UKRAINIAN-RUSSIAN CULTURAL RELATIONS IN THE RESEARCHES OF YURII SHEVELOV

Abstract

The article reveals the views of the famous Ukrainian scientist Y. Shevelov on the problem of Ukrainian-Russian cultural relations. It is argued that the researcher's works were an alternative to the concepts prevailing in Soviet science, which considered a set of issues of Ukrainian-Russian relations exclusively within the framework of official ideology. It is pointed out that one of the most destructive factors in the development of Ukrainian culture, Y. Shevelov considered provinciality, which in his writings appears as a „psychological complex‟ caused by the history and colonial position of Ukraine. The expansion of Ukrainians into the Tsardom of Muscovy in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the colonial absorption of Ukraine led to the fact that the Ukrainian culture for a long time lost its direct connection with Europe. It is emphasized that Y. Shevelov made efforts to refute the stereotypical views prevailing in the works of Soviet scientists about the positive influence of figures of Russian culture on the Ukrainian one. In particular, he has been proving the invalidity of the assessment adopted in the USSR that T. Shevchenko got inspired by the Russian critics and publicists M. Chernyshevskyi and M. Dobrolubov. Among modern Russian writers, Y. Shevelov singled out the author of the "Gulag Archipelago" A. Solzhenitsyn, who in his fundamental work revealed the mechanism of the Soviet punitive system. At the same time, the scientist emphasized that A. Solzhenitsyn failed to overcome the Russian imperial complexes, which is manifested in his attitude to the enslaved peoples of the Soviet Union. Y. Shevelov draws a parallel between the work of A. Solzhenitsyn and the novel "The Garden of Gethsemane" by Ivan Bahrianyi, who much earlier than the Russian author raised the topic of testing a person in the grip of a totalitarian-repressive system. It is noted, that in general in his writings Y. Shevelov interpreted Ukrainian and Russian cultures as excellent systems, the relationship between which he repeatedly regarded as the history of a great and still unfinished war.