HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

178 fflOR SEVCENKOVenetian elements into the Greek vocabulary. What is more, in the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries Greek subjects of the Venetian Empire,too, were rejecting the union and creating a literature of their own—the socalledCretan literature—but they were creating it on the basis of straighttranslations or borrowings from Venetian, partly Jesuit, works.The West's offensive in the Ukrainian lands carried with it a danger: thatof the loss of the unity of the Ukrainian nation. Here a comparison with theCroats and the Serbs comes to mind. Among these two nations a linguisticidentity (roughly speaking) did not secure a national unity, because thesetwo groups had been divided by faith and frontiers from the eleventh centuryon. Three factors contributed to the preservation of the Ukrainiannational unity: first, the long period of time during which the major part ofthe Ukrainian territory remained under the sway of one, that is, the Polish-Lithuanian, state; second, the relatively short period of time during whichthis same territory was ruled by several states (1772-1945); third, theabsence of complete Catholicization in the Western Ukrainian lands.In spite of the Western penetration into Ukrainian lands—a penetrationthat lasted for several centuries—Ukrainians became "the East" in Westerneyes at a relatively early date, even before the partitions of Poland. Thiscame about not only because the majority of Ukrainians professed "theEastern faith" and were subordinated to an oriental patriarch down to thevery last quarter of the seventeenth century (after all, the Uniates weresubordinated to a Western patriarch); this also came about because thePolish-Lithuanian state itself (that as late as the sixteenth century was perceivedby the West as a component of the West), starting with the middle ofthe seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth, was perceived—by theway, unjustifiably so—as something connected with the East. This new perception,in fact, took root even earlier. Take the painting by Rubens, now inthe Boston Museum of Fine Arts, as an example. It dates from about 1625and, following a story in Herodotus, depicts Tomyris, the sixth century B.c.queen of the Scythian Massagetae who lived in the area of the Caspian Sea.In Rubens's picture the members of the queen's entourage appear in thedress of Polish noblemen. Not only the orientalizing dress of Polish noblemenand of their Ukrainian counterparts contributed to the reputation of thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the eighteenth century, the Jews ofthe Commonwealth (so many of them living in the towns of Ukraine) alsocontributed to it, for their fox fur hats and their long capotes were repugnantto the tastes of the enlightened observers in their short coats and their whitepowdered wigs.