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The notion of decolonization writ large occupies the fields of Slavonic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies in the current context of Russia’s genocidal war on Ukraine. While certain structural and logistic aspects of coloniality are readily visible, others of an epistemic nature are more difficult to recognize. This paper focuses on the nineteenth-century and the Soviet restoration and renovation of medieval churches on the territory of Ukraine. It shows how such projects have imposed an imagined uniformity on Rus′ visual culture and have discarded as irrelevant features of difference that ‘othered’ Rus′ monuments from each other and that distinguished the early modern cultural of Ukraine from that of Russia. Specifically, the paper examines how objectified ecclesiastical structures were cleared of visible accretions and thereby excised and alienated from their immediate local contexts. The resulting restored medieval churches have played into a broader narrative of All-Russian and even All-Slavic unity and cultural uniformity. In Western academia, these churches have sustained the misnomer ‘medieval Russia’ when speaking of Rus′ history and culture. Far from being innocent, the resulting Russification of all things Eastern Slavic that prevails in western academia supports Putin’s war rhetoric.
