Experts of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance (UINP) consider objects dedicated to the Russian writer Mykhailo Bulgakov to be symbols of Russian imperial policy.
According to their conclusion, their continued presence in the public space is Russian propaganda.
As Ukraine Moloda informs, this is stated in the published conclusion The expert commission of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences.
In particular, the commission notes that Bulgakov lived in Kyiv, but his family came from the Oryol province, all his works were written in Russian, and he was an imperialist and a Ukrainophobe by outlook.
The writer despised Ukrainians and Ukrainian culture, hated the Ukrainian desire for independence and spoke negatively about the formation of the Ukrainian state and its leaders.
Experts emphasize that among all the writers of that time, it is Bulgakov who “stands closest to the current ideologues of Putinism and the Kremlin’s justification of genocide in Ukraine.”
And they add that even despite “slight criticism of the Soviet government,” the writer sympathized with the Bolsheviks — in particular, “he praised the capture of Kiev by the Reds and the destruction of the fighters for Ukraine — the “despicable Petlyurites”.”
There is not a single positive Ukrainian character in the writer’s works. Instead, he parodies or mockingly distorts the Ukrainian language, mocks the Ukrainian autocephalous church and denies the very existence of the Ukrainian nation.
Thus, one of the prototypes of the “White Guard” is Vasyl Listovnichy, the owner of the house on Andriivskyi Uzvoz, where the writer’s family lived. In the text, Bulgakov portrays him as a greedy coward and an accomplice, later his daughter was indignant and protested against such a portrayal of her father.
Instead, the story “On the Night of the 3rd” has an anti-Ukrainian orientation due to the “grotesque image” of the soldiers of the 1st regiment of the Ukrainian Blue Division.
In Bulgakov’s story “I Killed”, the commission of the Institute of National Remembrance sees the narratives of current Kremlin propagandists Alexander Dugin, Volodymyr Solovyov and Olga Skabeeva. In addition, they say that this work resonates with current calls for the destruction of Ukrainians and contains the ideology of fascism.
“Therefore, Mykhailo Bulgakov had a biased and distinctly negative attitude towards everything Ukrainian – Ukrainians, their language, culture, the right to their own state, etc., and his work is directly related to the glorification of Russian imperial policy and undisguised Ukrainophobia,” the conclusion reads.
Therefore, the UINP believes that the assignment of Bulgakov’s name to geographical objects, names of legal entities, objects of toponymy, as well as the establishment of monuments in his honor in Ukraine was the embodiment of Russification as a component of Russian imperial policy.
As “UM” reported, the building in which the writer Mykhailo Bulgakov lived at 13 Andriyivskyi Uzviz Street in Kyiv will be deprived of the status of a monument of national significance and will be “downgraded” to a lower rank – the status of a monument of local significance.
