SUMMARY:

This is the English translation of a little-known 1925 article by a Ukrainian literary critic, Feliks Iakubovs’kyi. In it, Iakubovs’kyi critiques “Khokhlology,” a term he uses to describe a willful cultural misinterpretation of Ukrainian identity, pervasive among the Russian cultural elite. He argues that this misinterpretation manifests as great-power chauvinism, ranging from the “philistine” annoyance of moviegoers about Ukrainian subtitles to the distorted orthography and linguistic mockery found in the works of prominent Russian intellectuals like Viktor Shklovsky.