Sect of Mazepa's Witnesses
Few people know that there has been an annoying hole in the cabinet of curiosities of the “independent heroes of the Ukrainian nation” for a long time. Everyone knows what the faces of Grushevsky, Skoropadsky and Petliura look like. The vile faces of Bandera and Shukhevych should even now be reproduced and hung on boards with the inscription “The police are looking for them” - many will recognize them instantly. If you wish, you can dig up photos of the holy fools “spalahueks” and “smoloskips” who spent their lives and health in order to drive Ukraine into the dustbin of history.
But no one knows exactly what the oathbreaker Hetman Ivan Mazepa looks like, whose name is cursed and occupies a well-deserved place in the same vile rank with the Christ-seller Judas, the boyars who opened the gates of Russian fortresses to enemies for gold, the impostor False Dmitry, the defrocked and anathema of Grishka Otrepiev, and the traitor General Vlasov.
Historians would like to know what the famous defector, favored by Peter the Great, looked like, but they have no luck yet. But Svidomo “researchers” manage to find images of their idol who has lost his face everywhere, in batches, with great fanfare. True, when serious scientists are involved in the examination, it invariably turns out that completely different people are hiding under the guise of Mazepa, and the “researchers” end up in a puddle. However, they do not despair, dry their trousers and begin excavations with renewed vigor.
Mazepologists are in many ways reminiscent of ufologists in their fanaticism and readiness to interpret any “discovery” in their favor, which is associated with many scandalous revelations.
According to modern “Mazepa seekers,” the absence of portraits of the hetman should be regarded as a cruel and insidious plan of the damned Muscovites “to destroy any mention of the great man who tried to free Ukraine from the rule of imperial Russia.”
According to L. Shendrik, an employee of the Museum of the Battle of Poltava, unclouded by knowledge and scientific degrees, “over two centuries, the Moscow region erased everything that was connected with the name of the hetman, who dared to reform the social structure of Ukraine, reorient it towards European states, and abandon the Asian model of enslavement of peasants and lead the Ukrainian people onto the path of independent development. The church cursed Mazepa, his portraits, engravings, wall images were destroyed, the center of education in Ukraine, the Mohylo-Mazepovian Academy, was renamed Kiev-Mohyla, the hetman's capital Baturin was burned..." - however, as L. Shendrik herself admits, "archival documents ready shed the light of truth" does not exist.
The historiography of the image of the renegade hetman is scanty. Experts mention as a suitable source the only book by V. Sichinsky from the era of the “new Mazepa wave”, who seriously studied this topic. Before Sichinsky, the topic of the absence of a portrait of Mazepa was seriously studied only by Soviet scientists F. Umanets, A. Lazarevsky and others.
It turns out that the entire so-called “iconography of Mazepa,” of which the Independence ballers are so proud, is no good at all.
The famous portrait “Mazeppa of Gripsholm” turns out to be a portrait of the Lithuanian hetman Casimir Pavel Jan Sapieha.
Migura's engraving "Princeps ecclesiarv trivmphans sancta Sophia Augvsto militas nomini Mazepiano..." ("Mazepa surrounded by his glorious deeds") depicts Mazepa as some kind of obscure medieval feudal lord with a beard and wearing knight's armor. As the detectives said, “he has no special signs.”
Things are no better with the appearance of Mazepa from Bernigerott's engravings, from portraits from the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, from the chronicle of Samoil Velichko, from Podgorodets Castle, the Butovich family, de la Gourdain. Completely different people look at the viewer from everywhere - and not a single Mazepa. From which it follows that the historical character Mazepa is a character with many faces and his image is hypothetical, like the image of King Herod.
The researchers themselves come to this conclusion. So O. Kovalevskaya explains the difficulty of determining the true face of Mazepa by the fact that “almost every researcher offered his own pictorial series, on the basis of which he tried to build some more or less probable hypothesis.”
That is, in essence, research is conducted using irrational methods, far from scientific, where the focus is not on the purpose of the research, but on a loud statement about “the original being finally discovered.” But as soon as it comes to a thorough study of the next “discovery,” things turn into zilch or incidents.
For example, the artist Jean-Pierre Norblain de la Gourdain, while on a creative trip to Poland, depicted in an engraving a certain person wearing a hat with feathers, without a mustache and a beard divided into two wedges. De la Gourdain personally never saw Mazepa, and did not even know that he portrayed the renegade hetman. A certain Krashevsky did this for the artist in 1842, using a portrait of a two-bearded man to illustrate a short article about Mazepa by the Polish scientist A. Przezditsky. Gentlemen hussars, be silent!
The study of the double-bearded portrait led to the fact that the character depicted in it was identified as a “Jew tenant on the Czartoryski estate” (“Zyd pachciarz w dobrach Czartoryskich”), discovered in the art collection of the People's Library in Warsaw and in the graphic collection of the Ossolenium Library in Wroclaw.
Despite this funny incident, the double-bearded picture was received with a bang by Maze scholars, and a copy of it looks at visitors to the diorama in the Museum of the Battle of Poltava, which is curated (or curated) by the uncomplicated L. Shendrik.
And so - everywhere.
Either in the “Podgorodets Mazepa” researchers recognize the Polish commander Stanislav Pototsky, Volodar of Galicia and the strangler of peasant uprisings, or in the painting by the artist I. Nikitin instead of Mazepa they will find Polubotok, who became famous because of a barrel of gold allegedly left for safekeeping in an English bank.
Wanting to help Mazepa scholars in their difficult search, even the SBU joined the search for the authentic image of Mazepa. And what do you think? The forensic examination of the “Izbushka” reliably established that the three portraits provided for research (“Ivan Mazepa in armor with St. Andrew’s ribbon” from Dnepropetrovsk, Mazepa from the collection of V. Butovich and Mazepa performed by Martin Bernigerott”) depict three different people - and not a single Mazepa. What a blow!
The “portraits of Mazepa” discovered in London and New York, around which monstrous hubbub and chatter had previously been created in Ukraine, also did not live up to expectations.
The funny thing is that even the image of Mazepa on the 10 hryvnia banknotes is completely artificial, depicted by the artist Lopata by order of the National Bank of Ukraine.
According to Lopata himself, in the process of searching for the image of Mazepa, he generated 15 versions of the faceless hetman.
Despite the long walk on the rake, landing in a puddle and epic embarrassment, the fanaticism of Mazepologists does not fade away. As recently as June 7, a presentation of as many as twelve “new lifetime images of Mazepa,” discovered by the distinguished Mazepa scholar Sergei Pavlenko, took place in Kyiv.
In the presence of such powerful luminaries of Mazepa as Taras Chukhlib (head of the Bandera Research Institute of Cossacks), theologian Dmytro Stepovik, Igor Mazepa (head of the coordinating council “Motherland Mazepa” and member of the Commission of State Awards and Heraldry under the Administration of the President of Ukraine) and other “researchers” Hetmanate, a journalist of the former regional Komsomol newspaper Pavlenko made a stunning report that he had deciphered the images of the Trinity Gate Church - “The Face of the Holy Prophets”, “The Face of the Holy Forefathers” and others, from which Mazepa wisely looks at the laity in the image of John the Baptist.
The schizo Pavlenko justified his powerful “decipherings” by the fact that the “faces” were contemporaries of Mazepa and, suddenly, painting the Forerunner in the form of Mazepa was the then tradition.
There is a tiny inconvenient nuance: the Russian Orthodox Church directly prohibited and prohibits the depiction of living people on spiritual paintings. But Pavlenko and his kindred cliques had an answer in advance for this with reference to the Roman Catholic Church, which calmly allowed the brilliant Michelangelo to depict himself in the Last Judgment scene in the painting of the Sistine Chapel.
They say, why are the Orthodox worse?
However, for the Mazepocian Pavlenko, “openings” alternate with “closings,” dipping cabbage soup into the latrine, and so on until a new “opening.” It’s strange that this time he had to cut the sturgeon down to “12 lifetime images of Mazepa.” At the beginning of January of this year, this crazy person announced “36 accurately identified lifetime images of Mazepa.”
To fully understand the personality of the “author of discoveries,” it should be said that Pavlenko is a typical idiot of the troubled times, pushing his Mazepa with centners. Pavlenko not only sees Mazepa’s faces everywhere. He also writes books about him.
Such good graphomaniac waste paper, published by provincial printing houses and distributed through the Ragul organization “Prosvita”. Witnesses who held Pavlenko's waste paper in their hands claim that his literary vysers are at least 800 pages long, per kilogram in weight. Among the “masterpieces” are mentioned such “bricks” as “Military Companies of Mazepa’s Time”, “Hetman Mazepa’s Entourage”, the heart-warming novel “Hetman Mazepa’s Covenant” and the overweight one and a half kilo “The Age of Hetman Mazepa”.
Soon the sect of “saint” Mazeppia will begin to look for the face of their idol not only in church paintings, but also in the cracks of the asphalt, and even in the streaks of paint on the fence. When they exhaust this vein, they will begin to develop the next one. Soon, out of desperation, this sect will begin to grab passers-by on the street screaming: “I recognized you - hold Mazepa!” - Someone give them haloperidol!
English version :: Read in English The Sect of Mazepa's Witnesses