Falling into the existential abyss: Ivan Franko’s realist prose in experiments with Gothic and crime fiction modes

This article examines three novels by Ukrainian realist Ivan Franko (1856–1916): Dlia domashn'oho ohnyshcha (For the Home Hearth, 1892), Osnovy suspil'nosti (Pillars of Society, 1894), and Perekhresni stezhky (Fateful Crossroads, 1900). Previous scholars saw elements of crime fiction in these works, but the actual relationship between the two genres of crime fiction and realism has not been fully developed. By studying the conventions of crime fiction, along with its antecedent, the Gothic, and their influence on Franko, the author shows the make-up of the early Ukrainian crime fiction genre and points to its importance in understanding Franko’s vacillation between realist and modernist tendencies. As she argues, the scales of his vacillation are tipped toward modernism in its decadent form, an existential void that characterized fin de siècle Europe. Hence, Franko’s “ideal” or programmatic realism (defined by Franko as a literary style with a didactic tendency aimed at educating society), which he introduced under the appealing cover of crime and Gothic motifs, ultimately failed him. The author proposes that it is the creative modes (Gothic and crime fiction) that Franko chose for voicing his ideas about social reforms that led him, unsuspectingly, away from his programmatic goal and toward the decadent aspects of modernism.     

Andrii Liubka’s Carbide: Ukrainian democratic reforms through a dark glass

ABSTRACT

The Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine and its reforms are the topics of Andrii Liubka’s novel Karbid (Carbide, 2015). Employing Voltairean laughter and neo-Gothic aesthetics, Liubka presents the idea of European integration (one of the expected outcomes of the reforms) implemented practically by the corrupt elites of the imagined Transcarpathian town of Vedmediv as a money-laundering enterprise – an underground tunnel for smuggling drugs and people’s organs from Ukraine to Europe. The author proposes that the elites – most of whom are criminals – personify Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection in the novel and represent social spheres that need reform. Contrary to the Euromaidan goals, these comprador elites desire even stronger borders between Ukraine and the European Union, as these facilitate their shadow economy, and they subject the local population to economic and social decline, turning them into disposable human waste. By applying the concept of abjection in its psychoanalytic and social forms to Liubka’s tragicomic novel, the author argues that his text points to Ukraine’s struggle to define itself as “West” and shed its totalitarian legacy of the Soviet “East,” and brings attention to the conflict between the post-Euromaidan national strivings of Ukraine’s citizens and the rampant corruption that negates their efforts.     

Prostitution and Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation

The paper aims to enhance understanding of sex trafficking and prostitution and provides distinction between the two. It argues that it is not prostitution itself which may fuel sex trafficking, but the exploitation of prostitution. Examples of the pro-prostitution and anti-prostitution policies are provided to support this argument. Svitlana Batsyukova received her Masters Degree in Public Administration with concentration in International Development from University of Washington, USA.     

The Formality of Informal Civil Society: Ukraine’s EuroMaidan

Over a period of three months, starting in late 2013, Ukraine experienced a remarkable civic transformation. What started as peaceful protests largely consisting of young idealists, grew quickly into an organized yet decentralized social movement, a conglomeration of semi-formal initiatives, and a loosely defined network of related formal and informal organizations—a process that ultimately prompted significant political and social changes in Ukraine. This paper offers three case studies related to EuroMaidan to provide insight into the formal and informal dimensions of civil society, contrasting those with official designations. The discussion contributes to the long-debated question of the strength or weakness of civil society in the context of Eastern Europe and suggests directions for future research with regard to the conceptualization of civil society and our understanding of formality.     

Two Generations, Two Strategies: The Fate of Bare English–origin Nouns in Ukrainian

The status of lone nouns of one language in discourse of another is often ambiguous, since they typically provide few indications of their language membership. Making use of the facts of linguistic variability in each of Ukrainian and English, we examine the quantitative conditioning of such forms in bilingual performance data. Results yield a synchronic portrait of the integrated loanword, even when it bears no surface indication of that integration, is neither recurrent nor widespread, and has no history of attestation or other status in the language. Distinguishing the languages involved in the contact situation (Canada) as produced by the first generation (G₁) or the second generation (G₂), further reveals that G₁ speakers incorporate borrowed items – nonce or established – into recipient language discourse by applying to them the fine details of their native language constraints on linguistic variability. In contrast, G₂ speakers' treatment of English-origin nouns coincides neither with their own treatment of Ukrainian nouns nor with G₁ speakers' treatment of Ukrainian or English–origin nouns.     

Negotiating Magic: Ukrainian Wedding Traditions and Their Persistence in Canada

Magical efficacy has been important in Ukrainian wedding ritual. The korovai, rushnyk, omens, gifts, the showering of the couple, and other “sacred” objects and acts of the Ukrainian folk wedding are believed to be imbued with prophetic qualities. Uprooted folklore tradition, however, faces inevitable transformations, and Ukrainian immigrants in Canada tend to know and believe in magical objects and actions significantly less. The examination of magical beliefs and practices in the context of weddings among Ukrainians in Ukraine and in Canada shows that the two groups possess different belief systems: magical and anti-magical respectively. Rural and urban dwellers, divorced people, and the clergy from both countries were interviewed retrospectively about their wedding days. Their answers confirm that magical beliefs and practices are the most fragile part of the folklore complex transmitted to a different cultural context. By contrast, material culture, which becomes a major means of ethnic identification, remains well preserved and cherished.     

From the Tabennisi nunnery to Pussy Riot: female holy fools in Byzantium and Russia

In this paper, as the author explores the gendered aspects of the holy fool’s phenomenology, she argues that, despite the presumed egalitarianism and the fact that female holy fools appeared in Byzantine hagiography as early as the fifth century, throughout the history of holy foolishness the urban model – hagiographically established in the Byzantine vita of Simeon the Fool of Emesa – was available exclusively to males. Females, recently canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church as holy fools for Christ’s sake, completely lack such essential characteristics of holy foolishness as subversion, defiance, and folly, whereas the holy fool’s theatricality and rebellious ardour live on in the subversive performances of activist artists.