National abstraction or social project?

Contrary to the forecasts of many philosophers and historians, the 20th century was the era of national liberation movements and national renaissance. The truth is that every nation is the treasure of our planet and the wealth of humankind’s culture is, in fact, the wealth of the nations that form this culture. This fully applies to the history and culture of the Ukrainian people and our national idea.

What shape is this idea to take in the conditions of the 3rd-millennium globalization, in the context of the historical experience of Ukraine and Europe as a whole? Is the national idea a speculative abstraction or, just the contrary, quite a concrete and realistic social project? What does the national idea and the idea of social progress look like in the legacy and oeuvre of Ukraine’s prominent thinkers? This is the subject of an interview with Prof. Serhii KRYMSKY, Ph.D., a well-known Ukrainian philosopher, chief research fellow at the Hryhorii Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), a regular contributor to and a friend of our newspaper.

It would be perhaps a good idea to start a conversation on this subject with the following question. Why have experts and the general public reached no tangible results in debating on the Ukrainian national idea in nearly 20 years of Ukraine’s independence? This question still remains unanswered, at least in clear-cut terms. What do you think?

“I must say that if the above-mentioned problem is tackled correctly, it will be surely resolved. The point is that the Ukrainian national idea is often regarded one ideological concept or another, i.e., it is treated in the spirit of certain abstractions. This follows from the interpretation of the national idea as a purely philosophical concept which can include various opinions, proposals, and notions. We think, however, that in reality the national idea is a cultural extract of the nation’s history, it is a problem of national sociality that characterizes not only certain conceptual structures but also the imperatives determined by historical experience. The national idea is, above all, a social project which can be discussed as long as it is being implemented, as long as it corresponds to the social development of one ethnos or another, to a certain type of sociality.

“For example, the national strategy of Britain used to be associated with this sociality of an industrial world leader. In its turn, what once shaped the national strategy of Germany was geopolitical assertion of the German Empire historically based on the empire of Charlemagne. The French nation positioned itself as a cultural leader of European civilization. The Spanish and Italian national strategies were associated with the social strategies of papacy and the Catholic Church in general.

“The ideals of the Russian nation reflected its social claims to Eurasianism and being an heir to Byzantine as a ‘Third Rome’.”

It will be perhaps appropriate now to speak about Ukraine and its national ideals that were historically formed in close interaction with European culture.

“Since the times of Hryhorii Skovoroda (18th century), the Ukrainian nation’s imperatives of development have been associated with the ‘Republic of Spirit’ (in his own words) — a project that was assuming a civilization-related dimension as Ukraine embraced social and scientific progress. It is important to remember that no other country has ever ridden out a crisis thanks to material factors only. It is the social requirements of state-building and religious development that played the main role here.

“Take our own history. As the era of the Ruin began in the 1660s, there were two closely-linked factors in the development of the Ukrainian nation. One was the necessity to defend the Hetmanate, while the other was the awareness that the armed force was not enough to solve the problems of national life. This task required affiliation with the European cultural movement, the world culture as such.

“As a result, the propaganda of language as a ‘spiritual sword,’ to quote Lazar Baranovych, gave way to the great cultural reform of Ukrainian life worked out by Petro Mohyla, Feofan Prokopovych, Meletii Smotrytsky, Sylvestr Kosiv, Kasiian Sakovych, and K. Trankvilion Stavrovetsky. This reform called for a synthesis of Eastern Slavic and European cultures and the introduction of Latin scholarship and Western European curricula.

“As part of this project, the Kyiv Mohyla Academy and a lot of fraternity schools (not only in Kyiv but also in Lutsk, Lviv, and other cities) were established. Ukrainian students became part of the large European brotherhood of Goliards who wandered from one university to another all over Europe. For instance, according to Valeriia Nichyk’s research, there were 100 Kyiv church school students on the list of Kant’s seminar participants. It is also a proven fact that the marble plaque of the Bologna Music Academy showed the name of Maksym Berezovsky, a gold medal winner of this academy, next to that of the medalist Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Therefore, cultural transformation of the Ukrainian nation by way of acquiring world experience was in fact the linchpin of the project of Ukraine’s national renaissance.”

But there must have been Ukrainian national impulses too…

“Naturally, what I have said does not mean that national renaissance only boiled down to gaining foreign experience. It surely called for taking into account the spiritual traditions of our own people. This task was carried out by Petro Mohyla who did a very important thing in the 17th century: among other things, he systemized and legitimized all the Ukrainian holidays in a manner that the Ukrainians are accustomed to even today.

“Ukraine embraced the world experience of baroque culture aimed at standardizing the entire European space of urban development — from Lisbon to Poltava. This process of synthesis was obstructed by counterreformation that denied the Renaissance experience of the glorification of man by pessimistic and tragic interpretation of the baroque-era consciousness. Only Ukraine and Germany, which were experiencing a national revival, produced the interpretation of a baroque-era individual as a national hero, leader, and prophet. The chivalrous glorification of Ivan Mazepa as a representative of the Ukrainian nation may serve as an example.”

But, as history teaches, there is nothing unchangeable, eternal, given once and for all. Apparently, the national idea has also undergone some changes?

“In the further development of national awareness, the idea of social and technological progress began to play the leading role. We must first of all recall Taras Shevchenko’s grandiloquent appreciation of James Watt’s technological achievements and the industrial revolution that began with the discovery of the steam engine. Let me remind you his words from the Diary (Journal): “O great Fulton! O great Watt! Your young brainchild, which is growing day by day and hour by hour, will soon devour whips, thrones, and crowns and relish diplomats and landlords for dessert, as a schoolboy would do a lollipop. Your colossal brainchild of genius will finish on our entire planet what the Encyclopedists began in France. My prophecy is doubtless. I only pray that the much too patient Lord reduce a little His heartless patience” (August 27, 1857).

“It would be also good to note the scientific universalism of Ivan Franko and his fundamental work, What Is Progress?, on the philosophy of progress and the role of science in national development. Such an assessment of science and progress at the time was possible owing to works by Ostap Terletsky and numerous propagandist articles by Ivan Fedorovych, Hanevych, and other Galician intellectuals.

“Vienna University formed a Ukrainian association, Sich, which published Ukrainian literature and encouraged research in natural sciences. One of Sich’s leading figures, Ivan Puliui, became famous for designing the devices, including the cathode tube, which helped discover X-rays. At the same time, Mykola Hulak, one of the founders of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, published the monograph An Experiment in Four-Dimensional Geometry, Europe’s first study in multidimensional geometry. This work blazed the trail to the perception of the spatial and temporal notions of relativist mechanics.

“Moreover, the Ukrainian scientist Yurii Kondratiuk computed the trajectory of a rocket-assisted flight to the Moon, which US scientists used, as NASA admitted, to launch a manned spacecraft to Earth’s natural satellite. We should also recall that the Ukrainian poet Pavlo Hrabovsky’s son Borys designed a television system capable of transmitting the images of moving objects. Besides, the first screening of the Lumi re brothers’ film in Paris was preceded by two cinema shows in Odesa. So Ukrainian culture proved capable of not only using but also making the most dramatic scientific discoveries.”

What conclusion can we make to sum up the historical experience of the formation and development of the Ukrainian national identity?

“The analysis of the factors of Ukraine’s historical development allows us to claim that its national idea follows from the task of becoming a subject of the current civilization process (we have shown above that this is possible and has been done), thereby making a contribution to humankind’s future. This is the main conclusion.”