“Wilderness which only yesterday emerged from the forest”: Polish-Ukrainian Borderlands and the Colonial Imaginary in the Fiction of Aleksander Groza

Abstract

The article presents an analysis and interpretation of the oeuvre by Aleksander Groza in search for the author’s colonial convictions transmitted therein, prejudiced against the Ukrainian nation. The influence of the nobles and magnates of Polish and Lithuanian background over the territory inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians and Belorusians lasted for several centuries. The vast landed estates, fiefdoms, gradually reorganised the feudal system towards an even greater exploitation of the peasant population. Poles’ attitude towards the Ukrainians carried undertones of cultural, civilisational, and religious superiority of the Polish and Lithuanian Commonwealth, and of the paternalistic mission of “bringing education” to Ukrainians, who were considered to be “savage”, “feral”, “dependent.” Symptoms of such thinking are traced in the article by way of analysing representative Polish texts about Ukraine.