Evolution of image of Ukraine in imperial literature of the first quarter of 19th century: regionalism, ethnography, politicization (Article I)

The final phase of Ukraine's integration into the imperial space during the reign of Alexander I was marked by the spirit of loyalty from the Ukrainian society. That was extremely important for the capital authorities building their relationships with various ethnic groups according to the special "unofficial" hierarchy. Occasional Ukrainians' access to the highest cultural and political spheres of the empire changed into their permanent and mass participation in metropolis life. In doing so, the natives of Little Russia no longer perceived themselves as bearers of another ethnic and national identity. Their self-consciousness can be defined as regionalism. There were at least three ways in which the image of Ukraine was transformed in the Russian public conscience and literature from 1800 to the early 1820s. With the integration of Little Russia into the imperial administrative and political, social and cultural system the emphasis on the difference gradually weakened and was replaced by the attention to similarity. That became the ground for century, at the common study of local and imperial history. That was also found in literature and journalism changing their language into Russian and becoming a part of the whole literature process. Turning to the cultural origins came from the notion of the united Russian and Ukrainian basis where Little Russia presented itself as the Slavic "antiquities reserve". At the other pole those changes attached significance to the local color and prevented from the complete removal of the native-or-strange system. In perspective they were to revive the regional patriotism with the possibility of its transformation into a new national self-consciousness and thinking in terms of the nation. Thus, regionalism, ethnography and politicization, as a united complex, defined the main features of the Ukrainian "difference" appearing in the imperial discourse of the Alexandrian epoch. In the article special attention is focused on the character of the first component of the complex. The element determined the functioning of the Ukrainian image in the imperial culture and the possibility of its transformation in accordance with the Ukrainian position. A number of texts, mainly journal and journalistic ones, are examined in the article. They reflect the phenomenon of Ukrainian regionalism: its ideological content, stylistic variation, genre features and functions (including the function of social consolidation, expression of general class requests, making a stand for the rights and privileges of any class, description of the modern image of Ukraine and the expected vectors of its future development which relate chiefly to their interaction with imperial Russia, and so on).

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