Bread as the Basis of Ensuring Human Life and a Symbol of Indomitability in the Conditions of Undeclared War

Author

Kalach Olena

a Ph.D. in History, a junior research fellow at the Ukrainian Ethnological Centre Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6304-5076

Bread as the Basis of Ensuring Human Life and a Symbol
of Indomitability in the Conditions of Undeclared War

Abstract

Ukrainian society is experiencing the third anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion. In fact, ten years have passed since the country is in a state of undeclared war (starting with the annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions). During this period Ukrainians have become more integral, more monolithic, found more common points of contact, united around helping not only the army, but also each other. Accordingly, new angles of research for humanitarians have been opened.

The study of traditional culture is gaining relevance. So far, many popular scientific works have been published, dedicated both to the peculiarities of Ukrainian cuisine in general (in various historical periods) and to separate dishes in particular.

The purpose of the submitted article is to consider the attitude of representatives of the Ukrainian ethnic group towards bread as a food product and to assess its value for residents of the de-occupied territories and military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in particular.

The relevance of the work is determined by the need for an immediate generalization (based on the oral historical narrations of eyewitnesses and the authoress’s own observations) of the current situation in the de-occupied settlements of Ukraine, as well as the value and worldview orientations of the representatives of various strata of the Ukrainian ethnic group under the current extraordinary conditions.

The source base of the submitted research consists mainly of the materials of recorded face-to-face interviews with eyewitnesses using a questionnaire prepared personally by the authoress in advance, data found in the Internet: messages from various news agencies, videos posted on a number of YouTube channels. They contain not only the memories of Ukrainians who have survived the occupation and experienced problems with the organization of food regime, but also offer a description of the work of bread factories or bakeries both during the occupation and now, analysis of the offered products, but also interviews with the bakers themselves, who are volunteers or internally displaced persons in various parts of Ukraine).

The research methods include general scientific and specific-historical: face-to-face interviews and oral history (during communication with respondents); analysis and synthesis (in the work with sources); generalization (to understand the real state of living conditions, value orientations, formulation of the concluding part); comparison (to consider the attitude to bread as a food product in peacetime and to emphasize its value under conditions of artificially created famine and being far from one’s native home); chronological (for presentation of material in sequential-chronological order); synchronous (during the comparative description of the analyzed issue).

The scientific novelty of the article consists in a comprehensive analysis of new statistical data, interviews, videos and informational materials regarding the unprecedented scale of the consequences of the large-scale Russian invasion on the land of independent Ukraine, both with regard to the worldview and value orientations of Ukrainians, as well as the material component.

It is noted in the conclusions, that bread becomes not only a symbol of wealth, well-being and life, but also a certain language marker, a code of national indomitability.

Keywords

volunteering, bread, palianytsia, value orientations, indomitability, victory, united society, undeclared war, artificial famine.

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