THE IMAGE OF THE CITY UNDER OCCUPATION

Abstract

The article is devoted to the perception of the image of their city by the population of the temporarily occupied territories of Southern Ukraine. Using the example of Berdyansk, the author proves that local residents have a traumatic understanding of their native city as foreign, betrayed and emptied. The researcher considers the image of the city as a set of individual assessments, impressions and experiences, arising in the form of sensations and memory of past experience, closely related to spatial localization, determined by socio-cultural and historical factors. In the course of informal analysis of the content of 15 Internet sources, which contain interviews with forced migrants and those who remain in Berdyansk, it was noted that the image of the city arises in the dimensions of "past-future – current social interactions" and "visual – social spaces" . It is shown that during the occupation, the urban space from the sphere of public activity turns into a risk zone, and ordinary affairs acquire unpredictable features. It is concluded that in order to destroy the social subjectivity of the urban community, the invaders carry out a policy of urbicide, which includes the occupation of physical space, violation of privacy, the creation of an artificial carnival discourse of urban life, economic isolation and visual tricolorization. It was established that under these conditions there is a return to the social practices of the times of the communist totalitarian regime in the political and socio-economic spheres. The author proves that in this way the Russian occupiers are trying to impose their vision of the past and future, to give additional legitimacy to their power against the background of growing popular resistance and expectations of the Ukrainian army.