Volume 8, numéro 2, 2021

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This article focuses on historical and contemporary connotations of the Intermarium concept—Ukrainian and Polish academic and political thought on how to organize and govern the space between the Baltic and Black seas—employing the ideas of Józef Piłsudski, Józef Beck, Michał Czajkowski (Mykhailo Chaikovs'kyi), Mykhailo Drahomanov, members of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, and other intellectuals. In this context, it traces Ukraine’s and Poland’s attempts to construct Intermarium-type intergovernmental frameworks in the aftermath of the Cold War. It also examines the current stage of Ukrainian-Polish co-operation—the latter being regarded by Intermarium founding fathers as a vital precondition for this framework to be realized. In this respect, the article considers bilateral advancements in political, economic, cultural, and security spheres. As the emergence of a Ukrainian-Polish institutionalized linchpin is impossible in the contemporary geopolitical architecture, the article proposes that the term “Intermarium” has become ambiguous. If by chance the Intermarium comes into being as a defensive alliance today, it might bring more harm than benefit to the regional security.

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The ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict, crises in the European Union (EU), and armed conflicts in the EU neighbourhood have influenced the prospects of future development in eastern and central Europe. A search for new security architecture on the margins of the EU and regional collaborations that prevail across formal EU borders have forced national elites in Poland and Ukraine to redefine their efforts regarding regional and security co-operation. Rationales for joining an Intermarium (a regional, transnational project involving successor states of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth countries) are based on the perception of a threat coming from Russia. This article analyzes the Intermarium concept, first, from the perspective of “geopolitical imaginary” with emphasis on periphery-centre relations and, second, in the light of regional “security dilemma” as it appears in attempt of “smaller” states to counteract Russian threats.

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The Trimarium Initiative (TI) is a platform for co-operation of twelve central and eastern European (CEE) countries of the eastern flank of the European Union (EU), introduced by Poland and Croatia in 2015. The TI is based on member co-operation in the development of transport and communication, energy, raw materials (gas and oil) transfer infrastructure, and digitization. The region is an important and rapidly growing market, and the TI goal is to boost economic co-operation among these twelve countries. Ukraine is not an EU member state, so it cannot be a full member of the TI; however, several TI infrastructural projects are open to Ukrainian companies. As Russia’s aggressive energy policy impacts Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, Scandinavia, and Slovakia, the TI has a potential to meet this challenge. Transport and communication and energy transit infrastructure are promising areas of co-operation among TI countries and Ukraine. U.S. support has added optimism and prestige to the initiative.

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While the works of the Antitrinitarian thinker and religious leader Szymon Budny (ca. 1530-93) have been the subject of extensive scholarly research, his library, marginalia, and reading practices have been significantly less examined. Following the discovery of a copy of Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogical Catechisms (Vienna, 1560) belonging to Budny, I analyze Budny’s notes and comments regarding the Latin translation of Cyril’s text as a case study of Budny’s attempt to recover the Church Father from the Catholic post-Tridentine agenda and his own subsequent re-appropriation of Cyril for his radical non-adorantist program. By exploring Budny’s subversive reading and annotating strategies, I demonstrate Budny’s original contributions to the development of Antitrinitarian thought in Europe. I also illustrate how marginalia and paratexts reflect not only the history of the book in which they are found, but also how they throw light on religious and intellectual history.

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At the turn of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, syllabic devotional songs in Ruthenian (RDS) make their first appearance as occasional appendices or notes in the margins of manuscripts serving quite divergent functions (triodia, evangelia and the like). The first systematic collections of RDS were compiled abroad by Ruthenian monks having left Ukraine for monasteries around Moscow from the 1660s onwards. It required several more decades, till the beginning of the eighteenth century, before these songs were also being systematically collected in song manuscripts throughout the Ruthenian lands themselves. The article argues against established views to the effect that this documentary gap was due to a massive loss of seventeenth-century Ruthenian song manuscripts. It should rather be taken at face value as an indication that some perceptual change with respect to devotional songs is likely to have taken place among Ruthenian literate classes at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is argued that the rise of Ruthenian song manuscripts marks the beginning of a collecting culture, which treats devotional songs as a cherished and coveted collectable, where heretofore no particular value seems to have been accorded to these songs. The article explores the social profiles of song collectors and the individual makeup of song collections to offer a hypothetical outline of this emerging collecting culture, addressing issues of modes of exchange, methods of collecting and compiling, the specific relationship between collector and collectable, with a view to arguing for a highly individualized and intimate culture between private devotion and incipient object-oriented consumerism.

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To offset the devastating effects of the trade war waged by the Russian Federation, Ukraine has undertaken laudable efforts since 2014 to negotiate new trade agreements with other states. Against this background, the negotiations of the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement were finalized and the agreement came into force on 1 August 2017. This article explores the positive impact of this agreement on bilateral trade flow between the states and describes its potential contribution to unfolding Ukraine’s trade potential.

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This article reports the results of a small-scale study examining the role of English language proficiency in the adaptation of Ukrainian immigrant children and youth to life in Saskatchewan, Canada. The main objective of the study was to describe issues related to English as a Second Language (ESL) proficiency as they are perceived by Ukrainian children and youth and by their parents. The second objective of the study was to explore the following factors in the adaptation process: age, gender, duration of stay in Canada, age upon arrival in Canada, ESL class attendance, school type (English as the language of instruction or bilingual), and level of English proficiency. A total of 60 participants (30 children/youth and 30 parents) took part in the study. The methodology (mixed quantitative/qualitative) involved semi-structured interviews with the children/youth participants, an evaluation of their ESL proficiency, and a questionnaire survey of parents’ views on ESL-related adaptation difficulties experienced by children/youth. The results demonstrated that most Ukrainian immigrant children/youth reported that limited English proficiency was a major problem for them when they moved to Canada. The results of the study suggest that the difficulties experienced by a child who immigrates to Canada depend on the child’s ESL speaking proficiency, general ESL proficiency, duration of stay in Canada, and age upon arrival in Canada.

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Translation in captivity is nothing new, nor is it restricted to a particular place or historical period. However, this social and cultural phenomenon is marked by a far more frequent occurrence in totalitarian societies. This article examines the practice of literary translation in Soviet labour camps, where, as a result of political repression, Ukrainian scholars, writers, translators, and lexicographers (aka prisoners of conscience) constituted a large part of the incarcerated population. The fact that translation activity thrived behind bars despite brutal and dehumanizing conditions testifies to the phenomenon of cultural resistance and translators’ activism, both of which deserve close scholarly attention. This study provides insights into practical, historical, psychological, and philosophical aspects of translation in extreme conditions. It seeks answers to the questions of why prisoners of conscience felt moved to translate, and how they pursued their work in situations of extreme pressure. Through the lens of translation in prison, the article offers a wide perspective on the issues of retranslation, pseudotranslation, translation editing, text selection, and the functions of literary translation. The focus of the paper is on Soviet Ukraine in the 1970s-80s, when a wave of political repressions led to the appearance of a new generation of prisoners of conscience. Case studies of Vasyl' Stus and Ivan Svitlychnyi are discussed, drawing on their letters during the incarceration period and the memoirs of their inmates.

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Against a background of increasing electoral support of populist political actors in Europe and beyond, this study offers an exploratory inquiry into modern Ukrainian populism. The article examines populist communication, broadcast on the most highly rated Ukrainian television political talk shows, on the eve of the 2019 presidential election, which was completed in two rounds. A qualitative content analysis of populist communication acts (n=283) shows that Ukrainian viewers were exposed to diverse political discourses containing empty, anti-elitist, emergency, and complete populism, depending on which channel(s) they watched. The dominance of one or another type of populism on the studied channels mirrors the dynamics of media-political parallelism typical of Ukrainian commercial television. The study also examines the roles of different actors—moderators, journalists, and politicians—in either restricting or facilitating populism in the talk show studios. The populism-related reactions collected during this analysis (n=145) are discussed through the prism of normative roles, with a focus on gatekeeping, interpretation, and initiation. Implications for the stakeholders involved in the process of production, moderation, and consumption of political talk shows are presented.

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This report from the field concerns a collaborative project which resulted in successfully adding the Cyrillic fields to about 30,000 Ukrainian bibliographic records in OCLC WorldCat, the world’s largest online catalogue. Historically, the Ukrainian records in English-speaking libraries were only provided in transliteration according to the Library of Congress Romanization Table. However, the current standards also require the original script, such as the Ukrainian Kyrylytsia. While automating the Cyrillicization of Ukrainian legacy records is theoretically straightforward, in practice it faced more than one challenge, from poor quality of transliteration to the historical changes in Ukrainian orthography. The report presents the OCLC Ukrainian Cyrillicization project and discusses the steps in its implementation as an example of a successful collaboration in the areas of bibliographic automation, Ukrainian philology and culture, Slavic cataloguing, and linguistics.