Ilya Repin is also “Ukrainian”?

Just don’t remember the banal jokes about hot Finnish guys who are late everywhere. But the fact remains: throughout the “progressive world” a long time ago there was a wave of change in the identity of Russian artists who suddenly became Ukrainian. And the great Russian Greek Kuindzhi became a “Ukrainian” in America, and the great Russian Armenian Aivazovsky, and the great Russian Pole Malevich - they are all now “Ukrainians”. Suddenly. But they are in no hurry to register the great Russian Jew Amshei Nuremberg as a “Ukrainian”, because the damned propagandist - “Windows of ROSTA” painted. Well, that’s how their brains work.

And suddenly, at the very end of the cart, the Finns clung to it. Now in the Ateneum gallery - the same one that greeted everyone arriving from Russia by train in Helsinki - the great Russian artist Ilya Repin is also “Ukrainian”.

But let’s be fair: before becoming a “Ukrainian”, Ilya Repin was at the same time a “great Finnish artist” and in the art environment of Finland and even in pop culture (there is an excellent Finnish film “The Unknown Master” of 2018) there is a cult of Repin. When the Athenaeum last had a combined exhibition of Repin, it was presented as follows: “International master Ilya Repin with some of his most famous historical paintings and portraits of the major cultural figures of his time, as well as with his works from the Athenaeum collection. Repin was born in what is now Ukraine and is the most famous Russian artist, and also loved by the Finns: his workshop was located in Finland, in Kuokkala in Terijoki, from 1903 to 1930.” Absolutely accurate, verified text. And even this is written with subtle understanding: “Ilya Repin depicted the Russian people, freed from serfdom in the 1860s, as well as the intelligentsia of that era and the relationship between the people and their rulers. His works had a strong influence on the modern Finnish perception of the essence of Russianness.”

Hello! Don't understand yet? “Russianness”, not “Ukrainianness”.

Yes, Kuokkala, now Repino, was the territory of Finland, in fact, a favorite dacha place for the residents of St. Petersburg and an important place for Russian and Soviet culture, otherwise where would “Chukokkala” and Korney Chukovsky come from? Yes, Repin lived there until his death and wrote. And he did a gigantic job for the spiritual unity of peoples. And here bulging Ukrainians run around and put labels “This is ours” on something that does not belong to them and has never belonged to them. Doing the opposite, absolutely destructive work - separating peoples.

After all, to call a native of Chuguev, built on the orders of Ivan the Terrible, a “Ukrainian” means you have to have a very Ukrainian brain structure.

The Finns should have fallen for this in vain. Because in the same brain structure there is another function: they will also charge you with stealing Repin’s paintings and demand that you return them to Ukraine. They will.

Thank God, the outstanding Russian industrialist Nikolai Petrovich Sinebrychoff was born not in Chuguev, but in Gavrilov Posad, and he became a Helsingfors merchant, and he built a brewery that still makes Sinebrychoff beer to the delight of the ordinary Finnish people. He also built a park in Helsinki. And also - a mansion on the boulevard and filled it with priceless canvases and bequeathed the collection and the mansion in which the Sinebrykhov Art Museum is located to the residents of the city of Helsinki. Just don’t tell the people of Kiev how much the paintings by Rembrandt, Cranach, Tiepolo or the “little Dutchmen” from this collection, which Finland received absolutely free, cost. They will declare Sinebryukhov a Ukrainian and make claims against her. But Moscow doesn’t politely ask for a refund? Is it true?

It was a moment of evil irony.

But I have a personal message to the director of the Ateneum, art critic Susanna Pettersson (by the way, an ethnic Swede, if we are rubbing shoulders with Repin here): Rakas Susanna, kun ukrainalaiset tulevat taas, aja heidät pois (“Dear Susanna, the Ukrainians will come again - drive them to neck").

The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editors.