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The 1990s were a period of tremendous artistic vigour, experimentation, and liberation for Ukrainian culture. The artists who emerged at this time unleashed a tidal wave of creativity that deliberately and aggressively reshaped inherited models. In this first English monograph on contemporary Ukrainian literature, Mark Andryczyk provides an in-depth analysis of the cultural explosion that engulfed Ukraine in its first decade of independence. The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction weaves a fascinating narrative full of colourful characters by examining the prose of today's leading writers. Andryczyk delves into the role of the intellectual in forging a post-Soviet Ukrainian identity, and follows these protagonists as they soar and stumble in pursuit of redefining their creative realm. In addition to introducing readers to vibrant literary gems, this book explores the artistic tendencies that determined the course of the Ukrainian cultural scene in the 1990s, and continue to shape it today.
Honorable Mention - American Association for Ukrainian Studies (AAUS) 2018-2019 Book Prize Having exploded on the margins of Europe, Chornobyl marked the end of the Soviet Union and tied the era of postmodernism in Western Europe with nuclear consciousness. The Post-Chornobyl Library in Tamara Hundorova’s book becomes a metaphor of a new Ukrainian literature of the 1990s, which emerges out of the Chornobyl nuclear trauma of the 26th of April, 1986. Ukrainian postmodernism turns into a writing of trauma and reflects the collisions of the post-Soviet time as well as the processes of decolonization of the national culture. A carnivalization of the apocalypse is the main paradigm of the post-C...
The concept of a 'return to Europe' has been integral to the movement for Ukrainian national rebirth since the nineteenth century. While the goal of a more fully reformed politics remains elusive, numerous expressions of Ukrainian culture continue to develop in the European spirit. This wide-ranging book explores Ukraine's European cultural connection, especially as it has been reestablished since the country achieved independence in 1991. The contributors discusses many aspects of Ukraine's contemporary culture - history, politics, and religion in Part I; literary culture in Part II; and language, popular culture, and the arts in Part III. What emerges is a fascinating picture of a young country grappling with its divided past and its colonial heritage, yet asserting its voice and preferences amid the diverse and at times conflicting realities of the contemporary political scene. Europe becomes a powerful point of reference, a measure against which the situation in post-independence Ukraine is gouged and debated. This framework allows for a better understanding of the complexities deeply ingrained in the social fabric of Ukrainian society.
Concepts of civilizational superiority and redemptive assimilation, widely held among nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals, helped to form stereotypes of Ukraine and Ukrainians in travel writings, textbooks, and historical fiction, stereotypes that have been reactivated in ensuing decades. Both Russian and Ukrainian writers have explored the politics of identity in the post-Soviet period, but while the canon of Russian imperial thought is well known, the tradition of resistance B which in the Ukrainian case can be traced as far back as the meeting of the Russian and Ukrainian polities and cultures of the seventeenth century B is much less familiar. Shkandrij demonstrates that Ukrainian literature has been marginalized in the interests of converting readers to imperial and assimilatory designs by emphasizing narratives of reunion and brotherhood and denying alterity.
In Mapping Postcommunist Cultures Chernetsky argues that Russia and Ukraine exemplify the principal paradigms of post-Soviet cultural development. In Russia this has manifested itself in the subversive dismantling of the totalitarian linguistic regime and the foregrounding of previously marginalized subject positions. In Ukraine, work in these areas shows how the traumas of centuries of colonial oppression are being overcome through the carnivalesque decrowning of ideological dogmas and an affirmation of a new type of community, most recently demonstrated in the peaceful Orange Revolution of 2004. Mapping Postcommunist Cultures also critiques the neglect of the former communist world in current models of cultural globalization.
As the «Orange Revolution» has shown, modern-day Ukraine has undeniably come a long way since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This volume contains papers delivered at conferences about Ukraine held at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) in 2001 and 2002. Supplementary articles have been solicited from recognized experts in the field to provide a comprehensive picture of a country in transition and to explain some of the challenges of Ukraine's «New Deal».
Russia's large-scale invasion on the 24th of February 2022 once again made Ukraine the focus of world media. Behind those headlines remain the complex developments in Ukraine's history, national identity, culture and society. Addressing readers from diverse backgrounds, this volume approaches the history of Ukraine and its people through primary sources, from the early modern period to the present. Each document is followed by an essay written by an expert on the period, and a conversational piece touching on the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine. In this ground-breaking collection, Ukraine's history is sensitively accounted for by scholars inviting the readers to revisit the country's history and culture. With a foreword by Olesya Khromeychuk.
By writing of Ukrainian national identity from a woman-centered perspective, female authors from the last Soviet generation established themselves as authoritative critics of their culture and paved the way to visibility and success for their younger female literary peers.
This study of cultural memory in post-Soviet society shows how the inhabitants in Ukraine?s east negotiate the historical legacy they have inherited. Zaharchenko approaches contemporary Ukrainian literature at the intersection of memory studies and border studies, and her analysis adds a new voice to an ongoing exploration of cultural and historical discourses in Ukraine. The scholarly journey through storylines explores the ways in which younger writers in Kharkiv (Kharkov in Russian), a diverse, dynamic, but under-studied border city in east Ukraine today, come to grips with a traumatized post-Soviet cultural landscape. Zaharchenko?s book examines the works of Serhiy Zhadan, Andre? Krasniashchikh, Yuri Tsaplin, Oleh Kotsarev and others, introducing them as a ?doubletake? generation who came of age during the Soviet Union?s collapse and as adults, revisit this experience in their novels. Filling the space between society and the state, local literary texts have turned into forms of historical memory and agents of political life. ÿ