Abstract
In the article, Ihor Yuzyuk’s play “There under the black forest... Banderado” is analyzed from the standpoint of various historical and ideological narratives regarding the movement of the Ukrainian national liberation resistance. The playwright uses the conceptual metaphor “banderado” (Spanish “flag bearers”) in the title of the work, and reproduces it in the content characteristics of its individual parts (a total of 8 banderado inserts with different plots about the individual heroism of Ukrainians from the Cossacks to the first post-Soviet years). Therefore, Yuzyuk’s drama can be considered as a meaningful narrative polemic with Oles Gonchar’s novel “The Standard Bearers”, because Gonchar interprets the role of Ukrainian soldiers as an organic segment of the Soviet army, which liberated European countries from Hitler’s fascism, but brought Stalin’s socialism there with bayonets. The phonetic consonance of the concept “banderado” with the surname of one of the leaders of the Ukrainian national liberation movement unfolds the discourse of Stepan Bandera himself, who does not become a direct character of the play, but is constantly mentioned in its dialogues. Ihor Yuzyuk shows how both totalitarian regimes — both Hitler’s and Stalin’s — tried to use and compromise Bandera and his supporters, how they used the “colonial army” of Ukrainians in their interests and did not pay attention to the colossal human losses, because “they are not counted, they are counted”. Considering the Ukrainian territory as a multi-front zone, which during the Second World War was on the brink of two totalitarian regimes, the playwright seeks to create new narratives both of the war itself and of the Ukrainian national liberation resistance. Every new play about Bandera will be relevant now, because since the beginning of the full-scale Russian aggression, the very name of Stepan Bandera has become for Ukrainians a symbol of unity, joint resistance and a sign of liberation from the hypnosis of a blurred psychedelic identity.
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