Delineating the Subject
In discussing the development of Ukrainian political ideas, I intend to restrict myself to the modern era, corresponding to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This chronological limitation is suggested by the structure of the subject itself.
Pre-modern social thought and political ideologies diverge substantially from those of the last and the present centuries, and their study would require a different methodological approach. A few indications must suffice. Political consciousness in medieval Ukraine (Kievan Rus’ and the Galician-Volhynian Kingdom) was expressed primarily in religious-ecclesiastical and dynastic terms. The political consciousness of the Ukrainian Cossack state in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was “estate”-bound, taking the form of a defence of the rights and liberties of the Cossack class; in addition, the ecclesiastical and dynastic elements continued to play a major role.In contrast with previous ages, Ukrainian political ideas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries evolved within a social setting where the old distinctions Ofhereditary estate were disappearing, and the traditional rural way of life was gradually being undermined and superseded by the rise of industrial mass society. The dominant themes in Ukrainian social thought of the past century and a half are nationalism, democracy, liberalism, conservatism, socialism, communism, and fascism. All are typically “modern” ideologies, common to all European peoples, although in Ukraine they assumed a specific shape. The peculiar character of modern Ukrainian political and social thought was largely determined by the condition of a people living under foreign domination and struggling to establish their own identity as a nation. This peculiarity becomes especially evident if we compare the development of Ukrainian and Russian ideologies.
Ukraine was affected by Russian intellectual and political trends such as Decembrism, Pan-Slavism, Populism, and Marxism, but in the Ukrainian environment all these assumed a distinct character. But Ukraine received its ideological inspirations not only from or through Russia. Polish and Austro-German influences, as well as channels of direct intellectual communication with the West and certain purely indigenous phenomena, were also important.First, however, a few brief observations about the state of research on the history of modern Ukrainian political and social thought are in order. The latter is still largely an unexplored, virgin land. So far, not a single major scholarly work has been written on the subject. Concerning the former, the essay by Iuliian Okhrymovych, Rozvytok ukrainskoi natsio- nalno-politychnoi dumky (The Development of Ukrainian National Political Thought, Lviv 1922), is but a brilliant sketch; moreover, it ends in the 1870s. Other works on the history of Ukrainian literature, historiography, and philosophy, such as the excellent study by Dmytro Chy- zhevsky, Narysy z istorii filosofii na Ukraini (Outlines of the History of Philosophy in Ukraine, Prague 1931), are general and only partly relevant to our subject. Ofbasic importance are original sources: the writings of Ukrainian social theorists and publicists, and the programs and policy statements of political parties and movements. However, there are no editions of the collected works of such leading Ukrainian political thinkers as Mykhailo Drahomanov and Viacheslav Lypynsky, and the student is forced to search for the original editions, which often are not easily accessible. Publications of documents pertaining to the ideologies and activities of Ukrainian parties and other political organizations are, with few exceptions, also non-existent.
This unsatisfactory state of affairs is the result of adverse circumstances. Until World War I, the nineteenth century, historically speaking, was still contemporary and hence unsuitable for detached scholarly research.
Discretion was also advisable to avoid the intervention of tsarist authorities. A very hopeful start in studying the history of social movements and thought was made in Soviet Ukraine during the 1920s, but these beginnings were cut short by the advent of Stalinism. After a lapse of three decades, studies in that field have been resumed in the Ukrainian SSR in recent years, but only on a modest scale and in a most diffident manner. Among the symposia which have appeared are Z istorii filosofskoi dumky na Ukraini (From the History of Philosophical Thought in Ukraine) and Z istorii ekonomichnoi dumky na Ukraini (From the History of Economic Thought in Ukraine). But the quality of most articles is not impressive. Particularly distressing is the fact that, with rare exceptions, the Academy of Sciences and other scholarly institutions of the Ukrainian SSR do not publish the original works of pre-1917 Ukrainian social thinkers, philosophers, historians and economists, even of those who are officially labelled “revolutionary democrats” and “progressives.” The same applies to documents pertaining to the history of political movements. In this respect, there is a striking difference between Russia and Ukraine. For instance, the works of the pre-revolutionary, non-Marxist Russian historians Solovev and Kliuchevsky have been brought out in new mass editions; Russian scholarly institutions feel no compunction about publishing the memoirs of tsarist statesmen, such as Valuev or Witte, not to mention the very extensive documentary and research literature on the history of nineteenth-century Russian revolutionary movements. It would appear that the communist regime discourages scholarly research which might strengthen the Ukrainian community’s awareness of its intellectual continuity with its own past.There are certain indications that valuable unpublished materials on the history of pre-revolutionary Ukrainian political movements and social thought are still hidden in Soviet archives. Conditions under the tsarist regime, especially prior to 1905, were such that many tracts, pamphlets, memoranda, and satirical poems circulated only in manuscript form without reaching the press. It is to be hoped that some day such materials will become available and the history of modern Ukrainian social thought will be seen in a new light, namely as a movement of ideas more continuous, comprehensive, and cohesive than it appears at present.