"I Am a Ukrainian": Letters and the Exploration of Contested Memory.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

On February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. The statements made by the Kremlin on the eve of the assault evoked not only factual disinformation and distortion, which relied on Russocentric approaches to the history of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union but also contested historical and cultural issues, deeply rooted in highly entangled relations of Ukraine and Russia. This dissertation explores the notion of contested memory that centers on Russia’s long-lasting denial of Ukrainians’ distinctiveness from Russians. The main source of this study is letters, which are viewed and conceptualized as a vehicle of power. The discussion of the dialogical nature of epistolary expressions includes theses outlined by Jurgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Homi Bhabha, and Fredric Jameson.The theoretical framework for the exploration of contested memory is based on the works by Guy Beiner, Antje Wiener, Jan Assmann, Aleida Assmann, and Michael Rothberg, with the main focus on the multifacetedness of memory in various manifestations.Epistolary expressions analyzed in this dissertation focus primarily on the nineteenth century; however, they also help reveal how the nineteenth-century rhetoric re-emerges in the Russian war rhetoric of the twenty-first century. The Russian Federation continues to promote the myth about Ukrainians and Russians being “one people” reinvigorating the imperial and colonial narratives of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.The analysis includes letters written by Mykola Hohol, Taras Shevchenko, and Lesya Ukrainka. Their correspondence provides a glimpse into the formation of political and national divergencies and memorial distinctiveness, as well as into the construction of cultural memory that engages with and responds to memorial contestations. The letters reveal the constructedness of contestations emerging as a result of oppressive measures toward Ukraine and its distinctiveness promoted by the Russian Empire and further adopted by the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. This dissertation discusses contestations not only in terms of negative repercussions that include social forgetting. Contested memory, which contains a possibility of dialogical exchange, can be a sign of doubt and, as a result, a way to express resilience and resistance.