New ideas, political upheavals, and social reforms captured the attention of Europeans, Ukrainians included, during much of the 19th century.

Yet at this same time, a less noticeable but far more fundamental process of change was under way, namely, the Industrial Revolution. Not since man mastered agriculture in the Stone Age would such profound changes occur in all aspects of human life as those associated with the coming of the machine.

In Ukraine, however, industrialization came slowly at first, and the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians remained what they had been for millennia – an agrarian people. But when industrialization finally did develop in the late 19th century in certain limited areas of Ukraine, it did so rapidly and on a large scale. As a result, two radically different systems of production, of social organization, and of values suddenly confronted each other – one associated with the modernizing city, the proletariat, and the machine and the other with the traditionalist village, the peasant, and manual labor. The strains, contradictions, and dilemmas that arose from this confrontation would mold Ukrainian history well into the 20th century.

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