The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew Book

"While the colonial status of Ukraine will continue to be debated among students of East European history, it might be productive to compare Ukraine's problematic colonialism with that of Ireland. In the nineteenth century, Ukraine was viewed as an agricultural addendum to the Russian Empire, as was Ireland vis-à-vis the British Empire. The 1932-33 Ukrainian famine devastated the countryside and shaped the national memory of Ukrainians just as the mid-1840s Great Famine devastated the
Irish village and shaped the memory of the Irish. The abolition of the last vestiges of the Hetmanate self-rule in the eighteenth century and the administrative incorporation of Ukraine as Little Russia into the Russian state administration might be seen as a possible parallel to the abolition of Lord Lieutenancy and submission of Irish local government to London.

Like the Irish in British imperial discourse, Ukrainians were stereotyped in Russian imperial discourse: they were uncivilized, unruly, pathetic, funny, prone to sudden violence and the regular consumption of alcohol, sentimental toward their Cossack past perfect and indifferent to their stagnating present continuous. Politically integrated into the Russian Empire and later the USSR, Ukraine ceased to be a subordinate nation, but as Terry Eagleton warns us, a country may be politically equal to another while being socially and culturally subjugated. Just as Ireland oscillated between its submissive imperial provinciality and its budding national revolt, Ukraine perceived itself either as a subservient southern province of the empire or as the freedom-loving rebel. The Ukrainian colonial situation was as mixed as the Irish, where 'at different times and in different places, various . . . forms of colonialism have complexly co-existed.' Yet unlike Ireland, Ukraine's passage to the national and postcolonial was obstructed by colonialist recidivism (i.e., in the early 1930s to late 1980s) that followed brief leaps forward to apparently complete national independence. Even if we admit that Ukraine underwent economic modernization during the Soviet era, benefited greatly from the Soviet cultural and industrial revolutions, and differed from agrarian economic dependencies, we cannot fail to recognize traces of colonialism in modern Ukrainian society, culture, and language. And since cultural history informs this book, I will make references to Ukrainian colonialism and spell out what I imply by it in every historical period under discussion."

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"The sensitive reader should keep in mind that this book was written in English by a Chicago-based author who teaches in English, speaks in Russian, prays in Hebrew, and dreams in Ukrainian."

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A few years ago I read two chapters of this fascinating book - the one on Raisa Troianker (of whom I had previously been unaware), and the one on Moisei Fishbein. A few days ago I found out that Moisei Fishbein has died.

Time to F this undeserved DNF, methinks.