Administrative and Political Developments in Dnieper Ukraine

With the elimination of Poland from the map of Europe following the Third Parti­tion in 1795, all Ukrainians came to live under the rule of two multinational states: the Russian Empire and the Austrian, later the Austro-Hungarian, Empire.

Territorial divisions

The tone of administrative and political life in Dnieper Ukraine was set by Empress Catherine II during the 1780s, when the last vestiges of autonomy as embodied in the Hetmanate and the Crimean Khanate were abolished. All of Dnieper Ukraine was henceforth to be administered in the same manner as other parts of the Rus­sian Empire. Despite several changes during the course of the nineteenth century, the administrative system retained five basic levels: (1) the village and city, (2) the county, (3) the province, (4) the region, and (5) the empire, headed by the tsar and his central administration in St Petersburg.

Administrative restructuring began in 1775, when Catherine II issued the Fun­damental Law for the reorganization of the empire. The object of this law was to create a standard administrative pattern throughout the realm. The basic unit was the imperial province (namestnichestvo). Each imperial province was to have a roughly equal number of up to 700,000 inhabitants, and its territory was subdi­vided into counties or districts (Russian: uezdy; Ukrainian: povity), each of about 70,000 inhabitants. The imperial province was headed by a governor appointed by the tsar and responsible directly to St Petersburg.

MAP 26

DNIEPER UKRAINE, circa 1850

Copyright © by Paul Robert Magocsi

The largest concentration of ethnic Ukrainian inhabitants lived in nine prov­inces. These included, on the territory of the former Hetmanate, the provinces of Chernihiv and Poltava. In former Sloboda Ukraine, an imperial province of the same name was established (although without certain territory in the north and northeast), and in 1835 it was renamed the province of Kharkiv. From former Zaporozhia, which initially had become part of New Russia in 1775, the provinces of Katerynoslav and Kherson (including lands between the lower Dnieper and Dniester Rivers acquired between 1774 and 1791 from the Ottoman Empire) were created. Of the old Crimean Khanate, both the peninsula and the steppe/coastal region between the lower Dnieper River and Sea of Azov became the province of Taurida. The lands acquired from Poland in 1793 and 1795 became the provinces of Kiev (including the city and surrounding area formerly within the Hetmanate), Volhynia, and Podolia. The Kiev, Volhynia, and Podolia provinces were together referred to as the Russian Empire’s Southwestern Land (Iugo-zapadnyi krai); here they will be referred to as the Right Bank.

Besides the nine “Ukrainian” provinces, ethnic Ukrainians also inhabited are­as in immediately adjacent provinces or regions of the Russian Empire. These included, in the east, parts of the Don Cossack and Black Sea Cossack Lands; in the southwest, parts of the province of Bessarabia (both the coastal region and an area around Khotyn in the north); and in the northwest, the regions around Brest and Chelm. These last two borderland regions had a complicated history.

Administrative structure

Like the old imperial provinces, the smaller provinces (gubernii) that formed the basis of the imperial Russian administrative structure during the nineteenth cen­tury were each headed by a governor (Russian: gubernator) appointed by the tsar. The governor was assisted by a board of administration (gubernskoe prisutstvie) and various bureaus or committees responsible for specific problems - taxes, public welfare, agriculture, and so on.

Below the province level was the county or district (Russian: uezd; Ukrainian: po- vit), for which the most important officials were the police commandant (ispravnik) and gentry marshal (predvodilel'dvorianstva). The county administration also had a ruling board (nizhnii zemskii sud) and various bureaus or committees.

Whether in Dnieper Ukraine or in the Russian Empire as a whole, it was the nobility who directed local government. Each county had its own gentry assembly (sobrnnie dvorianstva) consisting of all nobles over twenty-five years of age whose lands in the county produced an annual income of at least 100 rubles. The gentry assembly elected the gentry marshal and police commandant, who were, as men­tioned above, the two leading officials at the county level of administration.

326 Ukraine in the Russian Empire

The gentry assembly also chose officials to head the various county bureaus as well as delegates to the provincial gentry assembly. The assembly at the provincial level functioned in the same manner as that at the county level, that is, it elected officials to head various provincial bureaus and nominated candidates for the post of provincial gentry marshal.

The lowest level of administration included the village and township/city. Cit­ies experienced a particular development. Those that historically enjoyed self-rule remained outside the provincial structure until 1831 (Kiev until 1835), when Magdeburg Law was abolished. Thereafter, cities and towns, each with its own council (duma) and executive board, were made subordinate to the county or pro­vincial administration of the area in which they were located. The only exception was the port of Odessa, which with a small hinterland formed a territory depend­ent directly on the central government.

As part of the reform of the 1860s, the so-called zemstvo institutions were introduced in certain parts of the empire. These were established in an effort to democratize governmental administration at the local level and at the same time to resolve pressing social problems by encouraging local initiative and activ­ity. It should be kept in mind that the zemstvos, which existed at both the county and the provincial level, did not replace any existing institution. Rather, they were responsible for a limited number of local matters. Because the zemstvos were administrative entities parallel to the provincial and county gentry assemblies and boards of administration, they often clashed with these bodies over matters of

328 Ukraine in the Russian Empire

jurisdiction. The main functions of the zemstvos at both the provincial and the county level were to levy taxes, assign funds to finance their own operations, and elect their own officers. They were also charged by the central government with responsibility for operating the courts and for matters such as road maintenance, education, fire prevention, and hygiene.

In theory, the zemstvos were to be made up of delegates elected every three years to assemblies (sobranii) from three groups in the population: private land­owners, peasants living in communes, and certain categories of urban dwellers.

The peasants’ concerns were addressed in their own bodies of self-government, which came into being in 1861 with the creation of the rural district (volost’). The rural district was, in turn, made up of village communes (sd’skie obshchestva). The village commune had its own assembly (Russian: skhodd, Ukrainian: hromada), which elected a village elder (starosta) as well as delegates to the rural district assembly (volostnoi skhod). Each rural district also had its own board of administration and was headed by a land captain (zemskii nachal’nid) and police captain appointed by the central government.

Above the province, the basic administrative division was the office of governor­general (general-gubernator). This post was never established throughout the Rus­sian Empire as a whole, although it was often found in the borderland regions. The Ukrainian provinces fell into this category, and by the 1830s had as many as three governors-general: the Governor-General of Kiev for the Right Bank (Kiev, Volhynia, and Podolia, 1832-1914); the Governor-General of Little Russia for the Left Bank (Chernihiv, Poltava, and Kharkiv, 1802-1856); and the Governor­General of New Russia and Bessarabia for the steppe Ukraine and Crimea (Kher­son, Katerynoslav, and Taurida, 1797-1874). The governors-general had super­visory capacity over the provincial governors within their respective jurisdictions, and they were responsible for setting general policy for the region as a whole.

Finally, at the very top of the imperial administrative structure was the tsar in St Petersburg. By the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire had become an absolute hereditary monarchy, and with the adoption of the Law of Succession to the Throne in 1797, the Romanov family - specifically the eldest son of each tsar - was given exclusive title to the imperial throne. Thus, unlike in previous centuries, in the nineteenth century the royal mantle could be passed without difficulty from one tsar to the next. During that time, the empire had five rulers: Alexander I (reigned 1801-1825), Nicholas I (reigned 1825-1855), Alexander II (1855-1881), Alexander III (reigned 1881-1894), and Nicholas II (reigned 1894-1917). Until the very end of the Russian Empire’s existence in 1917, the tsar, in contrast to rulers or governments in most other parts of Europe, had abso­lute control over his subjects. Not even the revolutionary events and constitutional experiments during the first decade of the twentieth century limited in any serious way the tsar’s authority.

At the imperial level, the Russian Empire was administered by several minis­tries, each headed by a single minister appointed by the tsar. The ministerial sys­tem, adopted in 1802 (instituted in 1811), replaced the old system of colleges, or collegia (i.e., state departments headed by boards of twelve members) set up a century earlier by Peter I. By the end of the nineteenth century, there were ten ministries and several other administrative agencies. From the standpoint of the empire’s administrative structure, the most important of these was the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which headed a chain of command that went down from the imperial level through the provincial governors to the county police commandant, rural district police captain, and, finally, village commune police.

The imperial administration also consisted of various bodies, such as the Com­mittee of Ministers, the Council of Ministers (est. 1857), the State Council (est. 1801), the Senate, and the tsar’s Chancery. Some of these, in cooperation with the tsar, were responsible for legislative and judicial as well as administrative matters. The result of such a system was often jurisdictional overlap. Finally, in 1906, in an attempt to alleviate the problem of overlapping jurisdictions, a new governmental structure was adopted. Henceforth, there were to be clear divisions between leg­islative (State Council and State Duma), executive (Council of Ministries), and judicial (Senate) responsibilities. All these branches at the imperial level of gov­ernment were under the supreme authority of the tsar.

In essence, the administrative structure of the Russian Empire was designed so that despite certain areas of administrative autonomy (provincial and county gen­try assemblies and zemstvos, and rural district and village commune assemblies) there was a chain of command represented by certain officials (especially in the police) whose ultimate authority rested in the unchallenged authority of the tsar. Within such a centralized and autocratic structure, Ukraine had no real distinct administrative life. The Dnieper-Ukrainian lands formed an integral part of the Russian Empire, which throughout the nineteenth century managed to follow a relatively stable existence.

The evolution of the Russian Empire, 1814-1914

After the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the defeat of France in 1814, the Russian Empire emerged as Europe’s greatest land power. Of Russia’s traditional enemies, Poland had ceased to exist; Ottoman Turkey was growing weaker and on its way to becoming the proverbial “sick man of Europe”; and France was in the throes of its post-Napoleonic defeat. Immediately to the west, the tsarist government was, at least during the first half of the nineteenth century, closely allied with both the Austrian Empire and Prussia, who together with Russia saw themselves as part of a Holy Alliance “destined” to protect and preserve stability in Europe. Russia’s prestige was therefore at its height in the decades after 1815. Even when revolu­tion spread throughout most of Europe in 1848, the Russian Empire was virtually unique in not experiencing political disturbance. As the strongest and most stable force of the day, the tsar was even called upon by Habsburg Austria to intervene in its struggle with the Hungarians. Hence, it was the army of Tsar Nicholas I that put down the Hungarian revolution in 1849 and that saved the Austrian Empire from disintegration.

The first half of the nineteenth century also marked the continual territori­al growth of the Russian Empire. Territorial annexations followed in a virtually uninterrupted sequence. Along its western borders the empire acquired Finland (1809), Bessarabia (1812), and, by reacquisition, Poland’s Congress Kingdom (1815). To its south and east it added the Transcaucasian kingdoms (1801-1828), Transcaspian and Central Asian territories (1822-1895), and the Amur and mari­time provinces (1858-1860) near Chinese Manchuria and along the Pacific coast in the Far East. Before the end of the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire had come to control one-sixth of the surface of the globe.

All this does not mean that the empire was without problems. For instance, in 1853, when St Petersburg pressed for greater influence over Ottoman-ruled lands in the Balkans and for free access through the Bosporan straits near Constantino­ple, western Europe’s Great Powers felt obliged to respond. Anxious to protect their own commercial interests in the Near East, Britain, France, and Sardinia- Piedmont came to the defense of the Ottoman Empire. In response to Russia’s invasion of the Balkans, a joint British and French fleet crossed the Black Sea, disembarked along the coast of the western Crimea, and laid siege to the strategic port and fortresses (Inkerman and Balaklava) surrounding Sevastopol’. With the fall of Sevastopol’ in 1854, Russia had been defeated in what became known as the Crimean War. Aside from disrupting the economy of the peninsula and provok­ing uprisings among a portion of the Crimean Tatar population which supported the Western invaders allied to the Ottomans, the Crimean War revealed several weaknesses of tsarist rule and the need for reform. The war also left an indelible imprint on the Western mind, since among the heroes of the Crimean campaign were the nurse Florence Nightingale and a British unit immortalized by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854).

Aside from foreign invasion, the restless Poles revolted twice against Russian rule, in 1830-1831 and in 1863. Then, at the beginning of the twentieth century, tactless Russian expansion in the Far East was checked by the Japanese, who unex­pectedly won the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. This was followed by a revolu­tion in the streets of St Petersburg which forced the tsar to make certain political concessions, however nominal, to his increasingly restless subjects. The Revolution of 1905 was only the symbolic capstone of several decades of increasingly wide­spread revolutionary activity by a host of Russian and non-Russian political activists who hoped to overthrow the existing order. Finally, Russia’s greatest problem was its economic backwardness vis-à-vis the rest of Europe, only partially alleviated by the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and the beginnings of industrialization in the very last decade of the nineteenth century.

Nevertheless, none of these external and internal problems seriously shook the structure of the Russian Empire. On the contrary, the imperial system, despite its backward social structure and increasingly discontented national minorities, espe­cially in the European parts of Russia, continued to survive and even flourish until 1914 and the outbreak of World War I.

Given the situation of Dnieper Ukraine, it is not surprising that political activ­ity directed to improving the status of Ukrainians as a distinct national entity was for the longest time virtually non-existent. At best only a few individuals and movements appeared on Ukrainian territory with the goal of changing the exist­ing order. As early as the 1790s, a Ukrainian nobleman, Vasyl’ Kapnist, published tracts critical of Russia’s centralizing policies and traveled to Berlin to conduct secret negotiations for Prussian assistance in case of a Cossack rebellion against tsarist rule. Somewhat later, during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, when the latter’s Austrian allies were stationed for several months in western Volhynia, some French diplomats put forth vague ideas about a separate Ukrainian entity. The 1820s also brought political activity to Ukrainian territory in the form of the Masonic movement and activity by military officers’ societies which led to the abor­tive Decembrist revolt in St Petersburg in 1825. The regiment stationed in Cherni­hiv began to advance toward Kiev at this time but was speedily repulsed. By the 1830s, the Right Bank had become transformed into a fertile seedbed for Polish revolutionary activity. None of these movements, however, ever considered the idea of a separate Ukrainian cultural or political entity.

It is not until the very end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, a time when the first Ukrainian political parties came into being, that it is possible to speak in terms of a specifically Ukrainian political life. At that time, several parties were formed, and while some supported the existing regime and others cooperated with Russian socialist revolutionaries, there were still others who considered Ukraine a distinct entity worthy at least of some kind of cultural and even political autonomy. Yet despite the fact that these parties were represented in Russia’s first and second parliament, the Dumas of 1906 and 1907, each of which had a Ukrainian bloc of deputies, the embryonic Ukrainian political movement remained stillborn within an autocratic and highly centralized impe­rial structure that since the 1860s had actively suppressed any manifestation of national separatism within its borders.

For all these reasons, Ukrainian history in the Russian Empire during the nine­teenth century is basically the history of a region whose economic life and social structure were integrated with, subordinate to, and dependent upon develop­ments in the rest of the empire. Yet despite the seemingly complete integration of the Dnieper-Ukrainian lands in the Russian Empire, the region had a long and distinct historical and cultural tradition, whose memory was kept alive in the writ­ings of a small group of intellectual leaders. This group, known as the national­ist intelligentsia, succeeded in creating a national movement that eventually was to win the hearts and minds of ethnic Ukrainians as it tried to prepare them to accept the idea of independent statehood when, after the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, an opportune political moment finally arrived. Before turning to the Ukrainian national awakening and the subsequent national movement in the Russian Empire, it is first necessary to look at socioeconomic developments in Dnieper Ukraine.