THE UKRAINIAN RUSSIAN STUDIES: WHAT SENSE THEY HAVE AND HAVE THEY ANY SENSE AT ALL?

Abstract

«Les Écrivains francais et le mirage allemand. 1800–1940» by Jean-Marie Carré was not just an emotional reaction of the French Germanist and Comparativist to the World War II, but a critical study of «the German Idea» in the context of 19-20th cent. cultural heritage. The proposed article of the Ukrainian Rusist addresses «the Russian Idea» on the basis of Carré’s methodology. How does academic Russian Studies look in history, theory, and practice in the context of the Carré syndrome? What did it mean for Ukraine, what does it mean for Ukraine now and is it going to matter for Ukraine in future? When did Ukrainian intellectuals start to study the phenomenon of Russia and what system of stereotypes have they shaped?? These questions are bound to take us back to the 17th c. when the sense of national identity started superceding the religious identity of European communities. As to the Russian Empire, it was virually non-existent until mid-17th c., when Ukrainian and Belarussian clergy designed it and translated their design into life through making it known to the Russian tzar. As any artificial formation, Russian empire was badly in need of a myth about its historic mission and high origin. This myth featuring the Romanovs’ derivation from the Kyiv prince Volodymyr who baptized «the three fraternatal nations» justifying the Russians’ manifest destiny was provided to the Romanovs by the Kyiv school religious activists, and later writers, such as Hohol and Dostoyevsky. While Dostoyevsky’s contribution into «the Russian Idea» is generally acknowledged in cultural historiography, detailed studies remain scarce. In fact Hohol and Dostoyevsky were in many ways the interpreters of the spiritual heritage of Simeon Polotsky and Lazar Baranovich.Ukrainian Russian studies have accumulated invaluable expertise in studying the nation characterized by Pushkin as «devoid of common sense and mercy». To begin with, it is a unique source for European Russian Studies providing a specific angle of vision of its subject. Then, since it was Kyiv school thinkers of the 17th c. who invented a certain code bringing to life the Russian Empire, their descendants must be capable of deptiving this Golem on the feet of clay of its «magic» powers. Since this Golem has gotten out of control and began its destructive crusade, the time has come to show the world its rotten essence, making him eventually weaken, decline, and come to dust.