EDITOR'S NOTES

The letter from Drahomanov reproduced [above], was addressed to Professor de Gubernatis, the editor of Rivista Europea, in Florence. A translation of the letter, the Italian of which is not perfect, reads as follows:

Dear Friend and Colleague:

I am taking the liberty of recommending to you my friend Boris Pavlovic, professor at the girls' high school in St. Petersburg. He will bring you a copy of the book Professor Antonovic and I wrote.

I received your last letter but have delayed answering it because I want to send a report on the Archeological Congress in Kiev.

You will have to wait for my next letter.

My Ludmilla and Lydia send greetings to your wife and to Cordelia and little Alessandro.

With warm regards,

Michele Dragomanoff

The letter is not dated, but the reference to the Archeological Congress in Kiev (August 2-16, 1874) places it in 1874. The book mentioned is the first volume of Drahomanov and Antonovych's Historical Songs of the Little Russian People, which appeared in 1874 and was presented at the Congress. Count Angelo de Gubernatis (1840-1914), to whom the letter was written, was an Italian scholar in the fields of folklore, Sanskrit, and the history of literature. From 1869 to 1876 he was editor of Rivista Europea, the leading Italian periodical of the time. Gubernatis' marriage to a relation of Bakunin explains his interest in Slavic affairs. During Drahomanov's three years of study and travel in Western Europe, he spent the winter of 1872-73 in Florence, where he made the acquaintance of Gubernatis. Rivista Europea published an article by Drahomanov on the Ukraine, "Il movimento letterario ruteno in Russia e Galizia" (1873, Nos. 1 and 2). Gubernatis included an article on Drahomanov in his Dictionnaire International des Ecrivains (1888-1891). Drahomanov's letters to Gubernatis are to be found in the archives of the latter, which are preserved in the National Library in Florence. This is the first time that one of these has been published.

In selecting articles by Drahomanov for Part II of this book, the editor wishes to provide as representative a cross-section as possible of Drahomanov's ideas. Both to save space and to avoid the need for too much explanatory material, some cuts were necessary. We have left out some repetitions, and a number of references to contemporaries and contemporary arguments which today can be of interest only to a specialist in the period. The order of the article is not chronological.