i Ukraine’s Quest for Identity Ukraine’s Quest for Identity Embracing Cultural Hybridity in Literary Imagination, 1991–2011 Maria G. Rewakowicz LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2018 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. 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Printed in the United States of America Contents Preface vii Note on Transliteration xiii 1 Literature on Edge: Cultural Hybridity, Identities and Reading Strategies 1 2 Cultural Geographies: Regionalism and Territorial Identities in Literature 51 3 Gender Matters: Women’s Literary Discourse 99 4 Language Choice and Language as Protagonist 141 5 Ways of Social Marginalization in Post-Independence Fiction: Ideology, Disease and Crime 175 6 Popular Literature and National Identity Construction 203 Conclusion: Toward a New National Literature 231 Epilogue: Literature in a Time of War 243 Bibliography 249 Index 265 About the Author 275 v Preface This study’s pathway from an initial project proposal for a research scholar- ship at the Kennan Institute in Washington, DC, back in 2003, to its final realization as a published monograph has been unusually long but nonethe- less gratifying. Current affairs, be it of political or cultural nature, demand as a rule an immediate reaction if one’s goal is having a contemporaneous critical impact. For a scholar of any contemporary literature, sooner or later there comes a moment of deciding at what point to stop and how to provide a meaningful framework for literary phenomena continuously unfolding. For me that moment came with the celebration of Ukraine’s twentieth anniversary of independence in 2011. However, as I embarked on writing, I soon realized that the first two decades after independence in fact constituted a qualita- tively different period as compared to what followed, a period that could be characterized as transitional, hybrid, post-Soviet, or even, in some sense, soul-searching. While working on the book I witnessed an enormous political transformation in Ukraine. In 2012, the Ukrainian Parliament’s adoption of a controversial law on the principles of state language policy, giving Russian the status of a “regional” language, triggered a wave of protests among the Ukrainian-speaking intelligentsia; and then, in the following year, the govern- ment’s refusal to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union led to the Revolution of Dignity and war with Russia. To talk about identity formation in this context is qualitatively different from what transpired in this respect during the first two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. By the time I finished writing Ukraine’s Quest for Identity: Embracing Cultural Hybridity in Literary Imagination, 1991–2011, Ukraine managed to celebrate its 25th anniversary of independence despite facing many challenges, and the political situation in the country could not have been more different than when I started writing it back in 2012. Then, the Yanukovych regime increasingly vii viii Preface acted as if its rule were to last in perpetuity, and the ensuing politicization of the cultural sphere invariably contributed to the polarization among intellec- tual elites, causing rifts, growing unease and making everyone feel on edge. Who could foresee back then that the eruption of the Euromaidan protests in November 2013 would halt Ukraine’s straight path toward an authoritar- ian rule? But the tragic events in early 2014, with so many lives sacrificed in the name of democracy, did just that. The subsequent collapse of the Yanukovych government brought a considerable degree of relief among the democratically minded protesters, but their sense of victory was extremely short-lived. Russia’s annexation of Crimea on March 18, 2014, followed by its aggression in the southeast provinces of Ukraine, proved the country’s resistance and struggle for national dignity to be extraordinarily costly. And yet, amid all those tragedies, there is arguably a silver lining. Never before the sense of national belonging and pride in one’s national identity were as distinctly delineated among Ukrainians as in the aftermath of the Russian Federation’s invasion. Two decades of slow, if not occasionally conflicted, muddling through in terms of national soul-searching gave rise, literally over- night, to a strongly felt distinct national identity. The issue of Ukrainian and Russian language usage in Ukraine somewhat receded, because those willing to die for Ukraine’s sovereignty represented both Russian- and Ukrainian- speaking fighters—government troops and volunteers alike. When a country is at war, it might be tempting to dismiss the importance of various manifestations of the arts, including works of literature. However, oftentimes, the opposite is true. The cultural distinctiveness not only helps in alleviating colonial syndromes but also constitutes a rallying cry to coalesce around the cause. And while reflecting and comprehending the impact of new post-2014 realities on creative processes are timely and no doubt needed, this study is limited, as the title so explicitly points out, to the phase of “muddling through,” or to the phase of distinctly post-Soviet and transitional dynamics of the first two decades of independence. And even though Ukrainian writ- ers frequently took up the issues of national identity construction during that time, their overall social import was confined to rather narrow segments of Ukrainian society. The premise of this book is twofold: first, that it is possible to identify the range and nature of post-independence literary texts according to their place within a grid of specific identities; and second, that those texts invariably rep- resent value in the body of a new national literature, impacting the politics of canon formation. This monograph concentrates on major works of literature produced during the first two decades of independence and places them against the background of clearly identifiable contexts such as regionalism, gender issues, language politics, social ills, and popular culture. It also shows that Ukrainian literary politics of that period privileges the plurality and hybridity Preface ix of national and cultural identities. I explore the reasons behind the tendency toward cultural hybridity and plural identities in the literary imagination by engaging postcolonial discourse and relying on the sociological method, as championed by Pierre Bourdieu, whereby literary production is viewed as socially instituted. Hence, cultural hybridity, identity negotiation, language politics and canon formation, viewed relationally and as constitutive of Ukrai- nian national literature, are the major themes addressed in the present study. In many ways, in its quest for identity Ukraine has followed a path similar to other postcolonial societies, the main characteristics of which include a slow transition, hybridity and identities negotiated on the center-periphery axis. It is less evident if a more coherent and/or aggressive governmental cultural policy early on would make any difference. After all, any affirmative action endeavors on the part of the ruling elites beg for compromises and cooperation with the political opposition. And that was in short supply at the time. However, it is also true that producers of Ukrainian cultural goods faced limited opportunities because of institutional weaknesses, namely the fact that those with authority to grant literary value were constantly undermined by the old inefficient system or, even, by their own ideological bias, not to mention that they themselves often held subordinate positions vis-à-vis the field of power (i.e., the government). Ukraine’s Quest for Identity: Embracing Cultural Hybridity in Literary Imagination, 1991–2011 is the first study that looks at the literary process in post-independence Ukraine comprehensively and attempts to draw the connection between literary production and identity construction. The first chapter provides a theoretical framework, focusing especially on the concepts of cultural hybridity and identity. It also examines major premises of postco- lonial theory and its proponents, and, at the same time, offers a critique of the most important approaches and schools in Ukrainian literary criticism since independence. Chapter 2 foregrounds the topos of location and a strong sense of territorial identity, demonstrated by a number of contemporary authors from various regions of Ukraine. I argue that the geography of belonging has played a crucial role in Ukrainian literature since 1991, mainly expressed through a tendency among writers to heighten regional differences in their texts, colored by a specific historical conditioning. This chapter,