Concepts of civilizational superiority and redemptive assimilation, widely held among nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals, helped to form stereotypes of Ukraine and Ukrainians in travel writings, textbooks, and historical fiction, stereotypes that have been reactivated in ensuing decades. Both Russian and Ukrainian writers have explored the politics of identity in the post-Soviet period, but while the canon of Russian imperial thought is well known, the tradition of resistance B which in the Ukrainian case can be traced as far back as the meeting of the Russian and Ukrainian polities and cultures of the seventeenth century B is much less familiar. Shkandrij demonstrates that Ukrainian literature has been marginalized in the interests of converting readers to imperial and assimilatory designs by emphasizing narratives of reunion and brotherhood and denying alterity.

Myroslav Shkandrij is professor emeritus of Slavic studies at the University of Manitoba.

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"A major contribution to Slavic studies, as well as to postcolonial studies. It is truly pioneering in its scope and attempt at bringing the scholarly discourses of these two disciplines into dialogic contact. Shkandrij's scholarly approach combines a nuanced and sensitive introduction of several key theoretical concepts with careful close readings of the original texts." Vitaly Chernetsky, Slavic Languages, Columbia University