Russian Radicals in Ukraine, Russian Radicals on Ukraine: Reception and Exchange

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel investigates the engagement of nineteenth-century Russian radical writers and critics (Chernyshevsky, Dobroliubov, and Pisarev) with Ukraine, as well as the reception of their ideas by the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Some of the central questions the panel explores are: to what extent these Russian thinkers’ radical agenda accommodated the idea of Ukraine as an autonomous culture; and which of these ideas were viewed as particularly productive by the Ukrainian intellectuals of the time? Helen Stuhr-Rommereim will explore the notion of Russian literature’s “narodnost’,” or lack thereof, as laid out by Nikolai Dobroliubov in the context of his writing on literature written in Ukrainian (Shevchenko), to consider the meaning and significance of the notion of “narod” for the radical critics. Valeria Sobol will analyze cultural and geographical references to Ukraine in Chernyshevsky’s influential novel What Is to Be Done? (1863) and their connections to Chernyshevsky’s views on Ukraine, and “the Slavic question” more generally, as developed in his critical and historiographical writings. Yuliya Ladygina will discuss the prominent Ukrainian modernist writer Olha Kobylians’ka’s engagement with Russian radical thought, in particular Pisarev’s 1862 pamphlet “Bees,” and her adaptation of his key ideas for her own ideological agenda.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 19th Century

Chair

• Lyudmila Parts, McGill U (Canada)

Papers

• Radical Critics: 'Narodnaya literatura' and Ukraine - Helen R Stuhr-Rommereim, U of St. Andrews (UK)

• Ukraine and Chernyshevsky’s Utopia in What Is to Be Done? - Valeria Sobol, U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Ol’ha Kobylains’ka’s Reception and Radical Revisions of Russian Radicals: The Case of Dmitrii Pisarev - Yuliya V. Ladygina, Pennsylvania State U

Discussant

• Serhiy Bilenky, U of Alberta (Canada)