The war in Ukraine is often described in territorial, political or military terms. Yet beneath the drone strikes and tank offensives lies another battlefield, one that has been contested for centuries: the struggle over historical memory. For Ukraine, the defence of national identity is inseparable from the act of reclaiming her past — a past long distorted, suppressed or appropriated by imperial forces, most enduringly by the Soviet Union. Here we explore how the legacy of Soviet historical man