TY - JOUR AU1 - Ryabchuk, Mykola AB - © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI 10.1163/221023910X512778 Canadian–American Slavic Studies 44 (2010) 7–24 brill.nl/css * ) I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and one of them for taking the time to help with the stylistic editing of this text. I also appreciate the fi nal round of copy-editing by Marta D. Olynyk. 1) Ludovic Kennedy, In Bed with an Elephant (London: Corgi Books, 1996), p. viii. Th e Ukrainian “Friday” and the Russian “Robinson”: Th e Uneasy Advent of Postcoloniality * Mykola Ryabchuk Ukrainian Center for Cultural Studies, Kyiv, Ukraine Abstract Th e paper addresses the problem of Russian-Ukrainian asymmetric relations as revealed in the struggle of two discourses—the discourse of imperial dominance and the discourse of national/ nationalistic resistance and liberation. Critical discourse analysis is applied to deconstruct the imperial discourse as a major obstacle for the normalization of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Postcoloniality is suggested as a desirable condition for both Russian and Ukrainian cultures to achieve internal freedom and eliminate colonial stereotypes and anti-colonial mobilization, respectively. Keywords Ukraine, Russia, postcolonialism, imperial discourse, identity Forty years ago, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, famously declared that living next to TI - The Ukrainian “Friday” and the Russian “Robinson”: The Uneasy Advent of Postcoloniality JF - Canadian-American Slavic Studies DO - 10.1163/221023910X512778 DA - 2010-01-01 UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/brill/the-ukrainian-friday-and-the-russian-robinson-the-uneasy-advent-of-YzDnUz3gD8 SP - 7 EP - 24 VL - 44 IS - 1-2 DP - DeepDyve