Lost Kingdom

by Serhii Plokhy

  Alexander II also ordered repressive measures against leading Ukrainophiles. Drahomanov and another Ukrainophile leader, Pavlo Chubynsky, were to be exiled from Ukraine, and the Kyiv branch of the Imperial Geographic Society—the locus of intellectual and cultural activity in the city and the hotbed of the Ukrainophile movement—closed, along with the newspaper Kyivan Telegraph. The heads of the Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa educational districts were ordered to watch for unreliable Ukrainophiles on their faculty and report them to the authorities. New teaching positions were now to be filled exclusively by Great Russians, while Little Russians were to apply for positions in Great Russian schools and universities. This was an all-out attack on the Ukrainophile movement and its current and potential members. The treatment of Drahomanov and Chubynsky was not as harsh as that of the members of the Cyrillo-Methodian Brotherhood, but the approach was much more systematic and broader in scope than ever before. It was no longer limited to a handful of rogue intellectuals, as in 1847, or to restrictions on publishing, as in 1863, but aimed against Ukrainian cultural expression in general, both written and spoken.

  THE EDICT OF EMS HAD A SINGLE PURPOSE—TO ARREST THE development of the Ukrainian cultural and political movement. What it offered was a mix of repressions, prohibitions, and restrictions. There was no positive program to build up an alternative all-Russian project; consequently, no additional funds were allocated for the development of Russian-language schools, publications, or societies. The only exception was the section of the edict dealing with the newspaper Slovo (Word), which was published, of all places, in Lviv, the capital of the Galician province of neighboring Austria-Hungary. Russia was “to support the newspaper Slovo, which is being published in Galicia with an orientation hostile to that of the Ukrainophiles, by providing it at least with a constant subsidy, however small, without which it could not continue to exist and would have to cease publication,” stated the edict. The measure was justified as a response to Polish propaganda. The authors of the edict added, in parentheses: “The Ukrainophile organ in Galicia, the newspaper Pravda [Truth], which is completely hostile to Russian interests, is published with significant assistance from the Poles.”

  The subsidy, which amounted to 2,000 guldens, was suggested by Yuzefovich and approved by the tsar. It was the first time that the Russian imperial government had decided to allocate resources abroad not to support fellow Slavs but to influence a contest between two trends in the Slavic movement beyond the borders of the empire and support the Russophiles in their conflict with the Ukrainophiles. The dominant population of Galicia, or Red Rus’, called itself “Rusyn” (in present-day English, “Ruthenian”) and was considered by Russophile authors to be Russian, or, more specifically, Little Russian. That view began to gain ground after the publication in the empire of a Russian translation of Pavol Šafárik’s Slovanský národopis in 1843. It was certainly the view of Mikhail Pogodin, who had visited Galicia, established close ties with local Russophile activists, and provided financial support for their activities. The Slavic Benevolent Society, especially its Kyivan branch, which was headed by Nikolai Rigelman, worked for the same cause, channeling mostly private funds to the region, but the government showed little interest until the signing of the edict of 1876.

  Until then, developments in Galicia had been considered a matter for the imperial Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Russian diplomats had advised their superiors to stay away from involvement in the region. In 1866, ten years before the Edict of Ems, and in the midst of Austria’s disastrous Seven Weeks’ War with Prussia, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, Ernst Shtakelberg, advised the foreign minister, Prince Aleksandr Gorchakov, against the possible partitioning of Austria and annexation of the province to Russia. As defeat in the Austro-Prussian war forced the Habsburgs to turn their empire into a dual monarchy and share power with the Hungarians on the national level, and with Poles and other nationalities in local administration, Galicia came under de facto Polish control, arousing great discontent among the Ruthenian elites.

  Once again, Shtakelberg advised caution. He argued against a media campaign in defense of the Ruthenians in order to avoid directing “Austria’s attention to the Ruthenians, who might perhaps drop into our hands like ripe fruit as a result of the Vienna cabinet’s careless toleration of Polonism.” Prince Gorchakov agreed with the ambassador’s reasoning. Although the Slavophile media in the Russian Empire sided with the Ruthenians against the Poles, the government once again did nothing. Shtakelberg was right in predicting the evolution of Ruthenian attitudes toward the monarchy. The transformation of the Habsburg Empire into a dual monarchy in which Hungarians wielded power along with Austrians, and the appointment of a Polish governor to rule Galicia on behalf of Vienna, were widely regarded by the Ruthenian elite as a betrayal, making a turn toward Russia and Russian identity almost inevitable.

  The movement that came to be known as Muscophile or Russophile was born. Among its leaders was Bohdan Didytsky, the editor of Slovo, the movement’s official mouthpiece. Didytsky was an alumnus of the University of Vienna, where he had studied Slavic languages and literatures under the supervision of Franz von Miklosich (Franc Miklošič), a close colleague of another prominent Slavist, Jernej Bartol Kopitar. (It was in a review of one of Kopitar’s works that Nikolai Nadezhdin had first formulated the idea of a tripartite Russian nation in 1841.) Didytsky was originally attracted to Ukrainian literature under the influence of Ivan Kotliarevsky’s Eneïda—the first major literary work written in vernacular Ukrainian in Russian-ruled Ukraine, but then, fascinated by the writings of Pushkin and Gogol, had opted for the Russian solution of the Ruthenian identity problem, seeing the Austrian Ruthenians as part of the Russian rather than the Ukrainian nation.

  In 1871, in the wake of the constitutional reforms, another Russophile, Adolf Dobriansky, produced a political program for the Russophile movement that was adopted by its leading body, the Rus’ Council. For Dobriansky, the Rus’ nation (russkii narod) that the council represented and on whose behalf he spoke was not limited to Galician Rus’ but also included the Ruthenians of Bukovyna and Transcarpathia, as well as Ruthenian settlements in the Austrian Balkan possessions. Dobriansky insisted that the Ruthenians of Austria-Hungary not only constituted one nation but were also part of a larger Russian nation: “Our Ruthenian people of 3 million, living under the Austrian scepter, is just one part of one and the same Russian (russkii) people, Little, White, and Great Russian, and has the same history as they do, the same traditions, the same literature, and the same folk customs; consequently, it has all the characteristics and conditions of complete national unity with the whole Russian people and is therefore in a position (in that regard) to realize and proclaim its true national status.”

  Dobriansky pledged his allegiance to the Habsburg Empire, dismissing Polish accusations that by claiming membership in a larger Russian nation the Ruthenians were casting doubt on their loyalty to the Habsburgs. Dobriansky, however, saved most of his polemical zeal for his fellow Ruthenians, particularly those who had lost their way and subscribed to the Ukrainian project. Commenting on the foundations of the Ukrainophile movement, he wrote: “The Ukrainian question, presented in its current form, is based on the historical argument of the former independence of Cossack Ukraine and is more closely defined by the antiquity of the Little Russian dialect and the independence of recent Little Russian literature. Its ultimate goal is the independence of Ukraine.” He considered the Ukrainophiles’ historical and linguistic argument flawed and their political program of either joining a pan-Slavic federation or gaining complete independence a threat to the international order.

  The rise to prominence of the Polish aristocracy in Galicia in the late 1860s—after the Habsburg Empire had lost the war with Prussia and reinvented itself as Austria-Hungary, making a deal with the former masters of Galicia, the Poles—provoked different responses from the Russophiles and Ukrainophiles. Whereas the Russophiles placed their hopes in the powerful Orthodox t
sar and hoped to join the big Russian nation, the Ukrainophiles turned their attention to the Ukrainophile movement in Russian-ruled Ukraine, imagining themselves not as part of a 60-million-strong Russian people, as did Didytsky and Dobriansky, but as a Ukrainian people of 15 million. If the Russophiles subscribed to a conservative social agenda and were closely allied with the church, the Ukrainophiles, who were also known as populists (narodovtsi), had a more radical following that included the secular intelligentsia. They rejected both the conservative agenda of Slovo and the artificial language used by that newspaper. They wanted the literary language of the Ruthenians to be as close as possible to the one spoken by the popular masses, which they identified as Ukrainian.

  The late 1860s and early 1870s saw the institutionalization of the Ukrainophile movement in Austria-Hungary. In 1868, the Ukrainophiles created a cultural society called Prosvita (Enlightenment) to disseminate their brand of Ruthenian nationalism among the peasantry. This was followed in 1873 by the establishment of a Ukrainophile literary society named after Taras Shevchenko. The initiative for the literary society and the money to make it possible came from Dnieper Ukraine—a donation from Yelysaveta Myloradovych-Skoropadska, a descendant of a prominent Cossack family that counted numerous colonels and hetmans in its ranks. Ukrainophiles in Russian-ruled Ukraine invested not only their money but also, and predominantly, their ideas in Galicia. The prohibitions on Ukrainian-language publications in the Russian Empire turned Austrian Galicia into an attractive market for Ukrainophile writers and activists. The Russian Ukrainophiles helped the Galician Ukrainophiles create new publications. Thus the Ukrainophile newspaper Pravda was established in Galicia in 1867 through the efforts of Panteleimon Kulish, one of the leading members of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius and a key figure in the Ukrainian cultural revival of the late 1850s and early 1860s. After his exile from the Russian Empire, Mykhailo Drahomanov was one of the many Ukrainophile activists who wrote for Pravda. Mikhail Yuzefovich and the authors of the Edict of Ems had good reason to be concerned about the impact of Pravda on political and social thought in Galicia and Dnieper Ukraine. They strove to undermine the influence of the newspaper and the development of the Ukrainophile movement on both sides of the imperial border by introducing new prohibitions on Ukrainian publications in Russia and funding pro-Russian publications in Galicia, but their attempts proved unsuccessful. With new prohibitions in place, more Ukrainian writers turned to the Galician press as an outlet for their works, strengthening the appeal of the Ukrainophile project in Galicia.

  By contrast, the subsidy for the newspaper Slovo decreed by the tsar did not reach the Russophiles for a number of years, either through bureaucratic incompetence or owing to corruption. The editor of Slovo informed his alleged benefactors in 1879 that he had never seen the money allegedly sent to him through diplomatic channels. When the Russian government resumed its support for the Russophiles in the 1880s, it was too late. Pro-Russian activists in Austria found themselves under increasing pressure from the government: in view of growing tensions with Russia, Vienna considered the Russophiles a more serious threat than the Ukrainophiles, with their dreams of an independent or autonomous Ukraine and its place in a future pan-Slavic federation.

  The Russian authorities welcomed refugee Russophiles from Austria-Hungary, which was becoming increasingly hostile toward them, but preferred to keep the ideologically motivated arrivals away from the contested lands of Right-Bank Ukraine. The Galician Russophiles were welcome in the northwestern provinces and in the Kholm region of the former Kingdom of Poland. That had been the homeland of the last large group of Greek Catholics in the Russian Empire, who by living in this area had been shielded from the Orthodox zeal of Iosif Semashko and his supporters prior to 1863. They were “reunited” with the imperial Orthodox Church in 1875.

  The Russophile priests and seminarians from Galicia, who had been born, raised, and educated as Greek Catholics but became Orthodox out of a desire to join the imperial Russian nation, effectively propagated imperial Russian identity among the former Uniates, who were forced to change their religion. In 1881, out of 291 Orthodox priests in the Kholm eparchy, 143—almost half—were former Greek Catholics from Galicia. Their salary from the imperial government was significantly higher than their previous income in Galicia—another incentive to leave the Galician battlefield to the Ukrainophiles and join the winning side in a Polish province of the “Russian world.”

  THE INCREASING NUMBER OF RUSSOPHILE MIGRANTS FROM GALICIA indicated a simple fact: the Russian Empire was losing the battle in that Austrian province. The emerging winners were the Galician Ukrainophiles, whom the Russian authorities were unwittingly strengthening by instituting repressive measures against the Ukrainian language and culture in their own empire. Such policies had their drawbacks, and some in the imperial government understood that better than others. Among them was the new liberal minister of the interior, Mikhail Loris-Melikov. Soon after taking office in August 1880, Loris-Melikov and his advisers got busy preparing either the complete abolition of the Edict of Ems or significant modifications to it in order to ease the pressure on Ukrainian cultural activities and Ukrainian-language publications. Loris-Melikov wanted to restore trust in the government. That could not be achieved in the Ukrainian lands if the edict were left in place: its provisions made it illegal even to sing Ukrainian songs on a theater stage, which alienated many perfectly loyal members of the Little Russian elite.

  Some historians have referred to this attempt to reconcile growing tensions between Ukrainian nationalism and the demands of all-Russian unity as a Scottish model. In Great Britain, the authorities had allowed the flourishing of a distinct Scottish identity and culture while ensuring the political loyalty of the Scottish elites. In the Russian Empire, an equivalent “Little Russian” solution would have accommodated Ukrainian identity and culture within a tripartite all-Russian nation. This would have involved the teaching of the Ukrainian language in elementary schools and the development of the Ukrainian language and culture alongside their dominant all-Russian (in fact, Great Russian) counterparts, leading to the creation of a bilingual educational system and a bicultural public sphere in the Ukrainian provinces of the empire. Some of the compromise ideas underlying the Little Russian educational program had been suggested by leading Ukrainophiles, including Mykola Kostomarov, and won the favor of some reform-minded officials in the 1870s and early 1880s.

  Many expected that the restrictions would soon be lifted. But March 1881 brought the assassination of Alexander II—a sea change in Russian politics. Gone were not only exaggerated expectations in Russian society for movement toward a form of Russian constitutionalism, but also the no less exaggerated expectations of Ukrainian society for eliminating the ban on its language and culture. The proposals of government officials to amend the Edict of Ems were minimal, and they were indeed adopted under the new tsar. On October 8, 1881, Alexander III signed a decree permitting theatrical performances in Ukrainian with the special permission of provincial governors but forbade the creation of a separate Ukrainian theater—every Ukrainian play had to be accompanied by a Russian one.

  The edict would remain in force for another twenty-four years. The continuing prohibitions made Galicia even more attractive to Ukrainophiles in the Russian Empire as a place of publication and cultural activity—a development that sealed the victory of Ukrainophile circles in Galicia over their Russophile opponents, despite Russian financial support for the latter in the 1880s. Inside the Russian Empire, the prohibitions made it completely impossible for the Ukrainophiles to find any common ground with the government and the proponents of the Little Russian idea. Over the next few decades, representatives of the Little Russian group would help turn Ukraine into a hotbed of Russian nationalism. One way or another, the times of the Little Russian compromise as a solution to the Ukrainian question were gone, and with them the hope of accommodating Little Russia in the all-Russian cultural and political space as a di
stinct component of a tripartite Russian nation. From then on, Little Russian intellectuals were left with only two choices—to become “true Russians,” or to embrace an independent Ukrainian identity.

  IV

  THE REVOLUTION OF NATIONS

  10

  THE PEOPLE’S SONG

  IT WAS A HUGE DISASTER AND A BAD OMEN FOR THE MONARCHY. Festivities organized to celebrate the coronation of the new Russian emperor, the twenty-eight-year-old Nicholas II, turned into a stampede that killed close to 2,000 men, women, and children.

  On May 18, 1896, an estimated half million people gathered on the Khodynka Field near Moscow to celebrate the ascension of a new Romanov to the throne. Many were attracted by the promise of gifts from the tsar that included bread, sausage, and sweets. When the officials began to give out the gifts, the crowd rushed toward the shops, crushing everything in its way and stampeding those who fell—the field was full of ditches covered with wooden boards that gave way under the pressure. The young emperor wanted to cancel the celebrations, but his courtiers insisted that they go on. Most of those who gathered at the Khodynka Field were attracted not by the promise of food and drink at the tsar’s expense but by the possibility of getting a commemorative cup with the double-headed eagle—the imperial coat of arms—depicted on it. The cups were put on display in Moscow shops on the eve of the celebrations, and enthusiasm for the monarchy ran high in Russian society. Once the corpses were removed, the crowd greeted the arriving emperor by singing of “God Save the Tsar,” a hymn that had become known as the “people’s song.” The monarchy had survived the accident almost without a scratch.

  The imperial regime was not so lucky in surviving another instance of popular adoration of the tsar and belief in his power to change the lives of his subjects for the better. It took place eight and a half years later, on Sunday, January 9, 1905. On that day, close to 20,000 St. Petersburg workers and members of their families marched from the outskirts of the city to the tsar’s winter palace (now the Hermitage Museum) in the center. Singing the “people’s song,” they carried Orthodox icons and portraits of the emperor. They did not ask for free food packages. But a petition prepared by the leader of the march, the Orthodox priest Grigorii Gapon, read: “We working men of St. Petersburg, our wives and children, and our parents, helpless, aged men and women, have come to you, О Tsar, in quest of justice and protection.” The factory workers wanted civil rights, higher wages, an eight-hour workday, and the right to strike. They also wanted responsible government. “Demolish the wall between yourself and the people, and let them govern the country together with you,” read the petition.