Gastronomic Heritage as an Instrument of Decolonization and Resilience: the Ukrainian Experience
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 profoundly transformed everyday relations to food, endowing culinary practices with new psychological, cultural, and political meanings. What had previously functioned as routine consumption became a mechanism of emotional stabilization, identity preservation, and symbolic resistance. Drawing on the interdisciplinary framework of the philosophy of food, this article analyzes wartime Ukrainian food culture at the intersection of micro-level lived experience and macro-level global processes. Particular attention is paid to food as a carrier of memory, dignity, and community cohesion under conditions of displacement, collective trauma, and food insecurity. The study conceptualizes wartime Ukrainian gastronomy through a two-layer perspective that links individual coping strategies with global crises, including war-induced disruptions of agricultural production and food supply chains. It further examines culinary heritage as an instrument of decolonization, focusing on the revival of traditional dishes, the rejection of Soviet cultural standardization, and the international recognition of Ukrainian borshch culture by UNESCO. The article argues that contemporary Ukraine has developed a hybrid philosophy of food grounded in psychological resilience, adaptive authenticity within diaspora contexts, political-cultural resistance, and grassroots food sovereignty. Culinary practices thus emerge as a form of everyday ethics and cultural diplomacy, positioning gastronomy as a strategic resource of national identity and social sustainability during wartime.
DOI: 10.17613/p6w3g-rss83
Author: Varypaiev, Olexii
Institution: State Biotechnological University
Language: English
Subfield: Food Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7122373830
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