Between Biography and Propaganda: Mykhailo Kozachynsky’s «Journal or Description of the Years and the Glorious as well as Solemn Victories of the Blessed and Everlasting Memory Peter the Great, Pater Patriae, the First All-Russian Emperor» (1744)

Abstract

The article focuses on a little-known literary work about Peter I which was composed by a Ukrainian poet, philosopher, and professor of the Kyivan Academy, Mykhailo Kozachynsky (1699–1755). This poetic biography was entitled «Journal or Description of the Years and the Glorious as well as Solemn Victories of the Blessed and Everlasting Memory Peter the Great, Pater Patriae, the First All-Russian Emperor». It was appended to a trilingual panegyric «Augustissimae ac Invictissimae Imperatrici» of the same authorship written in honor of the Empress Elizabeth’s of Russia visit to Kyiv in August-September 1744. The panegyric, the «Journal», a shortened edition of a dramatic play along with a poem and a canto formed a complex of works, which were published in the Kyiv-Pechersk printing house. One more of Kozachynsky’s related poem appeared in Wroclaw on the same occasion.The textual analysis of the «Journal» demonstrates that the author dealt with Feofan Prokopovych’s eulogies that glorified Peter I and were released in Kyiv and Saint-Petersburg throughout 1709–1725, namely «Panegyricvs de celeberrima et paene inavdita victoria qvam Pertvs Primva», «The Word to praise the Poltava Battle», «The Word on the Burial of the Most Illustrious Sovereign Peter the Great» and «The Word to Praise the Blessed and Everlasting Memory Peter the Great». In addition, Kozachynsky borrowed facts about the Great Northern War mostly from the so-called «The Mars’s Book» and then poetically reworked them. Such a richly illustrated collection of reports on the course of military affairs was published for the first time shortly after 1713 and later underwent several reprints.Taken in general, the context in which the «Journal» and the corresponding series of Mykhailo Kozachynsky’s works appeared reveals clearly that the Ukrainian elite of that time pursued the only goal to utilize Elizabeth’s arrival to Ukraine as an opportunity to lobby for the urgent issue of the restoration of the hetmanship. The splendor of the meeting with the special glorification of the Empress’s father served therefore as a propaganda tool to achieve this goal.