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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Queen Without a Court

8 December, 1998 - 00:00

That is the current state of Ukrainian literature

By Mykola Riabchuk
In Soviet times many Ukrainian authors were translated and published in
Russia as a sign of the officially propagandized "friendship of peoples"
and "flourishing fraternal cultures." Far from all of those works were
hopeless socialist realist trash.

Eight years ago Moscow party ideologues stopped regarding literary translations
of "fraternal authors" as a propaganda objective and it transpired almost
at once that this literature was something for which both publishers and
readers cared little if at all. Gogol's stereotype of "singing and dancing
Little Russia" or Belinsky's totally xenophobic vision of "cast iron headed"
Ukrainians will obviously govern Russian attitudes toward its Ukrainian
"little brother" for years to come.

However, the most dramatic consequence of postcolonial status is that
Ukrainians themselves are adopting a similar attitude toward their language
and culture. Primarily this is true of the so-called Russian-speaking Ukrainians
(but not only them).

Western researchers of postcolonialism have convincingly demonstrated
that the collective shadow of the dominant society (its subconscious negative
self-image) are projected onto the oppressed group for a long time and
exerts an absolutely ruinous influence on it, since this group begins to
identify itself with this projection because of the shadow belonging to
the dominant group which is naturally regarded by the oppressed group as
"superior." Thus, the colonially oppressed finally lose confidence in their
own qualities (the qualities of their culture and their society) and increasingly
adopt the colonizers' views.

In Ukraine, where the distinction between two major groups is basically
cultural and linguistic, not racial, the problem of the social inferiority
of the aboriginal collective farmers is solved (or at least cushioned)
in a manner unthinkable in Africa or America: by passing for white; in
other words, by discarding the "lower" Ukrainian language and adopting
the "higher" Russian one. As a result we have Russification and, consequently,
the continuous cultural creolization of our Ukrainian aborigines, contrary
to our formal independence and even recognition of Ukrainian as the sole
official language.

As a rule, converted aborigines are ashamed of their autochthonous background
(e.g., Ukrainian-speaking parents) and even less than Russians are inclined
to show any interest to their native culture, which they consider inferior.
And so even very good Ukrainian books, magazines (plays, movies, cassettes)
are not in demand in "Ukrainian" cities, whereas third-rate Moscow mass
culture (not even US products, which really are of much better quality)
are happily consumed by the gullible aborigines. On the cultural plane,
Ukraine is still "Little Russia," meaning a primitive supplier of cultural
raw materials and passive consumer of ready-made (mostly used, second-rate,
and obsolete) cultural products supplied by the Center.

Simultaneously, polls show that politically the Ukrainian people is
increasingly inclined to identify themselves more with Ukraine and less
with Russia and the USSR. Whether this political Ukrainization will ever
become cultural is hard to tell. At any rate, Ukrainian culture is still
largely in a situation like one in a parable recounted by Yevhen Sverstiuk:
"They don't want to play the Queen," an actress explained and broke down
weeping. She played the role well, but her partners could not create an
atmosphere in which her lines and gestures would make any sense.

For so long as Ukrainian culture plays the Queen without a court, without
props, and actually without an audience, all talk about a Ukrainian Marquez,
Agatha Christie, Nobel winners, and bestsellers sounds naive at best.

Files of The Day

  Mykola RIABCHUK
- publicist, translator, literary critic. Author of books of verse
and criticism; numerous articles included in Ukrainian and foreign collections,
magazines, and newspapers; worked for the journals Vsesvit (Universe)
and Suchasnist (The Contemporary). Currently a columnist on culture
with The Day; managing editor of Krytyka (Critique).

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