Agricultural Exhibition in Kyiv in 1852: An Article in a French Magazine as an Ethnographic Source about Ukrainian Culture

Author

Oliynyk Maryna

a Ph.D. in History, a senior research fellow at the Ukrainian Ethnological Centre Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2946-8243

Agricultural Exhibition in Kyiv in 1852: An Article in a French Magazine as an Ethnographic Source about Ukrainian Culture

Abstract

The article is dedicated to introducing a French-language article unknown previously to Ukrainian historiography into the source database for the study of Ukrainian ethnocultural reality of the mid-19th century. The authoress has found the article in the Parisian weekly “L’Illustration” (“Illustration”) for December 4, 1852. The lack of information about this important source is connected with the peculiarity of the article’s title. It is called “Industrial Exhibition in Russia”. The title of the article reflects the political and geographical realities of the time when Ukrainian ethnographic territories are included into the Russian Empire. This article deals with the holding of an agricultural exhibition in Kyiv in 1852. The author of the article is not specified, but it is known for certain that this is a Frenchman who is working near Kyiv at that time. This foreigner did not speak Russian, but only French. He has described what he saw at the exhibition and in Kyiv in general, and also provided valuable drawings of St. Andrew’s Church, Ukrainian women who visited the exhibition, and objects that were presented at the exhibition. His descriptions are evidence of the presence of Ukrainian culture in everyday life on Ukrainian ethnographic territories at that time. According to the narrator, peasant products from the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kursk, Poltava, Kharkiv, Podillia and Volhynia governorates have been submitted at the exhibition. Translator Zoia Borysiuk has made a translation from French into Ukrainian at the authoress’s request specifically for the «Materials to Ukrainian Ethnology» journal. The peculiarities of a foreigner’s view on Ukrainian culture are highlighted in the article. The colonial stereotypes of the terminology and discourse of the representation of Ukrainian realities as part of Russian culture existing at that time are analyzed. Special attention is paid to the study of Ukrainian clothing and images of peasant women.

Keywords

Ukrainian culture, agricultural exhibition, Kyiv, “L’Illustration” magazine, Ukrainian clothing, embroidery, embroidered rushnyk, ornamentation, invention of the «sanovoz» (sleigh), St. Andrew’s Church, Ukrainian culture, mid-19th century.

References

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