The event was attended by the authors of the book: Kateryna Lytvyn, the initiator of the expeditionary research, PhD in History; Oleksandr Shevchuk, project manager, head of the Northern Cultural Capital NGO, researchers Svitlana Makhovska; Olena Boriak, Oleksandr Vasianovych, Olha Vorobei, Anastasia Pankova, Olha Berezovska, the publication’s translator Andrii Shataliuk, and researchers from the War Museum. Tina Polek moderated the meeting.
The researchers spoke about the first days of the full-scale invasion, the siege of Chernihiv, the courageous resistance of the civilian population, and how the idea for the book came about. The publication documents the oral testimonies of residents in Chernihiv, contributing to the preservation of memory and memorialization of the events of the russian-Ukrainian war. The first expedition was carried out a month and a half after the liberation of the Chernihiv region from occupation, so the volunteer researchers managed to record "living" oral accounts that had not yet been "altered" by external information influence.
Interestingly, the book’s text preserves the authentic dialect characteristic of the region’s inhabitants as much as possible.
The publication contains 24 interviews (out of 350 recordings) with residents of the Chernihiv region who survived the occupation and isolation. The research covered three neighborhoods of Chernihiv, 25 settlements in the area, and several communities. For two years, the researchers collected audio testimonies from Horodnia, Ripky, Mykhailo-Kotsiubynske, and Chernihiv communities.
The compilers shared the details of their work on the book with the audience and online guests of the event. They emphasized that after collecting the necessary material, they began working on its decoding and compilation. Each article in the publication starts with a QR code, allowing readers to listen to an audio excerpt from the interview after scanning it.
Follow the link to watch the recorded presentation on the Museum’s YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/MTCwnh0jNyo
