The Russian Revolutionary Movement in Ukraine

It became evident during the 1870s that, despite emancipation, the economic plight of the peasant was not improving and that despite other reforms, absolutism showed no signs of retreating.

By the late 19th century the social composition of the intelligentsia, from which almost all revolutionaries came, had undergone a marked change. The postreform liberalization of education meant that nobles would no longer constitute the overwhelming majority of university students or, by extension, the intelligentsia. Now sons of burghers, priests, petty bureaucrats, Cossacks, and even peasants entered the universities in increasing numbers. In the three universities of Ukraine – Kiev, Kharkiv, and Odessa – they made up about 50% of the student body in 1895. These people of varied backgrounds (raznochyntsi) gave the new intelligentsia a declasse flavor that reduced somewhat its estrangement from the masses.

But despite the growth of universities in the late 19th century, the intelligentsia still remained a tiny fraction of society. In 1895 there were only about 5000 university students in Ukraine. And, of course, revolutionaries were only a small part of the intelligentsia. For example, in 1881 (a high point of revolutionary activity in the empire) there were, out of a population of 100 million, fewer than 1000 cases of antistate activity. Finally, the revolutionary movement was essentially anational. Anxious to mold a strong, unified “all-Russian” force against tsarism, its members initially downplayed nationality issues and, with time, viewed them as a major impediment in their revolutionary struggle.

From the 1860s, the radical youth of the empire were usually referred to by the term narodnyky. As the term implies, these were people who were identified with the narod (the people), which, under the circumstances, meant the peasantry. This identification with and idealization of the peasantry on the part of the radical intelligentsia cannot be understood in purely rational terms. To a large extent, it arose from a sense of guilt that young, idealistic students developed when they compared their privileged and comfortable position to that of the struggling peasantry. A way of subconciously compensating the peasant for his misery was to idealize him. The intelligentsia made much of the supposed moral purity that resulted from the peasant’s hard, honest labor. From its point of view, an especially praiseworthy aspect of peasant society was the commune, which seemed to be proof positive of the peasant’s natural unselfishness and inborn tendency toward socialism.

But while the idealization of the peasantry was not peculiar to the narodnyky (the Ukrainian khlopomany and other segments of the imperial intelligentsia shared it to some extent), they were exceptional in their determined commitment to create a revolution that would introduce a new and just order. The first revolutionary narodnyk group was organized by Mikhail Chaikovsky in St Petersburg in 1871; similar groups soon appeared throughout the empire. In Ukraine, Fedir Volhovsky organized one such group of about 100 members in Odessa in 1873. Among its members was Andrii Zheliabov, a Ukrainian student of peasant origin who would become one of the most prominent revolutionaries in the empire. Soon afterward, a small, anarchistically inclined circle called the Kiev Commune cropped up in Kiev; it, too, included individuals who would gain revolutionary renown: Vera Zasulich, Volodymyr Debohory-Mokrievych, and Iakiv Stefanovych.

As the revolutionary groups proliferated, a heated debate developed among them about the most effective methods for the attainment of their goals.

In Ukraine “going to the people” occurred mainly in the Chyhyryn region of Kiev province, an area that was chosen by the narodnyky because it had been one of the centers of the bloody haidamak uprising a century earlier; they hoped to find the rebellious spirit still smoldering there. Although the movement failed, a noteworthy sequel to the affair took place in the region in 1877, when Stefanovych and his Kiev-based anarchist group attempted to take advantage of the peasants’ loyalty to the tsar by fabricating “tsarist manifestos” that ordered peasants to form “secret teams” and rise against local landlords and officials. The plot was uncovered and about 1000 peasants were implicated in the so-called Chyhyryn Conspiracy.

While the great majority of narodnyky concentrated on the peasantry, a few began to pay attention to the increasing numbers of workers. In 1875 in Odessa, Evgenii Zaslavsky founded an illegal labor association called the South Russian Workers Union that was one of the first in the empire.

After the failure of the propaganda approach, some of the most radical narodnyky turned to Bakunin’s ideas and resolved that only violence and terroristic acts could initiate a revolution. In 1878, Vera Zasulich, an erstwhile member of a Kiev anarchist group, shot and wounded General Trepov, the military commandant of St Petersburg. Soon a splinter group, the notorious Narodnaia Volia (People’s Will) emerged and made terrorism its primary means of operation. Tightly organized and strictly conspiratorial, the People’s Will (among whose leaders was Zheliabov) launched a campaign of political murder that culminated in the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. But instead of revolution, the death of the tsar engendered a general revulsion against violence, discredited the terrorists, and convinced the government to pursue a reactionary course. It is noteworthy that during the terrorist campaign of 1879–81, the narodnyky in Ukraine were especially active. A number of important government officials were killed in Kiev and elsewhere. Some revolutionaries even claimed that political assassinations had been invented by such “southerners” as Zheliabov, Dmytro Lyzohub, and Mykola Kybalchych. The Russian revolutionaries and the Ukrainian issue

Although the focus of the narodnyky was social revolution, they could not (in preparation for it) disregard “local conditions,” that is, the national particularities of the various peoples of the empire. Lavrov, the leading ideologist of the narodnyky, viewed nationalism as a passing phase in world history and expressed great doubts about its ability to aid human progress. Many revolutionaries of Ukrainian origin supported his position, arguing that, painful though it may be, it would perhaps be better for national distinctions to disappear so that a new, global socialist society could emerge.

A graphic example of the type of problem that national particularities caused the narodnyky was the issue of the peasant commune. The revolutionaries considered peasant communal landholding in Russia to be a convincing indication of the fact that Russians had a natural inclination toward socialism. From this they concluded that Russia could skip the capitalist stage of development and arrive at socialism more quickly and directly than Europe. However, conditions in Ukraine did not support this theory. In the Ukrainian village private ownership of land was widespread, and some narodnyky spoke despairingly of the Ukrainians’ “natural aversion” to the commune. Other revolutionaries in Ukraine, such as M. Starodvorsky of the Kamianets-Podilskyi group, simply admitted that “in Little Russia, matters are different. Our people are bourgeois because they are permeated by the instincts of private ownership.” Even worse, according to Starodvorsky, this Ukrainian predilection for private property could mean that “Little Russia might serve as a barrier to the spread of the socialist idea in Russia.”⁷

These drawbacks notwithstanding, narodnyky and Ukrainophiles, particularly the younger generation, had much in common because of their shared interest in the peasantry. Frequently, young Ukrainophiles gathering ethnographic information in the village established friendly relations with narodnyky who were spreading revolutionary propaganda there. Indeed, many individuals combined the two activities. Even on the organizational level there were numerous cases of co-operation between revolutionary groups and the “young” hromady. However, the “old” hromady, whose members were deeply immersed in compiling a dictionary of the Ukrainian language, disapproved of the activities of their younger colleagues and this circumstance became a source of serious tensions between the two generations of Ukrainophiles.

The revolutionary movement not only led to a split among the Ukrainophiles, but it also greatly depleted the number of its adherents. Because of its dynamism, heroic romanticism, and appealing universalism, the revolutionary movement attracted growing numbers of young Ukrainians. Having joined the ranks of the revolutionaries, they adopted an antinational bias and broke with or never developed ties to the Ukrainian movement. At best, these young Ukrainian recruits to the cause of social radicalism sought to create the revolution first and deal with nationality issues later. Thus, the ability of revolutionary populism to attract increasing numbers of Ukraine’s most talented and energetic young people resulted in a critical weakening of the Ukrainian movement. Marxism

Perplexed and frustrated by the peasants’ blind faith in the tsar and disillusioned by the realization that the average peasant preferred to be a rich kulak rather than struggle for social equality in his village, many radicals began to have their doubts about the revolutionary potential of the peasantry. Consequently, growing numbers of radicals became receptive to ideas that placed hopes for a revolution on a new class – the proletariat.

The source of these ideas was Marxism. Compared to the fuzzy idealism of the narodnyky, Marxism’s stress on economics seemed to provide a scientific, verifiable way of analyzing social behavior. It provided a framework for the division of all societies into exploiters and exploited and revealed why class struggle was unavoidable and revolution was inevitable. Moreover, it appeared to be capable of explaining social relations throughout history and everywhere on earth.

Another appealing aspect of Marxism was its contemporary relevance. By contending that the last decisive confrontation was already occurring between the capitalist thesis and the proletarian antithesis, Marx predicted that the world’s greatest revolution would take place in the foreseeable future. After a titanic struggle, the proletariat would win and usher in the ultimate synthesis – socialism. He thus not only provided radicals with new optimism, but also encouraged them to believe that they themselves could be instrumental in bringing about these epochal events.

Marxist ideas made an early (albeit abortive) appearance in Ukraine when Ziber – whom Marx held in high regard – first introduced them to his Kievan students and colleagues in 1871. According to Soviet scholars, Ziber’s failure to generate interest in them was a result of his focus on Marx’s economic theories only and not on his revolutionary message. The fact that, at the time, large-scale industrialization had not yet begun and that the proletariat in Ukraine was exceedingly small also helps to explain this initial unreceptive-ness to Marxist ideas.

It is Georgii Plekhanov, a disillusioned Russian narodnyk who became familiar with Marx’s works during his exile in Switzerland, who is usually credited with having introduced Marxism to the intelligentsia of the Russian Empire. In 1883 he founded the first Russian Marxist group, The Liberation of Labor, in Geneva, where it published the works of Marx in Russian translation and disseminated them illegally in the empire.

In Ukraine the first stable Marxist group, called the Russian Group of Social Democrats, appeared in Kiev in 1893. Its formation was largely the work of Iurii Melnikov, a Russian who established a trade school that served as a conduit for the spread of Marxist ideas. Other Marxist groups appeared in Kharkiv, Odessa, and Katerynoslav. Ethnic Ukrainians were rare among these early Marxists, almost all of whom were Russians with a strong admixture of Jews and some Poles. This composition is understandable because the social democrats focused their attention on the largely non-Ukrainian proletariat to which the peasant-oriented Ukrainian intelligentsia found it difficult to relate.

Even in Russia the growth of social democracy was slow. Most of those who had constituted the membership of the Marxist Social Democratic party in 1898 were arrested; by 1903 a new congress had to be called abroad to rebuild the party. Instead of solidifying the party, however, the congress brought about a split in its ranks that would be of great significance to Russia and Ukraine. The Bolsheviks or “majority,” led by Vladimir Ulianov (later known as Lenin), opted for the formation of a disciplined, tightly knit organization of professional revolutionaries who would serve as the “vanguard” of the proletariat. From historical hindsight, the appearance of Lenin and the Bolsheviks was an event of tremendous importance. At the time, however, it went unnoticed by the people of Russia and even by the tsarist police, who were well informed about the activities of the social democrats and believed that any movement based on such obtuse, complicated theories as those of Marx had little chance of success in the empire. Other non-Ukrainian parties in Ukraine

The growth of the social democrats also forced their ideological rivals, the narodnyk-populists, to mobilize. In 1901 they formed the Socialist Revolutionary party, whose ideology was a mixture of old populist principles and new Marxist ideas and whose tactics still included the use of political assassination. Radical activism finally forced the liberals – whose goal was the establishment of a constitutional system like that of England or France and who were concentrated in the zemstva – to form their own party. In 1904 they established the Union of Liberation, which later became the Constitutional Democratic party or Kadets for short. Alarmed at the rise of illegal, antitsarist parties, the government sought to redress the balance by supporting the organization of ultranationalist, progovernment parties such as the Russian Monarchist party and groups such as the Union of Russian People. These ultrarightist groups, which were strongly supported by the Orthodox clergy, were popularly called the Black Hundreds and they specialized in pogroms of Jewish communities and anti-Ukrainian agitation in Ukraine. The national minorities in Ukraine also established their own political organizations. The Poles were represented by the Polish Socialist party (PPS) and the Jews, who were the most politically active and well-organized people in the empire, were led by the nationalist Zionists and the Marxist Bund.

The Russian parties in Ukraine were by no means composed exclusively of Russians. Large numbers of Russified and even nationally conscious Ukrainians were attracted to the Kadets and the Socialist Revolutionaries, for they saw in them the most effective means of combating tsarism. Even in the ultra-nationalist, anti-Ukrainian organizations, many “Little Russians” competed with Russians in demonstrating their loyalty to the tsar and their hatred of his enemies.

The attitudes of the Russian and non-Ukrainian parties toward the Ukrainian movement varied. Because they favored decentralization, the Socialist Revolutionaries were understanding, if not supportive, of Ukrainian aspirations. The Polish socialists and especially the Jewish Zionists and the Bund – who shared with the Ukrainians a desire for autonomy and cultural rights – were often willing to cooperate with certain Ukrainian groups. However, on the few occasions that they addressed the issue, the Marxists, and especially the Bolsheviks, were only partially successful in repressing their antagonism to Ukrainian “separatist” tendencies.