THE PROBLEM OF THE NATIONAL BEING OF THE UKRAINIANS IN THE CREATIVE WORK OF IVAN NECHUY-LEVYTSKYI

Abstract

The Russian Empire, which included the Ukrainian lands, constantly stood in the way of our national culture development. The metropolis proved the supremacy of the titular nation (Russians) through numerous prohibitions, which were especially strengthened at the end of the 18th and 19th centuries (the destruction of Zaporizhzhya Sich, the abolition of Cossack regiments as the military formations, the defeat of the Cyril and Methodius brotherhood, the ten-year imprisonment of Taras Shevchenko, Valuev circular, Emsk Ukaz). The task of these bans was to russify the peoples who were the part of the colony, to raise the imperial person – ignorant, indifferent to his roots. Fiction helped overcome this national problem. Even in difficult times of Russia’s pressure on Ukraine, the artists had the courage to speak, at least on a subtext level, about the need to create the future state, about such a value as the national freedom. The example of this is Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi’s artistic and journalistic work. His prose indicates his desire to see Ukraine independent. The analysis of the article “Contemporary Literary Direction”, the novels “Kaidashev’s Family” and “Clouds” prove that the writer explains the problem of the unrealization of the Ukrainians and the absence of the national state by the aggressive policy of the Russian Empire towards our people. The article “Contemporary Literary Direction” emphasizes the right of the Ukrainian literature to independent development. The author emphasizes the antiquity of our red script compared to the Russian one. Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi explains the spiritual decline, discord, and lack of conditions for self-realization among the Ukrainians in the story “Kaidasheva Simja” by long years of statelessness and ignorance of their own history. In the story “Clouds”, the author depicts two generations of the Ukrainian intelligentsia of the 19th century, who were unable to stand up for their people. The writer sees the main reason for the failures of the national elite in the policy of the tsarist empire, which sought to russify the Ukrainians.