The Russo-Ukrainian hybrid war as portrayed through modern ukrainian literature
Open Access
Author:
Cheatle, Jordynn
Area of Honors:
Interdisciplinary in Comparative Literature & Global and International Studies
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Yuliya Ladygina, Thesis Supervisor Krista Brune, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Russia Ukraine war hybrid propaganda information circulation
Abstract:
This thesis sets out to investigate how contemporary Ukrainian literature, both fictional and non-fictional, assess the role if propaganda and circulation of information in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, highlighting its hybrid nature. By analyzing 4 novels and 3 collections of critical essays—Andrei Kurkov’s Ukraine Diaries (2015) and Grey Bees (2018), Serhii Zhadan’s The Orphanage (2017), Stanislav Aseyev’s In Isolation (2021) and The Torture Camp on Paradise Street (2023), Artem Chekh’s Absolute Zero (2020) and Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s Mondegreen (2022)—this study has established that Ukrainian writers allocate a great deal of attention to weaponization of information in their works and draw their readers’ attention to how different groups of people caught in the ongoing war encounter and process information in radically different ways. Therefore, this study is broken into three chapters separated by civilians, prisoners, and soldiers, and pays particular attention to the topics of fake news, use of language as a code for political views, and the authors call for informational literacy.
