TOPIC 4

UKRAINE IN THE 19^TH CENTURY

The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania

At the end of the 18^th century Poland differed sharply from its neighbors which were strong and centralized absolutist monarchies. Poland in contrast became very weak. Its nobility boasted of “golden freedoms” that, practically speaking, provided the nobles with immunity before the law. That also meant that the land became almost impossible to govern. The king power was very weak. He was elected by the nobility and depended on them. The nobles did not want to submit to anybody and there were numerous wars among them. The nobles had the right to raise their private armies and build fortresses. In fact, anarchy reigned in Poland at that time. So it was a matter of time for Poland to be destroyed by its powerful neighbors. Finally, the Commonwealth’s three aggressive neighbors, Russia, Prussia, and Austria decided to take advantage of the situation and to divide the weak country among themselves. As a result of three partitions – those of 1772, 1775, and 1795 – Poland-Lithuania ceased to exist. These radical changes in the political map of Eastern Europe affected Ukrainians directly. Ukrainian ethnic lands were divided between Russia (80%) and Austria (20%). Austria received Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia (Закарпаття), the rest of Polish-ruled Ukraine was attached to Russia. These divisions had a great impact on the formation of Ukrainian mentality. They deepened the differences between eastern and western Ukrainians.

The Beginning of National Revival in Russian-Ruled Ukraine

At the beginning of the 19^th century a new cultural current called Romanticism was in great fashion in Europe. The Romantics believed that through national folklore, traditions, and histories the soul of a nation can be understood. They glorified everything unique in every nation, especially the life of common people and its culture. The life-style of the aristocracy was pretty much the same all around Europe and therefore was not a subject of interest for the Romantics.¹ The Romanticism stimulated European intellectuals to study histories and cultures of their nations. In Ukraine in that period a number of books about national folklore and history appeared. Books on Ukrainian folklore and history led to the ideas that Ukrainians had their own unique culture and constituted a separate nation. These ideas contradicted to the Russian propaganda claiming that Ukrainians were a branch of the Russian people.

The First Ukrainian Political Organization: The Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius

At the end of 1845 the first Ukrainian secret political organization appeared in Ukraine. It was called the “Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius” and included such prominent Ukrainians as M. Kostomarov, V. Belozersky, M. Hulak, P. Kulish, T. Shevchenko, and others. The major figure of the brotherhood was a noted historian Mykola Kostomarov.

The members of the Brotherhood talked at their meetings about the liquidation of autocracy (tsardom), abolishing of estates (classes) and serfdom, liberation of Slavic peoples and uniting them into a federal parliamentary republic (where each nation would have an autonomous status). The capital of this republic was to be Kiev.² The members of the organization hoped to unite all the Slavs around the ideals of freedom, equality, and brotherhood. The organization was destroyed in 1847 as its ideas of political freedoms were in sharp contrast with the autocratic principles of the Russian Empire. Since the members of the Brotherhood did not work out any practical steps for fulfilling their plans the government did not punish them severely. (They were exiled to provincial towns and were forbidden to occupy some state positions). According to the official police report, the Brotherhood was not a political organization but rather a discussion club of some “crazy intellectuals.”

The most radical of the members of the Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius was the greatest Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. He lamented the lack of unity among Ukrainians. He despised the Ukrainian elite that chose to be Polonized or Russified. Such an elite was called by him “the dirt of Warsaw and Moscow.” He criticized them for their attempts to find a master for themselves and to be servants rather than free people. In his poems Shevchenko protested against serfdom and tsarist oppression in Ukraine. The poet played a great role in the development of Ukrainian national consciousness. His patriotic poetry inspired future generations of Ukrainian fighters for freedom.