Lesia Ukrainka: Ukrainian National Identity Against the "Russian Ukrainians" Dichotomy

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru/

Dnipro University of Technology (Dnipro, Ukraine)

Lesia Ukrainka: Ukrainian National Identity Against the "Russian Ukrainians" Dichotomy

N.Y. Tarasova

Abstract

Purpose. The article is dedicated to the research of Lesia Ukrainka's correspondence, journalistic and literary- critical articles concerning the problem of national identity as a factor in overcoming the "Russian Ukrainians" dichotomy. Achieving this purpose involves solving the following tasks: 1) to reveal the poetess's views on the essence and social manifestations of worldview fluctuations in the life activities of the Ukrainian elite at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries; 2) outline her strategy for overcoming cultural "inter-words" in the individual and society. Theoretical basis. The author applies the existential discourse of Foreignness by G. Marcel, criticism of Christianity by F. Nietzche, the theory of the nation by F. Meineke, typology of patriotism by A. Valitsky, the phenomenology of the relationship between the Self and the Other by J. Kristeva, the typology of the Stranger by B. Waldenfels, the ideas of D. Dontsov, O. Zabuzhko, S. Varetska, S. Matsenka, D. Melnyk, Y. Tarasiuk. Originality. The author proves that Lesia Ukrainka is one of the first among Ukrainian thinkers who critically considers the issue of dichotomy in the worldview and life world of "Russian Ukrainians" of the early twentieth century - One's own and Others', stopping in the uncertainty of one's belonging to Russian or Ukrainian culture, rejection of national selfidentification. Conclusions. The ways to overcome this dichotomy, alienation from the values of Ukrainian culture, betrayal, and collaborationism, Lesia Ukrainka sees, firstly, awareness of the cultural difference of Ukrainians, that is, the spiritual and psychological incompatibility of the Ukrainian national identity with the Russian one. Secondly, the need for an effective volitional separation from others and the political struggle for unification into the Ukrainian nation as a social and culturally self-sufficient collective self, worthy of a free dignified existence and recognition by other nations of the world.

Keywords: Ukrainian national identity; the "Russian Ukrainians" dichotomy; Own and Others; cultural interworlds; a special philosophy of life; the will to fight for the nation

Н.Ю. Тарасова

Національний технічний університет "Дніпровська політехніка" (Дніпро, Україна)

Леся Українка: українська національна ідентичність проти дихотомії "російських українців"

Анотація

ukrainka national identity dichotomy

Мета. Стаття присвячена дослідженню в листуванні, публіцистичних і літературно-критичних статтях Лесі Українки проблеми національної ідентичності як чинника подолання дихотомії "російських українців". Реалізація цієї мети передбачає розв'язання таких завдань: 1) виявити погляди поетки на сутність і соціальні прояви світоглядних коливань у життєдіяльності української еліти кінця ХІХ - початку ХХ століть; 2) окреслити її стратегію подолання культурних "між-світів" в особистості й суспільстві. Теоретичний базис. Авторка використовує конструктивний потенціал учення Ніцше та екзистенціалізму, а також спирається на ґрунтовні розробки української національної ідеї в текстах Д. Донцова та О. Забужко. Наукова новизна. Доведено, що Леся Українка однією з перших серед українських мислителів критично осмислює питання дихотомії у світогляді й життєвому світі "російських українців" початку ХХ століття - Свого й Чужого, зависання в невизначеності своєї належності російській чи українській культурі, відмови від національної самоідентифікації. Висновки. Умовою подолання зазначеної дихотомії, відчуження від цінностей української культури, зради й колабораціонізму Леся Українка вбачає: по-перше, усвідомлення культурної відмінності українців, тобто духовно-психологічної несумісності української національної ідентичності з російською; по-друге, дієву вольову сепарацію від чужого та політичну боротьбу заради об'єднання української нації як соціально й культурно самодостатнього колективного Я, яке гідне вільного достойного існування й визнання іншими націями світу.

Ключові слова: українська національна ідентичність; дихотомія "російських українців"; Свої та Інші; культурні між-світи; особлива філософія життя; воля до боротьби за націю

Introduction

Russia's war against Ukraine turned our minds, it sharpened all the meanings of human beings and existence. Since the beginning of military aggression, perceiving the issues of markers about the unification of our society - values, language, memory, toponymy, religious and confessional affiliation - that have been resolved over the course of three decades, has polarized. The war accelerated the process of national identification and exacerbated the problem of overcoming the certainty of an individual's attitude toward Ukrainian and Russian culture. It is about recognizing one's own as native and denying the other (stranger, hostile) in the space of our life's socio-cultural interactions.

In this context, it is appropriate the desire to rely on Lesia Ukrainka's opinion - the strong- willed adherent of the Ukrainian national identity. Paradoxically, her ideas were not at the time both in the 19th and 20th centuries, they were "little understood. Or her contemporaries did not understand her at all", as M. Drai-Khmara (1926, p. 4) wrote. Only starting with the writings of

Dmytro Dontsov (2000), Lesia Ukrainka's thoughts on the struggle for the nation, voluntarism and "the glorification of expansion, cruelty and the right of the strong" are considered a conceptual source of the ideology of current Ukrainian nationalism (p. 190). However, unfortunately, even today, the worldview and philosophical aspect of her creative heritage is not sufficiently analyzed, although Lesia Ukrainka's thoughts are consonant with present days and require careful and in-depth study.

Purpose

This has dictated the purpose of this intelligence - the research in Lesia Ukrainka's correspondence, journalistic and literary-critical articles concerning the problem of national identity as a factor in overcoming the "Russian Ukrainians" dichotomy. It involves solving the following tasks: 1) to reveal the poetess's views on the essence and social manifestations of worldview fluctuations in the life of the Ukrainian elite of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; 2) to formulate her strategy regarding the ways of overcoming cultural inter-worlds in the individual and society.

Statement of basic materials

In the tumultuous days of the war of identities, as never before, it becomes clear why Yu. Shevelyov said that the history of Ukrainian philosophy cannot be written without taking into account the worldview developments of Ukrainka. It is axiomatically, nowadays it is impossible to bypass the poetess's intuitive insights regarding the fateful changes in the spiritual and social world of the future man.

The relevance of reviewing the philosophical discourse of Ukrainka is recognized in a number of research in recent years. Their authors study the poetess's attitude towards the problems of Life and Death, Sources and Reasons, and reality and mistake. The formation of her's new vision for the position regarding Ukrainian society as a self-sufficient unit of European historical development is observed.

Among recent publications, one cannot ignore the article by S. Varetska, S. Matsenka, D. Melnyk, and Y. Tarasiuk (2021) entitled «"Cassandra" by Lesia Ukrainka through the prism of linguistic, mythological, social and philosophical guilt». The authors are impressed by the existential perspective of seeing the worldview from the boundary state of guilt, which allows them to implement the "archeology of the sense" of existence. This perspective gives the key to the Ukrainian's understanding of the Self's responsibility for coexistence and awareness of her complicity in the world of Others. Tragic aspects in the philosophical perception of the world of the poetess-thinker are also important.

Although Dmytro Dontsov defined Lesia Ukrainka's worldview as tragic optimism - (amor fati), he discovered in her reasoning that a "special philosophy of life" that "gives the courage to live and die". According to his conviction, the defining feature of this philosophy is intuitionism, і.

e. intuitive understanding of the phenomenon of life, characteristic of "true artists" (not epigones-imitators - "imitators, servum pecus", "...as Schopenhauer called them") (Dontsov, 1991).

It is important that Ukrainka feels life in the aspect of its natural cruelty, unaesthetic. The tragedy of human existence lies in the "beastliness" of life. Upon close examination, she noted, even "the best, the noblest person appears disgusting to vulnerable perception". Life processes are devoid of beauty, and from this "there is no way out even in death", which leads to even worse processes of decay, Ukrainka reasoned. In the bowels of the existential orientation of human life - until death, over which "we have no power", the main meaning that justifies existence, Ukrainka (2021c) considers the erection of a spiritual-creative "superstructure ... on those foundations" (pp. 398-399). At the same time, the Ukrainka's philosophy of life is not only devoid of fatalism and pessimism but also of any utilitarianism, as Dontsov noted. The poetess perceives life as a continuous creative impulse that knows no measure, breaks all boundaries, and returns forever in a new manifestation, denying death. Life in the Ukrainka's worldview is the transformation of the world into a raging chaos, from which an orderly Universe is built again. Eternal movement, this creative flow overcomes the boundaries of death and life, love and hate, courage and risk, the boundaries of the end and the beginning, and the temporal boundaries of the past and the future (Dontsov, 1922, p. 23). Life is a creative process, Ukrainka believes, so it should not be comprehended with the mind, but only with creative intuition, creating artistic images of the world. As an alternative to human dependence, the thinker calls the beauty of creative impulse, which elevates the soul from earthly existence to heaven.

The foundations will already be as they are, we only have to sprinkle them with soil so that they do not loom naked before our eyes. We will have enough work and tragedies on those structures and we will never think about the foundations. That's what the "invulnerable" will say, and I stand on his side. (Letter to Krymskyi, November 16, 1905) (Ukrainka, 2021c, p. 399)

According to M. Yevshan (1998), Ukrainka's philosophy of life is special because of the intuitively embraced existence of Ukrainians in the flow of the current, which is acutely felt through the experience of one's own subjectivity "in sharp dissonance with the era" and society (p. 561). It permeates the expression in the search for the true meaning, the true values of the life of the Ukrainian elite at the end of the 19th - the first decade of the 20th century. The picture of the world of life in the interpretation of Ukrainka, following Yevshan, is rich with a high culture of soul and heart and full of living power, a great, poetic impulse, not feminine, manly. Ukrainka reveals the meanings of life, taken in the emotional tension of socio-cultural contradictions and disagreements with its "torn, bloody face" (Yevshan, 1998, p. 561). In essence, this is a philosophy of willful rebellious impulse against the dichotomous uncertainty of the Ukrainians' life in the Russian, Austro-Hungarian empires, Russian and Polish Ukrainians, Ukrainian-Rusyns, Ukrainian-Galicians, and the desire for their national identification as Ukrainians.

The factor in the formation of the main perspectives of Ukrainka's (2021a) worldview was, as she herself notes, the atmosphere in the rise of intellectualism, the intellectual ferment throughout Europe, the time that was a "decisive political moment" (Notes on modern Polish literature) (p. 141). She was not bypassed, firstly, by the situation of the spread of positivism, the controversy with the theories of Darwin and Spencer, Komte, and the struggle of positivists with realists. And secondly, the discussion of "patriots of the old school" with the young people regarding the preservation of national traditions and efforts to create new ideals. A subtle creative intuitive sense of reality called Ukrainka (2021c) towards harmonization of "free poetry" with "public duties" (Letter to A. Krymskyi, November 16, 1905) (p. 396). Born in the times while spreading F. Nietzsche's philosophy of life, A. Bergson's intuitionism, A. Schopenhauer's voluntarism, whose ideas were raging in the circles of the educated European and Ukrainian intelligentsia, in the literature of neo-romantics, Ukrainka could not remain aloof. She showed a critical interest in Schopenhauer's philosophy, still recommending getting acquainted with his teachings: "About Schopenhauer, I myself was of the opinion that both of you do not need him, but ..., I would ask ... to bring him to you." (Letter to M. Kryvyniuk, the end of April 1897) (Ukrain- ka, 2021b, р. 32). Ukrainka's attitude to Nietzsche's teaching is ambiguous - highly appreciating aphorisms, she allegedly takes the position of an anti-Nietzschean: ".I do not share your Nietzscheanism, because this philosopher never impressed me as a philosopher: his ideal of the Ubermensch (Superman - the author), that "Blond Bestie" somehow does not charm me. His aphorisms are really brilliant and nice, but I do not love aphorisms" (Letter to O. Kobylyanska, May 20, 1899) (Ukrainka, 2021b, р. 213).

In fact, contrary to her statements, Ukrainka (2021a) was deeply imbued with the irrationalism of Schopenhauer's "freedom of will" and "will to life", "will to power", individualism and elitist determination of the Ubermensch, anti-Christianity and Nietzsche's "superhuman contempt" (p. 153). She understands the will to power as the will to fight for the nation and has a critical attitude to the Christian ethics of empathy, the value of humanism, considering it an indulgence of human weakness. Ukrainka's attention is focused on the issues of the dichotomy of will - bondage, arbitrariness - freedom of will, politics - ethics, political will and morality, mind and faith, Christianity and the state. Her voluntarism as a metaphysics of the will to struggle permeates the discourse on issues of state order, state, and ethics, legal foundations of social justice. Ukrainka's thought focuses on the issues of the essential difference between the Russian and Ukrainian soul and culture, Ukrainian religiosity and the missionary work of the Russian Church, real and pretended patriotism, the "Russian-Ukrainian" dichotomy, the betrayal and collaborationism of the Ukrainian artistic elite, and the main strategies of national identity of the Ukrainian intelligentsia.

"Non-strictness" of her philosophical reasoning, devoid of concepts, "separateness" of thoughts-"impressions" (Letter to Krymskyi, 1905) (Ukrainka, 2021c, p. 419). Ukrainka motivated with a skeptical attitude towards systemic rationality, pure theory and science, considering the society of the masses at the beginning of the 20th century. According to Dontsov, she wrote: "The scientific scheme is not enough for the crowd. They are looking for a sign of the times, they long for a miracle that would speak not only to their mind but also to their heart and fantasy". Therefore, they fully trust the knowledge of the phenomenon of life to creative intuition, artistic imagination, unconscious providence, and feeling. It was not by chance that Dontsov (1953) called Ukrainka "devoted without understanding, without logic to her truth and nation" (p. 16) the Ukrainian Sibyl, explaining her pre-war and pre-revolutionary predictions with a huge gift of providence, and in the characteristics of her method of cognition he referred to Schopenhauer's "we have something wiser like a head" (Dontsov, 1922, p. 6). The poetess identifies herself with figurative means - the confessions of the prophetess Cassandra, who .knows everything, but not with the cold knowledge of a philosopher, only with the intuition of a person who observes everything unconsciously and directly ("with nerves".), not with the mind, but with feelings - that's why she never says: "I know", but only: "I see", ... but she cannot explain with arguments why it must be this way and not otherwise.

(Letter to Kobylianska, March 27, 1903) (Ukrainka, 2021c, p. 247)

The concentration of the unclassical nature of Ukrainka's method of philosophizing is its aphoristic character, frequent intertextual use of proverbs from Latin, French, German, English, and more often - sayings from Ukrainian folk wisdom. Ukrainka (2021c) explained her inherent appeal to parables and myths by the fact that "when I do not know how to explain my credo in a concise, consistent and dogmatic form, I sometimes want to express my "faith" at least in parables" (Letter to A. Krymskyi, December 15, 1903) (p. 329).

Ukrainka's deconstruction of the myths about Sisyphus and the Trojan Cassandra is an answer to the questions "Who am I?", "Who is to blame?", "Is there any meaning"? Ukrainka turns to the myth of Cassandra, resorting to self-categorization, and interprets it closely to the philosophy of the absurd. The prophecies and words of Cassandra, endowed with an intuitive sense of the future for the sake of saving the lives of her community, are futile. No one hears her, no one believes in the speeches with her unrecognized truth and prophetic talent. Cassandra is a psychologically unstable, overly passionate subject of intuitive self-awareness of absurdity, she does not find understanding with contemporaries, because she speaks the truth "not in the way people need". Cassandra's inner dispute lies in her inability to remain silent and her unwillingness to speak otherwise, in her free-spirited defiance of the yoke of the soul, in her tragic doubts about her prophecies and the unknowability of the transcendental predetermined interdependence of the objective from the subjective, real events from words and vice versa. Kassandra with Ukrainka recognizes the absurdity of existence due to the obviousness of the existential law of life until death. Just like the absurd futility of inaction and fighting without faith for salvation from the death of the native land, loved ones, and everything that hurts the heart. She does not have the very faith in salvation and there is no reason for it to appear, therefore it is absurd to speak the truth out loud, and to remain silent, and to do nothing to fight, and to try to do - her deeds have no meaning, since "deeds without faith are dead". In reasoning about the absurdity of existence for the sake of the daily hard work of Sisyphus (Ukrainka's (2021a) critical response to the popularization of the "organic labor" concept started by the Narodniks/populists) (p. 141), which again and again raises the fatal, which is not useful to anyone, to the mountain stones that roll in the identical multiplication of the absurdity of life to infinity, Ukrainka comes to a conclusion about the tragicomic nature of the mythical situation. Exertion of physical forces for vital activities without meaning is senseless and ridiculous. A look at the "psychology of a person under the sword of Damocles" can become, she notes, not only an awareness of Sisyphus' misfortune but also "an occasion for a Zaporizhzhia joke". For example, "Don't waste your strength, godfather, get down to the bottom", she writes in a letter to H. M. Hotkevich on March 9, 1907.

But, in our opinion, the central artery to which all Ukrainka's paths of life philosophy converge is the problem of the "Russian Ukrainians" dichotomy.

This is what Oksana Zabuzhko draws attention to in "Notre Dame D'Ukraine: Ukrainka in the Conflict of Mythologies", receptively reconstructing the philosophical and sharply critical assessments of social reality, provided by the "Noble Heroine of Ukrainian Literature, Intellectual Feminist". In Zabuzhko's opinion, the process of transformation of the medieval-Renaissance Ukrainian gentry into the malorossiya nobility became obvious to the "Volitional Indomitable Rebel, Glorious Zhirandistka" who was deeply educated in Gnostic teachings and heresies. The process is accompanied by the dualism of the "Russian-Ukrainian" elite, sick with the ideas of Russian populism and divided into the coexistence of the "intelligentsia of schism" and the "intelligentsia of tradition". As Zabuzhko (2007) emphasizes, exactly this dichotomy that later oriented Ukrainian society toward the model of a "plebeian nation" that got lost in the search for the Russian ideal of the state - the guarantor of existence, with the fetishization of mass-cultural "boorcracy" at the head.

To date, the phenomena of cultural mutual exclusivity and hybridity, denoted by the term "marginality", have been scientifically investigated. Both are a spiritual and psychological state marked by a lack of rootedness, infiniteness (incompleteness), tendency to deconstruction, as a result of the weakening of cultural ties with the primary environment and the difficulty of adaptation on the border of two cultures and two societies (Shynkaruk, 2002, pp. 360-361). This is facilitated by the concepts of I and Other, We and They, Close and Extraneous, Self and Strangeness, introduced by existentialism, phenomenology, dialogue philosophy, and postmodern philosophy, in particular, in A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre, M. Heidegger, G. Marcel, M. Buber, P. Ricreur, J. Kristeva, B. Waldenfels. According to G. Marcel (1999), "Each of us, from the very moment we are born, appears before others and before ourselves as a kind of task" (p. 30). And from J. Kristeva's (2004) viewpoint, there is a dichotomous marginality in our Self, it is self-estrangement, a stranger hiding in our identity (p. 7). It causes a complex ambivalent spectrum of feelings from the tension between one's own and someone else's, that I project onto myself and perceive others. In the measurement of the Stranger's topos, B. Waldenfels outlines alienness as something that places someone outside the group, at the point of divergence of the specific worlds of one's own and another's, out of order. Therefore, the stranger is forced to tolerate the enemy, to pluralize the strangeness of life-world orders, to fall into inter-topos, and to hang in uncertainty. With the growth of structural alienation, existence explodes - opposite forms of life collide. Someone "half¹ falls into anxiety about strangers and chooses - the experience of the common world or inter-worlds (Waldenfels, 2004, р. 18, pp. 26-28, pp. 29-32, p. 68).

In Lesia Ukrainka, mental cultural inter-worlds become an important problem of "Russian Ukrainians". This state was also a contradiction in the self-awareness of Ukrainka (2021d) herself, because she was forced to territorially identify herself with Russia, and sometimes had to write articles in Russian for publication in the Russian press, confirming the words of Olena Pchilka that "not a single Ukrainian allowed such a blissful lie for the glory of native literature" (Letter to H. Hotkevich, February 7, 1907) (p. 27). However, Ukrainka did not allow herself to be "half" Ukrainian. Therefore, criticizing the bilingualism of V. Vynnychenko, whose literary activity "makes ... a sad impression in recent times, and it seems to me especially now (at the moment when our case is becoming acute) fundamentally harmful", Lesia emphasizes the choice of a certain Ukrainian language belonging as a factor of national identification - "I wish he would already stand either there or here, then people would know how to treat him, but as it is now, I prefer to stand aside" (Ukrainka, 2021d, pp. 327-328).

For Ukrainka, the essence of the half-heartedness of the "Russian Ukrainians" at the beginning of the 20th century is in the misunderstanding between two cultures in the Self, in the internal conflict of cultural national identities. This is wavering between "Ukrainian-Russian", and the fear of being Ukrainian in the culture of the Russian Empire. For Ukrainka, this is a consequence of the lack of awareness of her own national identity. The working Ruthenians from Galicia are psychologically tottered, she notes, because they identify with the Russian ethnonym Little Russians, they "do not consider themselves Ukrainians (or, as Muscovites say, Little Russians)". Their true national identity is Ukrainians: "Galician Rusyns (or they are all one people, Ukrainians)", she writes (Supplement from the editor to the Ukrainian translation of the booklets "Who Lives From What (Kto z czego zyje)" (Ukrainka, 2021a, р. 433).

From the Ukrainka's viewpoint, the question of the uncertainty of "Russian Ukrainians" is a problem of the timocratic order (F. Fukuyama) - a problem of respect and recognition by others. After all, the "formula Russian-Ukrainian people" is officially legalized in the social circulation of the Russian Empire. In her opinion, it is associated with moral humiliation. Addressing the workers in a letter, she feels socially inferior, just like them, because "all the shame, mistrust, irony that falls on you, falls equally on me" (Letter to comrades) (Ukrainka, 2021a, p. 377). She believes that the feeling of insecurity and low national self-esteem, supported by the legitimized supremacy of the "elder brothers", arises exactly from the internal rift in "Russian Ukrainians". And from this - the fear of not being allowed to social opportunities, vetoed as uncultured, mentally and socially inferior. The stigma of literary inferiority on the part of the "elder brothers" regarding her own courage to write on global topics causes fierce resistance in Ukrainka (2021d): ”... what impudence khokhlatskaia (Ukrainian) comes to, - Struve will say and the whole honest company of our "elder brothers", ... that this is impudence on my part, this is what I myself know" (Letter to L. Starytska-Cherniakhivska, August 8, 1912) (p. 326).

In the poetess - "impertinence", in others - fear was defined as an existential sign of being a Ukrainian and trying to renounce Ukrainian origin. From the disturbing feeling of the divergence of the self and the other in oneself, the non-identity of one's paternal-maternal memory, and the desire to reconcile with someone else's Russian reality - some have fear, Ukrainka has resistance. She denies even the possibility of self-justification of being a Ukrainian, denies the slavish national psychology - the courage to self-identify as a Ukrainian, that this is, and resists being different in language and customs. Ukrainka writes:

In my opinion, it would be worthwhile to abandon that form of proof:

"What is my fault that I am Ukrainian? Even if I wanted to, I can't be different". For non-state people, this self-deprecation is completely unnecessary, because it resembles a "slave language", and the example of the Ukrainian intelligentsia shows that a Ukrainian can be a non-Ukrainian when he wants to. Only then does a truly free, not chauvinistic, but also not "slave" national psychology begins, when a man says: "I might be able to be different, but I don't want to, and I don't need to, because although I am not better, I am not worse than others, at least from those who want to rearrange me in their own way. Accept me as I am and what I want to be, it is not your business to choose my language and customs.

My language is peasant, and all languages are peasants...". (Letter to M. Kryvyniuk, April 8, 1903) (Ukrainka, 2021c, pp. 254-255)

For a Ukrainka, hesitancy in the internal dichotomy, mental chaos and the intention to become different, to unconditionally submit to Russian provocations, and to assimilate into the titular culture is unacceptable. For her, this means entering the space of self-denial, destroying the learned cultural codes - the spiritual values of Ukrainian culture.

The roots of this value failure, according to Ukrainka, are, first of all, in a vague understanding of the concepts of patriotism, national, nationality, people, and nationalism, in their idealization. Idealism itself, which for her is like a game of moral categories of honor and spirituality, is close to the Nietzschean "pure spirit is a pure lie" (Nietzsche, 1899, p. 224). For Ukrainka, turning to the notions of people, nation, patriotism in general, duty or free will as universal, is a way of abstraction, idle theorizing. She cognates with the Nietzschean thoughts about the national vital characteristic of ethics and morality. As he believed, the very law of self-preservation requires a person, and even more, so an entire nation, to find their own integrity, their own categorical imperative. When there is a "mixing" of national duty with duty in general, the destruction of social values, morality, and life begins. Since the impersonal duty is a moloch of abstraction, Nietzsche (1899, p. 226) said. According to Ukrainka, the concepts of duty, patriotism, and good should be the values of the Ukrainian consciousness and the social reality of life.

And in this, there is an obvious influence of Olena Pchilka's beliefs on Ukrainka's reflections, who, according to Dontsov, understood the Ukrainian people not as a separate stratum of society, the downtrodden ("pariahs"), peasants, but as a source of spirit and strength, the foundation of the nation. Therefore, instead of populist compassion and mercy to the disadvantaged ones, it was necessary to educate them on social duty and national consciousness (Dontsov, 1922, p. 15). In the European sense, Lesia Ukrainka (2021a) understood the phenomenon of the Ukrainian people not as populist peasants, not as a "younger brother", and not only as "unspoiled nature", but as a "stronghold of nationality" (Notes on modern Polish literature) (p. 147). In her opinion, the Ukrainian nation does not need the idea of service, since it is a consolidation of equal citizens in society on the basis of the value of dignity. Consequently, it will gain the recognition and respect of other nations being united and self-sufficient. The misunderstanding of the essence of the people, Ukrainka noted, is the source of populist pessimism, lack of will, a constant look at the past, the lack of a vision of the national perspective, restraint from activity, and aloofness from all events of social life.

Hence the lack of awareness of the value of true patriotism - effective, active, strong-willed, and life-loving. Replacing it with pretend, "unceremonious", populist "new course patriotism", as Ukrainka notes. This leads to apostasy from one's own, Ukrainian, and submission to the imperial order. Hence the collaborationism of poets, composers, politicians, and diplomats with "Russian Zion", their way of "slowly and little by little imposing relations with the government and stronger parties" ("Unceremonious" patriotism). They do not understand the need for public education, she believes, there is a lack of national consciousness in them, immaturity of thought, inertia, neutral political program, quiet sitting, uncertainty, and unscrupulousness - "slowness", "where the wind blows". From this, there is a lack of self-esteem - humility, "despondency, bowing of the head", and lack of faith in the struggle for Ukrainian. Ukrainka asks, "Who will ask what faith we are? What kind of patriotism, whom do we believe in?". In her opinion, feigned patriotism is an obstacle to consolidation into a nation, an obstacle to the spirit of protest and resistance, "strong-willed speed and activity, energeticism", and the emergence of strong-willed leaders. Instead, there are «shadows, slow shadows of kings from "Macbeth"» ("Unceremonious" patriotism) (Ukrainka, 2021a, pp. 393-396).

Ukrainka calls tribal the patriotism of the elders of the Ukrainian school of Polish neoromanticism, agreed with state patriotism. She also denies the patriotism of young Polish- Ukrainians, who in "rare moments of Polish-Ukrainian solidarity" strive to "please their family and fatherland", insisting on the "common family of Ruthenians and Poles", on serving the "common cause". They only imitate Shevchenko and Gogol and portray Ukrainians in the image of "Mazovian boys" (Notes on modern Polish literature) (Ukrainka, 2021a, pp. 139-142). The absence of patriotism permeates the literature of Bukovyna, Ukrainka notes, where there was an "ongoing deaf national struggle between Ruthenians, Romanians and Germans". However, national alienation was replaced by interaction and "permanent ties and cultural relations between the Ruthenians of Bukovyna and Galicia and partly Ukrainians" (Writers-Ruthenians in Buko- vyna) (Ukrainka, 2021a, p. 87).

The modern Polish researcher of the typology of patriotism, Andrzej Walicki (1991), analyzing the concepts of Polish patriotism, gave the following definitions of the latter based on his understanding of social reality: 1 - loyalty to the people's will, the desire for sovereignty; 2 - loyalty to the national idea, preservation of tradition; 3 - individualized protection of the truly perceived national interest, which is not necessarily the same as the mythologized national idea and the will of the majority.

It is obvious from Ukrainka's narratives that her understanding of Ukrainian patriotism is close to the first and second of those considered by Walicki. An ethically and ethno-culturally directed variant of the republican type of patriotism, it is, however, different from the individualistic political liberal American and Western European model of patriotism. Because the poetess's discourse is motivated by the historical and value orientations of Cossack's fair civil equality that she has learned, which grows into freedom-loving and free-spirited aspirations of a noble democracy. In Ukrainka, love for the motherland is identical to love for freedom, where the care of optimistic energy, and the will to live, is complemented by the requirement of healthy physical strength to build a happy future, strengthened by a fanatical belief in achieving the common public good.

Therefore, Ukrainka's thinking about patriotism as the basis of the national idea and the will to fight is in no way consistent with the patriotism of serving the people, which for her is the embodiment of Ukrainian Narodniks. Their danger is that they devalue effective, decisive, noble patriotism, Ukrainka points out Shevchenko's line "not so much enemies as good people". She includes even Ivan Franko among them, although she justifies him: ”... no one... will suspect that Mr. Franko is an "enemy" of Ukrainian radicals and not a "good man" with good intentions". Good-hearted patriots deny the radicalism of actions and do not see the need to form fighters with a distinct national consciousness and ideals. And from value uncertainty, there is the absence of a national movement, solidarity "in people from the cohort of liberators" ("Not so much enemies as good people") (Ukrainka, 2021a, pp. 405-412).

According to Ukrainka, the uncertainty of values, the lack of a value foundation leads to the inability to rely on oneself, powerlessness, the search for self-preservation in reliance on another, state-aggressive culture. This imitation of citizenship, which protects against conflicts, this adaptability is the alienation of the Ukrainian in oneself, enslavement. It was succeeded by representatives of the "Russian-Ukrainian" artistic elite - writers, poets, and musicians who took part in the official greeting of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II in Paris in 1896, Ukrainka notes. Their "hypocritical lyre, flattering strings", and "treacherous nymph" humiliatingly serve the Russian throne in the "city of tyrants", "king-killers", in Moliere's city - Paris. Deliberate betrayal is shameful. "Shame on the free poets who ring the links of their voluntarily imposed shackles in front of a stranger. Slavery is even more abominable when it is voluntary", writes Ukrainka. Depriving themselves of the name of a Ukrainian, their own identity, becoming nameless, they lose everything, even though they live in abundance. In the tenets of Russian belonging "the poet can live there, and even in safety. Getting rid of only the name or getting rid of everything" (Voice of one Russian inmate) (Ukrainka, 2021a, рp. 401-403).

According to Ukrainka, the most serious prerequisite for the spiritual split of the Russian- Ukrainian elite is the Ukrainian Orthodoxy as the bearer of the religious messianism of the "Russian Sion". In denying its dreamy old-testamentary conciliarity, Letters written in Russian, authoritarianism and "dark ruling" of the Russian church, Ukrainka (2021a) comes close to Nietzschean anti-Christianity ("Unceremonious" patriotism) (p. 395). The danger to Ukrainian society from Orthodoxy is not its illness (aberration) as a religion, which Tolstoy claims, Ukrainka writes (Letter to A. Krymskyi, February 9, 1906). Even from the apostolic times, from the letters of the Apostle Paul, from "authentic fragments of the original Galilean propaganda", the spirit of slavery, and political heartlessness - "... heartless political quietism", idealistic use of feeling "to the bottom", social differentiation and moral subordination has been are embedded in Christianity. ".It is not for nothing that the word "slave" and the antithesis of "master" and "slave" appear so often in parables and everywhere in the Gospel, as the only possible form of relationship between a person and his/her deity", Ukrainka notes. Christianity is the religion of subordinates to Christ, and a Christian is a servant of God, she believes, Christianity offers the servant nature of Christ's relationship with believers and apostles. The poetess emphasizes: "..so you imagine that everyone will one day become servants of Christ - isn't that the same as slaves?" (Ukrainka, 2021c, pp. 425-426). Twenty years later, a student of W. Dilthey, a leading German historian, and theoretician of nation and nationalism, Friedrich Meinecke (1928), will talk about the close connection between religion, the state and the national factor in nation-building processes, when it is even difficult to determine what unites the nation more strongly - whether it is political, or a religious-confessional factor (p. 74). Ukrainka points to precisely the latter feature as a factor of national identification and de-identification.

She calls the communism of primitive Christianity fiction, which is actually the communism of the beggar and the benevolent rich man, the communism of property injustice and moral delusion. In Ukrainka's (2021c) opinion, Christian anarchism is also "of a low standard", behind which was hidden "the ill-manneredness and ignorance of the politically disenfranchised mass, which can imagine only utopia: the despot and the people and no one between them" (p. 426). In general, for her, Christianity is a prerequisite for the dichotomy of authoritarian despotism and spiritual idealism and the beginning of all social utopias. In the discourse of Christianity, Ukrain- ka's thoughts again agree with the Nietzschean critique of the Christian instincts of the subordinate and oppressed, when it is the lower classes who seek salvation in it. After all, according to Nietzsche (1899), the delusion of equality, supported by fervent prayerful worship of God's power, covers the will of Christian pastors to power (pp. 238-239). Ukrainka in her "Prophetic Dream of a Patriot" also speaks in Aesopian poetic language about Christianity as a religion with the will to persecute. Here the hidden Zion teaches the "Russian brothers" to obey all authorities, to go on a crusade to destroy the weak Sowers (Ukrainka, 2021e, p. 266). According to the poetess, Christianity is a world of pure fiction, contrary to everything that is real, which distorts and devalues. From the denial of nature by the concept of "God", Christianity interprets the corporeal as morally unworthy, and thus "the Kingdom of Heaven appears as the kingdom of the ghetto", as Nietzsche wrote. Even recognizing universal love and forgiveness as a positive moral and psychological achievement of primitive Christianity, Ukrainka does not recognize the life perspective in the feeling of compassion, considering it an excuse for human weakness (which again unwittingly evokes associations with the Nietzschean "there is nothing more unhealthy in our unhealthy modernity than Christian compassion") (Nietzsche, 1899, р. 223, p. 232, p. 235).

Based on this, the issue of struggle with Orthodoxy (a marker of Russian culture and a means of domination of the Russian state) appears for Ukrainka to be an issue of the struggle of "Russian Ukrainians" with themselves, a struggle for liberation from the slavery of Orthodox spiritual captivity, from idealistic abstraction and detachment from Ukrainian life reality.

In Ukrainka's opinion, the denial of someone else's spirituality, which makes it impossible to feel like Ukrainians, should be the understanding of one's national difference, the uniqueness of the Ukrainian soul and culture. Internally to separate, to detach the non-Ukrainian other in yourself, and yourself from those Russian others who humiliate you. Awareness of the cultural and mental otherness of Ukrainians and Russians is the only means of refuting the uncertain selfidentity of "Russian Ukrainians". Awareness of ethno-cultural differences is a positive direction for Ukrainka herself, who identifies herself as a "Russian prisoner". Distance, separation, rupture is a radical necessity. Her tragic conclusion looks like this: Russia is a spacious prison for poets who love freedom, homeland and people. According to Ukrainka, the phenomenon of Russia is its cultural and spiritual paradox, where great Russia is great baseness. In her opinion, "the wretchedness of the country that you call great. Russia is great, hunger, ignorance, thievery, hypocrisy, tyranny without end, and all these great misfortunes are huge, colossal, grandiose" (Voice of one Russian inmate) (Ukrainka, 2021a, p. 402).

Like almost no one before her, Ukrainka sharply and critically compares the incompatible in the experience of both peoples, namely, different cultural and historical paths, the opposite of national character traits. She rightly notes:

Rusyns are by nature more sensitive, pliable, slow and yielding (this is "recognized by the entire scientific world"), and "Muscovites" are cursed, obscene, aggressive, intolerant. They have a much more agile temper- ament.Bohdan Khmelnytskyi.went ahead and succumbed to the state of the "mixed race", although.. .Ukraine had nothing to do with the Moscow state. Whose power. That's the will. On whose chariot you ride, that's the song you sing. ("Unceremonious" patriotism) (Ukrainka, 2021a, pp. 394-395).

Due to the lack of psychological commonality between Russians and Ukrainians, their states, and cultures, Ukrainka establishes the principle of distinction as fundamental in the national identity of Ukrainians. The incompatibility of the spiritual-irrational sphere, the archetypes of the collective unconscious, artistic-aesthetic ideals, the Russians' and Ukrainians' vision of the religion of their ancestors - the Slavs, which "reflected on Ukrainians with beautiful lines and colors in spring songs (vesnianky), carols, rites and legends". About the exhibition of the Russian sculptor S. Konenkov, Ukrainka wrote:

For some reason, Slavic gods surely must be club-legged, crooked-nosed monsters - all of them! - when in our fairy tales even the enemy force - "snake" is often imagined in the similarity of an attractive handsome man, and "a forester", and mermaids, and "golden-curled sons" of that goddess, the princess, who has a star on her forehead, and a moon under her braid.

(Letter to O.P. Kosach's mother, 1913) (Ukrainka, 2021d, p. 392)

Ukrainka's (2021a) conclusion is radical - the dichotomy of "Russian Ukrainians" cannot be reconciled, corrected, balanced, or bypassed by a writer's "idyllic or utopia", just as "it is impossible to reconcile the patriotism of two nationalities, to reconcile different historical traditions, to separate class interests from national ones" (p. 144). This dichotomy can only be overcome by a willful struggle brought out into activity, into the life world of society.

A poetess of "storm and onslaught", as Dontsov (1922) called her, was born during the "revolt of the masses", according to O. Zabuzhko (2007), Ukrainka destroys the "Russian-Ukrainian" dichotomy in her poetry and drama semiotically - by the method of symbolic substitution, inversion - denial, antithesis overcoming, "beating" Ukrainian over Russians (p. 231).

The solution to the problem of "Russian Ukrainians" from the standpoint of the philosophy of Ukrainian life for Ukrainka should be the policy of national identification, the main mechanisms of which are determined by self-determination as a Ukrainian, the will to fight for an active national life, a form of social existence - political will, its subject - strong, optimistic, a fanatical, intuitively, sensually and instinctively directed personality in an active volitional impulse.

For Ukrainka personally, the solution to the "Russian-Ukrainian" dilemma was embodied in the desire to get rid of foreignness by getting rid of civil Russian citizenship.

We wouldn't have anything against changing to Austrian citizenship, but I... would be ready to even change to Abyssinian citizenship in order not to be a Russian subject, because I do not consider that citizenship to be a national characteristic (rather, a national misfortune), but for a thing of purely practical importance. A Ukrainian makes the same compromise when s/he writes that s/he is a subject of either Russia or Austria, Petersburg is as foreign to me as Vienna. (Letter to M. Pavlyk, April 17, 1903) (Ukrainka, 2021c, p. 262).

Originality

The author proves that Lesia Ukrainka is one of the first among Ukrainian thinkers to critically consider the issue of dichotomy in the worldview and life world of "Russian Ukrainians" at the beginning of the 20th century, Self and Other, hanging in the uncertainty of one's belonging to Russian or Ukrainian culture, rejection of national self-identification.

Conclusions

Lesia Ukrainka sees ways to overcome this dichotomy, that is, alienation from the values of Ukrainian culture, treason and collaborationism, firstly, the awareness of the cultural difference of Ukrainians, the spiritual and psychological incompatibility of the Ukrainian national identity with the Russian one, and secondly, the need for an effective willful separation from someone else's in the form of a political struggle for unification into the Ukrainian nation as a socially and culturally self-sufficient collective Self that is worthy of a free, dignified existence and recognition by other nations of the world.

References

1. Dontsov, D. (1922). Poetka ukrainskoho Risordzhimenta (Lesia Ukrainka). Lviv: Vydavnytstvo Dontsovykh. (in Ukrainian).

2. Dontsov, D. (1953). Poetka prorochytsia (Lesia Ukrainka). In Tuha za heroichnym: postati ta idei literaturnoi Ukrainy (pp. 5-28). London: Vydannia Spilky ukrainskoi molodi. (in Ukrainian).

3. Dontsov, D. (1991). Trahichni optymisty. In Dvi literatury nashoi doby (pp. 279-285). Lviv. (in Ukrainian).

4. Dontsov, D. (2000). Ideolohiia chynnoho natsionalizmu. In Natsionalizm. Antolohiia (pp. 188-196). Kyiv: Smoloskyp. (in Ukrainian)

5. Drai-Khmara, M. (1926). Lesia Ukrainka. Zhyttia y tvorchist. Kyiv: Derzhavne vydavnytstvo Ukrainy. (in Ukrainian).

6. Kristeva, J. (2004). Sami sobi chuzhi. Kyiv: Osnovy. (in Ukrainian)

7. Marcel, G. (1999). "Ya" i Inshyi. In Homo viator (pp. 18-35). Kyiv: KM Academia, Pulsary. (in Ukrainian) Meinecke, F. (1928). Weltburgertum undNationalstaat. Munchen und Berlin: R. Oldenbourg. (in German) Nietzsche, F. (1899). Erstes Buch: Der Antichrist: Versuch einer Kritik des Christenthums. In Nietzsche's Werke (Vol. 8, pp. 215-314). Leipzig: Drack und Verlag von C. G. Naumann. (in German).

8. Shynkaruk, V.I. (Ed.). (2002). Filosofskyi entsyklopedychnyi slovnyk. Kyiv: Abrys. (in Ukrainian).

9. Ukrainka, L. (2021a). Povne akademichne zibrannia tvoriv: Literaturno-krytychni ta publitsystychni statti (V. Aheieva, Ed., Vol. 7). Lutsk: Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University. (in Ukrainian).

10. Ukrainka, L. (2021b). Povne akademichne zibrannia tvoriv: Lysty (1897-1901) (O. Poliukhovych, Ed., Vol. 12).

11. Lutsk: Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University. (in Ukrainian).

12. Ukrainka, L. (2021c). Povne akademichne zibrannia tvoriv: Lysty (1902-1906) (Y. Hromyk, Ed., Vol. 13). Lutsk: Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University. (in Ukrainian).

13. Ukrainka, L. (2021d). Povne akademichne zibrannia tvoriv: Lysty (1907-1913) (S. Romanov, Ed., Vol. 14). Lutsk: Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University. (in Ukrainian).

14. Ukrainka, L. (2021e). Povne akademichne zibrannia tvoriv: Poetychni tvory. Liro-epichni tvory (O. Visych & S. Kocherha, Eds., Vol. 5). Lutsk: Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University. (in Ukrainian).

15. Varetska, S., Matsenka, S., Melnyk, D., & Tarasiuk, Y. (2021, February). "Dusha yii i slovo ne daietsia pid yarmo": "Kasandra" Lesi Ukrainky kriz pryzmu movnoi, mifolohichnoi, sotsialnoi i filosofskoi vyny. In Ideologist of the national aristocracy (in the honor of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Lesya Ukrainka): Materials of the All-Ukrainian scientific-practical conference with international participation (pp. 298-304). Lviv: Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University. (in Ukrainian).

16. Waldenfels, B. (2004). Topographie des Fremden: Studien zur Phanomenologie des Fremden (V. I. Kebuladze, Trans.). Kyiv: PpS-2002. (in Ukrainian).

17. Walicki, A. (1991). Trzy patriotizmy. Trzy tradycje polskiego patriotyzmu i ich znaczenie wspolczesne. Warszava: Res Publica. (in Polish).