Abstract:
This paper is an attempt to briefly outline the problem of the incompatibility
of Polish and Ukrainian national myths that influenced reception
of the novel With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i mieczem) in Ukraine. While
for Henryk Sienkiewicz the Cossacks were just one of the social groups
and Ruthenians were an ethnicity, for Ukrainians the Cossacks became
the core of their national identity. Furthermore, several concrete Ukrainian
responses to the novel that appeared during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries are analysed in the paper.
