ANTI-RUSSIAN NARRATIVE IN BROCHURES OF THE UNION FOR THE LIBERATION OF UKRAINE: CRITICISM OF IMPERIAL IDEOLOGUE AND MYTH-MAKING (1915–1916)

Abstract

The main features of propaganda of anti-Russian ideas and debunking imperial myths in brochures of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (ULU), which were aimed at the Ukrainian reader and set their main task a broad propaganda of the national issue are highlighted in the article. Almost from the very beginning of the creation of the organization, its members began to active information activities. In Vienna and other European cities, wide publishing capacities were established, in the context of which a separate place was allocated for printing this type of information as brochures. During the First World War, they became one of the important “platforms” for campaigning and propaganda. The main goal of the ULU proclaimed the creation of an independent Ukraine. At the same time, the implementation of such a plan was seen only on condition of absolute defeat in the war of the Russian Empire. In this regard, one of the key information tasks facing the members of the organization was the formation of a negative image of Russia. To do this, the authors used a wide range of propaganda techniques. Among them, the most common was the reception of “contrasts and comparisons”. The brochures systematically noted the positive political changes that have taken place in Austria and that Ukrainians here have broader rights and freedoms for their own development than in Russia. Of particular importance in anti-Russian rhetoric, the authors attached arguments from a historical point of view. The events and facts of the past were perhaps the best way to convince the reader of their own rightness. In addition to the formation of a general negative image of Russia, an important information task was to counteract imperial myths that had long been planted in the public consciousness of the Ukrainian people and gained a new impulse during the war. Thus, the authors of the brochures attempt to refute the following myths: that supposedly in the reign of the day there was one “common Russian state”, that the Moscow kingdom is the direct heir to Ancient Russia, that the agreement of Bogdan Khmelnitsky with the Moscow Tsar Alexei Romanov in 1654 was a “re-return” of Ukrainian lands to Russia, as well as that the current struggle for the liberation of fraternal Slavic peoples fraternal Slavic peoples from the oppression of the Triple Alliance. As a result, before the reader, Russia appeared in the form of the main culprit of war and the enemy, which entails only complete ruin, aims to completely destroy any manifestations of the Ukrainian national movement and is the main reason why for a long time in history the Ukrainian people were deprived of their own state independence.

Keywords: propaganda, anti-Russian ideas, imperial myths, brochure, Union of Liberation of Ukraine, Ukraine, Russian Empire, World War I.

Keywords: propaganda, anti-Russian ideas, imperial myths, brochure, Union of Liberation of Ukraine, Ukraine, Russian Empire, World War I.