THE IMPERATIVE OF UNITY

In the early 1890s the nationally oriented Ukrainian intelligentsia faced a number of urgent and difficult questions that could not be evaded, ignored, or shelved, for they needed an honest, sincere and courageous answer. The questions were: How can the wall between the intelligentsia and the people be torn down? In what concrete way can educated Ukrainians serve the joint national cause? How can one find and formulate a nationwide Ukrainian ideal? Finally, by far the most important question: Is it time to put the demand for Ukrainian independence on the agenda and how can this be achieved in practice?

What merits special attention today is a dialogue that took place in 1892-1893 between two prominent figures of the Ukrainian national and cultural renaissance — the outstanding political scientist, historian, philosopher, and journalist Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841-1895), and Borys Hrinchenko (1863-1910), later a classic of Ukrainian letters, who was also an acclaimed ethnographer, folklorist, linguist, academic, and author of the famous multi-volume Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language. This polemic stemmed from Hrinchenko and Drahomanov’s “Letters from Naddniprianshchyna” and “Letters to Naddniprianshchyna,” respectively, which were published in September 1892 — May 1893 in the Chernivtsi-based newspaper Bukovyna). It embraced such a wide range of burning issues and outlined such promising and comprehensive approaches to their solution that the ideas of these two prominent Ukrainians are still relevant today.

What were the differences between the two participants of this dialogue? In fact, both Hrinchenko and Drahomanov shared the same strategic views on the problems of the Ukrainian national renaissance, the development of the Ukrainian language, and the cultural and educational movement; they struggled against imperial tsarist policy toward the Ukrainian people and other nations. Where they differed was in their understanding of specific (predominantly tactical) questions concerning the further development of Ukrainian national awareness. Hrinchenko, a representative of the younger generation that was championing Ukraine’s renaissance, took a far more radical stand: he emphasized the crucial need for resolute and dynamic actions in the struggle for the Ukrainian people’s cultural and national rights. In contrast, Drahomanov stressed that his credo remained forever the same: “Cosmopolitanism in terms of ideas and goals, national spirit in the foundation and forms of cultural work.” Let us try to analyze the views of the two interlocutors (not opponents!) and prove that there were no essential, let alone irreconcilable, differences between them.

A reading of Hrinchenko’s “Letters from Naddniprianshchyna” reveals the author’s indignant, unspeakably bitter, and for the most part correct conclusions, judging by the course of events. “Our Ukrainian public,” the author writes sarcastically, “willingly chatters that ‘Ukraine is a poor sobbing mother! There’s nobody to do her good and help her!’ But they immediately add, ‘But how can one help under such circumstances? Because...’ And they begin enumerating these onerous circumstances. The circumstances are onerous indeed, but they become even more so because all that these gentlemen do to demonstrate their patriotism is babble.”

Borys Hrinchenko poses the following crucial question, “Why can’t we achieve at least some harmony in views and actions, at least some solidarity?” and proposes an answer: “First of all, possibly because the Ukrainian has a generally individualistic nature. And, secondly, we do not in fact have any Ukrainian intelligentsia, what we have is a motley crew of Ukrainian intellectuals.” According to Hrinchenko, the collapse of the national spirit has more than disastrous consequences: “It turns out that our incommunicativeness and disparity lead to a situation where, even if people want to rally around a certain joint cause, they are still unable to form a more or less stable union to work in one direction. It is like a vicious circle: disparity in views brings forth disparity in public activities, while disparity in public life and the ensuing need to arrive at the root of a problem through one’s own efforts engenders disparity in views — and so on, ad infinitum.”

Hrinchenko knows only one way out: national unity and overcoming the division of the Ukrainian people into what was known as “gentlemen” and “muzhyks” (uncouth peasants). In this scheme of things, the former have forgotten or do not want to remember that they are Ukrainian, with the latter “slaving away for a piece of daily bread” and oblivious to the national cause. In other words, the author points out, we will always be facing the terrible truth: “Our muzhyk does not even know his ethnic name. All he knows is that he is not Russian, Turkish or German, but God alone knows who he is exactly.” But this requires painstaking, inconspicuous, thankless but in fact unavoidable daily work, not just high-sounding fine words. Specifically, one must put across to the Ukrainians at least an elementary knowledge of their national history, explain to them that they have common interests, instill a feeling of national and human dignity into the Ukrainian people, the former and the latter being inseparably linked. This was the reason why Hrinchenko was especially resentful of the humiliating “Little Russian” status and favored building a relationship with Moscow on the principles of true equality, mutual respect, and free choice. For “one people is in harmony with another not when both of them are closely related but when their life in unity benefits them to the maximum, satisfies as many civic needs as possible, and brings as much happiness as possible.” His words seem to have been written today.

Now let us consider the concept of our native country’s national and spiritual renaissance, which Mykhailo Drahomanov expounded in his “Letters to Naddniprianshchyna.” First of all, he points out that Hrinchenko’s invectives about the Ukrainian intelligentsia (that it has been totally Russified, and thinks and speaks solely “in Muscovite,” etc.) are too rash and largely unfounded. Drahomanov recalled that the Istoriya Rusov, which had a powerful effect on the formation of the historical views of Shevchenko, Kostomarov and other members of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, was written in Russian, as was Vasyl Kapnist’s brilliant example of liberalism, Ode to Slavery. Moreover, according to Drahomanov, the Ukrainian national renaissance would have brilliant historical prospects only if its ideology organically embraced the best models of European liberalism and democracy. In Drahomanov’s view, it was this combination, rather than reliance on the narrow-minded language — and ethnography-based jingoism, that constituted the vital prerequisite for the achievement of the goals of the Ukrainian liberation movement.

Mykhailo Drahomanov emphasized that he was “just a universally-minded Ukrainian,” not a Muscophile, Polonophile, or least of all a Ukrainophile in the old meaning of the word. For “our political leaning toward Moscow is nothing but an attempt to package the idea of an autonomous Ukraine in the guise of liberalism shared by the educated Great Russians and other peoples of Russia because we see no serious grounds for official Ukrainian separatism in Russia (this is the heart of the matter — Author).” In fact, this clear-cut political formula had a crucial impact on the ideology of Ukrainian national liberation movement leaders in 1917-1920.

On the other hand, Drahomanov was unquestionably correct when he asserted that European liberal and progressive ideas, and democratic principles often found their way to Ukraine via St. Petersburg and Moscow, i.e., they first appeared “not in Ukrainian clothes, not in the Ukrainian but the Russian language.” But another of his postulates seems to be erroneous. “The old nationalist theories are on their last legs among the backward peoples of Europe or, to be more exact, among the backward strata of its intelligentsia.” History has shown that extremely powerful national movements and people’s aspirations for independence and freedom marked the entire 20th century. It is only by passing this stage of its development that the European nations managed (which we can clearly see) to achieve a qualitatively new level of integration and voluntary unity among states.

The dialogue between Mykhailo Drahomanov and Borys Hrinchenko (an interesting detail: Drahomanov did not even know the real name of his opponent, who wrote under the pen-names of Chaichenko, Vartovy, etc.) is important for us because, above all, these two prominent Ukrainians convincingly demonstrated that it is possible and necessary to reach a compromise between the humanistic democratic idea and Ukrainian national patriotic movement. These components must organically complement one another, and will therefore guarantee success for the unique public movement that we are witnessing and participating in today.