Niniejszy tekst dotyczy genezy słowackiej świadomości narodowej, która narodziła się w XIX wieku w warunkach nasilającej się polityki madziaryzacji ze strony władz węgierskich. Miała ona miejsce najpierw w ramach monarchii austriackiej, a po ugodzie dworu austriackiego w Wiedniu z elitami węgierskimi i powstaniu Austro-Węgier nasiliła się w ramach Królestwa Węgierskiego. W odpowiedzi na politykę madziaryzacji narody niemadziarskie, w tym Słowacy – a ściślej ich niewielkie elity polityczne i kulturalne – podjęły próbę przeciwstawienia się polityce władz węgierskich. W tekście autor ukazał proces kształtowania się słowackiej świadomości narodowej, rolę Ľudovita Štúra, Jána Kollara i kolejnych działaczy, politycznych, ludzi kultury w tym procesie do 1918 r. Omówił też współpracę Słowaków z innymi narodami niewęgierskimi, mieszkającymi w Królestwie Węgierskim w walce o swoje prawa, przeciwko nacjonalistycznej polityce władz węgierskich, w tym okoliczności związania się Słowaków z Czechami w okresie poprzedzającym wybuch pierwszej wojny światowej i w latach jej trwania – zwłaszcza na przełomie 1917 i 1918 r., co ostatecznie doprowadziło do proklamowania w Pradze 28 października 1918 r. Republiki Czechosłowackiej jako jednego z nowych państw Europy Środkowej, powstałego na gruzach Austro-Węgier.

«Killing of the mother» as a sign of national mental mutation under colonial and totalitarian pressure (illustrated on the twentieth-century ukrainian lyrics (the 1920–1930th)

The article deals with the specific art representation of moral, ethic, psychical shifts of the national masculine character in Ukrainian lyrics of the first third of XXth century. They are conveyed in particular through the masculine intention to destroy the maternal figure of Motherland. Sometimes aggressiveness and hostility expressed in the poetic texts are equal to symbolical “killing of the Mother”, if taking into consideration a convergence of the images of Mother and Motherland in poetic consciousness. The article employs analytical and structural as well as historical and typological literary techniques. The theoretical base of the investigation is postcolonial theory integrated with psychoanalysis as well as gender studies to deal effectively with such concepts as maternal figure of the Motherland, national colonial masculinity, masculine art consciousness, the notions of trauma, aggression and others as well. This theoretical direction can provide help with outlining of the “killing of the Mother” symptom as Ukrainian poets’ destructive gesture toward their Motherland represented in the 1920th proletarian poetry (Vasyl Ellan-Blakytnyi, Volodymyr Sosiura, Heo Shkurupii) and also in a number of works of emigrant poets between two World Wars (Yevhen Malaniuk, Ostap Tarnavskii and others). Diverse lyric tendencies to express the urge to kill the Mother extrapolated on the image of Ukraine are highlighted. Ethic transformation of Ukrainians poets’ patriotic feelings is predicated upon different reasons, but the common one is that they had equally suffered colonial and totalitarian pressure of Soviet Russia. The moods of depiction of Ukraine’s “death” are, on the contrary, differentiate; in the 1920th, proletarian Ukrainian poets defused the tension between Bolshevistic and nationalistic ideologies through splitting the image of Ukraine into the negative “bourgeois” one and the positive “proletarian” one. In some works of emigrant poets devaluated image of Ukraine acquires demonic “deathly” features and is dishonored as “a betrayer”.

The party ideologues of the Soviet totalitarian state artificially developed and actively introduced into the life of the titular nation of the Ukrainian SSR a new Soviet ritualism, the main goal of which was to raise from every Ukrainian a Russified citizen of the Soviet type without national identity and religious beliefs, with a Russian consciousness, mentality and language. The article proves that the ancient church and religious traditions and customs of the Ukrainian people continued to be a part of the everyday culture of Ukrainians. The religious activity of representatives of the Ukrainian ethnic group was especially observed during the celebration of Christmas, Epiphany, Easter and other church holidays. And although the number of adherents of religious rites in the republic was different – from less in the East to more in the West, Christian values, despite atheism, continued to be the basis of the spiritual life of the absolute majority of Ukrainians.