THE MYTH OF SHEVCHENKO AS AN ARCHETYPE OF THE NATIONAL IDEA: THE JOURNALISTIC WRITINGS OF OLENA PCHILKA AND ULAS SAMCHUK

Abstract

The article explores the similarly structured literary activities of Olena Pchilka and Ulas Samchuk, both dedicated to the figure of Taras Shevchenko. Their diverse texts—primarily journalistic in nature—served as instruments in their active nationalist civic engagement. Olena Pchilka regarded Shevchenko as a nationalist by worldview and substantiated this in numerous speeches, lectures, and essays. As editor of the journal Ridnyi Krai («Native Land»), she worked to popularize Shevchenko’s name. The mythologization of Shevchenko began during his lifetime: the folk image of a magical defender of the oppressed was later subjected to demythologization by the Ukrainian intelligentsia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In its place emerged a new romantic myth of the Poet, through whom the Ukrainian nation speaks to the world. Among the Ukrainian diaspora, this image further solidified as the archetype of the national genius and the bearer of the national idea. Ulas Samchuk actively employed Shevchenko’s name in his public discourse. The article examines the polemics among various ideological groups concerning the apologetics of Shevchenko. It argues that the mythologization of Shevchenko in the literary and public work of Olena Pchilka and Ulas Samchuk ultimately proved essential for uniting Ukrainians and constructing Ukrainian identity. Despite political differences, Shevchenko—as the archetypal Poet—served as a guiding figure in shaping Ukrainians as a powerful and self-aware nation. Numerous parallels in the perspectives of Pchilka and Samchuk on Shevchenko provide a basis for a theoretical generalization of the processes of mythologization and demythologization of historical figures.