinforced concrete, but by the social bonds of their citizens. These almost invisible, yet fundamental aspects of city life guarantee its existence and resistance. This is Kharkiv. Even if the aggressor destroys all our material possessions, they cannot destroy our most precious asset—the connections between people. These connectors are not transport infrastructure, the built environment, or cultural institutions. Kharkiv residents unite and hold together something greater. Is it shared values, solidarity, self-organization, or a refusal to accept suppression of independence? I am confident that the multi-perspective view of the authors on Kharkiv’s communities, spaces of cooperation, social processes, and human connections—both with place and with other people—is the key. While it may not solve the confusing puzzle of Kharkiv's spatial history, it at least demonstrates the piercing and complex nature of its present.”—Ievgeniia Gubkina, Tutor in History and Theory, Bartlett School of Architecture, London