Freedom square in kharkiv: political articulations in 2014-2022

The article is devoted to the political history of the centre square of Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, during eight years of the 21st century, at the time of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. The architectural and spatial organization of Freedom Square is considered an important primary source of the political history of Ukraine. It recounts the city public space through the political practices prism. An approach is proposed that shifts the emphasis in the analysis of the square from monumental architecture to the system of civic values in the light of the existence of the nation. It is hypothesized that Freedom Square largely determines the identity of Ukrainians as a nation that is repulsing Russian ideology and war aggression.