Contemporary Ukrainian literature prevails in a postcolonial condition under Russia’s ongoing acts of physical and symbolic violence, driven by its neoimperial ambition to erase the Ukrainian nation. To explore the current cross-border dynamics, my paper builds upon the works of Svitlana Biedarieva and Vitaly Chernetsky who apply classical postcolonial theory to the specific context of Ukrainian studies. Utilizing their conceptual framework, I then analyze the BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year 2016, Oblivion (published as Forgottenness). In her novel, Tetiana Maliarchuk examines identity and nation-building through two linked strands: one revives the 1920s intellectual Vyacheslav Lypynsky, while the other follows a contemporary artist studying his legacy. Ukrainian scholars have previously established parallels between the stories in the regard to pervasiveness of time. This paper, however, extends that notion by foregrounding space in Oblivion as the co-central theme. Vyacheslav Lypynsky’s Polish origins and his strong Ukrainian territorial and cultural ties exemplify the hybridity of identity rooted in the sociopolitical realm traversing Poland and the Soviet Union. Moreover, Oblivion’s non-linear structure displaces the reader across multiple timeframes on the background of the main character arcs. Thus, I further argue that by incorporating such spatiotemporal in-betweenness, Maliarchuk’s novel ironically conveys a sense of completeness in Ukrainian national self-determination. It ultimately serves as a literary enactment of decolonial release in contemporary Ukraine, dissolving symbolic ties to Russia. Finally, this project challenges entrenched Russian neocolonial narratives in the Western world while reorienting humanistic studies toward a more appropriate postcolonial analysis of historically oppressed Ukrainian culture.
