No. 3

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    A Word of Welcome from the Editor-in-Chief
    (2016) Morenets, Volodymyr
    Introductory article of Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal (2016) No. 3 by the editor in chief.
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    Dancing with Knives American Cold War Ideology in the Dances of West Side Story
    (2016) Belgrad, Daniel; Zhu, Ying
    In cultural studies today, there is emerging an interpretive revolution “from below” — that is, a radical reassessment of the politics of cultural forms, based on a recovery of the embodied and affective subject as the center of meaning-making. Making sense of dance performances is therefore methodologically important because of their particular ability to offer insight into these two aspects of subjectivity. As an artifact of Cold War American culture, Jerome Robbins’ choreography in the film West Side Story (1961) enforces an ideological distinction between legitimate and illegitimate forms of violence, through its portrayals of “cool” affect as a necessary disposition, and organized violence as a necessary evil. Our close analysis of the dances “Rumble” and “Cool” offers new insights into the affective “map” that provided the ideological foundation for American political theorists and policy makers in formulating their Cold War attitudes.
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    Ideology and Religion
    (2016) Hovorun, Cyril
    The article explores the genesis and varieties of the phenomenon of ideology, and its relationship with religion. It begins with the origins of the notion and term in Antoine Destutt de Tracy and Karl Marx, and then continues up to the most recent developments of conservative and liberal ideological schemata. The author pays particular attention to the totalitarian ideologies of Communism and Nazism. The article argues that ideology sometimes tried to replace religion, and sometimes mimicked it. In any case, it exercised a profound impact on churches. This impact is in most cases polarizing for the church, when the latter identifies itself with ideology and thus dramatically reduces itself. Among the instances of such an impact are “political Orthodoxy” in Ukraine, and the “Russian world” in Russia. The author concludes that the church should learn to distinguish what is ideological and what is theological.
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    Soviet Ideology in Workers' Memoirs of the 1920s-1930s (a Case Study of John Scott's and Borys Weide's Memoirs)
    (2016) Klymenko, Oksana
    Ideology was the basis of Bolshevik policy and was used as a means of control over society. Key Bolshevik ideological postulates were created and disseminated in the 1920s‑1930s. The goal of this study is to analyze the influence of Soviet ideology on workers of the 1920s‑1930s in the memoirs of John Scott and Borys Weide, who participated in the building of Magnitogorsk and DniproHES, respectively. Based on the memoirs, the article investigates the dissemination of ideology and describes its main tasks in the 1920s‑1930s, such as “the building of socialism,” and the glorification and formation of the “new Soviet man.” These two constructs have several components, which are considered in the article. For example, glorification of “the building of socialism” was achieved through demonstrating Soviet “achievements” in industry, “superiority” to “capitalist countries” of the West, etc. To form the “new man,” images of “self” and “other” were created and an anti-religious campaign was conducted. The study focuses on the writing style of workers’ texts, as the memoirs were written in a formalized “Bolshevik” language through which their authors demonstrated their loyalty to the state. Also studied are changes in workers’ attitudes to the state despite ideological influence.
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    A Trial in Absentia Purifying National Historical Narratives in Russia
    (2016) Bertelsen, Olga
    This study explores contemporary Russian memory politics, and analyzes the ideological underpinnings of the 2011 Moscow court verdict that criminalized a Ukrainian scholarly publication, accusing it of inciting ethnic, racial, national, social, and religious hatred. This accusation is examined in the context of Russia’s attempts to control the official historical narrative. Special attention is paid to the role of Russian cultural and democratic civic institutions, such as the Moscow library of Ukrainian literature and Memorial, in the microhistory of this publication. Deconstructing the judicial reaction of Russian lawmakers toward the Ukrainian publication, the study analyzes the Russian political elite’s attitudes toward the “Ukrainian” historical interpretations of Stalin’s terror and other aspects of common Soviet history, and demonstrates the interconnectedness of the preceding Soviet and modern Russian methods of control over education, history, and culture. Language and legislation play an important role in Russian memory politics that shape the popular historical imagination and camouflage the authoritarian methods of governing in Russia. The case of the Ukrainian publication is contextualized by examining the cult of chekism and the discursive significance of anti-Ukrainianism, salient elements in Russian memory politics that have transcended national borders.
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    Ideologies of the Self Constructing the Modern Ukrainian Subject in the Other's Modernity
    (2016) Horbyk, Roman
    Postcolonial theory has recently come under critique as an interpretative scheme applied to Eastern Europe and particularly Ukraine. However, a closer look suggests that the critique applies only to some aspects of the approach, such as a focus on power relations and representations, while the key question should be rephrased as whether the Ukrainian subject was constituted as a colonial subject. A range of empirical material from 1920s Ukrainian discourses, both Soviet and émigré, is analyzed to shed light on how Ukrainians constructed their subjectivity as “a site of disorder” (Dipesh Chakrabarty), splitting themselves into uncultured peasant masses to be modernized and erased as a voiceless subaltern subject, on the one hand, and modernizing elites, on the other. This split can be understood as an epitome of the colonial condition.
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    Orthodox Christian Biblical Studies in Pursuit of Identity the Role and Impact of Personal Research Practices
    (2016) Golovashchenko, Sergii
    The article explores the pursuit of identity in Ukrainian Orthodox biblical studies not only in liturgical, exegetical, moral, educational and apologetic dimensions, but also from the perspective of academic criticism. It reviews the key points of this process, as discovered in the legacy of prominent representatives of the Kyivan biblical study tradition. Governmental influence on the Church’s educational policies, balancing between loyalty to the Orthodox tradition and Western biblical criticism, is among the factors that have shaped biblical studies, this issue being explored in the article. Historical milestones of biblical studies are presented, as is the research of prominent Kyivan scholars. Considering all these aspects and other crucial issues, the conclusion shows what makes the Kyivan tradition of biblical studies unique and of lasting importance.
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    Eastern Christian Churches Between State and Society an Overview of the Religious Landscape in Ukraine (1989–2014)
    (2016) Shlikhta, Natalia
    The decline of the communist regime in the late 1980s stimulated decentralizing processes within the Russian Orthodox Church; a final result being the emergence of Eastern Christian Churches in independent Ukraine: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Throughout the next two and a half decades the Ukrainian religious landscape has been simultaneously characterized by sharp conflicts and a search for ways of peaceful coexistence between various confessions; ecumenical initiatives, and asserting one’s “canonicity” against the “schismatic” others; attempts by some Churches to act as civil agencies and national institutions; attempts by the state under President Yanukovych to revive a “state” Church following the Russian model; moves towards a Local Ukrainian Orthodox Church and also towards “Russkii mir” (The Russian World). Crucial issues are — the Churches’ search for their place in the post-Soviet Ukrainian realm and their choices of models for coexistence with Ukrainian officialdom and society. In its approach the article provides a general profile of each Church, examines state policies towards religion and the Church in independent Ukraine, and describes a turning point, that being the Revolution of Dignity’s deep influence on the Churches’ perceptions of themselves and their place in Ukrainian life.
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    The Artist's Longing and Belonging Cultural Sensitivity in Yurii Kosach's Narratives
    (2016) Poliukhovych, Olga
    As an émigré writer living outside of Ukraine, Yurii Kosach constructed an “imaginary homeland” through his treatment of history, culture, and memory in his literary works. This article analyzes these categories in Kosach’s meta-narratives of the artist in exile, by focusing on the texts “Zaproshennia na Tsyteru” (An Invitation to Cythera, 1945), Skorbna symfoniia (The Sorrowful Symphony, undated), and Senior Nikolo (Signore Nikolo, 1954). Kosach’s characters are placed between exile and homeland, nation and empire, and self and other. All these notions are included in a discourse that is inclusive rather than oppositional. Following a strategy used by Lesia Ukrainka, Yurii Kosach also tests the artist’s ability to create in lands beyond one’s homeland and in conditions of cultural oppression. Each story plot of the analyzed narratives is constructed in terms of the cultural and national aspects of the artist’s identity.
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    Found in Translation Vasyl Stus and Rudyard Kipling’s "If"
    (2016) Veretelnyk, Roman
    Despite a not very complete body of foreign literary texts translated into Ukrainian, and a corresponding lacuna of Ukrainian literary texts translated into foreign languages, some unique Ukrainian translation successes do exist. One example concerns Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If,” which has enjoyed an exceptionally varied translation history into Ukrainian. This paper provides a background to the emergence of these translations and investigates how the text has been incorporated into a Ukrainian linguistic and cultural setting through Vasyl Stus’ translation of it. Attention is also paid to long-standing ideological and aesthetic controversies surrounding both Kipling and his poem, as commented on by T. S. Eliot, George Orwell, and Edward Said. Another focus of the paper is on new views on the poem and its translation afforded by approaches of reader-reception theory expressed by Paul de Man and Stanley E. Fish.
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    Quixotic Imagery in Ideological Mythmaking
    (2016) Pronkevych, Oleksandr
    Each ideology has its own system of symbolic representation, which contributes to establishing hegemonies in the minds of human beings in the struggle with other ideologies. Literary imagery is an important part of ideological mythmaking. It provides creators of ideologies with lists of authors, citations, and characters of famous works of verbal art, which become icons of certain political, religious, esthetical values, beliefs, and principles. However, the semiotic mechanism of converting literary imagery into ideological myths is not clear. To address this question this paper focuses on the case of Don Quixote, as Cervantes’ protagonist has become the front man of numerous ideologies that contradict each other.
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    The Politics of Memory in Ukraine in 2014 Removal of the Soviet Cultural Legacy and Euromaidan Commemorations
    (2016) Liubarets, Andriy
    The year 2014 brought great social and cultural disruptions to Ukraine. Euromaidan, the annexation of Crimea, and war in the Donbas led to significant social and political changes, with crucial transformations in Ukrainian historical memory playing an important role in them. Public appeals to history accompanied most political processes in 2014 and were always used for self-legitimization by both sides of the conflict. Changes in attitude towards the Soviet cultural and historical legacy and the formation of a new memory about Euromaidan (“the invention of tradition”) might be considered as a major shift in this field. The aim of this article is to observe and analyze major trends of the politics of memory in Ukraine in 2014 and early 2015.