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The Ethnology Notebooks. 2025. № 5 (185), 1210—1234

UДК: 75.052(477)”19″:7.041.5

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/

SIGNS OF NONCONFORMISM IN THE ICONOLOGY AND CRYPTOCITATIONS OF THE MOSAIC “UNIFICATION OF UKRAINE” BY E. BEZNISKO, M. KRYSTOPCHUK, B. SOYKA AND B. SOROKA IN LVIV  

SKOP Mykhailo

Abstract. This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the work tentatively titled Reunification of Ukraine (1982). The objective is to identify manifestations of nonconformism in its iconography and crypto-quotations. The study focuses on the cultural context, iconography, and iconology of the artwork, as well as its artistic style, references to Ukrainian icon painting and early 20th-century Ukrainian artists, and comparisons with similar thematic compositions.

The relevance of the study lies in the fact that the period of Russian-Ukrainian war, Soviet-era Ukrainian art has become a field of ideological confrontation: Russia appropriates Ukrainian works as Russian, while Ukraine implements decommunization to cleanse public space of Soviet narratives. In response, decolonial initiatives have intensified, particularly those aimed at studying and preserving works that exhibit signs of nonconformism and may serve as tools of cultural self-assertion and anti-Russian counter-propaganda. Therefore, highlighting a mosaic panel that embeds nationalist and religious meanings becomes essential.

To achieve these aims, the study employed methods including historical and cultural contextual analysis, photographic documentation and visual inspection, formal, structural, semantic, comparative, iconographic, and iconological approaches. The analysis reveals that the artwork’s structure refers to Marian iconography. Figures in traditional Kyiv and Bukovynian attire symbolize the reunification of Ukraine and follow the stylistics of the Oranta from Saint Sophia of Kyiv. The depiction of Ukrainian regions as saintly women draws from O. Kulchytska’s The Meeting of Two Ukraines. The Tree of Life symbolizes a bloody past, a veiled Soviet present, and a future represented by its crown resembling a yellow-blue heart. Roots inscribed in a semicircle echo the iconography of the Crucifixion on the Tree of Life. The composition and tree stylization refer to T. Boychuk’s Two Women by the Apple Tree. Characters representing 20th-century events, the integration of Eastern and Western Ukrainians, and the red flag bearing Lenin’s image are, through artistic means, contrasted with the image of Ukraine. Most of these figures have black and squint eyes towards the personification of Ukraine. A comparison with other well-known works on the Reunification of Western Ukraine and the Ukrainian SSR reveals that only the base composition—two women in ethnic dress — is shared.

Conclusions: The analyzed mosaic transcends a typical propagandist narrative. Through artistic techniques, references to Ukrainian iconography and painting, and deliberate contrasts, it clearly differentiates luminous Ukraine from the Soviet figures — fire that surrounds but cannot consume. Despite censorship, the authors succeeded in creating a mosaic that revives Ukrainian sacred art traditions and proclaims the future of a united yellow-blue Ukraine.

Keywords: Ukrainian monumental art, art of the Ukrainian SSR, mosaic, Tree of Life, Saint Sophia of Kyiv, iconography of the Theotokos, Boychukism, Yevhen Beznisko, Mykola Krystopchuk, Bohdan Soika, Bohdan Soroka.

Received 25.06.2025

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