THE FUNDAMENTALS OF ANTI-COLONIAL DISCOURSE OF T. SHEVCHENKO

Abstract

The article outlines the principles of the poet's anti-colonial discourse, relying on the authoritative judgments of Shevchenko’s scholars and post-colonial researches by Ukrainian scientists.

Shevchenko’s creativity met the challenges and needs of national existence, when Ukrainians were threatened with the loss of their national identity under the pressure of the denationalizing imperial policy. The artist’s anti-colonial discourse is updated in connection with modern challenges and the need to understand the cultural processes in the Ukrainian national liberation movement and needs careful reading.

Such important forms of denial of the imperial policy in the artist’s discourse are Shevchenko’s Ukrainian centrism, the nation-building essence of his poetry, the image of the Russian Empire as a “dark kingdom” with all its characteristics: the boundless arbitrariness of the tsar as the primary source of evil and lawlessness, the arbitrariness of his officials, on the one hand, and on the other the second – Moscow serfdom; suppression of free thought, strict censorship; slavery, poverty, demoralization, wars of aggression. Within the limits of his anti-colonial concept, he debunks the idols of the empire – the tsars; contrasts Ukrainians as superior – humane and democratic – to Muscovites – as inhumane and slavish; interprets the pre-colonial Cossack era as a time of self-rule with the principles of freedom and equality rooted in it; laments the suffering of Ukraine oppressed by the Russian Empire; demythologizes imperial myths: the Pereyaslav Rada, the so-called “brotherhood” of Ukrainians and Muscovites; сondemnes malorosiistvo as a widespread phenomenon of mental disease among Ukrainians inspired by the empire, etc.

Shevchenko’s counter-discourse to the imperial discourse worked to assert national identity, challenged colonial policies and undermined the power and threatened the integrity of the empire.

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