In Retrospect
The political, and then cultural, Russification of the former class of Cossack Starshyna toward the end of the eighteenth century formed a turning point in the development of Ukrainian national consciousness.
In an epoch where the people were still represented by their aristocracy, it meant an interruption in the national existence of Ukraine. With it came an alienation between the popular masses and the ruling class, which had ceased to serve the interest of its native land. This alienation of the elite from the masses condemned the former to civic impotence, while depriving the latter of much needed cultural services. Up to 1917 the greatest problem in the realm of Ukrainian consciousness remained that of the competition of two currents within Ukrainian society: one, “Little Rus- sianism,” which saw no other path than that of the deepening and securing of the union with Russia, and the other, “conscious Ukrainianism,” which clamoured for the maintenance and reactivation of Ukrainian identity. Of couse, this was not a free competition on both sides, reflecting the internal reactions of the Ukrainian community alone. The “Little Russian” current was supported by the power of the Empire, while the Ukrainian national current was discouraged and persecuted. In the course of the nineteenth century, between these two extreme positions there was a whole scale of nuances. Even the “Little Russians” preserved a sense of their ethnic difference from the “Muscovites” and a certain attachment to local characteristics and customs; and, on the other hand, the “conscious Ukrainians” did not postulate a radical break with Russia— which in any case seemed beyond the bounds of possibility—and sought rather a compromise between Ukrainian and Pan-Russian interests. The decisive factor was to be the attitude of the new social groups that made their appearance in the nineteenth century (intelligentsia and bourgeoisie) and that of the popular masses, who could not be kept in a state of civic tutelage forever. These new social forces were to decide whether they would confirm or reject the national capitulation of the former Cossack aristocracy.Notes
1. W. Lipinski, Szlachta na Ukrainie (Cracow 1909), 69.
2. B. Olkhivsky, Vilnyi narid (Warsaw 1937), 72.
3. W. Lasocki, Wspomnienia z mojego zycia (Cracow 1933), 1:331.
4. V. Antonovych, “Moia ispoved’,” Osnova, 1862, 1:83-96.
5. K. Mykhalchuk and P. Chubynsky in Trudy etnografichesko-Statisticheskoi ek- speditsii V Zapadno-Russkii krai, as quoted by M. Drahomanov in Avstro-ruski spomyny (Lviv 1892), 322.
6. M. Mikhnovsky, Samostiina Ukraina, a new edition (n.p. 1948), 28.
7. D.S. Mirsky, Russia, A Social History (London 1931), 277-8.