Populism

Modern democratic political and social ideas appeared in Ukraine in the 1820s in the wake of the Decembrist movement. A group particularly rel­evant from the viewpoint of the evolution of Ukrainian thought was the Society of United Slavs, whose program combined implacable hostility to serfdom with the idea of a democratic Pan-Slav federation.

The democratic-populist trend came of age with the Cyrillo-Methodian Society, a circle of young intellectuals in Kiev in 1846-7. The chief theorist of the Society was Mykola Kostomarov (1817—85), a gifted his­torian who later founded the populist school in Ukrainian historiography. Also associated with the Society was the poet Taras Shevchenko (1814-61), whose genius has made him the most influential figure in the intellectual life of modem Ukraine.

The new element in the ideology of the Cyrillo-Methodian Society, in comparison with that of its Decembrist predecessors, was Ukrainian na­tionalism. This was due to the influence of the Ukrainian cultural revival of the early decades of the century, mostly connected with Kharkiv Uni­versity, which, although non-political in nature, awakened both an en­thusiasm for the “people” and an awareness of a Ukrainian ethno­cultural identity. The program of the Cyrillo-Methodian Society was a synthesis of Romantic nationalism with the radical political and social ideas derived from the Decembrist movement, infused with the spirit of ardent Christian faith. The Cyrillo-Methodians wanted to base their country’s national rebirth on the emancipation of the peasant masses; their goal was an independent Ukrainian republic within a federation of Slavic nations and a new social order incorporating the Christian princi­ples of freedom, justice, and equality. The world-view of the Cyrillo- Methodian Society implied also an interpretation of history in which the democratic tradition of Ukraine (as embodied in the Cossacks) was fa­vourably contrasted with aristocratic Poland and autocratic Muscovy- Russia.

The tenets of the Cyrillo-Methoclian Society determined the ideologi­cal orientation of the Ukrainian national movement in the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.

The outstanding Ukrainian political thinker of the second half of the century was Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841-95). What differentiated him from the Cyrillo-Methodians was his consistently positivist and secular philosophical outlook. Drahomanov was a non-Marxist socialist, influ­enced by Proudhon and close to Western evolutionary socialism. He pro­duced elaborate proposals for a constitutional reorganization of Russia on federalist lines, with strong guarantees of individual civil rights and of self-government for regions and nationalities. Drahomanov hoped to secure Ukraine’s national interests through a federalization of the exist­ing states, Russia and Austria-Hungary.

The first Ukrainian political parties came into existence in Galicia in the 1890s. The two main parties were the National Democrats and the Radicals. The former was a broad coalition whose platform contained the planks of democratic nationalism and social reform. The latter, founded under the direct inspiration of Drahomanov, was a party of agrarian so­cialists and militant anti-clericals. The outstanding exponent of demo­cratic thought in Galicia was Ivan Franko (1856-1916). An encyclo­pedic mind, Franko distinguished himself as a poet, novelist, historian, literary scholar, critic, and brilliant publicist. A co-founder of the Radi­cal Party, he gradually moved away from the federalist teachings of his teacher Drahomanov and became one of the first exponents of the idea of a fully independent, democratic Ukrainian state.

In east-central Ukraine, embryonic political parties appeared only at the turn of the century and especially after the Revolution of 1905, but their existence remained precarious.

aries. Another noteworthy figure was Mykola Porsh (1877-1944), the Social-Democratic theorist who ably defended the ideal of Ukrainian autonomy with economic arguments.

In the thinking of all shades of the democratic-populist movement we can notice two distinct components: a striving for civic and national liberty and for social justice. Of the two, the latter component was prob­ably more pronounced than the former. A concern for the socio-eco­nomic interests of the downtrodden masses, combined with a strong egalitarian bias, was the ideological leitmotif of the whole trend. On the other hand, Drahomanov’s insistence on the importance of an adequate and well-planned democratic institutional framework did not leave a durable imprint. The desire for liberty was authentic in Ukrainian populism, but its content was primarily negative: an intense loathing of the oppressive features of tsarist autocracy. The sense of the “rules of the game” in an effective democratic system, and of the restraints which representative government necessarily implies, remained under­developed.

The culmination of the democratic-populist trend came in 1917. Ukraine’s revolutionary parliament, the Central Rada, was the direct outcome of a line of development which started with the Cyrillo- Methodian Society.

The inter-war period was a time of decline for Ukrainian democratic forces. They were forcibly repressed in Soviet Ukraine, although during the 1920s intellectuals with a democratic-populist background continued to play an influential role in the country’s cultural life. In western Ukraine, which had been annexed by Poland, the traditional democratic parties remained the official spokesmen of the Ukrainian community un­til the outbreak of the Second World War. But their position was chal­lenged and undermined by the rise first of communism and later of in­tegral nationalism. The decline of Ukrainian democracy resulted in part from the fact that it had to bear the blame for the failure of Ukrainian in­dependent statehood in the years 1917-21, and in part from the general crisis of European democratic systems and the ascendency of left- and right-wing totalitarian regimes.