UKRAINIAN LITERARY EDITIONS OF THE MID-19TH CENTURY: ALMANACS AND «THICK» MAGAZINES IN THE HISTORY OF THE FORMATION OF UKRAINOPHILISM

Abstract

The article is devoted to the literary publications of the Ukrainophiles, who made attempts to gain a foothold in the Russian printed space in the middle of the 19th century. At that time, there was an activation of the proto-national movement, which sang the Little Russian identity in the heterogeneous southwestern region of the Russian Empire. Ukrainian publications have evolved from literary collections and extended almanacs to the first thick magazine “Osnova”, which captures certain stages in the formation of Ukrainophilism. The article pays attention to the idea of creating a new model of Little Russian journal, which the Ukrainian ethnographer P.A. Kulish tried to implement. However, this idea had to be shelved due to the negative consequences of the exposure of the Cyril and Methodius Society. The Kharkov Romantic School appeared in literary collections as a local manifestation of provincial ethnography, an elegiac curiosity of the local intellectual elite. The capital magazine “Osnova” appeared a decade and a half later thanks to the efforts of a new galaxy of Ukrainian actors who were ahead of their time, formulated a position and presented it to the expert community. During the publication, the authors of the bilingual “Osnova” encountered a number of difficulties that predetermined the short life of the publication. Despite the accusations of national separatism, the Ukrainophiles raised the problem of teaching peoples in their native language, spread Hromadov's practices and achieved indirect recognition of the literary status of the Little Russian language, which in total makes it possible to identify Ukrainophilism of the early 1860s as a national movement. The use of Hrokh’s typology of nationalisms helps to more accurately identify the stage of development of the Little Russian national idea.