Шевченко проти Путіна: актуальні виміри української ідентичности
Shevchenko against Putin: Current dimensions of Ukrainian identity

Summary/Abstract: The article is based on refuting the thesis of Russian propaganda about Ukraine as an “artificial formation”, an “experimental” “creature of the Soviet era” (according to Vladimir Putin); it is on these theses that the Putin regime bases its encroachments on Ukrainian sovereignty. An unexpected assistant of Eastern propaganda is the methodology of Western constructivists, who present modern national identities as a “cultural construct”, “imagined communities” (Benedict Anderson), claiming that nationalism “makes up nations where they do not yet exist” (according to Ernest Gellner), and artificially “invents tradition” (Eric Hobsbawm and Tirence Ranger) and so on. Such views stem from an understanding of modern secularization and modernity in general as alternatives to medieval theocentrism, when in fact it was a search for the living presence of God in man and society; “Palingenesian” legitimation of nation-building; evangelization of democracy; sacralization of “freedom, equality, brotherhood” at the turn of the Middle Ages and modern history. The author of this article defends this thesis, resorting to the poetry of Taras Shevchenko and the program document of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood “Law of God (Genesis of the Ukrainian People)” – the first manifestation of modern Ukrainianness, which is aware of its own identity.

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