THE UKRAINIAN NATIONAL LIBERATION MOVEMENT IN THE MIRROR OF CRITICAL THEORY: POSTCOLONIAL AND DECOLONIAL ASPECTS

Abstract

The article provides an interdisciplinary understanding of the Ukrainian national liberation movement through the prism of critical theory, in particular postcolonial and decolonial approaches, which allows us to rethink historical processes in Eastern Europe in a broader global context. The Ukrainian movement for national identity and state independence is considered as a classic example of anti-colonial struggle against the long-term policy of linguistic, cultural and legal subjugation implemented by the imperial structures of Russia. The author analyzes the political continuity between the tsarist empire, the White Guard movement, in particular through «Denikin’s Address to the Population of Malorussia» (1919), Soviet ideology, and contemporary Russian politics. Considerable attention is paid to V. Putin’s article «On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians» (2021), which contains a programmatic concept of modern neo-imperial thinking and an ideological basis for further aggression against Ukraine. At the same time, the author analyzes the neglect of the Ukrainian issue in Western academic scholarship, which has long been dominated by Russian studies, reproducing the colonial discourse, and Ukrainian studies were not an independent discipline. In this context, the problem of academic colonialism arises, which contributed to the legitimization of an external vision of Ukraine through the prism of the Russian narrative. The article proposes a conceptual approach to the decolonization of knowledge as a factor of cultural resistance and a basis for the formation of an autonomous intellectual space. The Ukrainian experience of creating political subjectivity in the context of prolonged colonization is seen as relevant to broader studies of postcolonial transformations taking place in the world. The author concludes that Russia’s current war against Ukraine has not only a military-political, but also a deep civilizational and cognitive dimension, which requires appropriate reflection in science. The article is addressed to researchers of philosophy, history, nationalism theory, cultural studies, law and postcolonial studies.