Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the Discourse of Empire from Napoleonic to Postcolonial Times by Myroslav s> Shkandrij (review)

Abstract

I22 SEER, 8i, I, 2003 in the literaldemonization of those who were figuresof fear;forpeasantsthat was undoubtedly the gentleman, or, quite frequentlyin Estonian sources,the German landlord. In sum,whilst offeringa broad canvasof empiricaldata on the devil from a varietyof Estoniansources,one cannot help but conclude that the book ought to have been expanded to include more information.Forexample, the author comments that the devil appears in almost all seventeenth-century sermons (p. i i), but does not pursuethatparticularline of enquiryin depth. He admits that he did not include accounts of the devil in fairytales, but includes entertainment legends, which 'can be interpreted as fairytales' (p. I8). Although purists may find the methodology a little unconvincing, this work representsthe recent trend towardsinterdisciplinaryanalyses,and providesa refreshingly different approach. Thus it appeals to a wider audience than those interestedmerely in Estoniaor in folkreligion. Her!ford College, Oxford W. M. WYPORSKA Shkandrij,Myroslav.RussiaandUkraine. Literature andtheDiscourse ofEmpirefrom Napoleonic toPostcolonial Times. McGill-Queen's UniversityPress,Montreal & Kingston, London and Ithaca, 200I. xvi + 354 pp. Notes. Bibliography .Index. /57.00. AFTER his stimulatingwork on the literatureand art of the I920S, Myroslav Shkandrij'snew magnum opusexamines rival Ukrainian and Russian versions of 'imagined Ukraine' through the prism of colonial and postcolonial studies. The result is a highly successful and wonderfully illuminating book, which provides an extra dimension to the story of the development of Ukrainian national identityto set alongsidethe workof historiansand sociologists. The author'smethodological approachallowshim to examine the complexities of 'empire'. Shkandrijdoes not seek to place Ukraine and Russia in a one-dimensional colonial paradigm. He constantly stresses ambiguity of identity, 'intertextuality',ambivalence and hybridity,even 'theinevitabilityof some degree of cultural transference'between Russia and Ukraine (p. 272). Writers like Mykola Khvylovy and Bohdan Zholdak who have used 'the macaronicUkrainian-Russianargotcalled surzhyk' areaccepted as partof this 'culturalborderzone' (pp. 224 and 267). Shkandrijalso admitsthatUkrainian literaturehas often been a 'traditionseeminglypermanentlylockedin struggle with the one it is contesting, sufferingthe dependencies and complexities of opposition,and continuallybeingdrivenbackwithintherhetoricalboundaries that it strugglesto break down' (p. xiii). This approach allows him to give a much more convincing account of Ukrainian voices that have managed to assemble a more radical opposition to empire or even break free of its structuresof thought. Shkandrij'sargumentthat 'themore relaxed,"postcolonial " attitude can take root only when the threat of engulfment or apostasy has receded' (p. 274) is thereforealso given more breathingspace. The author begins with a detailed analysis of nineteenth-century Russian visions of Ukraine, placing its characteristic tropes ('residual alterity', REVIEWS I23 'panoptical time', 'arresteddevelopment', the 'economic benefits of empire', 'redemptiveassimilation',etc.) in comparativeperspectivewith otherborderlands in the Russian and other empires. Many of these stereotypes were internalizedin the work of earlyUkrainianwriterslike Hrebinkaand Gogol', but othershelped construct'an unambiguousanticolonialism[... ] an attempt to breakwith all attemptsby the colonial to inscribehegemony' (p. i 9 I). This list would obviously include Shevchenko(even if before his time) and apostles of linguistic purism like Borys Hrinchenko, but Shkandrij also gives a fascinating account of lesser known writers like Anatolii Svydnytsky,whose novel T7he Liuboratskys (i 86 I-62) centred on the highly prescient theme of the importanceof rivaleducation systemsin shapingultimateculturalloyalties. Shkandrij is also excellent on the manner in which the next generation (IvanFrankoet al.)attackedthe earlier'viewof Ukrainiansas aplebian ethnos [which] inadvertentlyconfirmed the claims advanced by the Polishgentry in Western Ukraine that there was no Ukrainian nation but simply an ethnographic mass that would, in time, under the influence of Polishculture, acquire a Polish identity' (p. I93) and of course the parallel Russian argument in the east. 'Modernism'snational narrative'therefore found new critiquesof populism and patriarchy(asin Lesia Ukrainka'sTheBoyar'sWife), of 'Ukrainian consciousness at war with itself' (Khvylovy'stragicallyincomplete Woodsnipes -p. 228), and the dead-ends of antiquarian obscurantism (Petrov/Domontovych) and neo-fascist 'Hellenism' (YevhenMalaniuk). On the way, Shkandrij provides a novel reading of Khvylovy, now often retrospectivelyidealized, as 'stimulatingand suggestivebut fullof inconsistencies and discontinuities'(p. 225). Some of Shkandrij'sbest analysiscomes towardsthe end of the book, when he discusses the work of the poet-dissidents' of the I96os in 'Subverting Leviathan' -as against the official literature of double identity and the achievements of literature since independence. His presentation of Yurii Andrukhovych'ssavaging of 'imperialicons' in his I993...