Contribution short abstract:

This paper focuses on the challenges faced by contemporary Ukrainian researchers of the history of Luhansk region and the reasons why some topics remain unwritten

Contribution long abstract:

The research focuses on the history of the easternmost region of Ukraine – Luhansk, which has been partially occupied since 2014 and has been fully occupied by the Russian Federation since the end of 2024. These events have drawn considerable attention to the region. There was an urgent need to reassess approaches to understanding its history, so a significant number of historical studies have been published over the past ten years. So why does the question arise that something remains silenced?

The study finds that there are two groups of reasons why a part of stories about Luhansk history remains unwritten despite the active work of Ukrainian researchers. The first is the lack of historical sources, the vast majority of which remained in the occupied territory or were taken to the Russia during the XIX – XX centuries. The second group is ethical. Soviet myth about “Russian Donbas” is developed in modern Russian historiography, especially in so-called “LPR” – the textbooks, monographs, dissertations, conferences etc. as part of propaganda have been creating the idea of Luhansk as an exclusively Russian region. But polemics with these “historians” will lead to their legitimization for the academy. Other problems are self-censorship due to fears about the fate of relatives in the occupied territory, and the extremely emotional perception of the region's history among Ukrainians. So, both sets of reasons make it difficult to study the history of Luhansk region, despite its importance for understanding the current Russian-Ukrainian war.