Rethinking Ukrainian History by Ivan L. Rudnytsky

Leading Ukrainian writers presented Jews as selfish innkeepers and leaseholders.

Although in 1859 such Ukrainian figures as Taras Shevchenko and Panteleimon Kulish had denounced the notorious antisemitic publication in the Russian journal Illustratsiia, in 1861–62 the Ukrainian press canonized the image of the Jew as an enemy alien of the Ukrainian people, in full accordance with the populist stereotype of the Jews as petty bourgeoisie. An unexpected manifestation of what could be called one of the first stages of the Ukrainian-Jewish cultural encounter ended abruptly and ugly. Nor were Ukrainian-Jewish relations stimulating any mutual rapprochement. The notorious claim that the Ukrainian language “has not, does not, and cannot exist” defined and exhausted the situation of Ukrainian culture in tsarist Russia. The authorities endorsed Ukrainian discourse grudgingly but only if it contained no hint of the nationalist strivings of Jena romantics, let alone of the revolutionary enthusiasm of Sturm und Drang. 1 Close The 1863 Valuev decree and 1876 Ems edict uprooted the timid Ukrainian populism by dramatically limiting the legally endorsed culture of Little Russia, as Ukraine was then officially named. This brief political thaw was followed by an almost total ban on things Ukrainian. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Ukrainian books and primers appeared in print for the first time in the modern era, Taras Shevchenko was allowed back into the capital, and a couple of Ukrainian periodicals, such as Osnova ( 1861–62) and Chernyhovs'kyi lystok (1861–63), were authorized, albeit in the imperial Russian language. The East European intelligentsia was indifferent to Ukrainian cultural endeavors at the time the descendant of an affluent Jewish family, Grigorii Kerner, made up his mind to identify with the Ukrainian national strivings, dedicate himself to Ukrainian poetry, and adopt the pen name Hryts'ko Kernerenko.

Rethinking Ukrainian History by Ivan L. Rudnytsky