Rarely has there been a more exciting, varied, and widespread flowering of new ideas than in the 19th century.
By that time, the disengagement from the medieval belief that the world could be comprehended only in terms of God’s will, begun in the Renaissance, had long since been completed.
Educated Europeans were secure in the conviction that the mind of man was fully capable of analyzing and guiding human life. This intellectual confidence led to an unprecedented growth of ideas and ideologies. Indeed, ideology – that is, a system of ideas that claims to explain the past and present world and to serve as a guide for a better life in the future – emerged as a major historical force at this time.Closely linked to these developments was the rise of intellectuals or intelligentsia, as the roughly analogous social group was called in Eastern Europe. As specialists in the formulation and propagation of ideas and the mobilization of people in behalf of these ideas, the intelligentsia would be in the forefront of political and cultural change in Eastern Europe. And one of the most gripping concepts developed by the intelligentsia during the 19th century was that of nationhood. It was, as we shall see, a wholly new way not only of viewing society, but also of influencing its behavior. In Ukraine, as elsewhere in the world; the rise of the concept of nationhood was an unmistakable indicator of approaching modernity, for with nationhood came ideas and causes that are still with us today.