After Borodyanka, the town in Kyiv region, was liberated from the rashists’ occupation, the damaged monument to Taras Shevchenko was seen among other destructions. The bronze bust of the Great Ukrainian was shot by the russian horde like a human. It is obvious that they knew who they were aiming at, and this act of vandalism was well thought out. In any case, this is suggested by the nature of the injuries of Taras's head: he was shot in the forehead and temple. The propagandists of the army's political bodies had certainly nourished ordinary orcs with hatred and specially prepared information about Ukrainian the sacred. Given the willful ignorance of most of the russian occupiers, it is impossible to explain this symbolic shooting otherwise. But at the same time, this is the overwhelming evidence that imperial russia still considers the Great Kobzar dangerous to itself. Therefore, it expunged him during his life and does not leave in peace even 161 years after his death.
Dangerous memory
On May 22, Ukraine marked another anniversary of Taras Shevchenko's reburial in his native soil. Despite the war, in Kaniv and many other cities of Ukraine, government officials and the public honored the memory of the Great Kobzar and laid flowers at his monuments.
It will be recalled that after Taras Shevchenko's death on February 26 (March 10), 1861, he was buried in the Smolensky cemetery in St. Petersburg, but on the same day his friends decided to transport his remains in accordance with his poetic will to his native Ukraine. Our newspaper has previously written about the circumstances, organization and details of this transportation (see "The Last Way of the Kobzar"), so we are not going to retell this material. It should be noted that the body of the Great Kobzar was met and accompanied by his compatriots from all walks of life everywhere on the whole mourning way. After all, during his life he gained fame not only as a national poet, but also as a national martyr, prophet and fighter for the freedom of the Ukrainian people. No wonder he was called the Father by people, sometimes much older than him. Therefore, the accompaniment of Shevchenko to the Chernecha Hora in Kaniv and his burial on May 10 (22) in his native soil became probably the first nationwide demonstration of disagreement with the authorities in Ukraine. And the authorities immediately noticed that.
So later on, all commemorations of Kobzar and especially the day of his reburial in Ukraine met bans and fierce opposition from government officials at various levels. The organizers and participants of such events have always had very serious troubles, up to deportations and imprisonment. This was the case in tsarist russia. However, a few years after the October coup, this tradition was intercepted by the soviet government. Those who did not forget this day were branded as "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists" with appropriate conclusions and consequences. However, every year on May 22, the stream of those who wanted to honor the memory of the national Prophet never dried up. Monuments to Taras Shevchenko in Kaniv and Kyiv have been the main places of such commemoration since the second half of the 20th century. Those who studied at the so-called "ideological" faculties of Ukrainian universities (philosophical, historical, journalism, etc.) in Soviet times, and others also remember how on the eve of this day curators of groups and party members held special conversations with students, and warned of troubles that await someone who will even just walk around the monument to Shevchenko. And on May 22, from morning to evening, KGB officers and their agents were on duty near these monuments, taking notes of the disobedient. The appearance of a person with flowers in such a place was regarded as a political demonstration. And the delivery of some speeches or reading poems were generally considered a crime. Moreover, unlike all official celebrations, such things happened exclusively on the initiative of the people themselves. The authorities were terrified of this, so they resorted to unjustified repression. Therefore, it is not surprising that over time, such actions in Soviet Ukraine really grew into a demonstration of national and political resistance.
"I haven't read, but I condemn…"
"… I did research on Shevchenko… This Khokhol radical wrote two lampoons - one on His Majesty the Emperor, and the other on Her Majesty the Empress. I have not read these lampoons, and none of my acquaintances have read them (which, incidentally, proves that they are not biting at all, but only flat and silly), but I am sure that the lampoon on the empress must be outrageously disgusting for the reason I have already spoken of. Shevchenko was sent to the Caucasus (as in the letter, D.S.) as a soldier. I don't feel sorry for him, if I were his judge, I would do no less. I feel personal animosity towards liberals of this kind. These Khokhols! After all, jackasses - and liberalize in the name of halushky and vareniki with lard! "
This is an excerpt from a letter from the famous russian literary critic and publicist, known for his democratic (without any quotes!) views, Vissarion Belinsky to his colleague Pavel Annenkov. By the way, these lines refute the common belief that the formula in the subtitle was devised in the late 1950s, when the soviet government cracked down on Boris Pasternak and his novel “Doctor Zhivago”. At that time, the now almost forgotten playwright Anatoly Sofronov stated this at a meeting of the presidium of the USSR Writers' Union dedicated to the hearing of Pasternak's "case." However, it turns out to be devised more than a hundred years earlier.
Thus, Belinsky fully approves the unjust punishment imposed on Shevchenko by the russian autocrat personally, and is filled with disguised scorn to the Ukrainian word. Of course, someone may say that it is written in a private letter. But he actually claimed the same thing in his articles. Moreover, the thought leader of the liberal russian community did not acknowledge the right of the Ukrainian people to their own literature, because, say, from the time of Tsar Peter the ruling classes switched to russian, and Ukrainian only remained for ordinary folks, so it can only describe peasants’ life". What kind of literature, he wrote, that "breathes with the rusticity of the peasant language and the dullness of the peasant mind" - a rather strange statement as for a revolutionary-democrat, "Furious Vissarion", as he was portrayed in the school course of literature in soviet times. Moreover, in one of his articles, Belinsky even insisted that the Ukrainian language does not exist at all, but is only a "regional dialect." And all this despite the fact that Belinsky never visited Ukraine, did not know Ukrainian language and in his critical opuses, quoting some phrases, made glaring mistakes in interpreting Ukrainian words! How similar it is to the current russian leaders, who have formed the same beliefs in the majority of the population!
In fairness it should be noted that many men of culture of the time were enthusiastic about Shevchenko's work (take at least Belinsky's ideological follower Nikolai Dobrolyubov), but there were not as many of them as soviet literary historians tried to put into our heads. The very first works of the young author were attacked by a host of haters of the "Khokhliatsky" language, who denied the Ukrainian people the right to their own culture. Although, to tell the truth, to be an outspoken critic of the artist and poet-sufferer soon became considered almost obscene among some of the intellectuals. However, the educated russian public preferred to see in Kobzar's poetry mostly ethnographic motives, and his passionate visions of national oppression of Ukraine and poetic appeals to fight against moscow's enslavement attributed to the poet's plight and his unjust punishment. At the same time, in all the difficult times for the empire, some writers quickly forgot about decency and returned to the tradition established by Belinsky in the middle of the XIX century. A striking example is the poem of the well-known Russian poet of completely non-Soviet orientation, Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky "On the Independence of Ukraine", which he wrote in the early 90's of the twentieth century. He ended his outspoken anti-Ukrainian text with an absolutely unacceptable attack on Shevchenko. The author of the well-known statement that "the russian democrat ends where the Ukrainian question begins" was right!
Tortures on “Kobzar”
Unlike the crooked liberal community, the imperial government - whether tsarist, soviet or Putin - did not consider anything obscene towards Kobzar. They understood everything from the very first publication of Shevchenko's works. No wonder all Shevchenko’s publications, without exception, were subjected to the most severe censorship - from the first "Kobzar'' in 1840 to books published on the eve of Ukraine's independence. Moreover, in Soviet times, censorship distortions of Shevchenko's poetry and pieces to be cut became not less, but more than in tsarist times. According to the famous diaspora poet and member of the editorial board of the "Encyclopedia of Ukrainian Studies'' Bohdan Kravtsiv, which he cited in an article written on the 100th anniversary of the great Ukrainian poet, if in five editions of "Kobzar" 1908-1910 the decision of the St. Petersburg Judicial Chamber in 1910 ordered to write out five separate pieces of poetry and one poem, and in fifteen pieces of poetry separate parts were wrote out, 1491 lines totally, then at least 18 works, which amounted to a total of 1687 lines, were removed from the soviet edition of 1950 with a foreword by Korniychuk! An interesting detail: the tsarist censors in those editions of “Kobzar '' marked as anti-government mostly the same Shevchenko's works that were falsified or written out by the editors of "soviet" editions.
It should be added that some of Shevchenko's poems were unknown to readers until the establishment of the independent Ukrainian state. These are, first of all, “If Only You, Bohdan the Drunk”, "Chyhyryn, Chyhyryn", "Big Cellar", " "The Plundered Grave", "Subotiv" and a number of others. We will not list them all, but these works largely determined the worldview and general mood of Shevchenko's word. Things were not much better a quarter of a century later: for example, most of them are also missing in the "Kobzar" published by “Dnipro” in 1976. They could be found only in small-circulation academic publications and with clumsy comments.
This is how the emperials of various ideological bent were afraid of Taras's word! While the ideological machine of the soviet government tried to make Ukrainian genius a kind of a younger (of course, younger!) companion of russian revolutionary democrats.
For russia, Ukrainian culture is as much an enemy as the Ukrainian army
In recent years, everything related to Ukraine and its national identity has been presented in Russia exclusively in a negative way. However, the russians made several attempts to "privatize" Taras Shevchenko's work and, as in soviet times, to declare him almost a glorifier of "proletarian internationalism." Anyway, they all failed. One of the last was made last year, when the russian Center for Science and Culture in Kyiv (oddly enough, but it functioned here even after 2014!), which is a branch of the russian government agency "Rossotrudnichestvo" (read FSB), tried on the Remembrance Day of "russian-Ukrainian (!) poet" (as it was written in the announcement) Taras Shevchenko to hold one of their events; but the case ended in a scandal with the World Congress of Ukrainians, and statements about the unacceptability of such actions by our authorities.
In general, Shevchenko is a historical predecessor and ideological inspirer of modern "Banderites”, who wrote in a nonexistent language, for ordinary rashists now. Such an idea in the mass consciousness of ordinary russians was formed by people who were much better acquainted with the artistic, historical and philosophical heritage of the great Kobzar. Unfortunately, among them were not only propagandists and analysts of the secret services, but also russian scientists who placed their knowledge in service of the anti-humanist ideology of their government. All of them perfectly understood that Taras Shevchenko is the mouthpiece and personification of Ukrainian national self-determination and the most respected figure in all strata of society. And therefore - a person, the very memory of whom should be written out of history in their view. And as is the case with the whole Ukrainian culture, the mad putin and his entourage claim that the Ukrainian people do not exist, and therefore there is no separate Ukrainian culture. So, they started with monuments.
In fact, the monument to Shevchenko in Borodyanka is not the first cultural object to be damaged during this war. And we should do justice to the russian government: it acts consistently in this regard. Let us only recall the ruin of the Library of Ukrainian Literature in moscow with the removal of "extremist publications". The first stage of its destruction began in 2007, and the last ended with its liquidation in 2017.
Burning books about the Ukrainian Holodomor removed from libraries and bookstores after the russian occupation of the Crimea is in the same vein. And after the beginning of the full-scale war against Ukraine, its destructive furiousness immediately spread to the objects of Ukrainian cultural heritage. Therefore, the rocket attack and destruction of the Hryhoriy Skovoroda Literary Memorial Museum in the village of Skovorodynivka in Kharkiv region is not accidental: the memory of the original Ukrainian philosopher, whose legacy russian ideologists from science failed to "privatize", proved harmful to russian authorities. As well as the memory of our outstanding folk art painter Maria Prymachenko, whose more than two dozen works were stored in the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum in Kyiv region, destroyed by the rashists.
According to the 1954 Hague Convention, the destruction of cultural heritage sites is a war crime. And, according to the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, as of mid-May, experts have already documented more than 330 such crimes of russians against Ukrainian culture. Hence it follows that now Ukrainian culture is as much the enemy to russia as the Ukrainian army. The russian authorities believe that by destroying cultural monuments, they are also destroying Ukrainian identity. And this is a huge mistake! The nationwide honouring of Taras Shevchenko is an evident proof of that. No matter how much the emperials of all times tried to erase this name from the national memory of Ukrainians, it will forever remain for us the personification of the Ukrainian spirit and greatness. And the symbolic shooting of his bust by the rashists will also become history as a demonstration of fear, which even the mention of the indomitable Ukrainian Prometheus fills them with.
Except the enemy who mocks.
Laugh, then, ferocious foe, (6)
But not too loudly, for our fame
Will never be laid low.
It will not perish, but proclaim
The annals of our age,
What is our justice, what our wrong,
And what our parentage.
Our epic and our ancient song
For ever shall remain,
And that is where our glory lies,
The glory of Ukraine.