Ukrainian History to 1915
It is their common historico-political tradition that gives the Ukrainians their most important indications of separate national existence. And if it had not been for the dense ignorance that prevails…
Location: Kiev, Ukraine
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From The Ukraine and the Ukrainians by Stefan Rudnitsky, 1915.
The most important distinguishing characteristic of a real nation is the fact that it possesses its own historico-political traditions and ambitions for the future, thus furnishing the basis for that constant plebiscite which E. Renan regards as the thing makes a race into a nation.
It is their common historico-political tradition that gives the Ukrainians their most important indications of separate national existence. And if it had not been for the dense ignorance that prevails in Western Europe regarding the history of the eastern half of the continent, and for the advertising carried on to this very day, by Russian scholars, in behalf of their propaganda for "Russian" history, which has worked its way into all books on Eastern European history, this real condition of affairs could never have remained obscure so long.
The ancient Kingdom of Kieff, which is called "Old Russian" in all historical treatises, was in reality a state organized by the Southern Slavic races of Eastern Europe, the precursors of the present-day Ukrainians. This State of Kieff was already in existence at the beginning of the ninth century. With the aid of mercenaries from Scandinavia (Varangians) this state grew stronger after the middle of the ninth century, and during the tenth gives evidences of a remarkable activity of expansion.
The Northern Slavic tribes, the forebears of the Russians of today, were subjugated by the Kingdom of Kieff, the nomadic tribes of the steppes were pushed back, commercial and cultural relations were established with the Byzantine Empire, which seem to have been actively carried on, and in the year 988 the Great Prince of Kieff (Vladimir the Great), together with all his people, accepted Greek Christianity from Constantinople, but with Slavic rites. There ensued a great flowering of material and spiritual civilization, which aroused the admiration of travelers from Western Europe.
The fact that the ancient state of Kieff as well as its civilization was produced by Ukrainians is evident not only from the circumstance that the most ancient literary monuments of Kieff already show specifically Ukrainian peculiarities of language. A still more important bit of evidence is the constitution of the ancient Kingdom of Kieff. The power of the Great Prince was limited not only by the influence of his retainers (Drushyna), from which later the caste of the Boyars sprung, but also by the General Assembly of all freemen (the socalled Vitche).
The original constitutional—sit venia Verbo—yea, almost republican rural government of the Ukrainians had a tremendous influence, with the result that, throughout the history of the ancient Kingdom of Kieff, its Great Princes were engaged in a struggle with the Boyars and the people, for the exercise of their powers. This limitation of the monarchic power turned out to be a disaster for the Kingdom of Kieff. By applying the practice of succession to the throne in accordance with a principle known as that of "seniority", there resulted the formation of numerous petty principalities, all rather loosely, perhaps only nominally, subject to the authority of the Great Prince of Kieff. The Boyar caste and the people were very persistent in their labors to aid in the formation and maintenance of these petty principalities throughout the southern portion of the Kingdom of Kieff.
In the north, conditions were quite different; there were the little principalities on the Oka, and Moscow. Only the ruling dynasty came from Kieff, the people were a mixture of northern East Slavonic tribes and the aboriginal Finnish-Mongolian population. From this melting-pot the Russian nation takes its origin. The spirit of the people, so different from that of the Ukrainians, enabled the Russian petty monarch to crush the power of the nobility as early as the twelfth century, and to introduce an arbitrary form of government. That is the germ from which the Russian Empire of the present has sprung.
This young Russian nation, whose directing center was first Vladimir and later Moscow, began waging a series of bloody wars against Kieff, weakening that country so lastingly, that the headquarters of Ukrainian political life had to be shifted southward, in the 13th century, to Halitsh on the Dniester.
In fact, the situation of this Kieff country was such as to expose it also to continous invasions on the part of the nomadic warlike hordes which infested the steppes of the Ukraine. But the nation managed to hold them in check during this weary term of warfare. When, however, the hosts of the Mongol potentate Djingis-Khan appeared in the Pontian steppes, the resources of Kieff and Halitsh were no longer equal to the pressure. In the three days' battle on the Kalka (1224) their army was annihilated, and in 1240 the city of Kieff was razed to the ground. The principality (later kingdom) of Halitsh survived it by almost a century, but could not withstand the continued aggressions of the Tartars on one side, and of the Poles and Lithuanians on the other; in 1340 it was incorporated with Poland by right of succession, and thus ended the first national organization of the Ukrainian people. All the Ukraine, excepting the forest regions in the northwest, had been completely devastated.
The Polish-Lithuanian State treated the Ukraine as conquered territory. Being now dissenters in the midst of a Catholic State, the Ukrainian nobles were limited in their prerogatives, and deserted their faith and their nationality, in order to have a share in the "golden freedom" of Poland. The burgher class was tyrannized (as was the practice all over Poland), the peasant became a serf. The splendid task of an ecclesiastical union with Rome was solved in an unsatisfactory manner and bore little fruit at the time. Every Ukrainian was made to feel the Polish government's iron hand, and their disaffection expressed itself in numerous rebellions (Swidrygiello, Glinskyi, etc.).
And yet, the Polish-Lithuanian State was far too weak to protect the Ukraine against the onslaughts of the Tartars. Every year these hordes of riders issued forth from the Crimea and pushed their invasions even as far as Galicia and Volhynia, devastating the country and depopulating it by seizures of slaves conducted in accordance with a systematic plan. The victims of this slave trade filled the markets of the Orient for centuries.
It was inevitable that this sorely tried nation should be forced to defend itself. And its efforts were successful in that they led to the formation of a new independent state, but unsuccessful in that they exhausted its resources and later had a tragical outcome.
The constant state of warfare on the Tartar boundary line forced the Ukrainian population in those parts to adopt a policy of continual "Preparedness". These people of the marches led a hard life, but they had access to the natural treasures of the virgin lands, and the exploiting Polish officials did not dare venture forth into these dangerous districts. These armed farmers, hunters, fishermen, were very much like the American backwoodsmen, they lived lives of independence and called themselves "cossacks", i.e., "free warriors".
In the sixteenth century there arose among these Ukrainian cossacks a military state organization, the center of which was a strongly fortified place below the cataracts of the Dnieper (the Saporog Sitch). This Ukrainian Cossack State was a democratic republic based on absolute liberty and equality. All authority lay in the hands of the general assembly, consisting of all the fighting men, and their decisions were enforced by elective officers. The liberty of the individual was very great, but had to yield to the will of the whole. And in time of war the chief official, the Hetman, had unlimited dictatorial power.
In the aristocratic state organization of Poland there was no room for such a lawless democratic state as that of the Saporogs was in Polish eyes. The entire Ukrainian nation regarded the Saporog cossacks as their natural defenders against the terrible Tartar peril, and likewise as their sole hope as opposed to the oppression practiced by the Poles. An ominous discontent prevailed throughout the Ukraine, and after, the Poles had naturally taken severe measures, a number of cossack revolts occurred in rapid succession, beginning toward the end of the sixteenth century and filling the first half of the seventeenth. In these revolts the cossacks were supported by the oppressed peasantry. But the Polish Kingdom was rather deficient, always, as far as its standing army was concerned, and was obliged to appeal to the Ukrainian cossack organization, which it could not possibly destroy, to aid it in its wars against the Turks, the Russians, and the Swedes.
Finally, in 1648, the Ukrainian cossacks, aided by the entire people, from the Dnieper to the San, raised the standard of rebellion, and under the leadership of Bogdan Chmelnyzkyi, succeeded in annihilating the Polish armies. This victory meant the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state after three hundred years of a foreign yoke.
The new state, surrounded by enemies on all sides, needed calm and quiet to enable it to achieve the necessary internal organization. Chmelnyzkyi negotiated with all the surrounding governments and peoples, with the Poles, the Transylvanians, the Swedes, the Turks, and finally in 1654, concluded the treaty of Pereyaslav, with Russia, with which they were related by ties of religion, This treaty provided that the Ukraine should retain a complete autonomy, as well as their cossack organization, the latter under the suzerainty of the Czar. The Hetman, who was to be elected by the votes of the general assembly, was even to retain the right of conducting an independent foreign policy.
But Russia had no mind to respect the treaty that bound it in dual alliance with the warlike Ukrainian nation. The democratic form of government in the Ukraine was an abomination to Russian eyes. To understand the Russian attitude, we must rapidly trace its development. The young Russian empire of the thirteenth century had also suffered much from the Tartar invasions, but it was rather remote from the southern steppes, in which the Tartar Khans had pitched their tents.
The young Russian state was therefore not destroyed by the Tartars, but simply forced to pay tribute. The Great Princes of Moscow went so far, finally, as to solidify their absolute authority under the protection of the Tartar Khans, and in 1480, when the strength of the Tartars was at a rather low ebb, they cast the Tartars out and declared themselves to be the Czars of all the Russias. They arrogated to themselves the right to act as sole rightful heirs of the ancient Empire of Kieff, although the two nations were entirely distinct, as were also their theories of government. While the descendants of the ancient Empire of Kieff were organizing the democratic cossack republic in the Ukraine, the tyranny of Ivan the Terrible was indulging in its frightful orgies in Moscow, ultimately depriving the nobility and the clergy of the last vestige of their rights, an act in which the servile nature of the Russian people fully supported him.
Once this cossack republic was under the control of Moscow, the Russian government felt that no stone should be left unturned to destroy this dangerous national organism. Their machinations in the Ukraine were aided by Chmelnyzkyi's untimely death (1657) and the incompetence of his immediate successors. The cossack generals were inspired with prejudice against the Hetman, the common cossacks against their superior officers, and the common people against all who were wealthy and in authority. Huge sums of money were spent, and vast extents of territory granted in fief, in order to bring about this desired end. At every successive election of a new Hetman the autonomy of the Ukraine was cut down, and in the Peace of Andrussow (1667) with Poland, the country was partitioned. Of the two sections, one, that nearest to Poland, which had been dreadfully decimated and depopulated, was ceded to that country, and this section very soon lost its Ukrainian form of government and its cossack organization.
The section on the other side, the left side, under its dashing Hetman Mazeppa, made an effort, during the Scandinavian War, to throw off the Russian yoke. Mazeppa made an alliance with Charles XII, King of Sweden. But the Battle of Pultawa (1709) buried all his hopes. Mazeppa had to flee to Turkey with Charles XII, and the Ukrainian rebellion was put down by Peter the Great with the most frightful atrocities, and finally the guaranteed autonomy of the Ukraine was abolished. To be sure the title of Hetman was again introduced after the death of Peter the Great, but it had but a wretched semblance of life. This shadow of autonomy was destroyed in 1764; in 1775 the last bulwark of the Ukraine, the Saporog Sitch, fell into the hands of the Russians through treachery, and was destroyed by them. The rest of the Saporogs were later permitted to settle on the banks of the Kuban in the Caucasus; the Kuban Cossacks are the only Russian Cossacks who are Ukrainian in origin,
Russia thus succeeded, in the course of about a century and a half, in completely wiping out the later, second, Ukrainian state. The devious policy Russia was simultaneously carrying on in Poland led also to the latter's downfall. In the successive partitions of Poland (1772—1795), the entire part of that nation which was inhabited by Ukrainians, with the exception of Eastern Galicia and the Bukowina, which fell to Austria, became the property of Russia.
But Russia was not satisfied with political domination alone. Russia already understood, in the seventeenth century, that the Ukrainians differed entirely from the Russians in language, customs, and views of life. The Russian government therefore inaugurated a policy of rigid repression of all these points of difference. As early as 1680, it prohibited any use of the Ukrainian language in ecclesiastical literature. In 1720, the printing of any Ukrainian books at all was forbidden. All Ukrainian schools were closed. In the middle of the eighteenth century there were in the province of Chernigov, 866 schools that had been founded during the period of Ukrainian autonomy. Sixty years later, not one of these was in existence. This, together with the attempt to introduce the Russian language which none of them understands, is the cause of the overwhelming percentage of analphabets among the Ukrainians.
The Ukrainian orthodox church, which enjoyed absolute autonomy, with a sort of loose subordination to the Patriarch of Constantinople, was made subject to the Patriarch of Moscow, later to the Holy Synod, and became completely russified. The Greek-United faith, which had many adherents in the Western Ukraine, was completely suppressed by the Russian government, and all who professed it were obliged, by the most awful persecutions, to "return" to the orthodox belief. The Ukrainian people became completely estranged from their former national church, which now is a tool wielded for purposes of russification, and consequently a new sect—the so-called Stunda, a sort of Baptist denomination—made great progress in the Ukraine.
But the russification of the Ukraine seemed to be making very little headway. To be sure many educated Ukrainians, for the sake of their own personal advantage, or for other considerations, did renounce their nationality; in fact some, like Gogol, became great lights in Russian literature. Yet there always remained the feeling of national independence, together with a living historical tradition.
As early as 1791, Kapnist, an emissary of the Ukraine, endeavored to move the Prussian government to make war on Russia, in order to reestablish the autonomy of the Ukraine. And when, after the beginning of the nineteenth century, Ukrainian literature began to flourish, the movement attracted some attention. The watchful Russian government began to take repressive measures. The Ukrainian Secret Society in Kieff was discovered in 1847 and its members banished. The poet Shevchenko was sent to Asiatic Russia in penal convoys and there tortured almost to death. And as the Ukrainian movement continued spreading in spite of everything, there was issued the above-mentioned ukase of 1876, which seemed likely to give the movement its final quietus.
But not even this unprecedented measure was able to stop the spread of the idea. The literary and scholarly phases of the movement were transplanted to Galicia, and the youth of the Ukraine filled the ranks of Russian nihilists and revolutionaries. Laboring under the delusion that the liberation of the Ukraine would be best attained by freeing all of Russia from the tyranny of the Czar, the young men of the land sacrificed all their strength for the general revolutionary tendencies of Russia.
Only after the Russian Revolution of 1905 did their views become clarified, and then rather powerful progressive national Ukrainian parties were formed, whose activities had of course to remain subterranean. Their object is a free Ukraine, established on democratic principles. There is also a moderate independence party, but the great mass of the educated classes in the Ukraine has until very recently stood for the principle of an autonomous Ukraine within the frame of the Russian Empire. Whether this moderation has been caused by existing conditions, that is, by the constant, absolute, and ruthless pressure of the Russian government, it would of course be impossible to ascertain at this moment. In recent years the "autonomists" have dwindled considerably as compared with the Independence Party.
All that the Russian Ukrainians have succeeded in obtaining is the fact that the Ukase of 1876 is now no longer in actual enforcement (since 1905), although the Russian government is nevertheless doing everything in its power to obstruct the development of Ukrainian literature and culture. The Ukrainian language continues to be prohibited for official and school purposes.
We must still devote some attention to the history of the Ukrainians in Austria-Hungary. Incorporation with Austria was an epoch-making event in the evolution of the Ukrainian national movement, although only a very small strip of Ukrainian territory has enjoyed the advantage of this great piece of good fortune. For the first time in half a millenium the Ukrainians once more began to feel what it meant to have human rights and to be on equal terms with other races. The love which the Galician Ukrainians bear for Austria was magnificently evidenced in 1848, and since then they have been known by the honoring epithet of "the Tyrolese of the East".
The Constitutional Era was greeted with delight by the Austrian Ukrainians. But its first fruits were very disappointing. Under a constitutional government it was impossible for a people like the Ukrainians, who, owing to five centuries of Polish domination, consisted merely of peasants and a small handful of cultured persons, to offer any resistance to the Polish element of the population, which possessed a very numerous aristocracy,, a wealthy nobility, a middle class (even though it was a small one), in short, a powerful caste of officials. In addition, the Ukrainians were very universally discriminated against, and entirely lost their influence in the administration of the country, in school matters, in the Parliament, as well as in the Landtag.
By thus holding down the Ukrainians, the ground was cleared for the Pro-Russian activities in Galicia. Russia has never lost sight of the little bit of "Russian" soil which had become Austria's. The first attempts to sow Panslavic-Russophile notions in Eastern Galicia, proved failures. But beginning with the sixties of the last century, Pro-Russianism began spreading among the intelligent classes of the Ruthenians, chiefly as a reaction against Polish oppression. This tendency was widespread, but not profound, and was chiefly a matter of catchwords, such as "the unity of the Russian nation, from, the Carpathians to Kamtchatka", of introducing Old Slavonic as well as Russian words into the literary language, and an adherence with stolid rigidity to the ancient, impractical, "thousand-year-old" orthography, etc., etc. On such ideological foundations a Russophile Party arose, but of course it never attained any serious political importance.
The Russophile Party completely proved its insignificance in the following decades. The rise of a Ukrainian literature based on purity of the popular idiom found a ready echo in Galicia and in the Bukowina. The Ukrainian national consciousness was awakened to vigorous life among the Austrian Ukrainians, and from being a mere handful of young enthusiasts, the Ukrainian National Party was already an important one by the end of the sixties. It at once entered into combat with the Russophiles and carried away with it more and more of the great mass of those who at first were indifferent.
This National Party, in the nineties of the nineteenth century, already had possession of the entire cultural and economic life of the Galician and Bukovinian Ukrainians, the Russophiles retaining their importance only in the political field, an importance which they owed in part to pecuniary subsidies of Russian origin, in part to the protection of powerful Polish politicians, to whom the growth of the Ukrainian national consciousness in Eastern Galicia seemed far more dangerous than a "tame", "harmless" Russophilism, which presented no new language difficulties, and asked for no schools, gymnasia, or universities.
The danger which the Ukrainian movement involved for Russia, forced the latter country to take active steps. Since the nineties of the nineteenth century, vast sums of money have been pouring into Galicia, in order to halt the dissolution of the Russophile Party. This money was spent for printing russophile newspapers and pamphlets, thousands of copies of which were circulated free among the common people, and for establishing educational institutions, in which the studious sons of the peasantry were trained into violent agitators and partisans of the russophile movement.
When the first elections to the Reichsrat in accordance with the universal suffrage were held, In 1907, in spite of great Russian subsidies, they resulted in a decisive defeat of the Russophiles and a brilliant victory of the Ukrainians; naturally the exertions made by the Russian government were even further stimulated. The systematic manner in which the russophile agitation was carried on is evident from the history of the first few days of the present war: russophile agitation had been most active in the northeastern part of Galicia, in the country around Brody, Lemberg, and Sokal, and there the progress of the Russian armies was comparatively easy.
After 1907 the Russophiles adopted a new pose, declaring themselves to be "Galician Russians", although there are very few persons in the whole party who even know the Russian language. The party consists today of a number of lawyers and government officials, very many priests, those who are provided with the most lucrative livings, which have been thrown into their laps by the great landed proprietors whose favorites they may happen to be, a number of young men educated in russophile institutions, and several tens of thousands of deluded peasants. The latter cherish the false belief that the Great White Czar speaks the same language as they do, is a member of the same religious faith, and is only waiting for a favorable opportunity to free them from the oppression of Poles and Jews.
The hatred the Russophiles bear the Ukrainians is a blind and senseless one; at every election they vote for the Polish candidates merely in order to harm the Ukrainians, disperse Ukrainian meetings, and boycott everything that is Ukrainian, whenever an opportunity offers. And the immunity from punishment on which they may safely count, redoubles their activities along these lines.
But even this latest onslaught of Russophilism has not been able to do lasting damage to the Ukrainian cause in Austria. On the contrary, it resulted in a complete ostracism of the Russophiles, who were considered adherents of a hostile foreign nation, an ostracism that has led even to the dissolving of ties of family and relationship, and this fact has given a wondrous strength to the Ukrainian movement. In noble emulation all the Ukrainian political parties—the National Democratic, the Radical, and the Social Democratic—worked together for the realization of their national ideals.
To uplift the country people, great cooperative organizations were founded and developed; to swell the ranks of the Ukrainian cultured classes, private schools and private gymnasia were established, and a great fight was carried on for years for the establishment of a Ukrainian university in Lemberg,—unfortunately without success. Simultaneously the horizons of their political ambitions began to widen. The Ukrainians were in the first ranks in the struggle for the granting of universal suffrage; now the watchword of all parties is national autonomy. The ideal of all parties now is a free Ukraine, bounded by true ethnographic lines. To realize this ideal, they founded Societies of Marksmen (Schützenvereine) and Gymnasts (Turnvereine), which have grown very rapidly in spite of the financial weakness of the Ukrainians. The road they must travel to attain their goal is clearly defined.
The Ukrainians are the only European people who will be directly benefited by a defeat and exhaustion of Russia. Free Ukraine can only be the outcome of a combat with Russia. Even the untrammeled development of the Ukrainian people, aside from their national aspirations, can only proceed outside of the limits of Russian jurisdiction.
Rudnitsky, Stefan. The Ukraine and the Ukrainians. Translated by Jacob Wittmer Hartmann, Ukrainian National Council, 1915.
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