The Influence of Language on Transforming Ukraine’s Image in 20th — early 21st Century

The importance of language in the process of structuring, development, and modification of the image of Ukraine in the 20th — early 21st centuries is thoroughly covered in the article. And it is shown that its originality is determined by the outlook-value orientations and cultural resources, which are positioned as external signs of the mental identity of the community within a certain historical period. The key role in the process of constructing the image of Ukraine in all historical periods was played by the Ukrainian language, which, as a result of the permanent Russification of the Ukrainians in the 20th century. Turned to be seen as a sign of provincialism, as a result of which it could not compete freely with Russian, fully presenting the cultural heritage of the Ukrainian people. The unchallenged domination of the image of Ukraine of the populist orientation in the 20th century led to the development of a complex of Ukrainian inferiority, which was manifested in the depreciation of Ukrainian cultural achievements, because of the prejudices prevailing in the public consciousness about the Ukrainians’ provincialism, and hence the inferiority, compared with the achievements produced by the “advanced” Soviet culture with a distinct Russian coloring. There is every reason to consider the historically shaped complex of the inferiority of Ukrainians as one of the main obstacles towards the development of the Ukrainian homogeneous cultural environment, which would contribute to overcoming the orientation of part of Ukrainians to the imperial cultural centers, external to the state while laying the bases for rethinking the foundations of the populist image of Ukraine in line with the socio-cultural demands of the Ukrainian population and the geopolitical orientation of Ukraine.


Introduction
For almost two centuries, the consolidating potential of the language has attracted the attention of foreign and Ukrainian thinkers and has been accompanied by intense discussions. Partially, they are caused by the fact that the resolution of the linguistic issue in the specifichistorical dimension of a particular community, including Ukraine, is accompanied by ideological prejudices and political manipulations that directly relate to the existing status of a particular communicative community. Domination of this approach to the science and socio-political practice of the 19 th century significantly slowed the self-determination of those peoples who, at the time of the national principle, could not culturally re-equip themselves according to the standards of civilization, creating a literary language that seemed to represent the cultural heritage of the community as an integral part of human spiritual and practical experience.
Despite the rationality and reasoning of a number of linguistic explorations (Yakob Grimm, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Fedor Buslaev, Fedor Potebnia, and others) devoted to disclosing the influence of language on the development of the cultural identity of a community, the political history of the early 20 th century testified to the rationality of Ernest Renan's remarks that the language invites to unity but does not force it. This seemingly apolitical assertion of the French scientist formed the basis of the cultural strategies of European political nations, whose consolidation was ensured by the loyalty of citizens to state institutions, who purposefully constructed the image of the national community in the process of "inventing the national tradition" (Eric Hobsbawm), with the national language has been its integral part. Similarly, European cultural (or ethnic) nations were formed, with their elites having proved their distinctiveness and identity, appealing not only to shared history, but also to such significant cultural resources as language, literature, religion, etc. On this basis, as the experience of the Germans and Poles eloquently testifies, they proved their right to political self-determination while constructing the image of their nation in the general project of Europe.
Despite some specific historical differences in the formation of European nations, there is currently no doubt that the history of the 20 th century is closely linked to the development of national states which, being the main guarantors of the protection of human rights represented by a citizen in the legal aspect, required for their existence a collective sense of unity, which underpinned a certain image of the nation. This image becomes a generalized view of the cultural and mental identity of a community, defined by the symbolic capital that ensures group unity and competitiveness of the community in the development of civilizational values (Kryvda & Storozhuk, 2016). In fact, it is in this context that language is particularly important because it provides for the formation, transmission, and representation of the historical experience and cultural heritage of the community, thereby defining their identity as represented by some collective "We." It is interesting that the image of the latter is dynamic in its character and depends not only on the cultural values to which political and cultural elites attach consolidating importance in different historical periods, but also on the level of development of a homogeneous communicative space.
The direct and immediate evidence of the validity of our remarks is the socio-cultural changes that are taking place under the influence of globalization in today's Euro-Atlantic civilizational space and bring back the questions about the image and perspectives of the existence of national communities and states to the agenda. With a particular acuteness, all these problems are manifested in the sociocultural existence of modern Ukraine, whose elites have not yet presented a cultural and political image that could contribute to the internal consolidation of the population of the state, while defining the vector of its geopolitical development. In our opinion, this problem is caused by speculation of images of Ukraine that were constructed in the 20 th century influenced by external political circumstances and determining the level of development of a homogeneous cultural environment. To confirm our assumption, we consider it expedient to reveal the role of language in the process of shaping images of Ukraine in the 20 th century, thereby outlining the direction of contemporary cultural policy.

Communicative dimension of Ukraine's image of populist orientation
The origin of the image of Ukraine's populist orientation began in the mid-19 th century, owing to the active position of the intellectuals represented by the declassed nobility and the provincial intelligentsia during this period. They united around Kharkiv (1805) and Kyiv (1834) universities, paying much attention to studying ethnography, which, as Ivan Lysyak-Rudnytskyi rightly emphasized, had a considerable influence on the development of contemporary historical consciousness (Lysyak-Rudnytskyi, 1994: 178). Indeed, most historians of populist orientation, including such authoritative figures as Volodymyr Antonovych and Mykola Kostomarov, explicated the Ukrainian past as a series of spontaneous popular movements in their struggle for civil liberty and free land ownership. Let us note that the term "people" in the middle of the 19 th century did not acquire a clear conceptual outline, and therefore could be used to refer to 1) the broad masses, that is, all without exception, segments of the population except for the nobility; 2) a communicative community, all layers of which have related cultural and psychological characteristics, and 3) designating a poorly educated peasantry. However, ignoring the above-listed diversity, the Ukrainian populists mostly reduced the people exclusively to the peasantry, because, in their opinion, it was precisely in their culture and language that the Ukrainian ethnocultural identity was accumulated. It is these convictions that a great deal of interest in ethnography and folklore is related to. Both ethnography and folklore focused on defining the outlook and cultural identity of the Ukrainian peasantry, which was regarded as the bearer of the mental values of the people's soul (Lysyak-Rudnytskyi, 1994: 178).
Some changes in the interpretation of the people, began in the early 20 th century, thanks to the fundamental historical studies of Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, who, developing the populistfederalist tradition initiated by his predecessors, considered it reasonable to regard the people as a starting point and object of historical study. Interestingly, the term "people" in the works of the scientist acquired the new meaningful connotations in comparison with its populist interpretation: the scientist used it not to refer to the peasantry, but to a wider community, whose representatives inhabit a certain territory and are united by a common culture. At the same time, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi stated that external to the people "political and state relations ... can only interest us in so far as they directly or indirectly influenced the national, economic and cultural life of the Ukrainian population" (Hrushevskyi, 1990). This remark seems to be very interesting, because it clearly indicates that the state and its political leadership can be alien to the people in all historical periods due to the significant difference in worldview, language and culture. This assumption is completely and entirely in line with Ivan Ohienko's remark about the flaws and shortcomings of modern Ukrainian state-making, among which not the last role, according to the scientist, was played by the fact, that the Ukrainian intelligentsia was "not numerous, still politically unknowable and in the great majority strongly and tightly connected with the Russian intelligentsia" (Ohienko, 1968: 4).
Ivan Ohienko's remarks about the level of development of the national consciousness of the Ukrainian elite reveal the worldview potential of the Ukrainian elite, but do not reveal completely the causes of not only this phenomenon but the defeat of the Ukrainian statebuilding in 1917-1920 as well. In our view, it was, to some extent, predetermined by the fact that the Ukrainian intelligentsia did not recognize themselves as the bearer of the cultural values of the people whom they represented from the political perspective. This can be evidenced by the extremely telling remarks of Volodymyr Peretz about the burning need for a comprehensive study of the Ukrainian language in society. Its provision, according to the scientist, will "close the gaps that have been created over many years of unjust disregard for the Ukrainian language spoken by up to 30 million people" (Peretz, 1906: 46). It is interesting that the term "people" is used by the scientist in its populist interpretation, which indirectly illuminates his well-known statement that "political circumstances have denationalized and are denationalizing the layers of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, detach talented people from their native people" (Peretz, 1908).
All the remarks made by us invariably attest to the existence of a communicative split amidst the Ukrainian society in the early 20 th century, at the same time emphasizing the fact, that the image of Ukraine at that time was invariably linked to the broad masses, who, due to the authority and fundamental nature of Mykhailo Hrushevskyi's works, began to be considered as a cultural community whose unity is ensured by language. In other words, at the beginning of the 20 th century, the image of Ukraine's populist orientation acquires the new meaningful connotations in comparison with the previous era, because it goes beyond purely rural culture and extends without exception to all the native bearers of Ukrainian culture, to which, as the German scientist Klaus Hansen showed in a well-argued manner, belonged all those who speak the same language (Hansen, 1995: 179).
Given that language is the cultural foundation on which collective unity is established, it seems quite appropriate to resort to official statistics that clearly reveals the level of formedness or maturity and specificity of the Ukrainian-speaking communication space at the turn of the 19 th -the beginning of the 20 th centuries. For example, according to the data of the First General Census of the Russian Empire in 1897, thoroughly analyzed by a contemporary Ukrainian researcher Olha Kazakevych, the share of the Ukrainian-speaking population in the Ukrainian provinces that were part of the Russian Empire was quite high -the Ukrainians (17,81%) were the second-largest language group after the Russians (44.31%) (Kazakevych, 2018: 268). According to the researcher's data, a significant part was the share of the Ukrainian population in most Ukrainian regions. For example, the Ukrainian-speaking population of Bessarabska province was 19.62%, while in Volynska -70.10%, Katerynoslavska -68.90%, Kurska (of Putyvlskyi county) provinces -52.06% Podilska -80,93%, Poltavska -92,98%, Tavriyska -42,21%, Kharkivska -80,62%, Khersonska -53,48%, Chernihivska province -66,41% (Kazakevych, 2018: 269).
It would seem that a high level of communicative homogeneity of the Ukrainian population is a prerequisite for the revival of communicative memories, the most effective for the development of a community, and the establishment of constructive state-building ideals on their basis. However, for Ukraine, this seemingly simple task was not easy to implement. A significant part of the Ukrainian-speaking population lived in rural areas or small provincial towns and had very low levels of education. In particular, only 0.36% of the Ukrainian-speaking population had the education higher than primary school, while only 18.9% of Ukrainians were literate (Kappeler, 2005: 309). This fact was of ambivalent importance for the development of the Ukrainian movement -illiterate Ukrainian peasants could not become supporters of any socio-political beliefs of those times, while being deprived of access to Russian-language school education, they continued to reproduce the historically arranged way of life, transmitting from generation to generation norms and values, inherent in them, thus preventing the assimilation of Ukrainians.
Some other trends were observed in the urban population, where Ukrainians were a significant minority. For example, in 1897, the Ukrainian-speaking community of Kyiv made 22.23%, while the Russian-speaking population was 54.20%, the Polish-speaking language was spoken by 6.69%, 12.08% of the population were Yiddish-speaking, and 1.76% of the townspeople -German-speaking (Kazakevych, 2018: 282). The above statistics could have been ignored by exploring the ideological and socio-cultural origins of the populist image of Ukraine formed at that time, provided that there is no data on the distribution of the Ukrainianspeaking population by social class affiliation. In particular, the Ukrainian-speaking nobility numbered 907 people, while the officials -965, somewhat more equal to them, was the Ukrainian-speaking clergy, which numbered approximately 1467 people, the Ukrainianspeaking honorary citizens, merchants and burgesses altogether constituted a numerous group of about 1797 persons; instead, the Ukrainian-speaking populace of Kyiv was 33,270 people (Kazakevych, 2018: 283). The situation was similar with the Ukrainian-speaking population in many other large cities of Ukraine at the turn of the 19 th and 20 th centuries. As an example, we can mention Kharkiv, where the Ukrainian-speaking population was 25.92%, and the Russianspeaking population was 63.17%. Such a distribution, according to the famous Ukrainian scientist Dmitriy Bagaley, became a natural result of assimilation and deethnization, as a result of which the Ukrainian-speaking population was often ashamed to acknowledge their Ukrainian "khokhlatski" roots (Bagaley & Miller, 1993: 132) (from ethnonym "khokhol" -a derogatory Ukrainian name, used on a household level, and could originate from a characteristic hairstyle of Cossacks).
These statistic data provided by us give us every reason to say that at the turn of the 19 th -20 th centuries, the prestige of the Ukrainian language was very low. Most of the Ukrainian intelligentsia at the time were underestimating their status at both the household and literary levels. However, one should not think that this was the reason for the removal of the "Little Russian dialect" or "demotic Little Russian parlance" from literary works, on the contrary, the Ukrainian language was often used to demonstrate comic and ironic, thus emphasizing the elegance and depth of the Russian language (Levkievskaya, 2008: 162). The latter was evidence of belonging to a high culture, while Ukrainian is an invariable sign of low social status, provincialism, and illiteracy.
The extremely understated and highly tentative assessment of the potential of the Ukrainian language was a natural result of the rigid assimilationist language policy of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19 th century, defining the image of Ukraine for almost a century. To a certain extent, this image became a natural result of the inferiority complex, which, according to Yevhen Malaniuk's findings, was inextricably linked with belonging to Little Russia as a mental illness (Malaniuk, 1966: 234-236). This affiliation with Little Russia, as the scientist argued, was a characteristic of the intelligentsia, whose mental traits were treachery and worldview shakiness, which caused permanent defeats in the field of national struggle and their disdain for their Ukrainian-speaking people. In fact, through the efforts of these Ukrainian intellectuals, an image of Ukrainian culture was shaped and became invariably linked to the hybrid and promiscuous Ukrainian socio-cultural phenomena, among which the Cossacks, the clergy, the peculiarities of everyday life and the family relations of Ukrainians, their moral character, were of paramount and unconditional priority. The demonstration of these traits was often accompanied by certain elements of humor and satire that exposed the immoral features of Ukrainians, which attracted the attention of representatives of privileged and usually foreign cultures, while enhancing the feeling of deprivation among Ukrainians.
Originating in the burlesque-travesty sphere, in the times of state formation, the image of Ukraine gained new meaningful connotations -at this time the image of Ukrainians, who, incidentally, continues to be positioned as a Ukrainian-speaking communicative community, lose the elements of neglect and inferiority and begin to define themselves in the ideological key, initiated by Taras Shevchenko. He, as Vilen Horskyi proved at the time, laid the worldview foundation for the emergence of the image of Ukraine, which is inextricably linked with the world of the village, which, on the one hand, becomes a "quiet paradise", but on the otherfull of contradictions, which are manifested in all levels of its life. However, Taras Shevchenko does not consider this disharmonious image of Ukraine as complete, since in the future, he hopes for a transformation that will contribute to the development of brotherly love, which will result in the destruction of internal class contradictions (Horskyi, 1997: 164-168). In other words, the image of the village of Shevchenko's Ukraine, closely related to the world of the town, is the starting point of the project, which should be implemented in the future and will determine the image of Ukraine.
Without going into a comprehensive analysis of Taras Shevchenko's creative heritage and the image of Ukraine formed by him, it should be noted that the development of his ideas, combined with the work of Mykola Kostomarov, Volodymyr Antonovych, and subsequently some ideas of Dmytro Dontsov has become a conceptual basis for the approval of the typical image of Ukraine. In the socio-political consciousness of the early 20 th century, this image was inextricably linked to the culture, folklore, social practices, values and expectations of the Ukrainian-speaking population, which, owing to their social origin (provincial townspeople and peasants) and education, was unable to set and solve ambitious tasks and to introduce them to the world community in literature and philosophy (Chyzhevskyi, 1991). This, in its turn, was deepening the inferiority complex of Ukrainians, formed in the 19 th century under the influence of imperial assimilationist policy, which was exacerbated by prejudice against the Ukrainian language, which was still seen as a sign of provincialism or belonging to the lowerclass culture of the predominantly rural population.
Formed at the dawn of its becoming an image of Ukraine's populist orientation in the Soviet era acquired its complete appearance after the accession of Ukraine to the USSR on the basis of the federation. This, in turn, testified to the recognition of the cultural and linguistic distinctiveness of Ukrainians who, in the long term, had to become involved in a common culture of the USSR and corresponding social practices. The realization of this task required rethinking and separating the resources from the general cultural heritage of Ukrainians in order to construct a scenic image of Ukraine. The best option in this context could be the domestic themes and folk poetry of the Ukrainian populace. This, in turn, led to a deepening of the cultural split and dissection in the Ukrainian socio-cultural space, even though, according to the testimony of foreign travelers, the Soviet Union made an impression of a homogeneous country after World War II (Lysyak-Rudnytskyi, 1994: 457).
In general, while recognizing the high level of cultural homogeneity of the USSR population in general and directly in Ukraine, we consider it appropriate to pay attention to the fact that it was manifested only externally, that is, in the peculiarities of living conditions and social practices. A somewhat different trend was seen in the midst of Ukrainian society, which, as before, was clearly distinguished by the linguistic principle. Thus, according to the 1959 census, 76.8% of Ukrainians and 16.9% of Russians lived in the USSR. This seemingly natural situation is surprising, given that 73% of the Ukrainian population spoke Russian in this period, while only 24.3% spoke Ukrainian (Parakhina, 2014: 142). The Soviet authorities achieved such stunning results in a systematic and purposeful Russification of all spheres of society and, above all, in education, science, record keeping, radio, television -everything in its unity was requiring the entry into the space of a privileged Russian-speaking culture and opening up a much wider profession opportunity. These results had fairly clear outlines in large cities, which resulted in the fact that the majority of the population of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, and other cities have become Russified. However, Soviet assimilation propaganda did not pass the provincial regions of Ukraine, either, which, gradually being drawn into the Russian-speaking communicative space, began to neglect the Ukrainian language and the Ukrainian-speaking population, which usually lived only in remote industrial centers in rural areas. The sharply expressed communicative split of Ukrainian society, which was usually accompanied by significant differences in the status of these linguistic groups, contributed to the further development and popularization of the populist image of Ukraine. As before, it included some elements of the comic, which were especially well presented in Soviet cinema by Leonid Bykov, individual elements of Ukrainian folklore, and customs and rituals of the traditional culture of the Ukrainian countryside, cleared of religiosity. Necessary for the Soviet system, elements of this culture were broadcast through cinematic means that perfectly exemplify such well-known films as "Wedding in Malynivka" (1967), "Chasing after Two Hares" (1961), "Evenings at the Hamlet near Dykanka (1961), and others. These films, as well as Kotlyarevskyi's "Aeneid" at its day, were broadcast in Russian, even though they revealed the originality of traditional Ukrainian culture.
On the whole, there is every reason to say that the Soviet authorities continued to develop the populist image of Ukraine, which, due to its constant social orientation to the countryside, deepened the already distinctive complex of Ukrainian inferiority. It was this complex that prompted a Russified part of the Ukrainians to become involved in the space of privileged Soviet culture represented by the Russian-speaking communicative space. This process was often accompanied by contempt and disdain for the Ukrainian language and culture, which were considered a sign of provincialism.

Collisions and Problems of Constructing the Modern Image of Ukraine
After Ukraine gained independence in 1991, the problem of forming an image that would reveal Ukraine's cultural and mental uniqueness would have to gain a lot of urgency. However, as evidenced by the events of the late 20 th -early 21 st centuries, the problem did not become the focus of intellectual discourse, which, in our view, was to a certain extent caused by the fact that no radical break with the Soviet past has happened in Ukraine. On the contrary, according to Volodymyr Kravchenko's testimony, the history of post-Soviet Ukraine for some time was characterized by the historical and ideological heritage that Ukrainians often lacked in the struggle for statehood in all previous historical periods (Kravchenko, 2011: 455). This is the reason, according to the scientist, that Ukrainian society has remained deeply "Sovietisized," "having preserved the mentality, habits, stereotypes, way of life and thinking of the Sovietera" (Kravchenko, 2011: 455).
The preservation of the basic structures of the Soviet past in the political and socio-cultural space of Ukraine was one of the main reasons for preserving the scenic image of Ukraine, dominating in the Soviet times, with the inherent populist orientation. Its development and popularization in the dawn of Ukrainian independence was ensured not only by the "worldview vacuum" created in the process of devaluation of the Soviet ideals and social priorities, but also by a completely legitimate need to revive the historical memory of Ukrainians, which was accompanied by an increase in scientific interest to the theoretical groundworks of the Ukrainian populists (narodnyky), whose works in some places turned into a prism through which they looked at the Ukrainian past. No less, ethnographic explorations of the 19 th century contributed to the regeneration of a number of elements of traditional Ukrainian culture, which were usually associated with the village and widespread ritual and customary practices, folklore, and the like.
Despite the clearly expressed legacy in the development of the populist image of Ukraine, its further development was, to some extent, facilitated by the linguistic differentiation of the Ukrainian population. In particular, according to the 2001 All-Ukrainian Population Census, 67.5% of Ukraine's population consider Ukrainian as their mother tongue, while 29.6% consider Russian as their mother tongue. This seemingly positive trend is somewhat different in the case of a more detailed analysis, as according to a survey by the International Center for Policy Studies conducted in 2015, 56.9% of respondents believe that Ukrainian is the mother tongue of a large proportion of Ukrainian citizens. It is interesting in this context that 60.5% of respondents call Russian the mother tongue of a part of Ukrainian citizens. Obviously, such beliefs are stipulated by the fact that approximately the same number of Ukrainian citizens equally speak (27.0% and 25.2% respectively) Ukrainian and Russian in their everyday life. However, such data should not be considered a sign of bilingualism, given that exclusively Ukrainian in everyday life is spoken by 32.4% of citizens, while Russian -by 14.2%. (The results, 2015: 22).
It is interesting in this respect is the fact that 72% of Kyiv residents consider Ukrainian to be their mother tongue, according to the 2001 All-Ukrainian Population Census (All-Ukrainian, 2001), but this did not lead to their dominance at the level of everyday communication. Thus, according to research by the Research & Branding Group, 53% of indigenous Kyivites speak Ukrainian in everyday life (Kyiv, 2015), which, according to the same surveys, does not cause any oppression or restrictions.
A similar trend is observed in many other regions of Ukraine, with the exception of the Donetsk region, where 74.9% of the population identified Russian as their mother tongue, Luhansk oblast -68.8% of the population recognized Russian as their mother tongue and Crimea, where according to the 2001 census 77.0% of the population consider Russian as their native language. A slightly smaller percentage of the Russian-speaking population is observed in Kharkiv (44.3%) and Odesa oblasts (41.95).
In general, the sociological data, presented by us, shows that the split of Ukrainian society was long before 2014, which became a peculiar culmination of those political, economic, ideological and socio-cultural problems that invariably accompanied the whole history of the modern Ukrainian state and were inextricably linked to the lack of cultural policy aimed at creating an image of Ukraine relevant to today's public inquiries. Of course, some Ukrainians, especially the fosterlings of the Soviet ideological system, were utterly and completely satisfied with the scenic image of Ukraine's populist orientation, whose entertaining intentions reached their climax, acquiring the form of "panting," or "sharovarshchyna" (a way of representing Ukrainian culture and identity with the help of pseudo-folk peasant and/or Cossack clothes, elements of everyday life, which actually means the victory of form over content). Obviously, such an image of Ukraine could satisfy neither representatives of the Ukrainian-speaking communicative space, nor Russian-speaking Ukrainians of the East and South of Ukraine, who, through their compact living, were forming a clear line of communicative, and simultaneously cultural split amidst the Ukrainian society.
Individual intentions in shaping the contemporary image of Ukraine and, accordingly, cultural policy emerged after 2014. At this time, the Ukrainians stated quite clearly their aspirations for European integration, thereby laying the groundwork for affirming the image of European Ukraine, which now looks rather vague due to the contradictions of the value and worldview orientations of Ukrainians. In particular, according to sociological polls conducted by Razumkov Center experts in 2017, Ukrainians are now characterized by uncertain political priorities, as in their minds the principle of democracy is organically combined with the image of a "strong leader" who, without government and parliamentary support, will be able to solve pressing problems. It is likely that such uncertainty is stipulated by the regionally determined commitment of Ukrainians to the "right" and "left" political forces, which in the public consciousness are associated with certain value orientations. In particular, political "righteousness" correlates not only with traditional values, but also with autonomy and self-sufficiency in n making power decisions. On the other hand, the tendency for political "leftism," which is much more pronounced in the East and South of Ukraine, is associated with such negative moral qualities as indifference to social problems, cruelty, maliciousness, deceit and greed. It is interesting that similar views dominate the part of Ukraine where a large part of the population considers themselves citizens of the USSR and stubbornly develops the Soviet values and stereotypes that can neither contribute to the well-being of Ukrainians, nor to the Europeanization of Ukraine, nor to the development of civil society as the primary condition for ensuring human rights and freedoms (The basic principles, 2017: 11-14).
The possibility to accomplish each of these tasks is inextricably linked to the urgent need to formulate the image of Ukraine, which is time-based and social-friendly, which could unite the politically and ideologically divided Ukrainian population. However, such unification is not possible without a clear and programmatic language policy that will enhance the prestige of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine, while facilitating the development of a homogeneous cultural space against which diverse social debates may unfold, including the creation of a timely image of Ukraine. It is interesting that according to sociological surveys conducted by the experts of the Razumkov Center, currently, the absolute majority of the Ukrainian population believes that Ukrainian culture should become the basis for shaping the culture of the modern Ukrainian political nation. Its development should be provided by the education system and state cultural policy (The basic principles, 2017: 68). Of course, this Ukrainian culture should not be limited to highly specialized or scenic populism, but positioned as the historically formed spiritual and material heritage of the Ukrainian people, which determine their distinctiveness and uniqueness, while ensuring free competition in the civilizational cultural space.

Conclusions
One of the key areas of contemporary Ukrainian cultural policy is the construction of circumstances of the image of Ukraine in accordance with time, socio-cultural, and political circumstances. The need for its development is conditioned not only by the need to overcome internal contradictions in the country by forming a homogeneous cultural identity, but also by the European integration ambitions of Ukraine. It is difficult enough to meet these intentions without a clear, unambiguous, and at the same time, dynamic socio-cultural and political image of Ukraine, which as a whole would correspond to the basic tendencies of the development of European society, which causes the growing scientific interest in this problem.
Covering the features of constructing, development, and modification of the image of Ukraine in the 20 th -early 21 st centuries century has clearly demonstrated the fundamental role of language in the process of forming its originality. Against this background, the inseparable correlation of the dominant image of Ukraine with the communicative community, whose world-value orientations determine the prestige of their cultural resources and their competitiveness in the perspective of civilizational inquiries during a certain historical period, has been revealed.
In the course of the research, the permanent dominance of the image of Ukraine of the populist orientation was demonstrated, which in the conditions of modern socio-cultural transformations has no unifying potential not only because of the communicative split of Ukrainian society, but also its incoherence with the socio-cultural demands of the Ukrainian population and geopolitical orientation of Ukraine.