Political Developments

It was fortunate for the Russian Empire that it had evolved into a stronger, tighter structure by the early 19th century, for this was the time when the tsarist regime was severely tested.

The first shock was the most traumatic. It occurred in 1812, when Napoleon’s Grande Armee, numbering 640,000, invaded Russia. As is well known, Russia managed not only to repulse the invaders, but to push them all the way back to Paris – though at great cost and with tremendous effort. The impact of the invasion on Ukraine was relatively minor. A part of Napoleon’s forces broke into Volhynia and caused considerable damage there. For the most part, Ukrainians responded willingly to the tsar’s call to join the war effort. Several volunteer regiments were quickly organized along Cossack lines on the Left Bank. The widespread support for these units demonstrated not only the readiness of Ukrainians to fight for the empire, but also the popularity of Cossack traditions. However, there were also rumors that several scions of Cossack starshyna families were drinking toasts to Napoleon’s health and hoping that he would smash the tsarist empire. Recent precedents for such attitudes were not lacking. In 1791, for example, Vasyl Kapnist (a prominent member of the Left Bank nobility) had secretly journeyed to Prussia on a fruitless mission to obtain Prussian aid for a Ukrainian uprising against the tsar. Nonetheless, antitsarist attitudes were the exception and the vast majority of Ukrainians fought loyally and well in defense of the empire. The Decembrist uprising

During the lengthy Napoleonic wars, many of the tsar’s officers who for years had fought in Europe were exposed to and impressed by the political institutions and values of the West. After their victorious return, they expected their seemingly liberal tsar, Alexander 1, to introduce Western-style reforms in Russia.

The first of these societies, the Union of Salvation, was founded in St Petersburg in 1816. About five years later, it broke up into two separate groups. The aristocratic Northern Society, still based in St Petersburg, continued to work for the establishment of a republic. Lacking strong leadership, it accomplished little. However, the Southern Society, based in Tulchyn in southern Ukraine where its leader, Colonel Pavel Pestel, was stationed, was much more effective. Iron-willed and talented, Pestel convinced another secret group, the Society of United Slavs, to join his organization. Among the leaders of the United Slavs were two Ukrainians, the Borisov brothers from Poltava. Pestel also managed to convince a Polish revolutionary group based in Ukraine to cooperate. Thus, by 1825, his original group of about thirty officer/conspirators had grown to approximately 160.

Pestel’s program, as formulated in his “Russian Truth” (Russkaia pravda), was more radical than that of the northern constitutionalists. It advocated the abolition of all social and political inequalities, economic modernization of the land, leadership by a revolutionary elite, and rigid, centralized government. Although based in Ukraine, Pestel evinced little interest in the non-Russian peoples of the empire. He argued that, except for the Poles who had a highly developed culture of their own, all other minorities should be Russified. As for the Ukrainians in particular, he stated blankly that “Little Russia… never was and never can be independent… It must, therefore, surrender its right to be a separate nation.”⁶ For generations, other Russian revolutionaries would hold similar views on the Ukrainian issue.

Map 16 Russian-ruled Ukraine in the 19th century

Members of the United Slavs did not share Pestel’s centralist bias.

Idealistic but amateurish, the members of both the Northern and Southern societies were caught unprepared by Alexander I’S death in December 1825. After much confusion, the leaders of the Northern Society mobilized several thousand troops under their command in St Petersburg and tried to topple the new tsar, Nicholas I. The uprising failed, however, and all the leaders were arrested. In Ukraine, the Southern Society fared only slightly better. Because Pestel was arrested shortly before the uprising in the capital, leadership in Ukraine fell into the irresolute hands of the Bestuzhev-Riumin and Muraviev-Apostol brothers. Although they managed to convince about 1000 of their men to join them in revolt, efforts to gain more support from the soldiers and peasants in Ukraine failed. After a week of aimless wandering in the vicinity of Chernihiv, they were crushed by loyal troops. The Decembrist uprising, the empire’s first revolutionary outburst, thus came to a disastrous conclusion. The Polish uprising of 1830

Ukraine was the scene of yet another uprising. In November 1830, a secret society of young Polish officers, inspired by revolutions that had just occurred in France and Belgium, ignited an uprising against the Russians in Warsaw. After initial successes, however, internal conflicts dissipated Polish energies. In an effort to extend the revolt to Right-Bank Ukraine where the Polish nobility was well entrenched, a Polish force moved into Volhynia in early 1831.

It was obvious that for the Polish rebels to succeed they would need popular, that is peasant, support. In an effort to gain the backing of anti-tsarist Russians and Ukrainians, the Poles coined their famous slogan, “We fight for our freedom and yours as well.” However, more than mere slogans were needed to convince Ukrainian peasants to aid their hated Polish landlords. Some of the Polish rebels suggested freeing the serfs in return for their cooperation, but this idea was rejected by most nobles. As a result, most Ukrainian peasants on the Right Bank adopted a neutral stance, while some took this opportunity to avenge themselves on their Polish lords. Many Polish peasants also refused to back the rebellious nobles in 1830–31, indicating that even among the Poles, national consciousness and solidarity had not yet penetrated to the masses. By the middle of 1831, the uprising was crushed. But for many years thereafter, secret Polish societies continued to conspire against the tsar.

From the point of view of Ukrainian history, it is noteworthy that these conspiracies and uprisings had little to do with Ukrainians as such, although they occurred for the most part on Ukrainian soil. This fact was in itself a telling indication of how vague and emasculated the political significance of Ukraine and the Ukrainians had become in the Russian Empire in the early 19th century.