The story of declaring Bulgakov a "Ukrainophob" is part of a more general question - how should modern Ukraine treat figures of the past who, being born in Ukraine, at the same time either wrote in Russian (like Gogol or Bulgakov) or considered themselves Russian (like Igor Sikorsky), or they became prominent scientists in Moscow, not identifying themselves with Ukraine (like Serhiy Korolev), or they wrote in Ukrainian, but during the time of Soviet power, with a well-defined ideological color.
How to treat the author of "Songs about Stalin" Maksym Rylskyi? To the author of numerous poems about Lenin, Pavlo Tychyna? To the laureate of the Stalin and Lenin Prizes, the famous director Oleksandr Dovzhenko, who, among other things, made the famous film "Schors", which depicts the UNR in a caricature form and the Red Army in a heroic form? The film "Schors" became the "canonical" version of the events in Ukraine in 1918-1919 in the USSR for decades. And it clearly played a much greater role in the promotion of "narratives" than Bulgakov's "White Guard".
Compared to "Schors" and other works of the above-mentioned authors, "White Guard" looks like a neutral historical narrative. And Bulgakov himself, a writer clearly not favored by the Soviet authorities, is a real dissident.
Dovzhenko himself, although he served in the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, later switched to the side of the Bolsheviks and repented of the "sins of his youth", writing in his autobiography that he "entered the Revolution through the wrong door" (yes, this expression was in use long before Kirkorov and "naked party" of Ivleva). And if Bulgakov is a "Ukranophobe" by current official standards, then Dovzhenko is a "collaborator".
Claims, if desired, can be submitted to anyone at all. Taras Shevchenko, for example, wrote prose in Russian. You can ask the question "why not state?". The author of the Aeneid, Ivan Kotlyarevsky, served as an officer in the Russian imperial army, fought against the Turks, and in 1812 created a regiment to fight Napoleon. It can also be recorded as "collaborators" or even "occupiers".
Therefore, applying the standards of the present time and the norms of the Criminal Code of Ukraine in the version of 2024 to the figures of the past, one can go too far. "Cancel" hundreds of famous Ukrainians or natives of Ukraine who lived before 1991. And it will be a unique experience. Because, as a rule, any country seeks to declare as "its" as many famous people as possible, creating and multiplying its symbolic historical capital.
