The Ukrainian Impact on Russian Culture, 1750–1850

Description

This nine chapter study, based largely on original research in the archives of Moscow and St. Petersburg, sheds new light on the role played in Russian cultural development by those Ukrainians who chose to identify themselves with the Russian Empire. By stressing the native, Slavic aspects of imperial culture, Ukrainians modified the Russians’ understanding of what it meant to be Russian, preventing them from becoming wholly dependent on contemporary Western Europe. In a wide-ranging, richly detailed analysis, David Saunders shows how this impact was achieved by Ukrainian educators, writers, journalists, scholars, and political figures.

Chapters include:

• The Convergence of Ukraine and Russia
• The Great North Road
• Highly Placed Ukrainians
• Ukrainians on Grub Street
• Ukraine and Russian Literature
• Ukraine and Russian Historical Writing
• Ukraine and Russian Slavic Studies
• The Divergence of Ukraine and Russia
• and others.

Although significant, the Ukrainian impact was short-lived. The concluding chapter explains the tsarist government’s imposition of an increasingly rigid conception of nationality on all its subjects that led Ukrainians to assert their separate identity.

As the most comprehensive study of its subject, this book makes an important contribution to both Ukrainian and Russian history.