Invented ‘Europeanness’ Versus Residual Slavophilism: Ukraine as an Ideological Battlefield

Abstract

The chapter examines the residual forms of Slavophilism in Ukraine that survived both the end of the Soviet Union and the radical break in Ukrainian-Russian ‘special’ relations. The key hypothesis is that ambivalence and ambiguity were its inborn, genealogical features inasmuch as Ukrainian Slavophilism emerged within the framework of the all-Russian Slavophile movement that indicated both the adoption of Herder’s ideas and a semi-peripheral reaction to European modernity. Like any nativists, Ukrainian Slavophiles needed to be strongly committed to all things local and ‘traditional’ and hostile to all things arguably alien and imposed by foreigners. And yet, as nationalists striving for Ukraine’s national emancipation from the empire, they simply could not afford to be anti-Western, as they needed the West both symbolically and politically in order to withstand Russian pressure and dominance. They had to accept Western values and norms, even if rather lukewarmly and ambiguously, ‘by default’.