Many young Ukrainians are too isolated and anxious to imagine a future after three years of war, Robert F. Worth writes. That’s why a movement has sprung up to create new forms of social life—many of them literally underground. theatln.tc/E58zGJox
“The plight of Ukraine’s young people is a direct consequence of Russia’s effort to eradicate their national identity,” Worth writes. In a little less than four years, Russia has damaged or destroyed some 3,500 schools. This onslaught has also reduced churches and town halls to rubble, destroying “much of the physical and mental infrastructure of life for the country’s youth.”
When Worth visited the Kharkiv region in Ukraine this summer, he heard from administrators, teachers, and military officers in town after town that the isolation of Ukrainian children presents an existential threat to the country’s future. “To confront it, community members are building new institutions underground and improvising new forms of social life,” Worth writes. “Young people now spend much of their life in a subterranean world of schools, recreation centers, shelters, even malls.” In the region’s largest city, there are seven major subterranean schools, and more are being built. The resources being poured into this effort, Worth writes, “testify to the grim expectation that such facilities will be in use for many years.”
Read more about these underground communities—and what they mean for the Ukrainian adolescents who will soon be needed to defend their country’s fragile civic unity:
The Atlantic
Many young Ukrainians are too isolated and anxious to imagine a future after three years of war, Robert F. Worth writes. That’s why a movement has sprung up to create new forms of social life—many of them literally underground. theatln.tc/E58zGJox
“The plight of Ukraine’s young people is a direct consequence of Russia’s effort to eradicate their national identity,” Worth writes. In a little less than four years, Russia has damaged or destroyed some 3,500 schools. This onslaught has also reduced churches and town halls to rubble, destroying “much of the physical and mental infrastructure of life for the country’s youth.”
When Worth visited the Kharkiv region in Ukraine this summer, he heard from administrators, teachers, and military officers in town after town that the isolation of Ukrainian children presents an existential threat to the country’s future. “To confront it, community members are building new institutions underground and improvising new forms of social life,” Worth writes. “Young people now spend much of their life in a subterranean world of schools, recreation centers, shelters, even malls.” In the region’s largest city, there are seven major subterranean schools, and more are being built. The resources being poured into this effort, Worth writes, “testify to the grim expectation that such facilities will be in use for many years.”
Read more about these underground communities—and what they mean for the Ukrainian adolescents who will soon be needed to defend their country’s fragile civic unity:
📸: Jedrzej Nowicki
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