Ukraine's Ongoing Social Transformation and its Literary Representations

FAIN: FT-229357-15

Vitaly Chernetsky
University of Kansas, Lawrence (Lawrence, KS 66045-7505)

Summer reading and writing on Slavic Literature.

Since November 2013, ongoing crisis has placed Ukraine on the front pages of global news media. The mass protests that came to be known as the Euromaidan, the collapse of the Yanukovych government, the Russian annexation of Crimea, and the mixture of a civil war with an escalating Russian intervention in Ukraine's east brought unprecedented global attention to Ukraine. In recent months the country has radically transformed, which has profoundly affected Ukrainians' understanding of their identity and their view of Ukraine's place in the global family of nations. This project examines the role of contemporary Ukrainian writers and other public intellectuals in these events--their documentation of and creative response to the experiences of turmoil, psychological trauma, displacement, and the emerging formation of a new Ukrainian identity, which reaches across preexisting divides caused by differences in language, ethnicity, gender, age, and other factors.

Associated Products

Sofiia Andrukhovych’s Felix Austria: The Postcolonial Neo-Gothic and Ukraine’s Search for Itself (Article)
Title: Sofiia Andrukhovych’s Felix Austria: The Postcolonial Neo-Gothic and Ukraine’s Search for Itself
Author: Vitaly Chernetsky
Abstract: Sofiia Andrukhovych’s 2014 novel Felix Austria (Feliks Avstriia) became Ukraine’s most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work of literature published in the immediate aftermath of the Euromaidan revolution of 2013–14. It combined an ambitious historical reconstruction of daily life in the year 1900 in a mid-size city in the Habsburg-ruled part of Ukraine and an engaging plot skilfully employing multiple devices associated with the Gothic tradition, especially in its latter-day and postmodernist reinterpretations. The novel’s success is especially telling in the context of the rising interest in the Gothic in Ukrainian culture. Told by an unreliable narrator, the novel prompts readers to interrogate their assumptions. In the context of Ukraine, it is particularly subversive in its engagement with the nostalgic myth of the Habsburg Empire as a multi-ethnic utopia of tolerance, and by implication it challenges all imperial myths. The novel’s emphasis on the quest for (self-)discovery strongly resonated with readers in the context of a socio-political crisis, which highlighted the relevance of the distinct postcolonial overtones in its message.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00085006.2019.1668337
Primary URL Description: Link to the article on the journal website
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Canadian Slavonic Papers
Publisher: Canadian Slavonic Papers

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