UKRAINIAN AS A DEFIANCE AND DENIAL OF THE IMPERIAL CONCEPTS

Abstract

Long before the military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia launched an aggressive propaganda campaign based on imperial and Soviet ideological principles. In support of claims for Ukrainian lands, modern Russian propagandists use age-old imperial and Soviet myths about the origin of the Ukrainian language, and also manipulate the consequences of the Soviet Russification of the peoples of the USSR.

Historians and philologists have studied various aspects of the policy of the Russian Empire and the USSR regarding the Ukrainian language, but this topical issue for modern Ukrainians requires in-depth scientific study. The author of the article examines the reasons for the persecution of the Ukrainian language by the Russian Empire, the refusal to modernize the national policy and the desire to destroy the Ukrainian language, the consequences of this policy for the imperial government.

According to the author socio-political ideas of Kyrylo-Mefodiivskoho bratstva demonstrated that Ukrainian intellectual potential had evident features of European influence not a russian ones, that was the reason why the intellectual assimilation of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in Russia did not take place. Regarding intellectual efforts of the Ukrainian intelligentsia to find the way of development of Ukrainian, Russian empire took irreconcilable position. The defeat of Kyrylo-Mefodiivskoho bratstva claimed the rejection of European models of democratization and modernization, the orientation on preserving an outdated socio-political model, despotism, eliminating everything that was contrary to official imperial ideology. After being punished of members of Kyrylo-Mefodiivskoho bratstva the restrictions on Ukrainian become even stronger. Only by its existence, Ukrainian called into question about the legitimacy of the Russian concept of the “great empire”, which was based on claims to Kiev’s historical and cultural heritage. Thus, Ukrainian began to be perceived as the enemy of empire and the rebel that defy the empire. The disinclination to modernize the imperial identity model, to compromise, and restriction of the Ukrainian language made the situation worse for Imperium. Due to all these factors the empire ended up in the dead end and the courage to challenge the system became a sentence for the empire.