Much has already been written about Ukrainian-Russian relations in the context of Russian interests and priorities. Russia has unabashedly embellished its history with the victories and achievements of others, while depriving Ukrainians of their own past. From the Ukrainian perspective, the picture is quite different.
For centuries, Ukrainian literature has been the voice of anti-colonial discourse. From Kotlyarevsky, Kvitka-Osnovyanenko, and the Kharkiv Romantics all the way to the era of modernism and, ultimately, the establishment of the state, it has offered various models of identity, undermining imperial claims and asserting its own cultural self-sufficiency.
In this book, the renowned literary scholar Vira Ageeva analyzes Ukrainian resistance to the empire and the struggle to preserve collective memory through the lens of the cultural process.
Vira Ageyeva is a professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. She is a recipient of the Shevchenko Prize. A feminist, she was one of the first in the post-Soviet era to speak out about the need to reexamine patriarchal values.
