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Illia Repin’s 'Zaporizhian Cossacks' and the Cossack Myth of Ukraine
This chapter explores the complex legacy of Illia Repin, an artist of the Russian Empire deeply connected to Ukrainian culture, by focusing on his famous painting Zaporizhian Cossacks Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan of 1880-91 and 1893. The article discusses Repin’s Ukrainian origins and his influence on the Ukrainian artistic canon despite his prominent role in Russian imperial culture. The painting itself, born of Repin’s engagement with Ukrainian history and folklore, had a lasting impact on Ukrainian visual culture. It remains at the center of debates about identity, colonialism, and artistic heritage, especially in the context of the current war between Russia and Ukraine. Through this prism, Repin’s work is seen as a cultural hybrid and a site of constant national and historical reinterpretation. Numerous photographic re-enactments of the Zaporizhian Cossacks, staged at the front lines by Ukrainian soldiers since 2014 as well as in the Ukrainian parliament by deputies and immediately disseminated via internet and social media, prove the longevity of Repin’s image formula as a polemical and ironical visual statement against Russia’s imperial claims and military aggression. It is argued that this popularity is located in the sustainable tradition of the Cossacks in Ukraine, which manifested itself already during the Revolution of Dignity on the Maidan in 2013–2014.
