The love of his native country and the contempt to oppressors...": Nationalization of the Old Russian past and the construction of Ukraine's image in the early romantic literature

The article analyzes the historical concepts of South Russian ancient history in the early romantic literature of the 1810-1820-s in terms of their evolution, which, on the one hand, reflects the transition from autonomism to regionalism in historiography, and, on the other, the ideological rethinking of Ancient Russian images and plots in the belles-lettres. The first part of the article is based on works by D.N. Bantysh-Kamensky, A.I. Martos, M.F. Berlin, Z. Dolenga-Khodakovsky and focused on the history of Little Russia viewed within the traditional Imperial scheme, or Imperial grand narrative of N.M. Karamzin. Its logic is based on the stable successive autocracy under which South Russia was becoming more engaged in feuds since the 12th - 13 th centuries, while Northern Russia was growing more consolidated due to the strong unity of the princely dynasty. By the time of the Mongol invasion, the Kievan lands, having no state principle, dropped out of history to return only in the 17th century when they joined the Moscow Tsardom succeeded by the Russian Empire. In this scheme, the cultural differences between Great and Little Russians are removed due to their common origin, which allows considering Ukraine the cradle of the "Russianness". Sharing Karamzin's concepts, Little Russian historians of the new wave sought to fill the "gaps" and include the events of the 14th - mid-17th centuries in the imperial past. On the other hand, the emerging national mentality, as reflected in the historiography, focused on the system of distinctions between "us" and "them", making imperial authors more sensitive to the cultural boundaries. While the 1770-1790-s literature about Ancient Russia remained within mythological paradigm and was of little sensitivity to the national colour, the upcoming romantic era demanded greater historical and cultural certainty and closer ties to the time and place. As a result, mythologization with its genre patterns of "heroic" tales, comic operas, heroic stories or poems were significantly pushed back by the ideological problems within historical stories, Dumas and poems. In "The Slavonic Nights" by V.T. Narezhny, "Dumas" by K.F. Rileyev as well as in stories and poems by A.A. Bes-tuzhev, the past of Little Russia was connected with a set of special motifs: ethnic heterogeneity, a complex process of land collection in the Empire, the struggle against foreign enemies, republican freedom opposed to tyranny, strife and separatism. Such artistic nationalization of the past perfectly fit itself in the imperial grand narrative scheme with its integrated vision of outskirts. However, it nourished the Little Russian regional identity, implicitly outlining the future national and cultural distinctions.

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