The Ukrainian Culture
The culture of the Ukrainian peasantry is an extremely ancient culture of a purely agricultural people. Ancient, even Pre-Christian cultural elements are at its base; their ancient pagan Weltanschauung had…
Location: 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 It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.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.
When we speak of culture as a distinguishing mark of a specific nation, we mean, of course, not culture in the widest sence of the word, but those well known cultural peculiarities which characterize every European nation.
The Ukraine lies wholly within the confines of the greater European cultural community. But its great distance from the great culture-centres of Western and Central Europe has of course not been without effect, profound effect. The Ukraine is at a low stage of culture and must be measured by Eastern European standards.
The culture of the Ukrainian peasantry is an extremely ancient culture of a purely agricultural people. Ancient, even Pre-Christian cultural elements are at its base; their ancient pagan Weltanschauung had to accomodate itself to Greek Christianity, when they accepted the latter. Byzantine elements of considerable importance must also be borne in mind, and of course something must have percolated through from Western Europe. This is the blend from which the so called ethnological culture of the Ukrainian peasantry sprang. It is on an incomparably higher plane than Russian folk culture and has managed to assimilate, Ukrainianize, if one may say so, great bodies of foreign peasant settlers in the Ukraine.
The higher degree of culture of the Ukrainian peasant has protected him from russification in his Asiatic colonies, even on the borders of the Pacific Ocean. The character of the settlements, buildings, costumes, and mode of life, of the Ukrainian country people is such as to indicate a perfect adaptation to the conditions of agricultural life, which places them on a far higher plane than the Russian peasantry. It is hardly to be wondered at that the Ukrainian peasants do not intermarry with the Russian; in fact, they hardly ever will consent to live in the same village with them.
A still deeper chasm is formed between them by their spiritual culture, which, in the case of the Ukrainians, in the wealth of their vast oral traditionary literature, bears excellent witness to their depth of artistic feeling. The philosophical and esthetic Lebensanschauung of these illiterate peasants finds expression in thousands and thousands of pregnant proverbs and parables; their bloody but glorious past is celebrated in numberless epic poems; an incomparable variety of artistically perfect lyrics of love and religion beautifies their daily life. If thousands of these products of popular genius had not been collected—and these are daily supplemented by the appearance of new ones never known before—no one would believe that in this neglected race, oppressed for tens of centuries, such pearls of true poetic inspiration could be born.
Their rich ethnological life (manners and customs), their highly developed popular music and popular art (particularly ornamentation), their tolerant, profound religious feeling, so indifferent to mere externals, a pronounced individualism in family life, a higher position for women, and great power of collective activity when on terms of absolute equality—these are the things that distinguish the Ukrainian peasant, and much to his advantage, from his Russian neighbor. There is therefore every reason to believe that the gifted Ukrainian people present an admirable basis for a great future flowering of culture; the fact that they at present occupy a rather low stage of culture, cannot be a source of surprise to anyone. We know, for instance, what a disastrous effect the Thirty Years' War had on Germany. And the Ukrainian people had five hundred years of the Tartars.
On the broad basis of a popular culture the Ukrainian intellectuals have now been developing their gifts for a century. Long they vaccillated between Polish and Russian cultural influences, but finally they had the energy to strike out in independent lines, in order to lead the Ukrainian nation into the full blossom of civilization, with the aid of cultural influences from Western Europe.
Rudnitsky, Stefan. The Ukraine and the Ukrainians. Translated by Jacob Wittmer Hartmann, Ukrainian National Council, 1915.
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