205 years ago, on March 9, 1814, the famous Little Russian artist and poet Taras Shevchenko was born. He became an iconic figure among the Ukrainian intelligentsia, his image became the banner of aggressive Ukrainian national chauvinism. Although Shevchenko himself never separated the Russians and the Little Russians (the southern part of the Russian superethnos).
Taras was born in the Kiev province, in the family of a serf peasant. Orphaned early and learned the difficulties of the life of a poor man and a homeless child. He served with the sexton-teacher, from whom he learned to read and write, then from the sexton-painters (bogomazov), from whom he learned the first drawing skills. He was a shepherd. Then, at the age of 16, he began to serve in the family of the nobleman Engelhardt. Taras showed ability in drawing, so the landowner decided to train him in order to make him a home artist.
After Engelhardt moved to St. Petersburg in 1836, Taras Grigorievich met the artists Bryullov, Venetsianov, Grigorovich and the poet Zhukovsky, who decided to help free the talented young man. However, the landowner Engelhardt was in no hurry to free Taras Shevchenko, did not give in to the persuasions of his comrades. He wanted a big ransom. In 1838, a portrait of Zhukovsky, painted by Bryullov, was drawn in a lottery and sold for a significant amount. This money was used to buy Shevchenko out. In the same year, Taras entered the Academy of Arts, where he became a student of Bryullov. He studied well, was awarded medals of the Academy, read a lot. In 1842 the painting "Katerina" was painted, in 1844 he received the title of a free artist.
In 1840, the first collection of poems by Taras Grigorievich - "Kobzar" was published, in 1842 - the historical and heroic poem "Gaidamaki", his largest work. The 1840s became Shevchenko's "golden time", at this time his best and major poetic works were published. In 1844 he went to Little Russia (Ukraine), lived in Pereyaslavl and Kiev. Shevchenko makes a number of drawings of architectural and historical monuments of Pereyaslavl.
In Kiev he met the historian Nikolai Kostomarov, in 1846 he joined the Cyril and Methodius Society. It was a secret organization that aimed to create the Slavic democratic republics, the formation of a federation of them with the capital in Kiev. Members of the secret society opposed the autocracy, for the elimination of serfdom, estates, liberalization, the creation of a republic with a president and a parliament-Diet. In 1847, the society was identified and destroyed by gendarmes, its members were arrested, exiled (after a year in the Peter and Paul Fortress, Kostomarov was sent to Saratov) or recruited into the army. Shevchenko was assigned a soldier.
Taras Shevchenko served in the Orenburg corps, in the Orsk fortress, then he was exiled even further - to the Novopetrovskoye fortification on the Caspian Sea. In Novopetrovsk, he served from 1850 to 1857. The most difficult for Shevchenko was the ban on writing and drawing. He was released thanks to the persistent petitions for him by the vice-president of the Academy of Arts, Count F. Tolstoy, his wife. He returned to St. Petersburg and continued to do what he loved, at this time he was especially fascinated by engraving. In 1860 he was awarded the title of academician in the class of engraving. In the capital, Shevchenko became close to the Polish and Russian revolutionary democrats.
Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko died on February 26 (March 10) 1861 in St. Petersburg.
In the Russian Empire, Taras Shevchenko was not popular. By his centenary, representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia decided to raise funds for the monument, but found that the poet was unknown among the masses. Only after the revolution of 1917, in connection with the directive creation of the Ukrainian SSR and the "Ukrainian people" (millions of Russian people were simply recorded as "Ukrainians"), the policy of indigenousization (large-scale encouragement of national minorities to the detriment of the Russian people), did mass propaganda of the image of the "great kobzar" begin … So the Little Russian artist and poet was turned into a cult figure of the Ukrainian intelligentsia.
After the collapse of the USSR, when Little Russia (Ukraine) became "independent", a period of aggressive Ukrainization of everything Russian began again. Let me remind you that periods of active Ukrainization, xenophobic Ukrainian Nazism, were associated with the power of the Central Rada and the Directory after the 1917 revolution in Russia, the German occupation during the First and Second World Wars, the policy of radical revolutionaries, Bolsheviks, who in the 1920s and early 1930s -20s, they nurtured the Ukrainian intelligentsia, "language" as opposed to "Great Russian chauvinism."
Unfortunately, more than a hundred years of active Ukrainian propaganda, especially after 1991, led to the fact that the bulk of the population of Russian civilization (Great, Small and White Russia) no longer knows that until 1917 the "Ukrainian people" simply did not It was. The very words "Ukraine" and "Little Russia" are territorial concepts that in the Middle Ages designate the outskirts of the Commonwealth, which had previously captured the southern and western Russian lands. Since ancient times, the Rus, Dew, Rusichi, Russians lived on the Danube, Dniester and Dnieper. There have never been any "Ukrainians". Kiev was the ancient Russian capital. Chernigov, Pereyaslavl Russian, Lvov, Przemysl, Galich, Vladimir-Volynsky, Poltava, Odessa, Kharkov, Donetsk are Russian cities. Nothing has changed in the ethnography of the region after the occupation of the southern and western Russian lands by Lithuania, Hungary and Poland. The overwhelming majority of the population, more than 95%, remained Russian. Only the princely-boyar elite was polished and converted to Catholicism. Bohdan Khmelnitsky was Russian and under his leadership the Russian National Liberation War was going on.
Later in Russia the concept of "Little Russians" appeared to denote the South Russian population. But Little Russians were as much a part of the Russian super-ethnos as the Russian Pomors - residents of the Russian North, Siberians, residents of the former separate principalities and lands - Ryazan, Pskov, Novgorod, Tver, etc. They simply had their own South Russian dialect, peculiarities of life, etc. The Vatican, Poland, Austria and Germany - with the aim of splitting the single Russian superethnos, pitting its parts against each other, were working to create a Ukrainian intelligentsia, a "language". However, by the beginning of the 20th century, the results were minimal. An extremely small, marginal stratum of the intelligentsia who had no influence on the people considered themselves to be "Ukrainians". Only the geopolitical, civilizational catastrophe of 1917 made it possible to create the Ukrainian statehood and the "Ukrainian people" - an ethnographic chimera, of the Russian people who were made "Ukrainians" by repression, terror, administrative reforms and active cultural and linguistic propaganda, as well as diligent struggle against everything Russian.
Since 1991, this process has taken on the most active and radical character. From that time on, the name and image of Taras Shevchenko, a South Russian poet and artist, became the banner of aggressive Ukrainianism for the final de-Russification, the destruction of the all-Russian civilizational basis, in Little Russia-Ukraine. He was turned into an idol of the cave, zoological Russophobia, the ideology of Ukrainians.
Shevchenko himself never differentiated between Little Russians and Russians. Nowhere and never called himself "Ukrainian". The poet perfectly knew the Russian language, literature and culture in general, which were the full successors of the Old Russian language and culture. Most of Shevchenko's prose, as well as some of the poems, are written in Russian. The South Russian poet was a “product” of Russian culture. Representatives of Russian culture (Zhukovsky, Bryullov, Grigorovich) and others helped him to free himself from serf bondage, became teachers, helped to get on his feet. Shevchenko himself was part of the capital's intelligentsia. As a result, the poet never separated "Sweet Ukraine" and Russia. Even in his diary, he only calls his homeland Ukraine a couple of times, and in other cases Little Russia.
At the same time, Shevchenko himself was not a model of a moral, good person. In particular, when the investigation was unable to prove Shevchenko's involvement in the activities of the Cyril and Methodius Society, he was punished for his own misconduct. Shevchenko slandered the sovereign and empress. And in his personal life he showed immorality. So, a series of vicious actions led to a break with his teacher Bryullov and other former benefactors.
Thus, the current glory of Taras Shevchenko is the result of a special ideological campaign of revolutionaries in the 1920s as part of the violent Ukrainization of the southwestern part of Russia-Russia, when they created "Ukraine" as a separate state entity and the "Ukrainian people" as separate from Russian people ethnos. Then the idols of the "Ukrainian people" were urgently needed, they also remembered Shevchenko, so he would have been just one of many representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, originally from Little Russia. And since 1991, this information campaign has taken on a more radical, anti-Russian character. Shevchenko was made the idol of the Ukrainian Nazis, although in reality he was a supporter of Pan-Slavism - the creation of a single Slavic state, including the Western and Southern Slavs.
