Galloping Anachronism
“I think all the arguments about where he [Gogol] belongs are pointless and even humiliating to some extent,” Mr. Yushchenko said, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news service. “He no doubt belongs in Ukraine. Gogol wrote in Russian, but he thought and felt in Ukrainian.” ~The New York Times
Yushchenko might even genuinely believe this–he is a hard-core Ukrainian nationalist, and this is the silly sort of thing that nationalists say. As a matter of literature, which is the relevant subject, does it matter that he “thought and felt” in Ukrainian if he didn’t write in it? Yushchenko’s appeal to Gogol’s inner life is a classic bit of nationalist evasion: literature written in the national language is often used as proof of the “emergence” or “rebirth” of national consciousness, but when a nationality does not or did not cultivate its high literary language (or had not yet defined a certain dialect as its high literary language) until very modern times it is necessary to adopt famous and important figures who, by the normal literary and linguistic standards used by nationalists, might be identified very differently. If necessary, the nationalist will even disavow outward proof of an historical figure’s belonging to a different group and appeal to mystical or emotional inner states, but at the same time cling all the more tightly to any external evidence that backs up the nationalist interpretation of the figure.
The eclectic and selective approach to evidence is typical of nationalists, as it is of ideologues in general, which helps to remind us not only of the futility of such arguments but also their fundamentally distorting and misleading character. Asking whether Gogol would have identified himself with Russia or Ukraine is to ask a question that would not really have meant very much to Gogol himself, because it is a question that would not have had political or, for that matter, cultural relevance in the mid-19th century. It is therefore not a very good question for understanding Gogol, which is what the study of Gogol ought to be focused on, rather than focusing on ways to use Gogol as a symbol. Gogol is an example of how metropolitan Russian intellectual and literary life was enriched by someone from the provinces, and recognizing him as the forerunner of so much in modern Russian literature also acknowledges the debt that all subsequent great Russian novelists owed to the idiosyncratic man who told stories about Rudy Panko the beekeeper, wrote withering social criticism of rural society and serfdom and embarked on extreme, even excessive Orthodox religious devotions that he made while essentially on a pilgrimage to what was still a very Catholic Italy. It is amusing that so many people are invested in trying to pin and lock down a person who was in many respects never fully at home anywhere.
There is something to his observation that arguments about whether Gogol is Russian or Ukrainian are pointless, because neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians are ever going to “cede” him. The malleability and fragility of what it means to be Ukrainian, and the flexibility with which Russians have routinely appropriated the history of Kievan Rus’ and the history of the territory of modern Ukraine down to 1991 ensure that the claim will continue to be contested as long as there are nationalists on either side willing to keep such a senseless dispute going.
Having a birthplace and residence in the territory of a region that later became a Ukrainian nation-state, Gogol is both easier for Ukrainians to claim but harder to monopolize. For the nationalist in newly-independent states, it is supposed to be consciousness, expression and self-identification that matter rather than geographical location, but when there is no evidence for the former apparently location will do, even though this is in turn completely at odds with the national consciousness of diasporan emigrants.
P.S. One point of clarification on this post: when I said that the question of whether Gogol was Russian or Ukrainian would not have had political or cultural relevance in the mid-19th century, what I meant and what I ought to have said was that in the mid-19th century the idea of identifying with Ukrainian ‘nationality’ or ethnicity would have been as meaningless to Gogol just as it would be meaningless to retroject modern national identities onto figures in the post-Byzantine Balkans. I should not have said cultural when I really meant ethnic or national, because there is such a thing as cultural distinctiveness between regions of the same country that does not imply ethnic or national difference between the peoples who belong to distinctive cultures or sub-cultures.
I think Russia has entirely legitimate claims to sovereignty over the Ukraine. Two thirds of it has been part of the Russian empire since the early 18th century, the battle could be said to have signalled the arrival of the modern Russian state (Poltava) was fought on its soil, and the remainder of it which had previously belonged to Poland has effectively been part of Russia since the start of the 19th century. All this occurred long before Texas and the South West became part of the US. What would we make of Mexican claims to most of California or Texas. I’m sure this view won’t be popular. As for Gogol, if he’s not Russian is Chekhov. He came from the Crimea I believe. Most of the Crimea didn’t become part of the Russian empire until the reign of Catherine II in other words later than much of the Ukraine.
I don’t dispute that Russia has a long history of control in the area, and it had control of the area longer than the Republic has existed, so I am not going to say that Ukrainian statehood has some deep foundation. Like a lot of anti-imperialist nationalisms, Ukrainian nationalism relies on the faith that distant medieval dynastic states provide an historical and moral basis for a modern nation-state outside of the control of Moscow. If other nations beside anti-Russian ones were to put forward such claims, most Westerners would probably not take them seriously, or, as in the case of the Serbs, be openly hostile to such arguments. Bush the Elder’s so-called “Chicken Kiev” speech was actually a very sober and smart warning against trading distant misrule for local tyranny. Except that it pleases some people in the western part of the country, I don’t know that Ukrainian independence has been especially that much better for people living in the Ukraine. That said, what’s done is done, and I don’t see any benefit coming from trying to reincorporate it into Russia. I can understand some of the regionalist and separatist sentiments western Ukrainians have had over the centuries, but so much of Ukranian nationalism seems to be oppositional in nature by defining itself against Moscow. This is true of all nationalisms to some degree, but some are much more purely negative than others.
The distortion this produces is clear in the arguments over Gogol. Both sides couldn’t have a claim to him unless Russians and Ukrainians shared the same literary language and culture for centuries, which reminds us of the problem of modern nationalist disputes fragmenting earlier common cultures. Of course, I understand that Ukrainians have powerful hatred for Moscow’s policies during the 20th century under the communists, and they have every right to be wary of coming under Moscow’s sway again, but the fight over Gogol is one attempt to project 20th-century feuds into 19th century realities, and it makes no sense.
Ukrainianism = Galicianism = the south-western corner of the current country, which has only been part of the Ukraine politically since the Soviets grabbed it from Poland in WWII and is also the home of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
Here common knowledge is right: Kiev and most of the country are Russian.
It would make more sense for them to be part of Russia again (like Byelorussia probably will be) and for Galicia and Transcarpathia (Ruthenia) to split off with their capital in L’viv (Lwow, Lemberg) and be their own un-Russian country.
John Beeler: Didn’t Poland only get Galicia at the end of the First World War from the Austro Hungarian empire. So they only had it for 26 years. That said the Austrians only got it in the first and second partitions of Poland in the 18th Century. You’re right about the makeup of the Ukraine though….it’s Russian. Which brings us to Daniel’s
“That said, what’s done is done, and I don’t see any benefit coming from trying to reincorporate it into Russia.”
I’m sure Putin wouldn’t agree with you, In fact I’m convinced he and many in Russia’s elite are bent upon reincorporating many of the former provinces of the Russian empire into Russia by whatever means are available. Economic and political satellites first before moving on to absorbtion. Personally, I consider the breakup of the Soviet Union to have been a huge mistake. Just as I consider the breakup of the Austro Hungarian empire to have been a mistake. By “Balkanizing” these regions all that happened was that a host of weak successor states were created multiplying the minor tyrannies and opportunities friction. The notion that many of the two bit countries that have been an integral part of Holy Mother Russia for centuries can operate independant foreign policies in her shadow is absurd. I presume there are reason why Russia hasn’t moved militarily but I don’t see the west doing much if Russia retakes these countries. Maybe having them as satellites and many in central asia have already been reduced to that status is easier.
One of Stalin’s stupidest mistakes, from the point of view of Russian imperialism, was incorporating Galicia and Ruthenia into Ukraine in 1939. After all the brutal work the Bolsheviks did wiping out Ukrainian nationalism in the 1920s and 30s, they just ended up reintroducing a more virulent form of separatism via a group of Ukrainians who had no historical ties to Moscow at all, and arguably very few historical ties even to Kiev. If Galicia and the Baltics had been left outside the USSR at the end of WWII as satellites along the lines of the rest of the Eastern Bloc, it is quite possible that the USSR would still exist today. While a Russia without Kiev and Crimea is a Russia that is in a real sense an amputee, having lived in Kiev my sense is that it is now too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
vanya, on April 14th, 2009 at 6:50 am Said:
Stalin of course did lots of stupid things. As to putting the genie back in the bottle I’ve no doubt they said the same in Leipzig in 1985. I basically agree with you about the Baltics, to be honest I don’t know enough about Galicia, because they were rather like Poland which wasn’t of course annexed in keeping their ethnic identity. There are some things that one feels in the gut are irreversible, the Oder Neisse line will never be shifted, German monarchs will never be crowned in Konigsberg, but I don’t have the same feeling about Ukraine, Georgia, the Crimea, they are as Russian as Tolstoy.
Ottovbvs, I agree, except regarding Georgia. They are very much their own thing, with a unique culture, language, alphabet, etc. And unlike Ukraine and other areas under discussion, their borders have not shifted markedly through the centuries, wedged as they are between the Caucusus Mountains on one side and the Turks, Persians and Armenians on the other.
tcowan, on April 15th, 2009 at 9:48 am Said:
…Sure the Georgians have a distinctive culture but so do others in Russia like the Armenians but they are very much part of the Russian state it seems to me. Didn’t they become part of the Russian empire sometime in the early 19th Century. In reality it would be impossible for them to exist as a separate state hemmed in all sides by the Russian behemoth particularly a behemoth that regarded them as part of its body.
This reminds me of the German: “unsere Shakespeare.”
Ottovbvs, while closely allied with Russia, I’m not sure Armenians see themselves as “part of the Russian state.” Georgia was absorbed into Russia about 1801, I believe, and not of their choosing. I think Georgia can exist very well as a separate state, even sharing the border they do with Russia. They also share borders with Azerbijan, Armenia and a long border with Turkey. So, they are not exactly surrounded by Russia. Also, the Caucusus Mountains are a natural border like none other. There are few passes. Clearly, however, Russia’s role in Georgia’s future looms large and Georgia’s best economic outlet is the Russian market.