Volodymyr Ryzhkovskyi, Ph.D.

Arbeitsvorhaben

A Ukrainian Universe: The Journal Vsesvit and the Pursuit of Universalism in 20th-Century Ukraine

Ukrainian history, and Ukrainian intellectual history in particular, has been often narrated as a history of national affirmation. My project, while admitting the historical relevance of the national dimension and its connection to the global project of cultural and political decolonization, is an attempt to bring into focus explicitly universalist ideas, inspirations, and agendas, conceptualizing the diversity of the Ukrainian 20th-century intellectual tradition not as a neglected voice communicating an obscure particularistic history, but an inspiration and a source for thinking about the world beyond familiar national and civilizational repertoires and divides. To do so, I will use as a lens the history of the educational and literary journal Vsesvit (“Universe” in Ukrainian). Headed by prominent Ukrainian cultural and intellectual figures, Vsesvit emerged and reemerged in multiple iterations and at critical junctures of the 20th century as a platform for discovering, conceptualizing, and presenting the world in the Ukrainian language and to Ukrainian audiences. I single out three peculiar installments of the Vsesvit journal related to three eras of Ukrainian cultural history: the national and socialist modernization of the 1920s; the 1960s national revival associated with the Thaw generation of shestydysiatnyky; and the post-Soviet quest for fully-fledged cultural independence. Three installments of Vsesvit shed light on the complex entanglements between Ukraine’s imperial and national formations, while testifying to the incredible diversity of the intellectual traditions produced by these entanglements. As this project will argue, through the history of Vsesvit one can explore attempts at being socialist and internationalist, European and ecumenical, elitist and democratic, and at the same time distinctly Ukrainian. At the time of the political consolidation and forceful affirmation of the national identity in the face of Russian genocidal intentions, the history of Vsesvit is a powerful reminder of the diversity of Ukraine and its history and a focal point for problematizing the volatile imaginaries of “universalism,” “future,” and the “world.”

Recommended Reading

Ryzhkovskyi, Volodymyr. “Sovetskaia medievistika and Beyond: k istorii odnoi diskussii” [Soviet medieval studies and beyond: A history of a discussion]. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 97 (2009): 58–89. https://magazines.gorky.media/nlo/2009/3/sovetskaya-medievistika-and-beyond.html.
–. “Beyond the Binaries: The Postwar Soviet Intelligentsia in History and Memory.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 17, no. 2 (Spring 2016): 447–460. https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2016.0024.
–. “World History as Revolution: Boris Porshnev and the Experience of Dialectical Defeat.” Stasis 6, no. 2 (2018): 176–197. https://doi.org/10.33280/2310-3817-2018-6-2-176-197.

Publikationen aus der Fellowbibliothek

Ryzhkovskyi, Volodymyr (St. Petersburg, 2018)

World history as revolution : Boris Porshnev and the experience of dialectical defeat

Ryzhkovskyi, Volodymyr (Bloomington, Ind., 2016)

Beyond the binaries : the postwar Soviet intelligentsia in history and memory