Towards an All-Russian Identity
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the political decline of the Hetmanate was accompanied by a brain drain from the Cossack lands and a gradual decline of the Hetmanate's educational institutions.
The opening of Moscow University and the Cadet Corps during that period intensified the exodus of Ukrainian youth to Russia. In order to get a good education, they now had to move north, joining the earlier waves of Ukrainian emigrants - a circle that Isabelle de Madariaga has called 'a veritable Ukrainian mafia.' Interesting in that regard is an observation on the educational situation in Little Russia by Opanas Shafonsky, an alumnus of the Kyivan Academy and the Universities of Halle and Leiden, a medical doctor, and author of a topographic description of Chernihiv province. 'Forty years or so ago,' wrote Shafonsky in 1786, 'when Little Russians looked for service nowhere but in Little Russia itself, the children of the gentry and of the most respected members of the community used to study Russian at home and then enter the Latin schools... Now, because of the continuing absence of adequate gymnasia and universities [in Ukraine], gentry with sufficient means keep foreigners as teachers, but the others send their children to schools in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other places or to the various cadet corps, and some even send them abroad, so that already in the Little Russian schools it is practically only the sons of priests and other clerical children who study.'22 The Ukrainian gentry's demands for institutions of higher learning, including universities, which we encounter in petitions to the government starting with the Hlukhiv council of 1763, fell on deaf ears in the capital. Not until 1820 was the first college-level school established in Nizhyn with funds left by Prince Oleksander Bezborodko, by far the most successful Ukrainian migrant to St Petersburg.Bezborodko was the son of a prominent Cossack officer who served as general chancellor and general judge of the Hetmanate. He began his career as head of the chancellery of the governor-general of Little Russia, Petr Rumiantsev. Bezborodko distinguished himself by carrying out the most controversial orders of his superior, thereby provoking the animosity of his peers. In 1775, Rumiantsev recommended Bezborodko, then colonel of Kyiv and fresh from the Russo-Turkish War, to Catherine II as a person 'devoid of local sentiments.' Bezborodko was to have a spectacular career in St Petersburg, becoming secretary to the empress and advancing to a number of important posts in the Russian Foreign Office. Eventually he was appointed imperial chancellor. Bezborodko did much to attract young men from the Hetmanate to the imperial service, working diligently to help his countrymen adjust to life in the northern capital and advance their careers. Among his most famous proteges was his nephew Viktor Kochubei, a member of the inner circle of Emperor Alexander I during the early years of his rule and chairman of the Imperial Council under Nicholas I. Bezborodko encouraged his numerous relatives and clients to enter the cadet corps and then the imperial service, which, as he pointed out, promised career advancement and material remuneration. On the other hand, despite his spectacular successes in the capital, Bezborodko remained intimately attached to his homeland. When he died in 1799, the Russian dignitary Fedor Rastopchin wrote: 'Russia will be proud of him, but he did not love her as a son loves his mother.'23
A person 'devoid of local sentiment' or a son lacking in love for Russia - who was Bezborodko when it comes to his national identity? Most likely he considered himself 'all-Russian' in the imperial sense of that word. A clear indication that he viewed Little Russians as part of the larger Russian nation comes from the instruction of the gentry of the Chernihiv regiment to the Legislative Commission (1767).
The document was heavily edited by Bezborodko on Rumiantsev's orders. The first paragraph of the instruction read: 'that as equal to equal, free to free, true and principal member of the Rus' nation since ancient times, we may be joined to its original body, united by one law.'24 If anything, this formula echoed the traditional Ruthenian interpretation of the Union of Lublin (1569), which maintained that the Ruthenians had joined the Kingdom of Poland as equals. It also strongly recalled the Synopsis-style treatment of Ukrainians as part of a larger Russian entity, with the Russian state treated as a continuation of the Rurikids' Kyivan Rus'. The instruction can also be seen as foreshadowing the later claim of Ukrainian primogeniture in the larger Russian nation. Such a reading of Rus' history is particularly apparent in the anonymous 'History of the Rus',' a historical pamphlet written at the turn of the nineteenth century. The concept of the Little Russian nation as part of a larger Russian entity was also present in Bezborodko's St Petersburg writings.25 Bezborodko was a strong believer in the benefits of good government and despised the traditionalism, irrationality, and confusion of the administrative and judicial system of the Hetmanate. He thought that its interests and those of its elites were best served by imperial institutions and laws. Bezborodko was a sincere promoter and enforcer of the Enlightenment, with its cult of reason.He was also deeply interested in the history of his homeland and even contributed to Vasyl Ruban's Brief Chronicle of Little Russia, covering the history of the Hetmanate from 1734 to 1776. His account of the Hetmanate's history was completely loyal to the empire and full of praise for the Russian rulers of Ukraine, with lists of Cossack officeholders and their achievements.26 Bezborodko was proud of his work, as he sent a copy of the book to his father. 'I present it to you,' wrote the younger Bezborodko, 'In all fairness it belongs to you, for you have proven in many instances your love for that country, Our Beloved Fatherland, on behalf of which sincere efforts will always be made so as to preserve from oblivion the events and circumstances that indicate the fame and glory of our ancestors.'27 It was Little Russia, not the Russian Empire, that Bezborodko called the beloved fatherland, and it was its history that he revered. But he did not want to revive that tradition and objected to the restoration of Cossack detachments: in his opinion, they might give rise to a 'nation in arms' and disturb peace and tranquillity in the region, whose inhabitants remembered the times of Khmelnytsky and were known for their devotion to Cossack ways.28 Bezborodko conducted research on the history of Ukraine and stressed the heroic deeds of its people in order to present his homeland to a larger imperial audience in the best possible light, ostensibly as an equal partner of the Great Russians.
In so doing, he wanted to facilitate its integration into the empire, not to make a case for the restoration of the Hetmanate.The same task was carried out in St Petersburg by a number of Ukrainian writers who came to St Petersburg in the wake of their more powerful predecessors. Vasyl Ruban, the publisher of the Brief Chronicle of Little Russia (1777), co-authored by Bezborodko, was one of them. Before turning to the publication of books on Little Russia, he tried his hand at journalism, establishing a number of short-lived journals: Ni to ni se (Neither This Nor That), Trudoliubivyi muravei (The Industrious Ant), and Starina i novizna (The Old and the New). In 1773 he published Brief Geographical, Political and Historical Notes on Little Russia, a work dedicated to Petr Rumiantsev that introduced Ukraine to readers in the empire in the same manner as published descriptions of its other territories. In 1777 Ruban issued a revised edition of the Notes under the title A Description of the Little Russian Land. Judging by his publications, Ruban considered Little Russia to be a Russian land that had originally belonged to all-Russian rulers. In his article of 1770 entitled 'Historical Information Taken from Polish Writers and Belonging to Russian History about Russian Provinces and Cities Once under Polish Rule and Then Recovered by the Russians,' Ruban included, along with information about Livonia and Smolensk, data on 'the principalities of Kyiv, Siver, and Chernihiv,' as well as on the Zaporozhian Cossacks.29 Another prominent Ukrainian, Fedir Tumansky, edited the St Petersburg Russkii magazin (Russian Magazine), in which he published a good deal of material on Ukrainian history.30 Tumansky's publications show that his concept of fatherland clearly extended across the boundaries of the Hetmanate to encompass the whole empire. He wrote in one of his articles: 'I think that the general history of our Fatherland will hardly attain the necessary completeness if the histories of the parts (udelov) of this extensive empire long remain unknown.'31 Tumansky was a strong proponent of Russianness in opposition to the West and Western values.
He certainly was one of the 'sons of Little Russia' whose activities lend some credibility to Liah Greenfeld's estimate that 'as much as 50 percent of this first mass of Russian nationalists were Ukrainians.'32While Ukrainian intellectuals in St Petersburg and Moscow were successfully taking on a new imperial identity, one constituent of which was their non-exclusive Little Russian identity, what was happening in Ukraine itself? There are indications that not all Cossack officeholders were prepared to follow Bezborodko in his pursuit of Enlightenment ideals and imperial identity. As late as 1791, a group drawn from the Hetmanate's gentry sent one of their own, Vasyl Kapnist, to Berlin to negotiate with the Prussian authorities for support of an anti-Russian revolt in the former Hetmanate in the event of a Russo-Prussian war.33 The negotiations yielded no results, and it is not clear whether the conspirators could have mustered enough support for another Mazepa-style attempt to free Ukraine from Russian control.
Generally speaking, there is good reason to believe that in the final decades of the eighteenth century the 'Russification' of the Ukrainian elites that was taking place in the imperial capitals was also being replicated in the Hetmanate. The most prominent political figures of the Hetmanate were now making their careers in the capitals, as were Ukrainian intellectuals. The journals and books that they published in St Petersburg and Moscow often relied on subscriptions and sales in Ukraine. While the concepts of the Little Russian nation and fatherland remained prominent in the political and historical discourse of the epoch, they no longer delineated the exclusivist identity of the Het- manate's elites of the earlier period. This change in the structure and character of the national identity of the Hetmanate elites was reflected in the historical works of the period. By the turn of the nineteenth century, after the Hetmanate, its institutions and military forces had been fully incorporated into the empire, Ukraine began to witness an upsurge of historical writing. The thirst for historical knowledge was felt above all by the Ukrainian gentry, which was involved in a lengthy struggle for admission to the exclusive (and privileged) estate of the Russian nobility. The demand for historical data proving the nobiliary status of their forefathers fuelled the boom in research and writing on the history of Ukrainian ranks and the glorious deeds of those who had held them. That boom produced one of the most mysterious monuments of Ukrainian historiography, 'History of the Rus',' which has been regarded both as a strong statement of all-Russian identity and as the first work of Ukrainian national historiography. Like the Little Russian identity that it articulated, 'History' appears to have been capable of performing both functions.
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