Of Slaveholders and Renegades: Semantic Uncertainties in Volodymyr Antonovych’s Conversion to Ukrainianness
Of Slaveholders and Renegades: Semantic Uncertainties in Volodymyr Antonovych’s Conversion to Ukrainianness
Author(s): Jens HerlthSubject(s): Semantics, Eastern Slavic Languages, Period(s) of Nation Building, Politics and Identity
Published by: Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: 19th century Ukraine; populism; nation-building; linguistic nationalism; Volodymyr Antonovych;
Summary/Abstract: In an article published in the St. Petersburg-based Ukrainian language journal Osnova (Foundation) in 1862, Włodzimierz Antonowicz, formally the descendant of a Polish family from the landed gentry in Ukraine, declared that from then on he would consider himself a Ukrainian. In the present essay, I analyze the polemics around what can be called Antonovych’s conversion from Polishness to Ukrainianness. Antonovych as well as his adversaries brought into play various concepts of nationality and national identity, switching quite freely between various frames of references (political thought of the Enlightenment and the Romantic era, contemporary historical fiction, and historiography).
Journal: Sprawy Narodowościowe
- Issue Year: 2017
- Issue No: 49
- Page Range: 0-0
- Page Count: 12
- Language: English