history he Decommunizing Of Taras Shevchenko by Myroslava Hartmond he remarkable poet and artist who is considered to be the father of the mod- ern Ukrainian nation means diferent things to diferent people. It is precisely because he is such a well-known symbol, that his historical legacy and place within the pantheon will have to be reconsidered in the process of Ukrainian Decommunization. Contemporary Ukraine needs a new and fresh relation- ship with the work and identity of its founding poet. 22 history THE OTHER SHEVCHENKO Shevchenko was well-known for his resil- tation. Russian authorities also destroyed a Post-Soviet society. he reluctance to criti- ience in life – he survived serfdom, Tzarist Shevchenko’s former house in Orenburg, cally engage with the legacy of igures whose exile, Soviet censorship, and oblivion – and Russia. he war of symbols continues. And importance has been widely acknowledged without him Ukrainian culture as we know yet, what meaning do contemporary Ukrai- during the Soviet period – whether Karl it would not exist today. nians attribute to the ‘father of the nation’? Marx, Vladimir Lenin, or indeed Taras Shevchenko – has meant that both the ‘en- His posthumous life as cultural symbol he Soviet regime has let a plethora of emies’ and the ‘heroes’ of the Ukrainian turns out to posses a similar hardiness. In Gordian knots knitted into the fabric of nation are oten little more than abstract his post-Soviet existence Taras Shevchenko Ukraine’s national iber , but a pervasive symbols. To forge ahead, Ukrainian must cuts a striking igure, one that has genuine suppression of critical thinking skills in the imbue these symbols with meaning, and to traction both with the Ukrainian establish- service of particular critical positions is one reappraise them on their own merits. ment and the people – at home and abroad of the most perverse ills of the transition to in diaspora communities. In 2013, Euromaidan protesters called upon Shevchenko’s image, emblazoned on A dissident in imperialist Russia who shields, helmets, bulletproof jackets, graiti buildings, and the Ukrainian soldiers who wrote anti-Tzarist satirical poetry in the serve at the front now are issued with a min- iature camoulaged copy of the ‘Kobzar’, the ‘peasant language’, he was sentenced to poetry collection that deined Shevchen- ko’s literary legacy. Since the annexation exile in a remote Kazakh outpost and of the Crimea, monuments to Shevchenko in Sebastopol and, subsequently, Donetsk banned from writing or drawing and Luhansk have become sites of contes- 23 history A LIFE AGAINST THE ODDS a key igure in Russian painting, who is best- and archetypes to convey the salient themes known for his ‘Last Day of Pompeii’ (1830- of Ukrainian national culture: motherhood, he short yet vigorous life of Taras Hryhor- 1833). Initially an autodidact, Shevchenko a love of freedom, loneliness, separation, sad- ovych Shevchenko is well documented. Born became a Master Engraver at the St Peters- ness, and a longing for justice and happiness. into a peasant family in the Ukrainian vil- burg Academy of Fine Arts, creating around A dissident in imperialist Russia who wrote lage of Moryntsi on March 9, 1814, He was 1200 artworks in his lifetime as well as anti-Tzarist satirical poetry in the ‘peas- orphaned at the age of 12 and spent his early forging a literary legacy credited with es- ant language’, he was sentenced to exile in life in hard servitude to a nobleman in Vil- tablishing the modern Ukrainian language a remote Kazakh outpost and banned from nius and aterward in St Petersburg. He was and literature. Interestingly, he only visited writing or drawing. He managed to continue liberated from serfdom at 24 by friends and Ukraine three times ater his birth, in 1843, producing work however, which he hid in his patrons who recognized his colossal artistic 1845, an 1846. As a poet of the Romantic tra- shoes, work which became known as his so- talents – among them was Karl Bryullov, dition, Shevchenko used folk-song elements called ‘bootleg booklets’. He died at 47 in St. Petersburg, unmarried and childless, a man whose body had been broken by years of he Soviet government recognized Shev- abuse and ill health. He was later reburied on the Chernecha Hora near Kaniv, a major site chenko’s unifying appeal and the strong na- of visitation. He achieved prominence in his lifetime and laid the foundations for a glory tionalist sentiment encoded in his works and that reached far beyond the grave, he is cred- ited with formulating the call for Ukrainian image, and so chose to hide him in plain sight national liberation and for distilling the quintessence of Ukrainian cultural identity for all subsequent generations of Ukrainians. 24 history ATHEIST, HUMANIST, REVOLUTIONARY he Soviet government recognized Shevchenko’s unifying appeal and the strong nationalist sentiment encoded in his works and image, and so chose to hide him in plain sight. Much like the Roman imperi- al generals who brought back with them the idols of captured peoples to be worshipped in Roman pantheon, the revolutionary au- thorities welcomed the sombre mousta- chioed Ukrainian into the Soviet canon. Shevchenko was hailed as a ‘humanist’, ‘atheist’, and ‘anti-Imperialist’ revolution- ary poet and painter, a reluctant member of the enlightened cultural elite whose senti- ments were with the peasantry and proletar- iat that struggled under the Tzarist imperial yoke. While the 1930’s saw a brief period of meaningful study and critical reappraisal of Shevchenko in the USSR, the Stalinist terror that followed cut short any such initiatives. In 2016, Shilenko and her Chinese counterpart Alan Yu spear- headed a landmark series of art exchanges between Ukraine and China, including the exhibition project ‘Unfading Glory. In Honor of Taras Shevchenko’ Shevchenko’s works went through a long hus, the Shevchenko bomb was tempo- of the Soviet conception of the visionary period of systematic falsiication, published rarily defused. Ironically, this newly sanc- Ukrainian. It shows the older Shevchen- in abridged and amended form, honed by tioned veneration made Shevchenko a cap- ko on a pedestal, encircled by an upward Soviet spin doctors to it the procrustean tive of another oppressive foreign regime. procession of the characters of his works. demands of the Socialist Realist method, His likeness featured in Soviet monumen- In 1939, the Kyiv National University was and called upon to compliment, rather tal propaganda, and was not limited to the named ater Taras Shevchenko, one of than challenge, Communist state ideolo- territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist many state institutions which would carry gy. Edmund Griiths at the University of Republic. Russian sculptor Matvey Man- the Ukrainian name to the present day. In Oxford explained: ‘Shevchenko’s accept- izer’s hulking Stalinist baroque depiction 1964, on the 150th anniversary of his birth, ability as part of the Soviet canon, togeth- of Taras Shevchenko, completed in 1935 in a monument to Shevchenko was erected in er with his presentation as the Ukrainian the University Gardens of Kharkiv, is per- Moscow – with another rising in Washing- writer, probably made him seem less rath- haps the most efective visual embodiment ton D.C.! hus Shevchenko also inspired er than more interesting to generations of resistance to the Soviet political system British students of Slavonic literatures.’ in Ukraine, and was a powerful national symbol for the Ukrainian diaspora abroad. Today, there are over 1300 monuments to Shevchenko found all over the world. 25 history THE OTHER SHEVCHENKO Ukraine’s independence may have thrown of the yoke of Soviet censorship, but to counter Soviet apathy, a willful efort is re- quired on the part of every Ukrainian. A se- rious efort to acquaint themselves with the cultural legacy of its great men and women, both famous and unknown. he mimetic shorthand so characteristic of our digital age reduces cultural icons to exactly that – icons, approximations, codes. To decommunize Shevchenko, we must penetrate the surface and discover the works behind the man, and to make sense of them in our present context. Taras Shevchenko’s works were inspired by the unique challenges presented before the existence of a uniied Ukrainian nation, in a time when many Ukrainians were forced into a life that was barely human: a life of DECOMMUNIZING the exhibition project ‘Unfading Glory. In serfdom, poverty, and injustice. Yet his writ- SHEVCHENKO Honor of Taras Shevchenko’. his exchange ing is imbued with a transcendent humanity, culminated with the opening of the Taras the same sort of quality that made national he Taras Shevchenko National Museum, Shevchenko Museum in Beijing, the irst poets of fellow Romantics such as Alek- which irst opened its doors to visitors in such institution of its kind to be fully fund- sander Pushkin, Adam Mickiewicz, Robert 1949, has been entrusted with safeguarding ed by a foreign government – rather than the Burns, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. the original paintings and drawings, poem Ukrainian state or diaspora. he project was Ukraine is a country at war. It is a country in manuscripts and their initial published edi- the largest joint cultural project between the midst of a profound economic, political, tions, as well as the personal belongings of Ukraine and China since the Sino-Soviet and social crisis where people are tormented the poet. Located in a former palace owned split. It is a return to historical connections by the loss of loved ones that continue to this by Mykola Tereshchenko, a famous in de however as it is well-documented that be- very day. hough in many ways deepened, siècle sugar industrialist and arts patron, tween 1949 and 1960, the museum hosted Ukraine’s identity crisis has also been argu- now completed by a modern white cube numerous Chinese delegations, which came ably exacerbated since the Revolution of Dig- extension, the museum seeks to reinvent to honor the ‘poet of oppressed peoples’, nity, and symbols which motivated to action itself with a newfound urgency. he Muse- who was well known and venerated by the and lited the spirits in times of crisis must be um’s Chief Custodian Yulia Shilenko sug- Communist establishment of the People’s imbued with new and relevant meaning. We gests that most Ukrainians perceive their Republic of China. Li Geng, the Director of can ind clues in Ivan Marchuk’s remarkable national bard with an apathetic disinterest the Li Keran Memorial Complex, is hopeful surrealistic Shevchenkiana, a series of 42 reserved for other iconic igures, elevat- that the Taras Shevchenko Museum in Bei- paintings completed between 1982 and 1984, ed on a pedestal and far removed from the jing will serve as a platform for future exhi- or Andriy Yermolenko’s pop-art depictions contemporary concerns of a digitalized mo- bitions of Ukrainian art, and that original of Shevchenko as Superman, Elvis Presley, dernity. his is why she has played a pivotal artworks by Ukrainian artists will compli- a biker, rockstar, and kozar. Perhaps the best role in developing a series of international ment the current collection, which consists way to honor the millenarian poet, the vi- projects, which seek to write Shevchenko’s of paintings and calligraphy created during sionary Ukrainian, is to discover his works legacy into a global cultural context. Cur- the 2015-2016 exchange, as well as over irst-hand, and to seek in them a meaning at rently on display is the Ukrainian-Spanish 100 reproductions of Shevchenko’s graphic once personal and contemporary. project ‘Kindred Spirits: Francisco de Goya. works. During a press conference in Kyiv, Li Taras Shevchenko. Carlos Garcia Lahoz’, Geng recalled the afection that many mem- Myroslava Hartmond is the owner of Trip- which brings together the graphic work of bers of his generation felt towards the Soviet tych: Global Arts Workshop, Ukraine’s Shevchenko and Goya, and the sculpture Union, so while his generation remains in irst private ine art gallery since 1988. of a contemporary Spanish artist, a native power, it may be imprudent to wholly write She is a research Associate of the Centre of Goya’s Zaragoza. In 2016, Shilenko and of Ukraine’s Soviet legacy while devising for International Studies, University of her Chinese counterpart Alan Yu spear- a cultural-diplomatic strategy for region. Oxford, where she explores the role of headed a landmark series of art exchang- cultural diplomacy in Ukraine. es between Ukraine and China, including 26 history 27