In an interview on Ukrainian National Radio, Rory Finnin (Director of CUS) addressed the nation-consolidating function of Taras Shevchenko's verse.

'Shevchenko did not present Ukrainian national identity as an ethnic concept. For him, it was more a mode of existence, a mode of behaviour. In this way, Shevchenko reaches all Ukrainians of different ethnic origins -- Russian, Crimean Tatar, Polish, etc. His poetry is, we might say, the first All-Ukrainian Roundtable of National Unity.'