Key figures in the history of Ukraine and Russia in the eyes of Taras Shevchenko

Taras Shevchenko

If you imagine world history as a colossal mosaic, your eye will quickly catch some special, symbolic, even myth-making figures whom the public usually senses or fancies rather than has any precise knowledge of. What I mean here is not a system of facts but a system of masks and historical clichОs which, as the generations follow one another, in mass awareness increasingly replace the real-life characters of the past with all their often unattractive, to put it mildly, deeds and personal traits. This applies to a still greater degree to those so-called creators of history, who made a tremendous impact on the paths of development of various peoples, for this is a question of national honor, freedom, and self-respect. Here these sacred stereotypes and untouchable masks also constitute part of a state’s prestige. And one must have the audacity and creative scale of a genius to see through and reveal to the people an age-old truth. Taras Shevchenko was such a person.

Figures significant and eternally elevated to the pedestal of the centuries in Russian and Ukrainian history, such as, of course, Peter I, Catherine II, and to some extent Bohdan Khmelnytsky, had already been fully pointed out and canonized by Shevchenko’s time. It was difficult to imagine Peter in any gaise other than that portrayed in Aleksandr Pushkin’s Poltava (1828),

“His eyes are shining,
His face is terrible,
His movements are swift,
He is superb,
He is like the wrath of God.”

Or,

“He is proud and clear,
And his looks are full of glory!”

And even Pushkin’s Bronze Horseman, a work of genius, where the majestic imperial ruler is ruthlessly opposed to the defenseless little man, still remains part of the same tradition: Peter is grandiose.

And now, dear reader, let us try to fathom the grandeur of Shevchenko’s creative exploit, for he was by far the first (starting with his 1844 poem Dream ) to paint the despot emperor in the colors of, first of all, sarcasm, irony, and disgust. Let us read again the classic lines about the monument to Peter (referred to as the Bronze Horseman by Pushkin) in the Ukrainian Bard’s interpretation; although they are well- known, we think it would be good for a true Ukrainian patriot to refresh them in memory,

“A horse is flying,
Breaking the rock with its hooves!
And on the horse sits a fellow,
Wearing something like a robe,
With kind of a leaf, instead of a hat, on his head.
The horse is rampant, just about to leap over the river.
And he reaches out, as if to seize the whole world.
Who on earth is he?”

Then the poet reads the famous caption inscribed by Catherine II’s order in 1783 on Etienne Falconet’s monument, “To First from the Second.”

What still strikes the reader is Shevchenko’s reaction, the cool and calculated hatred, with which he comments on the so-called glorious deeds of the two crowned despots (in spite of Catherine II projecting herself as enlightened),

“This is the First who crucified Our Ukraine,
and the Second who brought to death the orphaned Widow.
Tormentors, tormentors! Cannibals!
You two are well-fed,
You stole so much, but what did you take to the other world?”

(This question from Shevchenko’s is one of his on the surface simplest and at greater depth eternal).

Moreover, the bard also showed a rather similar attitude to the empire’s beautiful and terrible capital Peter founded. Pushkin too displayed mixed feelings about St. Petersburg, also a truly “significant” figure in the history of Ukraine and Russia: on the one hand,

“I love you, Peter’s creation!,”

but there also are other lines,

“City of luxury, city of poverty,
The spirit of slavery in a slender body.
A pale green skyline, boredom, cold, and granite...”

And here come Shevchenko’s unforgettable Petersburg images. Let us compare:

“In a valley like a pit,
A city looms over the quagmire.
A heavy fog hangs like a black cloud over it...”

Is this fog not the same spirit of slavery which the genius of Shevchenko so hated?

“This is a boundless city;
Is it Turkish, German, or maybe Muscovite...?
...I gape like a madman.
Why did such a wonder emerge from this puddle?
How much human blood was
shed here without a knife being drawn.”

The national prophet’s gape might seem naive and childish, but let us remember that this is the surprise of a genius, a highly moral individual who all his life observed the Lord’s eternal and unassailable commandments: thou shalt not kill or torment your fellow man under any circumstances, God will not forgive this even if you try to justify this in terms of building some state. “Never say that the brutal Nero was blessed.” These words of Shevchenko hinting at Nicholas I, can be equally applied to Peter or Catherine. For the Cossacks, for example, have their own scores to settle with the emperor,

“You drove us, naked and hungry, away from Ukraine
To a snowy alien land and carve us up,
And then had a scarlet coat made of our hide
And founded the capital, wearing a new cassock...”

This is why Shevchenko’s allegorical play The Huge Cellar pronounces an eternal curse even on a young girl for giving water to the tsar’s horse after the horrible massacre perpetrated by Peter’s soldiers in the hetman’s capital, Baturyn. For the same reason, equally severe punishment is meted out to another girl in the same cellar just because she smiled at Czarina Catherine II without knowing that the latter was “a bitter foe of Ukraine, a ravenous she wolf.”

It is important to emphasize that none of the lines quoted from Shevchenko bears even a suggestion of hatred for Russia, its people and culture. Let us not return on the well-known facts of Shevchenko’s friendship with and cordiality toward those Russians who helped buy him out of serfdom and bring back from exile (Briullov, Venetsianov, FСdor Tolstoi, and his wife...). The question is of the spirit of slavery for the suppression of which the unarmed poet “did more than forty victorious armies” (Ivan Franko). The poet also saw this spirit of slavery in the actions of some cult personalities of Ukrainian history, including Bohdan Khmelnytsky.

The bard’s attitude toward the great hetman was a closely guarded secret in Soviet literary studies. They printed harsh, even outright rude, Shevchenko verses (like “If you, drunken Bohdan...”; yet, in the 1980s this poem was “accidentally” left out of the approved version of his Kobzar), only to explain then that this was just the way the poet criticized the existing system in general. Still, it remains unclear what caused the following scathing lines,

“Oh, Bohdan, dear Bohdan!
Had I known, I ‘d have strangled you to death
Right in cradle, you whom I carried in the womb”

(it is none other than Ukraine herself who says this in the poem A Grave Dug!). To explain this, one can write reams of historical and philological wisdom, but we will try to find a brief answer as follows: in Shevchenko’s opinion, Khmelnytsky is to blame for, first, being a nearsighted politician who believed and swore an oath to the Muscovite tsar and, secondly, for being an egoist who only cared about his personal interests and the welfare of his Cossack officer corps. Yet, it is not so simple: we cannot leave unattended the high appraisal of Khmelnytsky’s deeds Shevchenko gives in his Diary (“A rebel of genius”).

And finally consider Ivan Mazepa, another key figure in our long-suffering history. Shevchenko takes a well considered and cautious approach to this subject, allowing himself no emotional outbursts, not because he was afraid of being accused of hailing Mazepa (the poet’s fate is the best proof of his courage), but because it was perhaps difficult to debunk the existing stereotypes. Still, it is telling that in the poems where Shevchenko brings out Mazepa even indirectly (e.g., The Rusted, The Monk, where the hero is the Fastiv Colonel Semen Paliy) one can hardly find any condemnations or curses hurled at the old hetman. There are only the words of regret: if only “everyone had stood up together and reconcile the Fastiv colonel with the Hetman...” Conversely, in The Rusted the poet applies the unambiguous term “despicable” to the Pryluky Colonel Hnat Halahan who was the first to betray Mazepa and defect to Peter.

The 81st psalm, in Shevchenko’s interpretation, begins as follows,

“Among tsars and judges,
At a grand session,
The Heavenly Lord began to pass judgment
On the lords of this earth.”

He judged them for greed and “the innocent blood of the wretched.” What makes Shevchenko immensely great is his determination to assume (by his word and his creative work) the mission of the same Divine Judge of wicked lords. This is why he became the eternal Father of the Ukrainian nation.