Introduction In the annals of early modern European history, few figures possess the narrative allure of Roxolana, the captured Ruthenian woman who rose from the anonymity of the Ottoman imperial harem to become the legal wife of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. In contemporary Ukraine, her image adorns book covers, inspires historical novels, and features in popular television series, functioning as a celebrated icon of national resilience and feminine power. In the same intellectual and political spaces where Roxolana is venerated as a symbol of Ukrainian indomitability, one encounters an increasingly vocal and pervasive discourse of anti-colonial resistance. This discourse frames Ukraine’s historical experience as a long struggle against Russian imperialism and presents the nation’s contemporary identity as fundamentally opposed to colonial subjugation in all its forms. At first glance, the celebration of Roxolana and the rhetoric of anti-colonial struggle appear to coexist without friction, each occupying its own niche within the broader project of Ukrainian nation-building. A more rigorous examination, however, reveals a profound structural contradiction. Roxolana’s historical trajectory is inseparable from the very phenomenon that anti-colonial thought exists to condemn: the capture, trafficking, and forced assimilation of a colonized subject into the heart of an imperial power structure. To celebrate Roxolana as a national hero is to celebrate the successful integration of a Ukrainian woman into the Ottoman imperial elite, an outcome that required her conversion to Islam, her adoption of an Ottoman name, and her participation in the reproduction of imperial power through marriage and motherhood. The anti-colonial narrative, by contrast, derives its moral force from the condemnation of precisely such trajectories of assimilation, collaboration, and complicity. This study argues that the simultaneous presence of these two phenomena in Ukrainian culture is a symptomatic paradox that exposes unresolved tensions within the Ukrainian national project itself. The cult of Roxolana and the rhetoric of anti-colonialism cannot be fully reconciled because they rest upon incompatible understandings of what it means to be a colonized subject, what constitutes authentic national identity, and what the proper relationship between the individual and imperial power should be. The Roxolana cult celebrates the individual who transcends colonial victimhood through personal agency and integration into imperial structures. The anti-colonial narrative demands collective resistance, the preservation of national purity, and the rejection of all forms of imperial entanglement. When these two imperatives are placed side by side, the resulting tension reveals a fundamental ambivalence at the heart of Ukrainian identity politics: a desire both to condemn empire and to claim a share of its glory.

Chapter One: The Making of a National Icon The transformation of a sixteenth-century harem slave into a symbol of Ukrainian national identity is a complex historical process that spans several centuries and involves multiple cultural mediations. Roxolana, known in Ottoman sources as Hürrem Sultan, was born around 1504 in the region of Rohatyn, then part of the Kingdom of Poland and today located in western Ukraine. According to the dominant historical account, she was captured by Crimean Tatar raiders during one of the periodic slave hunts that depopulated large swaths of the Ukrainian lands and was sold into the Ottoman slave market. She entered the harem of Sultan Süleyman I, where she gradually rose to become his favorite concubine, then his legal wife, and ultimately one of the most influential political actors in the Ottoman court. This historical trajectory, remarkable in its own right, became the raw material for a national myth that would have been unrecognizable to the woman herself. The nineteenth-century Ukrainian intelligentsia, searching for figures around whom a national narrative could be constructed, seized upon Roxolana as evidence of Ukrainian genius and resilience. The historian and folklorist Mykhailo Drahomanov, together with other romantic nationalists, interpreted the folkloric traditions surrounding Roxolana as manifestations of the Ukrainian national spirit. In their readings, Roxolana became not merely a historical individual but a representative of the Ukrainian people, a woman whose extraordinary ascent demonstrated the innate capacities of the nation from which she came. This nationalist appropriation of Roxolana required a selective emphasis that transformed the meaning of her life. The circumstances of her capture and enslavement were acknowledged but subordinated to the narrative of her triumph. Her conversion to Islam and her integration into the Ottoman imperial elite were treated as strategic adaptations rather than fundamental transformations of identity. Her participation in the reproduction of Ottoman power, including her role in the succession struggles that marked the later years of Süleyman’s reign, was reframed as a form of national service to the Ukrainian people. The writer Pavlo Zahrebelnyi, whose 1980 novel Roksolana became the most influential literary treatment of her life, presented her as a secret agent of Ukrainian interests within the Ottoman court, a woman whose loyalty to her homeland remained unwavering despite her physical distance from it. The Soviet-era literary production around Roxolana added another layer to this mythologization. Under the constraints of socialist realism, Ukrainian writers could not openly celebrate the nation as a political community, but they could celebrate Roxolana as an exemplar of the human spirit overcoming oppression. The novel by Zahrebelnyi, published in the final decades of the Soviet Union, portrayed Roxolana as a proto-revolutionary figure, a woman who defied the oppressive structures of the harem and the court to carve out a space of personal freedom. This interpretation resonated with Soviet readers who were themselves navigating the constraints of an authoritarian system, and it prepared the ground for the post-Soviet revival of Roxolana as a national hero. In the post-Soviet period, the Roxolana cult expanded from literature into popular culture, where it acquired new dimensions. The historical novelist and satirist Iurii Vynnychuk published Zhytiie haremnoie (Life in the Harem) in 1996, a postmodern pastiche that demythologized Roxolana while simultaneously reinforcing her status as a cultural icon. Vynnychuk portrayed her as “the first Ukrainian grand dame of sexual liberation,” a woman who embraced the erotic possibilities of the harem and used them to advance her own interests. This interpretation, while superficially irreverent, participated in the same project of national myth-making that it appeared to subvert. By emphasizing Roxolana’s sexual agency, Vynnychuk attributed to her a form of power that was recognizably modern and individualistic, a power that contemporary Ukrainian readers could admire without confronting the uncomfortable realities of slavery and imperial service. The most significant development in the Roxolana cult came with the 2011 Turkish television series Muhteşem Yüzyıl (Magnificent Century), which was dubbed into Ukrainian and broadcast to enormous audiences. The series presented Roxolana as a powerful and sympathetic protagonist, a woman who navigated the treacherous politics of the harem with intelligence and determination. Ukrainian viewers embraced the series with enthusiasm, and Roxolana became a topic of widespread public discussion. The popularity of the series demonstrated that the Roxolana myth had transcended its origins in elite literary culture and become a genuinely popular phenomenon, a figure capable of engaging the imagination of millions. The contemporary Roxolana industry extends beyond literature and television into tourism, consumer goods, and even political symbolism. The city of Rohatyn, Roxolana’s putative birthplace, has erected a monument to her and promotes itself as the homeland of the sultan’s consort. Popular singers have adopted the stage name Roxolana, leveraging the cultural resonance of the historical figure for commercial success. In the context of the ongoing war with Russia, Roxolana has been invoked as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, a woman who demonstrated that even the most powerful empires can be influenced by Ukrainian intelligence and will. This symbolic deployment of Roxolana in the service of national defense reveals the depth of her integration into the Ukrainian cultural imaginary. Chapter Two: The Structure of Anti-Colonial Rhetoric The anti-colonial discourse that has become increasingly prominent in Ukrainian intellectual and political life since the 2014 Euromaidan and especially since the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion rests upon a set of interconnected propositions about the nature of Ukrainian history and identity. The first proposition holds that Ukraine has been a colony of Russia for several centuries and that the Ukrainian national movement has been an anti-colonial struggle comparable to the liberation movements of Asia and Africa. The second proposition maintains that the colonial experience has deformed Ukrainian culture and identity, producing internalized inferiority complexes and patterns of dependency that must be overcome through decolonization. The third proposition asserts that authentic Ukrainian identity is fundamentally opposed to Russian imperialism and that any entanglement with Russian culture or political structures represents a form of complicity with the colonizer. This anti-colonial framework has deep roots in Ukrainian intellectual history. Stephen Velychenko has documented the tradition of Ukrainian Marxist anti-colonialist thought that emerged in the early twentieth century, arguing that Ukrainian thinkers such as Vasyl Shakhrai and Serhii Mazlakh developed a critique of Russian communism as a form of imperial domination that anticipated the insights of later postcolonial theorists such as Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral. These thinkers combined Marxist analysis of economic exploitation with a nationalist commitment to Ukrainian self-determination, creating a hybrid ideology that Velychenko describes as “national revolutionary.” Their work was suppressed under Stalinism and remained largely forgotten until the post-Soviet period, when it was rediscovered as a usable past for the newly independent Ukrainian state. The contemporary anti-colonial discourse in Ukraine draws upon this tradition while also incorporating elements from Western postcolonial theory. Ukrainian intellectuals have applied concepts such as hybridity, subalternity, and epistemic violence to the Ukrainian experience, arguing that Russian colonialism has operated not only through political and economic domination but also through the production of knowledge and the shaping of cultural identities. The historian Serhii Yekelchyk, as noted by critics of the anti-colonial paradigm, applied the term “subaltern” to the Ukrainian context as early as the 1990s, viewing Ukrainian history as one that has constantly functioned within external narratives that reproduce imperial structures of silence or subordination. The anti-colonial narrative has been institutionalized in Ukrainian memory politics, particularly since 2022. The Ukrainian state has pursued a policy of “decolonization” that involves the removal of monuments to Russian and Soviet figures, the renaming of streets and cities, and the revision of school curricula to emphasize Ukrainian resistance to Russian domination. As scholars have noted, this policy represents an attempt to replace the colonial discourse with a new hegemonic narrative that securitizes memory and excludes alternative voices. The colonizer, in this framework, becomes the constitutive Other whose opposition is foundational to the emergence of a new Ukrainian hegemony. The anti-colonial struggle thus involves the construction of a purified national identity that is defined through its opposition to everything associated with the imperial center. Critics of this anti-colonial paradigm have pointed out its potential for exclusionary and illiberal consequences. The historian Marko Pavlyshyn has characterized anti-colonialism as a mere inversion of signs, in which a national myth replaces an imperial one with equal certainty and exclusivity. In this framework, imperial interpretations of history are declared false and mythological and are replaced by allegedly true myths of national liberation. The result is not a more accurate understanding of history but a different set of simplifications that serve the needs of the national project rather than the pursuit of truth. Volodymyr Ishchenko has argued that Ukrainian “decolonization” has been reduced to the abolition of anything related to Russian influence in culture, education, and the public sphere, a process that threatens to impoverish Ukrainian culture rather than liberate it. The anti-colonial narrative also faces the problem of internal inconsistency. Ukraine was not a colony in the classic sense of the term, and the relationship between Ukraine and Russia has been characterized by a degree of ambiguity and mutual entanglement that the colonial model cannot fully capture. Svitlana Biedarieva has proposed the concept of “ambicoloniality” to describe this situation, arguing that Ukraine has been both a subject and an object of colonial processes. The historian Yaroslav Hrytsak has questioned the application of the postcolonial paradigm to the Ukrainian case, arguing that in both ideological and economic dimensions, the relationship between Ukraine and Russia has been more complex than the simple colonizer-colonized binary suggests. Chapter Three: The Contradiction at the Heart of the Cult The paradox of Roxolana emerges most clearly when the anti-colonial narrative is brought into direct contact with the cult that has grown up around her figure. The anti-colonial narrative condemns the capture and enslavement of Ukrainians by Ottoman raiders as a crime against the nation. It celebrates the Cossack resistance to Ottoman expansion and mourns the loss of the millions of Ukrainians who were trafficked into slavery over the centuries. The Roxolana cult, by contrast, celebrates the most famous victim of that slave trade as a national hero. It transforms the story of a woman who was captured, sold, converted, and integrated into the imperial elite into a narrative of triumph and empowerment. This transformation is accomplished through a series of interpretive maneuvers that neutralize the uncomfortable aspects of Roxolana’s biography. The first maneuver involves the depoliticization of her capture. The slave raids that brought Roxolana to Istanbul are treated as a historical backdrop rather than a central element of her story. The focus shifts to her individual agency and her capacity to navigate the harem, as if her enslavement were merely the starting point of a personal journey rather than a fundamental violation of her humanity and her national belonging. The violence of the slave trade is acknowledged in passing but does not become the interpretive key to her life. The second maneuver involves the nationalization of her identity. Roxolana is presented as a Ukrainian woman who remained loyal to her homeland despite her physical and cultural distance from it. Her conversion to Islam is treated as a strategic accommodation rather than a genuine transformation of belief. Her adoption of the name Hürrem is noted but not emphasized, as if the change of name did not signify a change of identity. The nationalist reading of Roxolana insists that she remained essentially Ukrainian, that her true self was untouched by her integration into the Ottoman imperial system. This reading allows Ukrainian audiences to claim her achievements as national achievements while disavowing the extent to which those achievements depended upon her assimilation into a non-Ukrainian, non-Christian, imperial world. The third maneuver involves the celebration of her power. Roxolana is admired for her ability to influence the Sultan, to outmaneuver her rivals in the harem, and to shape Ottoman politics. This admiration is expressed in language that borrows from contemporary discourses of female empowerment and individual self-realization. Vynnychuk’s portrayal of Roxolana as a pioneer of sexual liberation is the most explicit example of this tendency, but it is present in more subtle forms throughout the Roxolana cult. The problem with this celebration is that Roxolana’s power was inextricably bound up with her position within the imperial household. She exercised power through her relationships with the Sultan and her role in the reproduction of the dynasty. To celebrate her power without acknowledging its imperial context is to celebrate the successful functioning of an oppressive system rather than the resistance to it. The anti-colonial narrative, if it were applied consistently to Roxolana’s story, would condemn her as a collaborator. She converted to the religion of the colonizer. She married into the colonizer’s ruling family. She bore children who became heirs to the colonial empire. She participated in the political intrigues of the Ottoman court, including the succession struggles that resulted in the execution of rivals. By any reasonable standard of anti-colonial morality, Roxolana’s trajectory represents the opposite of resistance. She is a case study in assimilation, in the internalization of imperial values, and in the successful functioning of the colonial system’s mechanisms for incorporating talented subjects from the periphery into the imperial center. Yet the Roxolana cult celebrates her. This celebration is possible only because the anti-colonial narrative is applied selectively. The Ottoman Empire, which captured and enslaved Roxolana, is not treated as a colonizing power in the same way that Russia is. The Ottoman slave trade, which depopulated Ukrainian lands and brought Roxolana to Istanbul, is not treated as a crime against the Ukrainian nation in the same way that Russian political domination is. The Ottoman imperial system, which required Roxolana’s conversion and assimilation, is not subjected to the same critique that is directed at Russian imperialism. This selective application of the anti-colonial framework reveals the extent to which the framework itself is constructed around a specific geopolitical enemy rather than a consistent ethical principle. The anti-colonial narrative is anti-Russian, not anti-imperial in general. It condemns Russian domination while remaining silent about or even celebrating Ottoman domination. It mourns the victims of Russian colonialism while celebrating the most famous victim of Ottoman colonialism. This inconsistency is a structural feature of a narrative that derives its political force from the identification of a particular enemy rather than from a universal commitment to the freedom of all peoples. Chapter Four: The Ottoman Slave Trade as a Forgotten Colonial Crime The paradox of Roxolana cannot be fully understood without examining the broader historical context of the Ottoman slave trade and its impact on Ukrainian lands. The slave raids conducted by Crimean Tatar forces, often in coordination with Ottoman authorities, represented one of the most devastating forms of colonial violence experienced by the Ukrainian people. For centuries, these raids depopulated entire regions, destroyed communities, and created a culture of fear and insecurity that shaped Ukrainian social and political development. The historian Oleksandr Halenko has documented the scale of this trade, noting that it was one of the largest systems of forced labor in early modern Europe and the Mediterranean world. The victims of these raids were not only individuals such as Roxolana who, through extraordinary circumstances, rose to positions of power. They included countless thousands who labored in Ottoman galleys, fields, and households, who never returned to their homeland, and whose stories remain largely unknown. The Ukrainian folk tradition preserved memories of this trauma in songs and laments known as dumy, which recount the suffering of captives and the longing for freedom. These cultural expressions represent a form of collective memory that is as authentically Ukrainian as the Roxolana legend, yet they receive far less attention in contemporary Ukrainian culture. The selectivity of the Roxolana cult becomes even more striking when one considers the amount of cultural production devoted to her story in comparison to the relative neglect of the slave trade that brought her to Istanbul. There are dozens of novels, plays, and films about Roxolana. There is no comparable body of cultural production about the anonymous victims of the Ottoman slave trade. The one exception, perhaps, is the figure of the Cossack warrior who rescued captives from Ottoman slavery, a figure that appears in folklore and literature but whose primary function is to celebrate Ukrainian martial prowess rather than to mourn the victims of the slave trade. This selectivity reflects a deeper ideological structure in which certain forms of colonial violence are recognized and condemned while others are ignored or even celebrated. The anti-colonial narrative focuses on Russian domination because Russia is the contemporary enemy. The Ottoman Empire, by contrast, is treated as a distant historical entity that poses no threat to contemporary Ukraine. The result is a selective memory that condemns one form of colonialism while commemorating another. Roxolana, the most famous victim of the Ottoman slave trade, is transformed into a national hero precisely because her story can be detached from the broader history of Ottoman colonial violence and presented as a story of individual triumph. Chapter Five: The Question of Complicity The most uncomfortable dimension of the Roxolana paradox concerns the question of complicity. If Roxolana is to be celebrated as a Ukrainian hero, what does her story imply about the proper response to colonial domination? Her trajectory suggests that the appropriate response to being colonized is to assimilate into the colonizing power, to rise within its structures, and to exercise power through the mechanisms that the empire provides. This is precisely the opposite of the response that the anti-colonial narrative demands, which is collective resistance, the preservation of national identity, and the rejection of imperial integration. This tension is not unique to the Ukrainian case. Postcolonial theory has long grappled with the figure of the collaborator, the colonized subject who chooses to work within the imperial system rather than to resist it. Frantz Fanon’s analysis of the colonized intellectual who adopts the language and values of the colonizer is a classic treatment of this problem. Fanon argues that such figures are ultimately alienated from both the colonizing and the colonized communities, capable of functioning only within the imperial framework that produced them. The anti-colonial struggle, in Fanon’s view, requires a complete break with the colonial system, a rejection of its values, and the construction of a new national culture that is independent of imperial influence. Roxolana, by this standard, would be a case study in the failure of anti-colonial consciousness. She did not resist, did not preserve her national identity in any recognizable form and, of course, did not return to her homeland or contribute to its liberation. She became, in effect, an Ottoman. Her power depended upon her successful performance of Ottoman identity, and there is no evidence that she maintained any meaningful connection to the Ukrainian lands from which she came. The claim that she remained secretly Ukrainian is a projection of nationalist desires onto a historical figure who has no voice of her own in the historical record. The anti-colonial narrative thus faces a choice. It can either condemn Roxolana as a collaborator and abandon the cult that has grown up around her, or it can maintain the cult and thereby compromise the purity of its anti-colonial principles. The fact that Ukrainian culture has chosen the latter option reveals the extent to which the anti-colonial narrative is driven by political expediency rather than ethical consistency. The Roxolana cult is too valuable as a symbol of Ukrainian achievement and resilience to be abandoned, even if it means tolerating a figure whose life story contradicts the fundamental premises of the anti-colonial struggle. Chapter Six: Gender, Agency, and the Limits of Nationalist Framing The Roxolana cult also raises important questions about gender and agency that complicate the anti-colonial narrative. Roxolana is celebrated not only as a Ukrainian but also as a woman who exercised power in a male-dominated society. Her story is presented as a testament to female intelligence, courage, and determination. This gendered dimension of the cult has made Roxolana a popular figure among Ukrainian feminists and has contributed to her status as a symbol of women’s empowerment. Yet this feminist reading of Roxolana is no less problematic than the nationalist reading. Roxolana’s power was exercised within the framework of the imperial harem, an institution that existed for the sexual and reproductive service of the Sultan. Her rise from concubine to legal wife was an extraordinary achievement within the constraints of this institution, but it did not challenge those constraints. Roxolana did not advocate for the liberation of women from the harem or from the broader system of gender oppression that the harem embodied. She worked within the system, exploiting its contradictions and using her intelligence and charisma to advance her position. To celebrate her as a feminist icon is to celebrate individual advancement within an oppressive system rather than the collective struggle against that system. The anti-colonial narrative, with its emphasis on collective liberation and national self-determination, has an uneasy relationship with the individualist ethos that the Roxolana cult embodies. The anti-colonial struggle is presented as a collective endeavor, a matter of the people as a whole rising up against their oppressors. The Roxolana cult, by contrast, celebrates the exceptional individual who transcends the limitations of her circumstances through personal qualities of intelligence, beauty, and determination. These two visions of liberation are not necessarily incompatible, but they rest upon different understandings of how change occurs and what it means to be free. Chapter Seven: The Function of Roxolana in the Ukrainian Cultural Imaginary If the Roxolana cult and the anti-colonial narrative are structurally incompatible, why do they continue to coexist in Ukrainian culture? The answer lies in the multiple functions that Roxolana serves in the Ukrainian cultural imaginary. Roxolana provides Ukrainian audiences with a figure of national pride who can be admired without the uncomfortable associations that attach to many other historical figures. Unlike the Cossack leaders who were often brutal and authoritarian, unlike the nationalist activists who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II, unlike the Soviet-era heroes who are now tainted by their association with the communist regime, Roxolana is relatively free of political baggage. She can be celebrated by Ukrainians of different political persuasions and different regional backgrounds. Roxolana also provides a model of Ukrainian agency that is compatible with the contemporary global order. Her story of individual ascent from slavery to power resonates with neoliberal narratives of self-making and personal empowerment. It suggests that Ukrainians are active agents who can shape their own destinies and influence the world around them. This narrative of agency is particularly valuable in the context of the ongoing war with Russia, which threatens to reduce Ukraine to the status of a permanent victim. The coexistence of the Roxolana cult and the anti-colonial narrative thus serves a psychological function for Ukrainian society. It allows Ukrainians to acknowledge the reality of colonial victimization while simultaneously affirming their capacity for agency and achievement. It allows them to condemn Russian imperialism while maintaining a positive relationship with the Ottoman Empire, which is presented as a space of opportunity rather than a space of oppression. The paradox of Roxolana is a tension to be managed, a necessary contradiction that allows Ukrainian culture to navigate the complexities of its historical experience.