DRAHOMANOV AS A POLITICAL THEORIST

Drahomanov's literary work is composed of two clearly distinct groups, his scientific writings, chiefly on ethnography and folklore, and his political writings, which are exclusively journalistic in form. There is never a question as to the group in which a certain work belongs. It is remarkable that Drahomanov, who was a scholar by training and profession, never gave his political works the form of learned treatises.

Of course this does not mean that there is no connection between the two sides of Drahomanov's creative activity. He states clearly that his study of Ukrainian folk literature had a deep influence on the development of his political ideas. On the other hand, it is clear that the direction taken by his scholarly researches was often motivated by his political interests, as in the case of the analysis of the social and political content of folk poetry. In spite of these connections, there is a clear division between Drahomanov's scholarly and political writings. This is characteristic of his personality and his methods. He was too conscientious to claim scholarly authority outside the field of his special competence. Drahomanov does not teach about political questions ex cathedra; he writes about them as a citizen and fighter, who seeks to reach certain practical goals, and who is clearly aware of his special standpoint.

Therefore outwardly Drahomanov's political writings should be classified as journalism. But this is journalism on an exceptionally high level. Drahomanov brought his great erudition and conscientious scholarship to bear on each particular article. Even more important was his incorruptible intellectual integrity. Although the immediate occasion for many of his political writings was polemical, his attitude was never sophistical -- to win the debate at any price -- but philosophical in the best Socratic sense -- to recognize the objective truth. Drahomanov did not say what was tactically opportune, but what his research and reflection led him to believe to be true. His whole life was lived in accordance with his basic principle:

The least or bitterest truth is more valuable than the sweetest or most imposing false appearance.¹

Behind his journalistic exterior Drahomanov was a vigorous and original political thinker. As is always the case with original thinkers, to succeeding generations his ideas are not only of historical interest; they are also still vital enough to enrich and influence contemporary thought.

The fact that Drahomanov's political writings usually had a polemical purpose has hindered the understanding of his ideas. Apart from the external difficulty that in order to read Drahomanov easily it is necessary to have some acquaintance with the quarrels of various Russian and Ukrainian factions of the 1870's to 1890's, there is a greater difficulty. In each of his political writings he is not only defending, but also opposing, a specific point of view. Therefore each given work is rather one-sided. None of them, with the possible exception of Historical Poland and Great Russian Democracy, represents the whole Drahomanov, the whole range of his ideas, but only a certain section, determined by the position of his opponent. Thus there is a noticeable discrepancy between his Ukrainian and his Russian writings. In the former he appears as a ruthless critic of the weaknesses of the Ukrainian movement. In order to know Drahomanov, the courageous apologist for the rights of the Ukrainian people against Russian centralism and chauvinism, one must read his writings in Russian. It is only by taking both together that one obtains a well-rounded picture of Drahomanov's position in the question of Russian-Ukrainian relations. It is the same in other questions. The contradictory interpretations of Drahomanov made by various critics -- at various times he was attacked as a socialist and as a bourgeois constitutionalist, as a nationalist and as a cosmopolitan -- are caused by the fact that his critics were content with considering one aspect of Drahomanov's political philosophy. Drahomanov was aware of this, and once wrote, half jestingly:

During my whole life I have always been attacked from at least two opposite sides at once, and I have even set up for myself the criterion of regarding something as a failure if, on its account, I am only attacked from one side.²

We must, however, emphasize that although most of Drahomanov's political writings are polemical, and all of them are in a journalistic form, he should not be regarded as an essayist following the inspiration of the moment, but rather as a systematic thinker.

For me, each of my ideas, which is attacked from various sides, is a part of a whole system of ideas about the Ukraine, Russia, Poland, the Slavic world, the Germans. . . . I have often stated that it is only to another system, even though it be diametrically opposed to my own, that I could surrender. So far no one has been able to show me such a system.³

Of course the "system" spoken of here is not a dogmatic, closed one. Drahomanov always rejected theories which claimed to have answers to all questions and patent remedies for all the difficulties of social life. This anti-dogmatism was certainly one of the bases for his repudiation of Marxism. The systematic character of Drahomanov's thought lies in the organic unity of his ideas, each of which is connected to and completes the others, and can only be understood within the whole.

Drahomanov's thought is syncretic. It combines democratic and socialist, patriotic and cosmopolitan, Slavophile and occidentalist elements. In order to view Drahomanov's system as an organic unity it is necessary to find the center of gravity of the whole. In his political thinking this central point and determining factor is undoubtedly the liberal idea.

We define Drahomanov's liberalism as the doctrine that the freedom and worth of the human being are the highest values. Politically it is primarily concerned with the extension and strengthening of the rights of individuals. Like President Wilson after him, Drahomanov believed that the history of liberty was the history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it. The security of the personal sphere is more important than participation in the creation of a collective political will.

It is self-evident that for each person the inviolability of his individual rights is much more essential than the right to direct, and particularly to indirect, influence on the course of affairs of State.⁴

In political revolutions he [the liberal] will be relatively indifferent to the form taken by the State at the top-governmental level. However, he will always intervene to enlarge the freedom of every person, in word and deed -- equally so for the freedom of races, associations, communities, and regions -- this through the limitation, wherever possible, of the power and the authority of the State.⁵

For Drahomanov the logical consequence of this thought was the ideal of anarchy -- not of course in the popular sense of the word as disorder and the war of each against each, but as a vision of a condition where external authority and pressure would no longer be necessary, since men would have learned to govern themselves and live in peace with their fellow men.

Mankind's aim, which is completely unlike present-day States, is a condition where both larger and smaller social bodies will be composed of free men, united voluntarily for common work and mutual help. This goal is called anarchy, i.e. the autonomy of each individual and the free cooperation of men and groups.⁶

Proudhon's influence on Drahomanov is visible here, and Drahomanov acknowledges it himself.⁷

The doctrine of anarchy was formulated by Proudhon as an antithesis to French theories of the forties and fifties, which all, whether monarchic, constitutional, or republican, were more or less centralistic. Proudhon's anarchism is the doctrine of the complete independence of the individual and the inviolability of his rights by all governmental powers, even elected and representative ones.⁸

It is improbable that Drahomanov believed that anarchist ideals could be realized in the foreseeable, or even in the remote, future. He saw them rather as an indicator of the direction in which progress should be made, whether or not the goal could ever be reached. At one point Drahomanov compared the ideal of anarchy with the efforts of an engineer to reduce the friction in machines to nothing, although this naturally is impossible.⁹ Here a critic is inclined to remark that without friction no machine would function at all. The analogy is not completely favorable to Drahomanov's thesis!

Drahomanov's anarchic ideals led him to federalism. This is the part of his political philosophy which is best known. Anyone who has heard of Drahomanov at all knows that he was a federalist. People think that the federalization of Russia was his aim, but in reality this federalism was a universal principle. For a political thinker who takes the autonomy of the individual as his starting point, and who rejects every form of authoritarianism, federation -- the adherence of persons with equal rights to groups and communities, and the cooperation of these in greater unions -- is the only way to overcome the atomization of society.

In practice Proudhon's anarchistic doctrines come down to federalism. Not only does federation not exclude discipline, but rather it is the best form of organization and discipline for humanity.¹⁰

Proudhon says that the synonym for anarchy is the English word self-government. In its practical application the theory of anarchy leads to federalism.¹¹

Only small States, or rather communities, can be truly free societies. Only a federation of communities can be truly free.¹²

The next quotation is especially important. It comes from a letter written in answer to a friend's request for information about federalism. This letter shows Drahomanov's wide erudition in this field and the sources he used as well as certain practical implications of his federalist philosophy.

Among continental authors who have been concerned with the problem of federalism, the first place belongs to Proudhon and his Du Principe Federatif. I must pass over the English [he probably means Italian] and Spanish works except for the mention of Pi-y-Margal, Les Nationalites; there is also a German translation. Constantin Frantz, Der Fцderalismus, is unreliable. It is hard to obtain Etwцs [a Hungarian author]. Much of value is to be found in Mill, On Liberty; Laboulaye, L'Etat et ses limites; Odilon Barrot, De la centralisation et ses effets; Dupon-White, L'lndividu et l'etat; and in old Benjamin Constant, Principes de politique. . . . The theoretical pros and cons of federalism can be discussed endlessly. In some things centralization is necessary, in others, decentralization. Federalism has two main practical advantages: A) By the use of the national languages federation aids education and brings the courts and the administration closer to the people. There is a good book on this problem in modern Europe by Fischhof, Die Sprachenrechte in den Staaten gemischter Nationalitдt. B) Administrative affairs are conducted by those whose interests are most directly affected. This latter point can best be understood by a comparison of social and political life in centralized and in federative States. Our people must be shown how the peoples of Switzerland, England, and the United States of America live; the details of the national, provincial, and local constitutions must be explained, (cf. Decombynes, Les constitutions europeenes; Dareste, Les constitutions modernes.) There is an interesting book on the parallel development of the idea of democracy and the idea of freedom in Switzerland by Theodor Curti, Geschichte der schweizerischen Volksgesetzgebung. Particular attention must be given to how, in our time, even centralized parliamentarism is being undermined from all sides.¹³

Perhaps we can best see the natural tendency of Drahomanov's thoughts in his sympathies and antipathies toward various lands and their governments. From the abstract discussion of the ideas of liberalism, anarchy, and federalism we here return to the world of concrete political reality.

Up to today the only States in Western Europe which have enjoyed solid political freedom are federative Switzerland, England -- with its system of the guaranteed rights of classes, corporations, counties, and cities -- municipal Belgium, the formerly federal republic of Holland, and the Scandinavian States, where centralism was never strong.¹⁴

I put no faith in any State, with the exception of Switzerland and England.¹⁵

It will immediately be noted that among the States which Drahomanov considers nearest to being the incarnation of his ideal, there are a number of monarchies. Drahomanov did not share the automatic republicanism of most East European progressives, not because he had any particular fondness for monarchies, but because for him the form of the central government was of secondary importance.

Certain modern monarchies, such as the English and the Belgian, better guarantee a larger degree [of self-government and personal rights] than does the French Republic, for instance.¹⁶

Finally let us remark that Drahomanov had a rather low opinion of the French Republic and its system of parliamentary centralism. Of all West European cultures, the French was the one that Drahomanov knew best, but his political thought was always opposed to the specifically French type of democracy, which looked back toward the Great Revolution. During the whole 19th century the French Revolution enjoyed tremendous prestige among Central and East European democrats. We need only mention that for decades the French Marseillaise served as the hymn of progressives in Russia. The fact that Russian revolutionary factions tended to take the Jacobins as their prototype was probably the reason that Drahomanov formulated his negative judgment of Jacobinism so sharply. His opinion of the French Revolution is not in line with that of Burke, whose traditionalism was foreign to him; it is rather similar to that of the French liberal historian and sociologist Tocqueville, whose works he knew well. Like Tocqueville, Drahomanov distinguishes two currents in the Revolution, a constitutional, liberal, and decentralizing one, and a centralizing, levelling, terrorist one. The victory of the latter through the dictatorship of the Jacobins was in fact the beginning of the counterrevolution, a reactivation of the Workst aspects of the ancien regime.¹⁷ Drahomanov gives especial weight to the attitude of the revolutionaries toward provincial ethnic groups. In the forcible repression by the National Convention of the linguistic and cultural individuality of the Provencals, Bretons, Basques, Corsicans, and Alsacians, Drahomanov saw the first modern example of the policy of denationalization by the systematic pressure of the State machinery, a policy which was later to be copied by Prussia and Russia in their treatment of ethnic minorities.¹⁸

Drahomanov believed that ever since the Great Revolution France had been on the wrong track.

Since 1789 France has experimented with seventeen constitutions [this was written in 1881] and has gone through four revolutions. In spite of this it has had to suffer three military coups d'etat. It is only very recently that it has had the beginnings of even a very weak and insecure municipal self-government. Freedom of the press and of assembly are still very incomplete. There is no freedom of association. In France labor unions are not recognized by law, and in fact, very characteristically, the workers' freedom of association, like many other freedoms, is forbidden on the basis of laws that were passed during the Great Revolution (1791-1796) with the intention of preventing the rebirth of the old corporations and the foundation of counterrevolutionary associations! Here we can see what it means to strive for the replacement of the autocracy of the monarchy by the autocracy of the people, without first making the true nature of political freedom clear.¹⁹

The expression "autocracy of the people" in the last sentence is an allusion to the famous theory of popular sovereignty, according to which the source of all power and authority is to be sought in the will of the people. The classic form of this theory is the doctrine of the social contract, i.e. the conferring of rights upon the government by the citizens. Rousseau gave this doctrine of social contract a revolutionary twist, which then served the French Revolution as the ideological justification of the Jacobin dictatorship. In the 19th century the historically unfounded doctrine of the social contract fell into disrepute, but the theory of popular sovereignty, of the unlimited authority of the popular will, remained untarnished in democratic circles. Drahomanov was at least very sceptical of this theory. He believed in the inviolable rights of individuals and natural groups (communities, economic groups, nationalities, etc.). For him freedom consisted in political and social pluralism, while the doctrine of the popular will obviously led to a process of levelling and to the creation of large, centralized, collective bodies.

The concept of "the popular will" is almost the exact opposite of the concept of "political freedom." . . . It [the popular will^ can mean nothing other than the will of the majority, and in modern States, so different from the ancient communal and cantonal States, this means the will of the majority of the representatives of the majority. It is obvious that the absolutism of such a will may be in opposition to the interests of a great part of the population and to the essential rights of persons, groups, areas, and entire nationalities.²⁰

In developing this thought Drahomanov adds that the doctrine of the absolutism of the popular will may contribute to the creation of dictatorial regimes. This is demonstrated by the examples of the tyrants in the Greek city-states, of Roman Caesarism, of the Jacobin dictatorship of the Committee of Public Safety, and of the Bonapartism of the First and Second Empires. In all of these regimes the absolute power of the government was supposedly derived from and legitimated by the will of the people. Napoleon I and Napoleon III even used plebescites, and every time the "popular will" endorsed the constitutional amendments and the extension of powers desired by the government. Drahomanov remarks that Muscovite Slavophiles are also fond of using the argument of the will of the people; for them the tsar is the incarnation of the will of the Russian people. Drahomanov was disturbed to hear the Russian revolutionaries also speak of the omnipotence of the popular will.

So far we have shown what Drahomanov understood by political freedom. It is interesting to see where he felt the historical roots of liberalism were. In his early work on Tacitus he opposed the thesis introduced by Montesquieu that freedom originated in the Germanic forests. He pointed to the Roman Empire with its ruling humanitarian and cosmopolitan stoic philosophy, enlightened lawmaking, improvement of the lot of women and slaves, gradual extension of the rights of provincials, and self-government of communities and provinces.²¹ Here we cannot evaluate these views. It is enough to say that later Drahomanov himself expressed a very different opinion, tracing liberalism to the institutions of territorial and class self-government and the feudal parliamentarianism of the late Middle Ages.

In part liberalism is the heir of feudalism, a medieval thing. England, the Netherlands, and Switzerland preserved their medieval freedom, and did not fall victim to later absolutism. Therefore they gave the impetus to the development of modern liberalism.²²

The question of the rise of political freedom leads to the problem of progress in general. The idea of progress was a basic component of 19th century liberalism. That which distinguishes Drahomanov's idea of progress is his precise, cautious, and relatively critical formulation of the idea. Drahomanov never regards progress as a sort of automatic process of nature, or identifies it with technological achievements and the accumulation of material goods, as did so many representatives of the vulgar liberalism of the 19th century. To anyone so ethically oriented as Drahomanov, progress is essentially a question of a higher degree of spiritual culture and of social justice. Drahomanov provides a remarkable pragmatic justification for the idea of progress. Belief in progress allows men to strive for the perfection of conditions as for a realisable aim, and does not permit a fatalistic resignation to the existing state of affairs. Since men fight for improvement, true progress will then be achieved.

Only the belief in the stern ideal of progress saves man from pessimism, doubt, and misanthropy and teaches him to judge epochs of history and historical personalities according to the idea of relative perfection. . . . It is only with the acceptance of the idea of progress that a solid basis is found for the idea that historical phenomena follow certain laws and rules.²³

One of Drahomanov's last works, published a year before his death, was the pamphlet Paradise and Progress. It is written so as to be intelligible to peasant readers, the members of the Galician Radical Party. But its simplicity should not deceive us; here Drahomanov develops a truly original philosophy of history. In contrast to most of the apologists for the belief in progress, he does not construct his argument from a demonstration of the outward achievements of civilization, but on the development of the idea of progress itself. The Biblical myth of Paradise, like similar myths among other peoples, shows how men, dissatisfied with reality, began to imagine a better life, even if in the remote past. The next step was Persian dualism, with its belief in the final victory of good. Then came Christian chiliasm, the hope of Christ's coming to reign during the millenium. From the sixteenth century men began to turn their eyes from heaven toward the earth, no longer hoping for the victory of good as a supernatural event at the end of time, but as the result of their own conscious effort.

The truth of the idea of progress is shown through the development of this idea itself. In its development we see a clear advance with the passage of time.²⁴

In this connection Drahomanov demonstrates briefly how each advance in the concept of progress has corresponded to an advance in civilization. This idealistic philosophy of history can be expressed in this way: the moving force behind positive development is the progress of ideas.

To complete the picture, we must also speak of Drahomanov's attitude toward religion.²⁵ This is not out of place in an examination of Drahomanov as a political thinker. He himself had the following conviction:

It is well known that there is a close connection between men's conceptions of political and social matters and their religious ideas.²⁶

Drahomanov had a clear practical program in regard to religious questions. He always desired the separation of Church and State and the turning of the churches into private, financially independent organizations. He referred specifically to the American example, and expressed the hope that it would be followed by the European States as soon as possible.²⁷

He believed that in politics freethinkers and liberal Christians should work together, but he feared that the Catholic and Orthodox faithful were unlikely to be useful in the struggle for civic progress. Later he modified this opinion. He realized that in lands like Ireland and Belgium the Catholic Church worked for the interests of the people. In the work of men like Cardinal Manning he saw the beginnings of social Catholicism. He also saw that there was a difference between lands like the United States and Switzerland and lands like Austria. In the former Catholics and Protestants lived together in a mixed population, and the Catholic hierachy had adapted itself to democratic institutions; in the latter the Catholic Church was still linked to feudal interests. In a letter to a Galician leader Drahomanov expressed the opinion that the Radicals in Galicia could find a modus vivendi with the clergy of the Uniate Church (an Eastern Rite branch of Roman Catholicism), provided that freedom for scientific research was undisturbed and that the social interests of the working classes were supported.²⁸ In the heat of his struggle against clericalism, Drahomanov was unable to appraise correctly the historical services which the Uniate Church had rendered to the Ukrainian people in Galicia. However, it is difficult to deny that his appeal for the secularization of Ukrainian culture and politics corresponded to an urgent need of his time.

Both during his lifetime and after his death Drahomanov was often considered an atheist. This was one of the principle reasons for much of the hostility against him, as well as the cause of his popularity in other quarters. Such an interpretation is possible on the basis of certain of his writings, where he attacks the churches as the cause of many bloody wars and unnecessary battles, and calls for rationalism in religious affairs. However, Drahomanov does not offer a rationalist ersatz-religion in the style of Auguste Comte's positivism or the all-embracing ideology of marxism. On closer inspection it is seen that Drahomanov's positivism may be reduced to the demand for the freedom of scientific investigation, unhindered by traditionalist taboos of a religious, or any other, nature. In one of his popular pamphlets he gives a beautiful interpretation of the Prometheus myth as the ancient but eternally new symbol of the human spirit storming heaven unafraid.²⁹ In connection with his studies of folklore and ethnography Drahomanov took a scholarly interest in the problems of the history of religions. He tried to spread among Ukrainians the study of the history of religions and of Biblical criticism. In a society where religion was almost universally identified with the traditional faith and the established churches, Orthodox and Uniate, this was quite enough to give Drahomanov the reputation of being an atheist. He did regard the religious situation in the Russian Empire as pathological. There, thanks to the censorship and to tsarist policy in general, even most of the educated people saw no other alternatives than the Orthodox State Church (which was backward even in comparison with Byzantium of the 4th to 8th centuries), or the crude materialism of the Nihilists.³⁰ There is no doubt that Drahomanov tried with all his strength to indicate a third way out of this religious dilemma to the Ukrainian people.

No reader of Drahomanov's writings can fail to notice the attention he gives to Protestantism, so disproportionately large in relation to its real role in the life of the Ukrainian people. He sought all the heterodox influences in Ukrainian religious history, from Manichaeism through Hussitism, Calvinism, and Socinianism. He was also extremely interested in the lay brotherhoods of the 16th and 17th centuries. These represented the democratic element in the government of the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine; they controlled the hierachy, fostered the development of the schools and the presses, and led the resistance against the militant Catholicism of the Polish Counterreformation. In the second half of the 19th century the peasants of the Russian Ukraine, who were dissatisfied with the official Orthodox faith, founded an evangelical movement called Stundism. In spite of the harsh persecutions of the tsarist government, Stundism became increasingly important, and in the course of time it took on the character of a Protestant sect, related to Western Baptism. Drahomanov followed the progress of the Stundists with unwavering interest. As early as 1875 he endeavored to provide Ukrainian translations of the Bible for them.³¹ In the early 1890's he wrote a number of pamphlets, among them one in 1893 on John Wycliff, which were aimed at acquainting the Ukrainian peasant reformers with the traditions of Western Protestantism. At the same time he spurred on his Galician friends to try to propagate in the Austrian Ukraine a movement similar to the Stundism of the Russian Ukraine. Drahomanov even made a proposal of basic principles for a "Ruthenian Brotherhood."³². Drahomanov's death prevented him from writing two pamphlets he had planned, one on Roger Williams and the other on John of Leyden. The first was to illustrate the relationship between enlightened Christianity and social and political progress, the second, the dangers of fanatical sectarianism.³³

It has been claimed that Drahomanov's interest in Protestantism was of a tactical nature, an attempt to weaken the traditional faith and prepare the way for the penetration of radical ideas. This explanation does not fit a man of Drahomanov's intellectual honesty. Drahomanov had many of the characteristics of a puritan reformer: severe self-discipline, high demands on both himself and others, tireless work, a moralistic attitude toward life, stiff-necked fidelity to his principles, and the courage to go his own way. It must be acknowledged that there was a genuine inner relationship between Drahomanov's spirit and that of Protestantism.

It is well known that the emergence of liberalism in the West was closely connected with the Protestant spirit. Nothing shows better the depth of Drahomanov's liberal position than does the attraction which Protestantism had for him.

Even if Drahomanov had been nothing but a sort of East European incarnation of the spirit of John Stuart Mill, he would still have been an interesting and unusual historical phenomenon (for genuine liberalism was a rare thing in the Russian Empire), but he would not be as worthy of honor as he is. Drahomanov's starting point was always liberal, but his originality as a political thinker is shown when he steps outside the framework of classical liberalism, and treats problems that were beyond the vision of the typical 19th century liberal philosophy.

Although the liberal gospel, as formulated in the first half of the 19th century, claimed universal applicability, in practice the blessings of liberalism reached very few. Liberalism defended the interests of the middle class. In the nationality question the liberals had only the peoples of Western and Central Europe at heart; farther to the east they were only interested in a few historical nationalities such as the Greeks, the Poles, and the Hungarians. Liberalism had nothing to offer either to the fourth estate in Western Europe or to the peoples of most of Eastern Europe, not to mention Asia and Africa.

After 1848, and particularly after 1870, the tide of the liberal movement began to ebb. The economic postulates of the middle classes had been fulfilled. In all European States, with the exceptions of Russia and Turkey, constitutional governments had been introduced. Italy and Germany had been unified and reconstructed as national States. All of the more important goals of liberalism seemed to have been reached, and nothing was left for it but to rest on its laurels; liberalism became conservative in the Workst sense of the word -- lazy and self-satisfied. Thereby it lost the chance to bring the awakening social and political forces into its camp.

Drahomanov was painfully aware of this decline of Western liberalism. He once said to a Polish democrat:

Everywhere the epoch of the purely political democracies is at an end. Even in its classic lands, France and Italy, you can scarcely find two or three uncompromised names. . . . All of that democracy is dried up, rotten, incapable of bearing fruit. Only look at Gambetta's republic. For these "democrats," the Russian tsar and his oppressive bureaucracy, with the money they have squeezed out of the Polish people, are more interesting as business partners than is a Polish revolutionary.³¹

It is noticeable that in his writings Drahomanov more often calls himself a "radical" than a "liberal." Naturally it is not a question here of words, and on the basis of an analysis of his political philosophy, Drahomanov must be counted as a member of the liberal school, whatever label he may have given to his position. But in the reticence which Drahomanov shows toward the use of the word liberal, we see a symptom of his disinclination, conscious or unconscious, to use a name which he felt to be compromised by the decadence of western liberalism.

Two great new political forces were appearing on the stage of history: the social awakening of the fourth estate and the national awakening of the oppressed peoples. Drahomanov's attitude toward these two forces was emphatically positive, for in them he saw an enormous stride forward on the road of the emancipation of humanity. But even for their sake he was not willing to deviate a hair's breadth from his liberal principles of individual freedom, the decentralization of power, and the rule of law.

Drahomanov believed that the logical consequence of democratic principles was socialism.³⁵ For the moment we can leave aside the question of the exact content of Drahomanov's socialist program. The basic tendencies must be made clear, however. True civic freedom requires not only that men have legal rights, but also that their social and economic conditions permit them to use them. The essence of the concept of democracy includes the idea of social change and social progress; otherwise it is no living democracy.

Drahomanov's ideas on the nationality question parallel these.

Peoples do not exist for States, but States for peoples. The peoples of multi-national States do not exist for the interests of one or two [ruling] peoples, but for themselves. A State has the duty to satisfy the requirements of all its peoples, not only those of the privileged ones.³⁶

Drahomanov's pedagogic experiences convinced him that the work of popular education would make progress only if it were conducted in the language of the people, and in accordance with national traditions. Conversely, the policies of Russification and Polonization were the chief causes of the cultural doldrums in the Ukraine. From this it was only a step to a much broader conception: that the centralism and chauvinism of the ruling nations were condemning the millions of the other nationalities to cultural stagnation. The masses can only participate in a universal culture -- through the medium of their own national cultural tradition. Drahomanov was a thorough believer in the blessings of national-cultural pluralism and in the historic mission of the less numerous peoples. Naturally it was Drahomanov's opinion that the development of national cultures could only be assured through a corresponding change in political institutions.

The range of Drahomanov's vision can be seen in his glad welcome to the beginnings of constitutional government in Japan and the movement in British India for self-government. He expressed the hope that this example would soon have an effect on the other Asiatic lands.³⁷

Drahomanov felt that the social and national movements were closely related. He introduced the sociological term, "plebeian nation," that is, a nation that has been reduced to a peasant mass and has no aristocracy and bourgeoisie of its own. With a few exceptions, such as the Poles and the Magyars, almost all of the peoples of Eastern Europe were, in Drahomanov's lifetime, such plebeian nations. In the lands where the lines of class divisions were at the same time lines of national divisions, where the dominant class was sharply divided from the simple people by the deep chasm of a different language, culture, and ideology, the movements for social and for national emancipation became one and the same.³⁸

Drahomanov believed that it was a weakness of the socialist parties in Western Europe that, since they were not immediately confronted by the problem of national oppression, they did not understand the interrelationship of the social and national questions.

The Hungarian State can be a useful object lesson for a socialist, for there he can observe how social relations are complicated by national ones. In all the States of present day Europe the laws of social development have led to the subjugation of the working classes by a capitalist oligarchy. The working classes are even more oppressed in those lands where a conquering nationality has enslaved other nationalities. Then the conquering nationality forms a sort of aristocracy. . . . An observer accustomed to the socialist movement in the great industrial centers, with its enlistment of important masses of workers, and to the national homogeneity of France, England, and Germany, would not understand what he saw if he were transported from the sphere of metropolitan socialism to Eastern Europe.³⁹

But Drahomanov's instinctive sympathy for the masses struggling for their social and national emancipation never brought him to an even partial abdication of his liberal principles. A number of his writings were aimed at convincing the Russian revolutionary factions that the struggle for political freedom in the Russian Empire must have priority over specifically socialist aims. In his arguments Drahomanov usually stressed tactical points: only the introduction of liberal political institutions would create the necessary conditions for a labor movement. But we can scarcely doubt that for Drahomanov himself civic freedoms had a logical priority over specifically socialist postulates.

Although the bourgeoisie is a heavy burden on the working masses, it is not the unrestricted ruler of the masses, and it does not even have absolute control of capital. Rather it plays the role of trustee in the present economic system. With the progressive development and organization of the workers, this trusteeship will be replaced by economic self-government. On the other hand the political autocrats are the shepherds and the masters of the people. The autocrats regard the people as a herd, or at best as eternal children. The first step toward the self-government of the people must be the breaking of the power of these shepherds, masters, fathers, or whatever they may choose to call themselves.⁴⁰

Drahomanov formulates his views on nationalism in an analogou; manner:

All civic work in the Ukraine must wear a Ukrainian dress, must be Ukrainian. But of course the Ukraine alone cannot be the aim of this activity. The aims of human activity are the same all over the world, just as theoretical knowledge is the same everywhere.⁴¹

I acknowledge the right of all groups of men, including nationalities, to self-government. I believe that such self-government brings inestimable advantages to men. But we may not seek the guiding idea for our cultural and political activity in national feelings and interests. To do this would lose us in the jungle of subjective viewpoints and historical traditions. Governing and controlling ideas are to be found in scientific thoughts and in international, universal, human interests. In brief, I do not reject nationalities, but nationalism, particularly nationalism which opposes cosmopolitanism. . . . I have always repeated: cosmopolitanism in the ideas and aims, nationality in the foundation and form. . . . For thirty years I have raised my voice against both Russian pseudo-cosmopolitanism, which neglects the Ukrainian nationality, and against the Ukrainian nationalists who, by their rejection of cosmopolitanism, bury the only sure indicator of progress and national rebirth and open the door to chauvinism, exclusivism, and reaction.⁴²

The example of Germany shows that national homogeneity in a State does not guarantee greater freedom, and that the national idea can lead to the violation of men and to great injustice. . . By itself the national idea cannot bring men to greater general freedom and truth; it is not even enough for the settlement of political matters. We must seek something else, above all nations, that can reconcile the nations when they fight among themselves. We must seek a universal truth common to all nations.⁴³

Drahomanov defended the cosmopolitanism of cultural values against all national egocentricity. In this he drew on the example of the great religions, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, and on that of modern scientific progress, which is only made possible by international cooperation. At the same time Drahomanov spoke up against the "false cosmopolitanism" of the ruling nations, who used, the idea of "progress" to excuse their forcible leveling and discrimination against the weaker nations. However, legitimate resentment against foreign domination and cultural discrimination can have dangerous consequences if directed by blind hatred. For this the classic example is the German reaction to Napoleon's occupation.

In its struggle to throw off French occupation and to reestablish the honor of its own language, the German national movement was justified. Not only was it not opposed to the cosmopolitan idea of the brotherhood of all men, it even drew directly from this idea. . . . But, in time, educated Germans developed the notion that the most important thing for men is their nationality, and that universal humanism is something abominable. They decided that in every respect Germans might think of nothing but being German, that in all relations with foreigners they must think of nothing but Germany's advantage, that they might live only in the German spirit, always have a German understanding, and possess purely German customs, etc. Thus they would cultivate that peculiar national character or spirit which God or Nature had especially destined for the Germans for all eternity.⁴⁴

Drahomanov opposed the myth of innate and unalterable national characters. Of course he recognized that empirically there are various differences between one folk and another, but he felt that these were the result of historical development, and therefore subject to further alterations. Moreover, for Drahomanov the cultural individuality of a nation did not lie in unique and independent originality, but in its particular manner of combining elements, each of them common to a number of peoples. Here Drahomanov used the evidence of his special field of study: the number of "wandering motifs" in folklore and folk poetry, i.e. in those very fields which the romantics claimed as the purest expression of the national soul.⁴⁵

Drahomanov's general attitude toward the problems created by the emancipation of previously oppressed groups can be illustrated by his ideas on sexual morality and on the role of the woman in society. The questions were debated very heatedly in Russian revolutionary circles. Under the influence of Chernyshevsky's programmatic novel, What To Do?, the slogan of free love, unfettered by any conventions, found considerable response. To a friend Drahomanov confided:

Free love is just as difficult as monogamy. One should approach this problem cautiously. Defend women's rights to education, work, and participation in public life. Struggle to make divorce less difficult. But keep from preaching free love in the fashion of the birds. Even among birds there is usually monogamy until the little ones are grown, and the human child takes twenty years to grow up. . . . A constitution is as necessary for the maintenance of freedom in love as for the maintenance of freedom in society. Liberum veto is not suited to either one or the other.⁴⁶

Drahomanov desired the emancipation of all oppressed groups, but he sought an orderly freedom, not individual or collective arbitrariness.

Drahomanov often speaks of himself as a socialist, but without giving allegiance to any of the schools or sects of socialism. There are few concepts which have so many varied and contradictory meanings as does "socialism." Therefore it is necessary for us to investigate more exactly Drahomanov's sort of socialism.

I have always been a socialist, ever since I was given Robert Owen and Saint-Simon to read in the gymnasium. But I have never thought of trying to put into practice in our country any stereotyped foreign socialist program.⁴⁷

We shall probably not be mistaken in the thesis that socialists who do not themselves spring from the working classes are usually socialists for reasons of ethics. However, only a few admit this. Usually the intellectual socialist has the tendency to cloak his resentments and hopes with scientific reasons. The commonest rationalization is the idea of a historical determinism which, inevitably, is leading mankind from a capitalist to a socialist epoch.

It is not the fact that Drahomanov became a socialist because of ethical motives which distinguishes him, but the fact that he himself realized it.

In Russia, up to the present, the socialist movement has depended chiefly on men who do not personally belong to the working classes and who become involved because of moral motives, because of the need to strive for the realization of social justice, and not because of economic needs or class ambitions.⁴⁸

But what is "social justice"? Many socialists live in the conviction that as long as capitalism exists, there can be no social justice, but that when a socialist order is victorious in the future, all imaginable social justice will automatically be assured. Drahomanov could not accept any such fatalism, just as he was not convinced by the bourgeois liberals who whitewashed the evils of the present system as (the regrettable but unfortunately inevitable by-products of the great economic and technical progress of the 19th century. His alert social conscience demanded concrete measures whereby the existing abuses could be remedied as rapidly as possible. This is the point of departure for his socialism.

I have expressed an idea that has always seemed heretical to many of my socialist friends, i.e. that in the social movement of our time, and even in the labor movement in the narrower sense, the question of communism [i.e. the future collective economic order] does not have a large place. For this movement the primary questions are ones such as the length of working hours, the standardization of wages, social insurance for the workers, etc. The importance of these is quite independent of the question of communism. Moreover, there are radical, and even revolutionary, agrarian movements (e.g. in Ireland), which have no communist elements at all.⁴⁹

Drahomanov gave a Galician friend the following advice:

You [the Galician Radicals] need European socialist ideas, and perhaps also something of the Russian sympathy for the peasants. But all of this must be adapted to Austrian and specifically Galician conditions. I would advise you to pay special attention to Ireland and Belgium. The former is interesting to us because of its agrarian problems and the skillful organization of the peasantry; the latter because of the linking of social agitation with political demands, because of the cooperation of the Walloons and the Flemings in the labor movement, and also because of the parallel between the development of social agitation and that of the cooperative movement. . . . I would advise you to pay attention to all of the movements of workers and peasants, and not only to those which label themselves socialist and collectivist. In practice socialism has taken on the nature of social politics. Things like the eight-hour working day are of more importance than any quarrels over the form of collectivization (State or communal), or even over collectivism itself. Moreover, the political and cultural conditions necessary for socialist policy, such as the general franchise, technical education, etc., are very important. We must come to regard the socialist movement, not from a sectarian perspective (either revolutionary or conservative), but from a civic and evolutionary one.⁵⁰

Naturally a far-reaching and systematic policy of social reform cannot be based on the forces of organized labor alone. Drahomanov names three elements which contribute to social progress. The intellectual socialists are the theoreticians, critics, and propagandists Then there are the mass movements of the workers (the unions, cooperative societies, etc.), similar peasant movements, and the political campaigns of the socialist and populist parties, such as the struggle for universal suffrage. Finally, we must include the measures of the ruling classes and the existing governments, even conservative ones, for the abolition or alleviation of social injustices (e.g. the English factory laws).⁵¹ All three factors contribute toward social progress, and a common denominator must be found. An interesting attempt to find this for Russia is presented by Drahomanov's social and political program in "Free Union."⁵² As the author explains in his commentary, this program is the result of a comparison and synthesis of the maximum reform program of the Zemstvo constitutionalists and the Russian liberal bourgeois press on the one hand, and the minimum demands of the European socialist and labor movements on the other. The soundness of Drahomanov's judgment is indicated by the fact that, since this was written, almost all of the more important points in his social and economic program (legal limitation of the working day, public arbitration between employers and employees, progressive income taxes, etc.) have been adopted by most civilized States.

That Drahomanov was free from the prejudices common to most of the socialists of his time is demonstrated by his realization that everywhere in Europe it is not the poorest, but the culturally and economically strongest workers who lead in the labor movements.⁵³ At the same time he warned the socialists against lumping the stable and productive business men together with speculators and adventurers on the stock exchange, even though in practice it may sometimes be difficult to distinguish the various groups in the bourgeoisie.⁵⁴

Drahomanov was convinced that in principle a socialist collectivism was preferable to private enterprise. At the same time it was clear to him that many honorable democrats and progressives did not agree, and he tried to persuade the hotheaded socialists among his younger friends not to spurn collaboration with the non-socialist democrats.

In our time it would be enough if each progressive party would really strive to do for the cause of progress what it promises in its program. With this the time of socialism would also come much faster.⁵⁵

Drahomanov was not a specialist in national economy. Compared to constitutional questions and problems of nationalities and foreign policy, economic questions take a relatively subordinate place in his writings. Various passages in his articles, particularly his strongly expressed interest in cooperatives, give grounds for the assumption that Drahomanov desired guild socialism (to use a later term), rather than centralized State socialism. It is doubtful whether he was fully aware of the problems created by the complexity of modern economic life. But all his works are impregnated with a strong social ethic which is the more commendable since Drahomanov's longing for social justice never caused him to forget -- as did so many socialists -- the value of political freedom and personal independence. The following definition is noteworthy.

The socialist ideal is not Arakcheyev's military settlements, but on the contrary, a brotherhood of well-rounded (integral, as the West European socialists say), developed individuals.⁵⁶

This comes from one of Drahomanov's polemics against a group of Russian socialists. Arakcheyev was Minister of War under Alexander I (tsar from 1801 to 1825). While in office he invented military settlements where soldiers performed agricultural labor combined with military exercises and military discipline. In the Russian and the Ukrainian languages these colonies have become synonymous with insane despotism and gruesome regimentation. It is noteworthy that, as early as the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Drahomanov was keenly aware of an Arakcheyevian spirit among Russian socialists. This leads us to a particularly interesting theme, that of Drahomanov as a critic of the Russian socialist and revolutionary movements.

We cannot summarize Drahomanov's opinion of individual leaders and theoreticians of the Russian revolutionary and socialist movements, such as Bakunin, Chernyshevsky, Lavrov, Plekhanov, and others. Let us only remark that Drahomanov always testified to his respect and admiration for Herzen, although he criticized a number of his views. Herzen was perhaps the only leading man in the Russian revolutionary movement in whose humanism and liberalism Drahomanov had implicit trust.

The Russian socialist movement of the second half of the 19th century, of which Drahomanov was the contemporary, critic, and in part participant, had two stages of development, populist and marxist. The name populist covers various leading individuals and groups from Herzen and Bakunin to the Narodnaya Volya (The Will of the People) Party -- roughly from the middle of the century to the 1880's. In spite of divergences on various points, all had certain basic convictions in common, one of which was the belief that thanks to the institution of the mir (a form of agrarian community), Russia would be able to by-pass the purgatory of western capitalism and proceed straight into the socialist paradise. Hand in hand with this went a general idealization of the Russian peasant as the supposed vessel of the highest social and moral values.

This romantic idealization of the muzhik (peasant) was completely foreign to Drahomanov's nature.

At the present level of education of the masses, many valuable interests of civilization, which someday may be useful to the demos, are simply unavailable to the demos of today. The people may betray them, or even Workse, simply trample on them. . . . In a word, thou shalt not set up for thyself any graven image, either in heaven, or on earth, or in the "people."⁵⁷

The tradition on which the socialists of the populist persuasion drew was that of the great Cossack and peasant rebellions of the 17th and 18th centuries, led by Stenka Razin and Pugachev. These were supposed to show that the Russian peasant is a natural revolutionary, ready to rise against his oppressor at any time. Drahomanov supported the contrary thesis that these revolutions were even more reactionary than the uprising of the German peasants and mystics in the 16th century, and therefore completely unfit to serve as an example for a modern, progressive movement. In particular he pointed out that the leading element in these revolts had been neither urban, nor even agrarian, but half-nomadic, which fact made success impossible from the beginning.⁵⁸ Drahomanov was equally dubious about the doctrine according to which the mir could serve as leaven for a socialist order. It is true that he believed that wherever there were remnants of this primitive collectivism, they should not be destroyed, but transformed into modern cooperatives if possible. But the mir system had serious defects. Although these Great Russian agrarian communities were self-governing bodies the rights of the individuals within them were not guaranteed. Moreover, in its way the mir was an authoritarian and irresponsibl ruling body. And within the individual families of which the mir was composed, the patriarch was a despot. The Russian peasant imagined the tsar as such a despotic pater familias.⁵⁹

Russian society lacks the conditions necessary for socialism, which are to be found in urban, industralized, educated, liberal Europe, where one can see unbroken progress since the 10th-11th centuries.⁶⁰

Drahomanov hoped, however, that with the development of the economy, of city life, and of education, the socialist movement in the Russian Empire would finally also enter the "natural" (general European) path.

One sees that in our lands too we already have an embryo of a better society. We dare to say that the beginnings of an urban educated working class, which combines manual labor and reading, is the foundation of all foundations.⁶¹

Since the expected general peasant revolt did not materialize, the Russian populists, or rather the most active and courageous of them, turned in the 1870's to the method of individual terror, in order to force concessions from the tsarist regime. This terror reached its peak with the assassination of Alexander II on March 1, 1881. Drahomanov never rejected revolutionary methods as such, but he felt that they should be only one part of the many-sided political battle against the existing regime. However, he considered that individual terror was a decidedly pathological phenomenon.

[In the given circumstances of lawlessness, for which tsarism is responsible], one can excuse political terrorism and seek to understand its causes. As historians we must recognize the good it has brought: it has forced all of [Russian] society to reflect on the reason for these assassinations. But it is inadmissible to glorify assassination, to present it as a pattern to be imitated, or to elevate it to the rank of a system. . . .

Even if we leave aside the moral aspect of the matter, these killings have a negative political effect. They strike the government, but they do not overthrow it, and they offer nothing new in its place.62

The death of Alexander II was followed by the rapid disintegration of the populist movement. The most courageous participants were dead, the organization was smashed, and its members were scattered, their faith shaken. In the 1880's a new form of the Russian revolutionary and socialist movement, marxism, began to rise on its ruins. Drahomanov lived through the rise and fall of populism, but he saw only the beginning stages, the incubation period, of Russian marxism. Drahomanov died before the (marxist) Social Democratic Party had crystallized organizationally in Russia. Nonetheless, he was able to define clearly his position in regard to this movement.

We must remember that the point of departure for Russian marxism was criticism of the preceding stage, populism. The attacks of Plekhanov, the father of the Russian Social Democratic Party, were directed against the same populist illusions -- belief in the mir, in peasant revolts, and in individual terror -- that Drahomanov had already criticized. Thus there is a certain parallel between Drahomanov's position and that of the early Russian marxists. This gives some verisimilitude to the claims of those later authors who tried to present Drahomanov as a forerunner of Russiar marxism.⁶³

Certain Ukrainian authors, particularly some Ukrainian Communists of the 1920's, were eager to construct a national, non-Great Russian geneology for Ukrainian marxism; Drahomanov had a place of honor in this family tree.⁶⁴ This thesis could be buttressec by Drahomanov's personal associations with certain marxists or semi-marxists, such as his friend Mykola Ziber (1844-1888), professor of national economy at the University of Kiev, who resignec and went into exile as a protest against Drahomanov's dismissa from the University. Ziber, who was active in Ukrainian circles in Kiev, was the first man in the Russian Empire to take an active interest in marxism, and was the translator of Capital into Russian There is no doubt that through Ziber Drahomanov early became acquainted with the basic ideas of marxism.

In spite of these points of contact, Drahomanov must not be counted as a predecessor, but rather as a decided opponent, of marxism. Indeed, he took a premeditated and conscious stand; within the limits of his influence he made every attempt to combat marxist influences among the Ukrainian and Russian socialists. In this he had some success in Galicia.

Drahomanov had serious reservations about marxist theories. He was ready to accept historical materialism only as an heuristic hypothesis, not as a dogma.

You know that I cannot agree to an exclusively economic philosophy of history and politics; this I regard as a sort of metaphysics. Human life is too complex to be explained by only one element. I have nothing against a one-sided theory if it makes easier the discovery of new facts. Unfortunately the followers of Marx, or rather those of Engels, seldom investigate anything; they rather draw a priori, and often completely arbitrary, historical and political figures.⁶⁵

Drahomanov endeavored to show that the political revolutions of the 16th to 18th centuries, in Holland, England, America, and France, were by no means the work of only one class, the bourgeoisie, and to point out that they could not be reduced to purely economic terms.⁶⁶

Drahomanov also had serious practical grounds for his opposition to marxism, and these were perhaps decisive. He did not believe that sectarian methods, which he imputed to the marxist German Social Democrats, were suited to Eastern Europe.

The conditions necessary in order that German-style sectarianism may progress are not only the existence of a homogeneous and compact mass -- the factory workers -- but also the spirit of military discipline, to which the Germans are accustomed even before they become socialists. Such sectarianism is ineffective even among the French workers; for us, a scattered peasant people, it would be even more so. Thus the English system of organizing on the basis of a practical task, and not of a catechism, suits us better.⁶⁷

The spread of marxism was undoubtedly a form of German cultural penetration into Russia. Drahomanov feared that this influence would strengthen the Russian socialists' inclination toward sterile dogmatism in theory and toward centralism in practical politics.

Of all the West European socialist parties, the German has had the greatest impact on Russia. This is to be explained by the strong personalities who have belonged to it recently, such as Marx, Engels, Lassalle. Their writings have become the substratum of the ideas of the Russian socialists. Moreover, their geographical nearness to St. Petersburg plays a role, as does the fact that the Jews have an important place in the socialist movements of Germany and Russia and, particularly in the northwestern provinces, present the natural link between the two socialist movements.⁶⁸

So far we have considered separately Drahomanov's stands on the two phases of Russian socialism, populism and marxism. He also criticized certain features which, to a greater or lesser degree, were common to almost all the leaders and groups of Russian socialists. The chief of these was the lack of a sense of political freedom, in the Western meaning of the term.

The social and revolutionary theories [of the populists] are in essence much closer to absolutism or to any other dictatorship than to liberalism.⁶⁹

In this respect marxism was no better than populism. Drahomanov said that the doctrine (developed by its publicists, Plekhanov and Vera Zasulich) of the dictatorship of the proletariat was a farce in a land in which, at that time (1884), factory workers made up only about one percent of the population.⁷⁰

An example of the dictatorial tendencies of the Russian socialists was to be found in the fact that each individual group, instead of speaking only in its own name, considered itself the sole representative of the whole revolutionary movement. Where in reality there were merely little circles of conspirators, parties and committees were spoken of. Revolutionary hierarchies, which behaved as if they were already the potential government of the Russian State, were set up.

The Executive Committee [of the Narodnaya Volya Party] is far from being a government. Nonetheless, in certain circles one can observe symptoms not dissimilar from those of courtiers: the fear of contradicting the Executive Committee in anything. . . the effort to draw profit from its fame, etc. Such customs . . . make the Russian revolutionary and the Russian governmental milieus similar.⁷¹

Drahomanov was particularly indignant over the cynicism of the Russian socialists in tactical methods. He felt that the Jesuitical theory that the means justify the ends would lead ultimately to the complete despotism of one person.⁷²

One indication of the amorality of the Russian socialists was the fact that they called their acts of individual terror the executions of the judgments of underground tribunals. Drahomanov considered such an attitude a perversion of justice and legality.⁷³ He considered equally improper the use of "pious frauds," such as falsified tsarist manifestoes, to instigate the peasants to rebellion.⁷⁴ Drahomanov, who believed that "to an honest man, speaking the truth is as natural a necessity as is breathing fresh air,"⁷⁵ was revolted by such intentional lies and by the whole unscrupulous Machiavellianism of the Russian revolutionaries.

Russian socialists of all stripes had an extremely intolerant and chauvinistic attitude toward the oppressed nationalities of the Russian Empire. At times an exception was made for the Poles, who were counted as a power factor and were wooed with concessions, often at the expense of the Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and Lithuanians.⁷⁶ The Russian socialists and revolutionaries systematically ignored the existence of the plebeian peoples, who, unlike the Poles, had no aristocracy of their own. In their proclamations the Russian revolutionary parties always spoke of a "Russian people" as if the population of the Empire were homogeneous and the Russians (Great Russians or Muscovites) not one nationality among others. At a public meeting of Russian political emigrants, and in a pamphlet,⁷⁷ Drahomanov proposed that a publishing house be created to edit socialist publications in the languages of all the peoples of the Russian Empire from the Estonians to the Armenians and from the Rumanian Bessarabians to the Tatars. Like other similar proposals, this was rejected with scorn;⁷⁸ anything which deviated from the centralist line was rejected by the Russian revolutionaries as "narrow nationalism," or at best as "an unnecessary splintering of forces which should be united against the common enemy, tsarism." No Russian socialist took the trouble to study Drahomanov's arguments that, without the participation of all the peoples of the Empire, the struggle against tsarism could not be successful, and that if such collaboration was to be achieved the legitimate cultural and political interests of the non-Russian peoples had to be considered. These Russian socialists, who perpetuated tsarist bigotry against the subjugated nationalities, nevertheless considered themselves as the most perfect internationalists.

These peculiar internationalists refuse to see that instead of a socialist pan-humanity, they propose to us an aristocratic, bourgeois, bureaucratic, and necessarily one-sided, nationally-dyed State. Their pseudo-cosmopolitan sermons against nationalism are not directed against those who oppress other nationalities, but rather against those who seek to defend themselves against this pressure. They seek to substitute denationalization for internationalism.⁷⁹

Drahomanov thought that the cause of this pathological state of affairs was easy to explain. The anti-tsarist opposition was burdened with the tradition of the Russian State. This might serve as an example of the well-known sociological rule that the opposition often forms itself according to the pattern of the regime it opposes.

Just look more closely at the genealogy of these claims that in Great Russia we find the best conditions for the victory of democracy, anti-capitalism, socialism, the search for truth, etc. At the root of the genealogical tree you will find old Muscovite reactionary chauvinism and the doctrine that "Moscow is the third Rome and there will never be a fourth."⁸⁰

[The Russian revolutionaries] do not desire to shake the idea of an absolute and centralized State, but only to transfer the power to other hands.⁸¹

Drahomanov's struggle against the Russian socialist fractions his time was a predecessor of the split, a generation later, of the world socialist movement into a democratic and a totalitarian wing.

A short resume of Drahomanov's views on the history of the Ukraine is the best introduction to his Ukrainian political program.

As for the period antecedent to the 13th century, it [the history of the Ukraine] reveals the federation of free cities, particularly of the cities of southern Rus, which were grouped around Kiev. Historians usually confiscate this period of Ukrainian history to credit it to the account of the tsarist empire, whereas in reality this latter is much more directly descended from the more recent principality of Moscow, which dates from 1328. Moreover, the despotic and aristocratic Muscovite institutions developed under the influence of the Tatars have very little in common with those of the free principalities of southern and even northern Rus in the 11th to 13th centuries. In addition we must remark that the history of the old State of Kiev is attached directly to the Cossack Ukraine as much by the scene of action and by the race of the actors as by the republican institutions.⁸²

Drahomanov believed that up to the time of the downfall of the Cossack State the Ukraine, although perhaps retarded in its development, was still an organic part of the European world.

Most of the national differences between the Ukraine and Muscovy can be explained by the fact that until the 18th century the Ukraine was linked to Western Europe. In spite of the handicaps caused by the Tatar invasions, the Ukraine participated in Western Europe's social and cultural progress.⁸³

This can be demonstrated by many details. For instance, in its own way the Ukraine experienced the Renaissance and the Reformation. The great Cossack rebellion against Poland in the middle of the 17th century came close to giving the Ukraine not only national independence, but also political and social institutions which could stand comparison with those of the most civilized European States.

[The frustration of these potentialities] was chiefly due to the devastation of the Ukraine at the end of the 17th century, when it was divided among Muscovy, Poland, and Turkey. The Left Bank Ukraine (the Hetmanate) then fell victim to the centralism of the Muscovite tsardom and the Petersburg Empire. . . . In the 19th century our Ukraine became a "province." It was farther behind progressive Europe than it would have been if it had gone its own way from the 17th century on. In fact it was even more backward than Muscovy, which, in the 17th century, had been more retarded than the Ukraine or Byelorussia.⁸⁴

The retrogression of the Ukrainian people becomes evident when one compares the Cossack revolution of Bohdan Khmelnytsky with the peasant revolts (haydamak movement) of the latter half of th 18th century. Both were mass movements with elemental force, but the leaders of the former were men with a European outlook and far-reaching plans. The uprising of the haydamaks was only a Jacquerie.

In the time of Khmelnytsky] the close relationships among all the classes of Ukrainian society -- the nobles, Cossacks, burgers, priests, and peasants -- made possible the emergence of men who could formulate their freedom-loving, democratic, and almost purely republican ideas in writing, and support them with arguments drawn from the history of their own and other lands. . . . The basic ideas of the last great Ukrainian mass movement, the haydamak revolt of 1768, under the leadership of Zaliznyak and Honta, were scarcely more clearly expressed than those of the Stenka Razin and Pugachev rebellions [in Muscovy].⁸⁵

Drahomanov was firmly convinced that Muscovite Russia's protectorate had had an unfavorable effect on the political, social, and cultural development of the Ukrainian people. Socially, Russian domination led to the reestablishment of serfdom, which had previously been abolished in the Dnieper Ukraine by the Cossack revolution. It is true that the Cossack State had been moving toward social stratification, the elders becoming a sort of new nobility. But it was only the help that Moscow gave the local reactionaries that made possible the sharp legal division of classes and the Russian-style enslavement of the peasants in the last quarter of the 18th century, i.e. after the final abolition of Ukrainian autonomy. Politically the story is similar. The Cossack State had had a flourishing system of local self-government and the beginnings of a representative national government. As Drahomanov shows, the liberal constitutional regimes of progressive European lands had developed from analogous roots. However, in the Ukraine, these were smothered by Russian centralism.⁸⁶ Culturally, the boundaries of the Russian Empire imposed an almost impenetrable wall between the Ukraine and Western Europe. In the first half of the 18th century the Ukraine still had many more men with a European education than had Russia. In the 19th century, however, almost the only route the Russian Ukraine had to the West was the long and difficult detour via the Petersburg "window into Europe." The following facts speak for themselves. In 1748 there were 143 schools in the Chernihiv regiment (regiments were the Cossack territorial units); in 1875, even after the introduction of the Zemstvos, there were only 52 in the same area.⁸⁷

Drahomanov's acute historical perception did, however, lead him to see the obverse side of the problem. The union of the Ukraine with Muscovy was no accident.⁸⁸ The Cossack Ukraine had been faced with two major problems of foreign policy, the conquest and colonization of the Black Sea coast and the expulsion of the parasitic Polish oligarchy. The continual raids of the Turks and Tatars, for whom the Ukraine was a sort of "White Africa" and a favorite ground for slave hunting, made an orderly, settled life almost impossible there. The eyes of the Ukrainian peasants and Cossacks turned longingly toward the fertile southern steppes, made uninhabitable by the Tatar menace. The harbors of the Black Sea were also necessary for commerce and for contact with the outside world. The Ukraine had had a toehold on the coast of the Black Sea in the early Period of the Princes, and then again at the beginning of the 15th century, but had lost it after Turkey became a great power in the Balkans and spread its protectorate over Moldavia and over the Tatars of Crimea.

After the Union of Lublin in 1569 the question of Polish-Ukrainian relations became equally pressing. This union separated the Ukraine from the so-called Lithuanian State, which in reality had been a federation of the Lithuanians, Byelorussians, and Ukrainians, and made the Ukraine subject to Poland. The boundless greed of the Polish magnates, the fiercely resented Polish social system, and the militant Catholicism of the Polish Counterreformation, all led to an elemental reaction on the part of the Ukrainian people; this came to a head in the revolution of 1648.

Countless folk songs show how deeply the Ukrainians were aware of their two national tasks: the battle against the Turko-Tatars and the struggle against the Polish nobility. By taking the initiative in this dual struggle the Cossack military organization, which after 1648 developed into the Cossack State, became tremendously popular among the Ukrainian people. But the young Cossack State was unable to withstand the pressure of its three neighbors -- Poland, Turkey, and Muscovite Russia. Polish pressure drove the Ukraine into the arms of Moscow, and by the Articles of Pereyaslav, 1654, the Ukraine accepted the protectorate of the tsar of Muscovy. Of course the Cossack leaders very soon realized the extent to which Muscovite centralism menaced them. Khmelnytsky's immediate successor, Vyhovsky, tried to free the Ukraine from Moscow's suzerainty. Several of the more important later Hetmans, among them Doroshenko, Mazepa, and Orlyk, followed the same policy. However, a Ukrainian orientation toward either Poland or Turkey would have been necessary for a break with Moscow, and the people were not ready for either of these unnatural combinations. The anti-Russian policies of Vyhovsky, Doroshenko, and Mazepa remained "affairs of State," without the support of the masses. Hostility toward the Turks and Tatars and toward Poland continued to be primary in the popular mind. This attitude explains the comparative feebleness of the protest against Katherine II's abolition of the remnants of Cossack autonomy; this loss coincided with the conquest of the Black Sea coast, a vast new field for Ukrainian colonization, and with the end of Polish domination in the Right Bank Ukraine. After the incorporation of the Ukraine into the Russian Empire, Russia did take over, in a certain sense, the prime obligations of Ukrainian foreign policy. By fulfilling them it obtained Ukrainian popular support.

Russian tsardom has done us much harm. . . . But it has also fulfilled our national tasks from the time when history took such a turn that we were unable to do so ourselves.⁸⁹

Drahomanov believed that in his generation, in the latter half of the 19th century, Russian-Ukrainian relations were beginning to take a decisive turn, though as yet this might scarcely be noticeable. The Polish uprising of 1863 was the last attempt to reestablish Polish domination in the Right Bank Ukraine. The failure of this uprising, which the Ukrainian peasants and the young Ukrainian intelligentsia had united in opposing, and the succeeding agrarian reforms, destroyed the last prospect for the success of the "historical" claims of the Polish nobility. From then on the acute form of the Polish-Ukrainian problem was to be limited to Austrian Galicia. A few years later the Balkan War of 1877-78 sealed the fate of Turkey as a European great power. With these two events the traditional grounds for the dependence of the Ukraine on Russia were shaken. Drahomanov foresaw that the time was approaching when the Ukrainian people would redefine its relation to the centralized Russian State.

It is only now that the problem can be posed: how is the Ukraine to be freed from Muscovite bureaucracy, how can the Ukrainian intelligentsia unite its forces with those of the people, how can Ukrainian national culture be regenerated, etc.?⁹⁰

During the 17th century and even the first half of the 18th century, the Ukraine possessed autonomous statehood. Drahomanov's call to the Ukrainians to "pick up the threads of our history that were broken off in the 18th century"⁹¹ might be understood as a plea for the reestablishment of Ukrainian statehood. Here we come to Drahomanov's views on Ukrainian political independence.

He made a sharp distinction between the right to separation, and its practicality.

Of course we would not think of denying the right of all the nationalities to complete separation from the Russian State. But it is advisable to reflect that States are particularly sensitive on the question of separation. States offer a much more vigorous resistance to the separation of a province than to the granting of personal rights to the inhabitants, or even to the granting of a certain degree of autonomy. Very great power is needed to put through the right of separation of a part of a State from the whole. The real question is not that of the legality, but that of the feasibility, of separatism.⁹²

Drahomanov believed that very sound arguments of foreign and internal politics militated against the possibility of Ukrainian statehood.

The Ukrainians have undoubtedly lost much by the fact that, at the time when most of the other European peoples founded national States, they were not in a position to do so. A State of one's own . . . is, after all, a form of social organization suited to defense against foreign attacks and to the regulation of affairs in one's own land. . . . [But] a revolution against Austria and Russia, similar to that which the Italians, with the help of France, made for their independence, is an impossibility for us. . . . The Ukrainians will have better prospects if they strive for their political and social freedom within the States in which they live, with the help of the other peoples also subjugated by these States.⁹³

Drahomanov pointed to the fact that all the new States which came into being in 19th century Europe needed foreign military and diplomatic aid. Italy received help from France and the various Balkan States were aided by either Russia or England. Even the great uprisings, such as those of the Poles in 1830 and 1863 and the Hungarians in 1848, failed without outside support. The Ukrainians had no protectors among the great powers, and Drahomanov felt that they should not hope for any. In his mind an even more conclusive argument against separatism was the immaturity of the Ukrainian national movement, shown in the denationalization of the upper classes and in the inadequate national consciousness of the masses.⁹⁴

Drahomanov believed that only the transformation of the Russian regime into a constitutional one with the greatest possible degree of regional and communal self-government would create the conditions necessary for the advance of the Ukrainian movement. For example, the abolition of preventative censorship would automatically remove limitations on Ukrainian literature. Then, with free competition between Ukrainian and Russian publications, the former would soon replace the latter in the Ukrainian villages. If private schools were permitted, Ukrainian would be used in these schools at least, even if at first Russian remained the language of the state schools. Making the local self-governments responsible for school administration would soon bring about the "Ukrainization" of at least the folk schools, and within a few years the question of Ukrainian secondary schools and of courses in Ukrainian in the universities would soon arise. Such a program of constitutionalism and decentralization required the cooperation of the Russian opposition, and would have much better chances of success under the banner of autonomy and federalism than under that of separatism.⁹⁵

It seems certain that Drahomanov analyzed correctly the practical possibilities open to the Ukrainian movement of his time. His analysis was validated by the fact that it was only after 1905 -- after the introduction of a certain, though very limited, degree of constitutionalism -- that the momentum of the Ukrainian national movement increased. Drahomanov's attitude toward the question of independent statehood for the Ukraine was thoroughly compatible with his attitude toward the socialist maximal program. In both cases he was sceptical of Utopias; he preferred to seek a strategic plan which would point the way forward from the status quo. But there was another element, besides this pragmatic one, which figured in his rejection of separatism. As we have seen, Drahomanov had a very individualist conception of freedom. His ideal was freedom from the State rather than freedom through the State. He considered concentration of power and power politics bad in themselves. But the foundation of a new State, even of a thoroughly democratic one, is impossible without power and power politics, without the creation of authority and of a hierarchy. It is easy to understand that Drahomanov instinctively shrank from seeing the Ukrainian movement go in this direction. He hoped that the political freedom of the Ukrainian people could come from a gradual decentralist and federalist transformation of the existing power aggregates, Russia and Austria-Hungary. We should like to say here that, at a time when there was neither a Ukrainian State, nor even a modest practical basis for a Ukrainian separatist policy, a man like Drahomanov, whose nature it was to think in terms other than those of States, was particularly fitted to render service to the Ukrainian cause.

How can we make Drahomanov's bitter criticism of Russian socialists and revolutionaries jibe with his plea that the Ukrainian movement cooperate with them? Drahomanov believed that the struggle against tsarist absolutism was the primary practical task; everything else depended on the weakening of this absolutism. At the same time he was well aware that the Russian revolutionaries made very questionable bedfellows. He was certainly not naive enough to be willing to have the Ukrainian cause depend on the good will of the Russian democrats. To secure the Ukrainians from surprise attacks from this quarter, he demanded the complete organizational independence of Ukrainian political parties and groups. It must be remembered that until 1917 Ukrainians usually participated in Russian political organizations, so that in this respect Drahomanov was far in advance of his time.

No Ukrainian group can unite with any Russian group or party -- not until the Russian groups are ready to renounce the theory of "Russian unity," to acknowledge the Ukrainians as a nation on precisely the same footing as the Great Russians, Poles, etc., and to accept the practical consequences of this recognition.⁹⁶

When a St. Petersburg newspaper spoke of Drahomanov as an alleged leader of the "Russian Social Revolutionary Party" (as a matter of fact there was no party of this name at that time), Drahomanov replied in a pamphlet published in Geneva:

I request you not to consider me as a member of the "Russian Social Revolutionary Party," or of any other Russian party. It is true that I was born a subject of the Russian tsar, but I am not a Russian. . . . As a Ukrainian I belong to a nation which in Russia is oppressed not only by the government, but also by the dominant Great Russian people. The Ukrainian nation extends beyond the boundaries of the Russian State into Austria-Hungary. My chief aim is to strive for the well-being of our people to the best of my ability. I can take a stand on "Russian" affairs, both (Great) Russian in the ethnic sense, and Russian in the political sense, only in so far as they affect our people. By the same principle I can of course have dealings with the Russian parties, but I cannot join any of them.⁹⁷

The independence of Ukrainian organizations which Drahomanov urged was undoubtedly a good way of resisting the menace of the centralist and levelling tendencies of the Russian revolutionaries. Other of Drahomanov's ideas on this problem will be treated in the next chapter.

Drahomanov was not an advocate of Ukrainian independent statehood. Nonetheless, at a time when most of the members of the upper classes in the Ukraine felt that they belonged to the Russian nation, and when the mass of peasants was without a crystallized modern political consciousness, Drahomanov did regard the Ukraine as a nation. This led to two important political postulates. He felt that the estranged upper classes should become nationally integrated with the Ukrainian people, and that a unified national consciousness and coordinated political will, cutting across political frontiers, should be created in all the ethnically Ukrainian territory.

Our people suffers injustice not only socially and politically, but also nationally. This injustice arises in part from the fact that our nationality and our language do not enjoy the same rights as do the Russian, Polish, Hungarian, and Rumanian. However, a far greater injustice arises from the fact that in all the territory where our people live, at most five percent of the intelligentsia acknowledge their national solidarity with the people. Therefore the people do not receive the cultural services they need from the intelligentsia, who live directly or indirectly from the people's labor. This disgrace reaches so far that even men of democratic convictions, living among the Ukrainians, turn from them and dedicate their work, their gifts, and their money to the service of other peoples. . . . Arrange things so that a part of the French elite consider themselves as English, a second part as German, a third as Italian, and a fourth as Spanish, and you will soon see what will happen to French literature and politics and even to the French socialist movement.⁹⁸

Drahomanov's belief that a Ukrainian's loyalty belonged to the Ukrainian cause came to a dramatic expression in his relations with Zhelyabov, the leader of the Narodnaya Volya Party. Zhelyabov, who was of Ukrainian origin, moved in Ukrainian circles as a younj man. At that time he met Drahomanov, and apparently personal trust and friendship developed between them. Some years later when Drahomanov had gone abroad as representative of the Kievan Hromada, Zhelyabov became the leader of that revolutionar organization, whose foolhardy terrorist struggle against tsarisn made Russia and the whole world hold its breath. In 1880 Zhelyabov sent a confidential representative to Geneva to ask Drahomanov to be the political representative of Narodnaya Volya in Western Europe, and the guardian of the Party's archives. In the same message Zhelyabov used the weakness of the Ukrainian movemen to excuse his going over to the all-Russian revolutionary movement

Where are our Fenians, where is our Parnell? The truth of the matter is . . . that while one sees salvation in the breakup of the Empire into autonomous parts, one must work for a [pan-Russian] constituent assembly.⁹⁹

Drahomanov's answer did not reach Zhelyabov, but after Zhelyabov's death Drahomanov published an account of the episode, and his reasons for turning down this offer.

This sceptical expectation of the time when the Ukraine might produce its Fenians and its Parnell comes from the pen of a man who was born in one of our Ukrainian provinces. Nothing prevented him from becoming, in his own way, a Fenian. Imagine that the Irish leaders were to wait passively until the advocates of home-rule appeared in their land, until that moment conducting themselves as Englishmen and as followers of British centralism. In that case Ireland also would have to wait a long time for its Parnell!¹⁰⁰

Drahomanov believed that in the Ukraine it was impossible to be an honest democrat without being a Ukrainian patriot, for the people was Ukrainian, not Russian or Polish. However, many members of the upper classes in the Ukraine did not recognize this duty, and joined the ranks of the Russian intelligentsia. This nomadic desertion estranged them from the people and nullified their abstract democratic ideals; this was one of the chief causes of their political weakness. Drahomanov himself had evolved from an all-Russian radical position to a Ukrainian national consciousness, and he hoped that sooner or later the intelligentsia living in the Ukraine would adhere to the cause of the national and social emancipation of the people.

It is time to put an end to this nomadism of educated people from "the cold rocks of Finland to the burning Kolchis" [from Pushkin] or from "sea to sea" [from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the war-cry of Polish "historical" patriots]. As a nomad, one can serve every cause imaginable except that of the people, of the peasants. For peasants are a settled and deeply rooted people, and therefore different in every land.¹⁰¹

Drahomanov declared that each Ukrainian intellectual must settle himself in a specific community, and grow into a definite social milieu.

[The intellectuals] must settle down in communities of our people, and use their forces to fulfill the needs of the social organism. This will enable them to spread sound ideas by word and deed. . . . The whole Ukraine must be covered by a network of individuals and groups linked with each other.¹⁰²

Drahomanov's call to the denationalized intelligentsia to unite themselves with the Ukrainian national cause was most movingly stated in these pathetic words:

Educated Ukrainians usually work for anything in the world except for the Ukraine and its people. . . . They must take an oath to themselves not to desert the Ukrainian cause. They must realize that every educated man who leaves the Ukraine, every cent which is not spent for Ukrainian purposes, every word that is not spoken in Ukrainian, is a waste of the capital of the Ukrainian people, and that with things as they are, anything lost is irreplaceable.¹⁰³

No less serious than the problem of the denationalization of the elite was that of the isolation of the Ukrainian regions from each other. Drahomanov pointed to the abnormal condition that the Left Bank and the Right Bank Ukraine, Galicia and Subcarpathia -- all of the Russian and all of the Austro-Hungarian Ukraine -- had very little contact, and were even very incompletely informed about each other.¹⁰⁴ In his scientific works Drahomanov had shown the ethnic and linguistic homogeneity of the Ukrainian people from the Kuban region at the foot of the Caucasus to the Subcarpathian region in the Hungarian State.¹⁰⁵ He felt that this ethnic unity should have political consequences. Although he did not propose as a practical goal the union of the whole Ukrainian area into one State, he aimed at close political and cultural collaboration and mutual help among the various parts of the Ukrainian territory. For instance, he advised that all democratic propaganda destined for the population of the Kuban should begin by reminding the Kuban Cossacks that they were the descendants of the glorious Zaporozhian Host.¹⁰⁰

Drahomanov did the work of a true pioneer in Subcarpathia, the most backward and remote of the Ukrainian regions. This was the land which, before the First World War, was known as Hungarian Rus. In the inter-war period it was called Subcarpathian Ruthenia and belonged to Czechoslovakia. Since 1938 it has been called the Carpatho-Ukraine. Drahomanov probably became the first leader of the Ukrainian national movement to penetrate into this land when he made two visits there in 1875 and 1876. He was deeply shocked by the misery of its oppressed and exploited people. In later years he never lost sight of the plight of this land, and he tried to turn the attention of the other Ukrainians to it. Shortly before his death he once again reminded the Ukrainians of their duty toward Subcarpathia.

I was the first Ukrainian to visit Hungarian Rus. I saw that spiritually it is farther separated even from Galicia than Australia is from Europe. I swore to myself an "oath of Hannibal" to work for the integration of Hungarian Rus into our national democratic and progressive movement, for only thus can it find salvation. . . . I have not been able to fulfill my oath, but today I lay it upon the heads of the whole Ukrainian people.¹⁰⁷

Drahomanov was able to make use even of the division of the Ukraine into Russian and Austro-Hungarian parts in his Ukrainian strategy. The systematic persecutions of the Ukrainian movement by the tsarist government, particularly the scandalous prohibition of printing in Ukrainian, limited the possibilities of work in Russia. In this difficult situation some Ukrainian patriots felt that the only solution was to convince the Russian government of the harmlessness of the Ukrainian movement by renouncing all political aims and limiting themselves to cultural regionalism, in the fashion of the Plattdeutsch (Low German) literary movement. Drahomanov did not agree to this idea of separating politics from culture; he also doubted that such concessions would lead to the alleviation of tsarist pressure. He feared that such a cowardly attitude would repel the young people -- and all courageous and freedom loving men -- and that thus their energy would be lost. He advised that the national movement give up its attempts to come to an understanding with the government. Within the Russian Empire its members should concentrate on strictly academic work (of necessity publishing in Russian) on Ukrainian history, ethnography, economic problems, etc. This research might later serve as the basis for political activity. At the same time, while of course preserving its organizational independence, the Ukrainian movement should seek to collaborate with the various Russian movements of opposition, from the Zemstvo constitutionalists to the revolutionary underground. However, the center of gravity of the Ukrainian movement should be shifted to Galicia, where, in spite of Polish hegemony, Austrian laws did provide a minimum of freedom. Drahomanov hoped that there Galicians and Russian Ukrainians together could create a focal point for Ukrainian activity. Then, until the weakening of tsarist absolutism should untie the hands of the Ukrainians in Russia, vitality from this center could radiate back into the Russian Ukraine.¹⁰⁸

Drahomanov doubted that the elder generation of the Galician intelligentsia could be converted to his program of joint action. Therefore he went over their heads, appealing directly to the young people. Of course this was a long-range project, but Drahomanov did not let himself be discouraged.

Gutta cavat lapidem no vi, sed semper cadendo. [It is not by force that the drops of water wear away the stone, but by always falling.] This has always been my motto; it is the best political motto.¹⁰⁹

Some years after Drahomanov's death one of his disciples, the eminent Galician writer and scholar Ivan Franko, evaluated his influence in the following way:

Truly our teacher, he was completely selfless. He did not spare either himself or us in his efforts to turn us -- his lazy and uneducated followers, who had grown up in the slavish tradition of our narrow [Galician] provincialism -- onto the better, more enlightened path of European civilization. One might say that he dragged us by the ears along this way. If any contribution to the world or to our national cause comes from the generation which was influenced by him, it will have been the work of Drahomanov.¹¹⁰

The continuing results of Drahomanov's far-reaching vision helped Galicia to become the Piedmont of the Ukrainian national cause before and during the First World War.

How could Drahomanov reconcile his ardent patriotism with his cosmopolitan convictions? He believed that the universal ideal of Mankind was a synthesis of the best characteristics of each people. His realization of the relationship between the general and the particular also made him see that a humanist who wanted to work for the well-being of mankind had to have a specific point of application.¹¹¹ The Ukrainian people could be one such point. Humanity could but gain if, among the peoples of the earth, there were "one soulless corpse less, one living nation more."¹¹²

A humanistic and cosmopolitan foundation for the national idea involves the duty to combat all forms of narrow, exclusive, backward nationalism among one's own people. Drahomanov did this conscientiously. Here, to complete the picture of his Ukrainian political program, we must glance at his fight against the excesses of Ukrainian nationalism.

During Drahomanov's lifetime the Ukrainian movement was too weak to be able to harm any other people. Nonetheless, Drahomanov was very sensitive to all the symptoms of national hatred and resentment among the Ukrainians which, in different circumstances, could turn into a destructive force.

Our nationalism is not nearly so pacific [as its apologists say]. Only listen to the hate with which our people sometimes speak of the Russians, Poles, and Jews. Reflect on what might happen to men of these races living on Ukrainian soil if our nationalists should come to power. What sort of forcible Ukrainization would be prescribed for them! This misanthropic nationalism is also harmful to us, for it aggravates the hostile feelings of our neighbors. Nowadays one must try to lessen hatred among nations even during war time, as the Red Cross organization does within its sphere.¹¹³

Drahomanov's intellectual conscientiousness made him an uncompromising opponent of all national illusions and patriotic superstitions.

I am disgusted with myself because my patriotism induces me to write on all possible subjects, from archeology to painting, only in order to be able to proclaim the existence of a Ukraine in the 10th and 15th centuries as well as in the 19th century, in prehistoric excavations as well as in modern opera. But my love for my own people does not give me the right to attack Russians, Poles, or Jews.¹¹⁴

Two examples of Drahomanov's battle against the prejudices of his compatriots are his attitude toward the Shevchenko cult and his stand on the usefulness of Russian literature to Ukrainians.

The untutored genius and revolutionary poet, Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), had a tremendous influence on the development of Ukrainian national consciousness. The Ukrainians honored him as a prophet, and soon a cult grew up around his name and memory. Each Ukrainian fraction, from the clericalists to the socialists, projected its own ideas into its picture of Shevchenko, and disregarded those aspects of his life and work which did not fit. Drahomanov was certainly not opposed to honoring the memory of Shevchenko. In his later life he tried, in vain, to have published in Geneva a complete and unexpurgated edition of Shevchenko's poems. However, he did protest against the canonization of Shevchenko, which hid the true man and poet behind his halo. Drahomanov felt that a historical and critical attitude, which would also take cognizance of Shevchenko's limitations, was needed. In particular he warned against regarding his poetry as a consistent political program.¹¹⁵

It may seem strange that both during his lifetime and after his death Drahomanov was often accused of being a Russophile. The reason for this was his frequently expressed conviction that Ukrainians should not shy away from Russian literature. His arguments were simple: first, Russian literature undoubtedly included the greatest artistic achievements of all the Slavic literatures; second, by turning their backs on Russian literature they would increase their provincialism rather than their cultural independence. Drahomanov answered the reproach that he was a slavish devotee of Russian literature and culture in the following manner:

Personally, since my early twenties I have been able to read five European languages, not including antique and Slavic ones. Of these I most love English literature, as I do the cultural and political life of England. With the exception of technical books in my field, I should be ready to live the rest of my life without books in Russian. But in the Ukraine I see the following state of affairs: only two or three intellectuals out of a hundred use European books, and most of these are technical. Even most writers do not know a single European language. Under these conditions what would be the level of Ukrainian men of letters if they should also give up Russian literature? I should not waste another word on the cultural value of Russian literature if in the Ukraine I saw energetic efforts to obtain spiritual nourishment direct from Western Europe, and if I did not see that our modern Ukrainian authors lack a basic European education.¹¹⁶

Thus Russian literature was indispensable in the Dnieper Ukraine because the numerous Russian translations of Western European writings were necessary. The situation was somewhat different in Galicia, where a knowledge of German was widespread. But Drahomanov was afraid that the German cultural influence tended to produce bureaucrats, and believed that Russian literature could play a positive role in Galicia too. He thought that the spirit of social criticism prevalent in the best Russian literature was a means of drawing the attention of the backward Galician intelligentsia to the needs of their own people. According to Drahomanov, such a feeling for the people was the best stimulus for the Ukrainian national movement. Moreover, acquaintance with reality in Russia was a sure means of destroying the illusions which the conservative "Old Ruthenians" had about the tsarist empire. Drahomanov maintained that he had distributed more Russian books in Galicia than all the Muscovite panslavists together, and that as a result of this very fact the younger generation had gone over to the camp of the Ukrainian national movement.¹¹⁷

Drahomanov could permit himself such a dispassionate, utilitarian attitude because he was convinced of the vitality of Ukrainian culture, and because he was free from a feeling of national inferiority. Many of his compatriots, who compensated for their dependence on Russian culture by bleating abuse against Russia, could not forgive this attitude. Drahomanov remarked that those who criticized him as a "Russophile" were the very ones who in practice were ready to make much greater concessions in the use of Russian in publications and even in private correspondence. The difference was that Drahomanov believed that the only honorable thing to do was to "admit in theory a part of the concessions which the others make in practice."¹¹⁸

In the history of Ukrainian political thought Drahomanov stands half-way between the generation of the Brotherhood of Sts. Cyril and Methodius of the 1840's -- the first expression of a modern Ukrainian national consciousness -- and the generation which was called upon to construct an independent Ukrainian democratic republic in 1917. Of course Drahomanov was not the first participant in the Ukrainian national movement to reflect on political problems and to work out programs. But in volume of writing and diversity of questions handled, and in profundity of thought, none of his predecessors or contemporaries can be compared with Drahomanov. To the present day, in the field of political theory, the Ukraine has produced but few men of the same stature. Drahomanov's reputation has suffered from the fact that he was a pioneer in so many respects. For the next generation many of his hard-won achievements were already self-evident, while the points in which his views had been surpassed by historical development (e.g. Ukrainian statehood) were immediately obvious. This is one of the reasons for the lessening of Drahomanov's influence on Ukrainian political thought in the inter-war period. But an examination of Drahomanov's heritage which endeavors to distinguish the living ideas from the dead ones must acknowledge the richness and fertility of his ideas.

Ivan Franko said:

Clear, incorruptible, and uncompromising, he will continue to be the conscience of our nation for a long time -- a true compass for the coming generations, showing them how they should live and work.¹¹⁹

Drahomanov believed that the federalization of the Russian Empire would bring freedom to the Ukrainian people.

The independence of a land and people can be achieved either by secession and the creation of an independent State (separatism), or by winning self-government without separation (federalism).¹²⁰

It should be noted that here federalism is contrasted with separatism, but not with independence. Drahomanov probably was thinking of Switzerland, where the French- and Italian-speaking cantons, though in the minority, are no less "independent" than are the German-speaking ones.

For the details of Drahomanov's constitutional program we refer our readers to "Free Union," his draft constitution for a reconstructed Russian Empire.¹²¹ Here we will only direct attention to a few especially interesting points.

A federalist structure presupposes the existence of the constituent units which compose the whole State. Drahomanov felt that the administrative divisions of tsarist Russia (provinces or gubernii), with their arbitrarily drawn boundaries, were not suitable as units for a system of vigorous self-government. On the other hand, he did not insist that the Russian Empire be divided strictly according to the ethnic principle, since the size of the single "cantons" would be too disparate. Drahomanov proposed that a new territorial unit, the oblast (region)¹²² be created. In fixing the boundaries of these regions, ethnic, economic, and geographic factors should all be considered. Some composite regions would have to be formed; the Latvians and the Estonians might form a single region, as might the various national groups in the Caucasus. The territories of the more numerous peoples, such as the Russians and the Ukrainians, should be divided into several regions. In the case of the Ukrainians Drahomanov proposed three regions: Kiev, or the Right Bank Ukraine; Kharkiv, or the Left Bank Ukraine; and Odessa, or the southern Ukraine, including Bessarabia and Crimea. In mixed regions national equality would be ensured by the self-government of communities and districts, and by the inviolability of the personal rights (including the free use of the mother tongue) of all citizens. Drahomanov cited Switzerland, where there are several bilingual cantons.¹²³

The most distinctive feature of Drahomanov's draft constitution was that (as in the constitutions of the United States and of Switzerland) the member states (regions) were to have a sphere of competence inviolable by the federal government. Jurisdictional disputes were to be decided by the supreme court (Senate). What Drahomanov proposed here was not simple administrative decentralization, but rather -- though he did not use these words -- the division of sovereignty between the federal union and the regions. This conception was further implemented by two other provisions. First, the regions were to have the right to conclude agreements with one another for special purposes. Second, in the case of a usurpation of power on the federal level, full authority, including the command of the armed forces, was to pass automatically into the hands of the regional governments. What actually happened in the territory of the former Russian Empire in 1918 approximated the sequence of events which Drahomanov had imagined. After the Bolshevist coup d'etat various regional governments, which at first regarded themselves as autonomous, but still as parts of a democratic Russia, took full authority into their own hands.

The eminent German sociologist Max Weber considered Drahomanov's constitutional project brilliant. Weber wrote:

Drahomanov's great strength lies in his synthesis of economic with national ideals and in his strong sense of what is possible, given the ethnographic conditions of Russia and the economic circumstances of the present.¹²⁴

Weber agreed completely with Drahomanov's thesis that the unitary structure of the Russian Empire was the chief obstacle to a liberal transformation and organic "Europeanization" of that country.

What were the forces on which Drahomanov counted in the struggle for the realization of a federalist program? He thought that the natural allies of the Ukrainians were all the other non-Russian nationalities in the Empire, from the Finns in the north to the peoples of the Caucasus in the south. Among the Great Russians there were also some groups with a vigorous feeling of local patriotism and a tradition of opposition to the centralism of Moscow and St. Petersburg: the Don Cossacks, the Siberians, the inhabitants of the Volga and Ural regions, and the inhabitants of the far north.¹²⁵ Drahomanov's ideas were proved to have been correct during the revolution of 1917-20, when these were the only ethnically Russian areas to resist the Communist wave coming from Central Russia.

It is a well-known sociological rule that a revolutionary movement is apt to imprint its organizational pattern on any regime it creates. Not only Drahomanov's aims, but also the means he proposed, were decentralized and federalist. He hoped for the creation of a series of regional revolutionary organizations which would coordinate their activities voluntarily, not just follow the dictates of a central authority.¹²⁶ This conception contrasted sharply with the idea, widespread in Russian revolutionary circles, that a strongly centralized revolutionary organization was necessary. When victory had been achieved, its central committee was to be the basis for a provisional government with unlimited powers. Completing the centralist chain, this provisional government would then preside over the elections to an all-Russian national assembly.

Drahomanov warned that in reality this program could only mean the conveyance of centralized power into other hands, and would bring with it an acute danger of a dictatorial coup d'etat from either the right or the left. He contrasted this idea of an all-Russian national assembly with that of regional constituent assemblies. An all-Russian assembly "would, I am almost sure, preserve the hegemony of the Great Russian people and the central Great Russian regions over all others, particularly in questions of education and economics."¹²⁷

This brings us to the question of methods in the political battle.

Basically the theory of liberalism goes hand-in-hand with the idea of gradual reforms in political, social, and cultural matters, and not with the idea of revolution, understood as a forceful overthrow of the existing order. Liberal theories only approve political revolutions when they are the only means to remove oppressive regimes which block reforms which a self-governing people would introduce.¹²⁸

Depending on the general political situation, Drahomanov several times altered his opinion as to what were the most advisable tactical methods. In his youth he hoped that peaceful progress would be possible on the basis of Alexander II's reforms -- the emancipation of the serfs, the new judiciary system, and the Zemstvos.¹²⁹ The reactionary turn taken by the Russian government, particularly the repression of the Ukrainian movement, made his attitude more warlike. During the Balkan War of 1877-78 he edited pamphlets to be distributed among the soldiers and officers of the Russian army, summoning them to armed rebellion.¹³⁰ He hoped that once again the army would rebel, as did the Decembrists after the Napoleonic wars, but that this time the military action would be supported by public opinion, focusing in the Zemstvos. Later, in the 1880's, having lost his illusions about the possibility of rapid improvement in the Russian regime, he again regarded the matter more coolly. He then directed his eyes toward the Zemstvo, an island of local self-government in the middle of the absolute and bureaucratic regime. He drew hope from the examples of France and Prussia: in France the initiative of the provincial assemblies led to the convocation of the Estates General in 1789; in Prussia the action of the provincial diets caused the convocation of parliament in 1847-48.¹³¹

Drahomanov reproached the Russian opposition with the narrowness of their views: as a consequence of centuries of absolutism and centralism they could imagine political change only as the result of violence --

of imperial decree, a la Peter I, or of a massacre, a la Pugachev. Either is a thunderbolt striking society, not a voluntary, cooperative action undertaken by the best elements of society -- either in a peaceful or a revolutionary way.¹³²

Drahomanov did not make maximal demands. He believed that it was less important for reforms to be introduced rapidly than for them to take deep root once introduced (as they had in England).¹³³ This gradualism paralleled his doctrine on compromise in politics. He felt that compromises were necessary, but that only "quantitative," not "qualitative," ones were admissible.

If the body cannot digest a whole quart of milk, then give it half a pint, but give it milk, not ink, or a mixture of milk and ink.¹³⁴

Drahomanov's biographer Zaslavsky asserts that Drahomanov was the only revolutionary author in Russia to treat problems of foreign policy fully and intelligently.¹³⁵

It was Drahomanov's Ukrainian perspective which led his eyes beyond the boundaries of the Russian Empire. His concern for Galicia brought him to a general interest in the affairs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Looking at the Polish question, the Jewish question, and the questions arising from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire from Kiev instead of St. Petersburg brought these problems nearer and made them more concrete. Drahomanov's ideas on the relations of the Ukrainians to their western and southern neighbors, and to the national minorities living on Ukrainian soil, were a counterpart and complement to his Russian program. Here internal and foreign policy met.

For Drahomanov the kernel of the Jewish question in the Ukraine was the fact that the Jews were at the same time a nationality, an economic class, and a religion. As a nationality they were isolated from the rest of the population by their language and customs. In the economic sphere, the vast majority of the Jews were employed in certain occupations of a middle class nature. Ritualistic observances carried over into daily life intensified the isolation of the Jews from the Christian population.¹³⁶ Drahomanov feared that the resentment which the Ukrainian peasants felt against the Jewish innkeepers, usurers, and arendators (tax-gatherers for the State and the nobility) might easily turn from social protest into anti-semitism. He felt sure that the Jewish question would not be solved by the laudable liberal formula: abolition of the legal limitations imposed on the Jews in Russia, e.g. their artificial concentration within the "pale of settlement" (in the Ukraine and Byelorussia). Drahomanov saw the solution in a schism between the Jewish workers and the exploitative elements in the Jewish community, and in the development of a feeling of solidarity between the Jewish and the non-Jewish workers. This would require the founding of a Jewish socialist organization and a Yiddish socialist press. In this program Drahomanov anticipated the later Bund Party. The first appeals for the founding of a Jewish socialist organization came from the press of Drahomanov's Hromada magazine in Geneva. This initiative encountered the open hostility of the Russian socialists, including the Russified Jews.¹³⁷

Drahomanov saw the "egg of Columbus" solution of the Polish question in the making of a sharp distinction between the territory that was ethnically Polish and that which, though ethnically Lithuanian, Byelorussian, or Ukrainian, was claimed by the Poles. In these non-Polish lands, which had once belonged to the Polish Commonwealth, the Poles composed a minority of the total population, but the majority of the landlord class. "Nowadays, for people of sound mind there can be a question of the independence only of ethnic Poland."¹³⁸ Of course Drahomanov believed that ethnic Poland had an unquestionable right to independent statehood, but he felt that a federalist policy of cooperation with the other peoples of Eastern Europe would be in the Poles' own interest. As for the Poles living outside of ethnic Polish territory, they should have cultural autonomy and of course equality as citizens, but they should not have a dominant position. The Polish minority in the Right Bank Ukraine, a relatively high percentage of whom were educated people, would have been able to render a great service to the cause of freedom if they had been willing to unite with the Ukrainians in the fight for the self-government of the land, rather as the Swedes in Finland had cooperated with the Finns. During the 19th century a few Poles in the Right Bank Ukraine were ready to take this road because of their democratic convictions or local patriotism. But the mass of the Poles, including those of democratic and even socialist opinions, were not able to free themselves from their hypnotic belief in Poland's "historical frontiers." Drahomanov was convinced that these Polish imperialist dreams were a source of disaster for the Polish people, who let themselves be seduced into policies of adventure, and a source of disturbance for all of Eastern Europe.¹³⁹

Unlike the Russian Slavophiles, Drahomanov desired not the demolition, but the federalization, of Austria-Hungary. The organization of the Empire into historic crownlands, in which an aristocratic nationality usually oppressed the plebeian peoples, should be replaced by a system guaranteeing genuine equality, on the basis of universal suffrage, to all the peoples. Drahomanov advised his Galician friends that the struggle for universal suffrage was their most immediate political task.¹⁴⁰

He took a lively interest in the fate of the Balkan Slavs, whom he believed to be the natural allies of the Ukrainians. He felt it was through the union with the Ukraine that Russia had become interested in the Balkan and Black Sea regions and that the Russian Empire's conflict with Turkey was inherited from the Cossack . Ukraine. However, Russia's imperialist tendencies made it incapable of being an honorable ally in the struggle of these regions for their independence. "A despotic State cannot be a liberator."¹⁴¹ Drahomanov warned his Bulgarian and Serbian friends against expecting true help from Russia.

Drahomanov's East European program was completed by his ideas on German-Russian relations.¹⁴² He felt that these two aggressive great powers formed a pincers enclosing Eastern Europe. Of the lands caught between them, those which were more immediately menaced by Germany placed their hopes in Russian strength and those menaced by Russia relied on Germany. Opposing both opinions, Drahomanov maintained that Russian and German imperialism supported each other, and that it was a fundamental error to believe that Germany and Russia would stalemate each other. He believed that an enduring peaceful order could be created in Eastern Europe only by the emancipation and federal union of the peoples living between the Russian and the German ethnic blocks. This would check both the Russian and the German imperialists. The thwarting of these imperialists would then strengthen the hands of the liberals within these two nations, in which the authoritarian form of government was a function of the expansionist foreign policy. In the long run, the federation of the peoples between the two blocks would benefit the Germans and the Russians as well as all the smaller peoples in between.

As we know, Eastern Europe took a course directly opposite to that which Drahomanov had mapped out. Nonetheless, there can scarcely be any doubt that he saw clearly the great issues in this part of the world. And the sad course of events since 1914 justifies the conviction that Drahomanov's ideas may still have some normative value in the future.

1 Drahomanov's Correspondence with Meliton Buchynshy (Lviv, 1910), p. 72.

2 The Archives of M. Drahomanov (Warsaw, 1937), p. 320.

3 Ibid., pp. 245-246.

4 Drahomanov, "Free Union," Collected Political Works, I (Paris, 1905), p. 329.

5 Drahomanov, "Introduction to Hromada," The Selected Works of M. Drahomanov (Prague, 1937), p. 120.

6 "Introduction to Hromada," Selected Works, p. 115.

7 Cf. Panas Fedenko, "M. Drahomanov and Pierre Joseph Proudhon," A Symposium in Honor of M. Drahomanov, Vasyl Simovych, ed. (Prague, 1932), pp. 271 ft.

8 Drahomanov, "Historical Poland and Great Russian Democracy," Collected Political Works, I, p. 124.

9 "Introduction to Hromada," Selected Works, p. 118.

10 Drahomanov, "Contribution to the Biography of A. I. Zhelyabov," Collected Political Works, II (Paris, 1906), p. 435.

11 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 124.

12 "Introduction to Hromada," Selected Works, p. 115. 13 Drahomanov, Letters to Ivan Franco and Others, I (Lviv, 1906), pp. 138-139.

14 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 194.

15 Drahomanov's Correspondence with M. Pavlyk (Chernivtsi, 1910-11), III, p. 382.

16 Drahomanov, "The Nationality Question in Russia," Collected Political Works, II, p. 865.

17 Drahomanov, "Narodnaya Volya on the Centralization of the Revolutionary Struggle in Russia," Collected Political Works, II, p. 397, n.

18 Drahomanov, Peculiar Thoughts on the Ukrainian National Cause (Vienna, 1915), pp. 76-81.

18 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 259.

20 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, pp. 318-319.

21 Cf. Fedir Slyusarenko, "Drahomanov's Studies of Roman History," Symposium in Honor of M. Drahomanov, pp. 243 ff.

22 Correspondence of M. Drahomanov (Lviv, 1901), p. 123.

33 Drahomanov, Tacitus and the Question of the Historical Importance of the Roman Empire (Kiev, 1870), pp. 36-37.

24 Drahomanov, Paradise and Progress (Vienna, 1915), p. 64.

25 Cf. Volodymyr Doroshenko, "Drahomanov's Ideas on Religious and Ecclesiastical Problems," Faith and Knowledge (Kolomea, 1926), No. 6.

26 Drahomanov, "Maria, a Poem by Shevchenko," Collected Political Works II, p. 756.

27 Gf. M. Drahomanov, "Religion and Politics," A Memorium to M. Drahomanov, Yakiv Dovbyshchenko, ed. (Kharkiv, 1920), p. 89.

28 Drahomanov's Correspondence with Teojil Okunevsky (Lviv, 1905), p. 208.

29 Drahomanov, Tales of Jealous Gods (New York, 1918).

30 Drahomanov, "Maria, a Poem by Shevchenko," Collected Political Works, II, p. 757.

31 Volodymyr Doroshenko, op. cit., p. 9.

32 To be found in Drahomanov's Correspondence with M. Pavlyk, VI, p. 184. These principles recognize the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of all men, and the self-government of all communities of three or more members of the Brotherhood.

33 Drahomanov's Correspondence with Teofil Okunevsky, p. 209.

34 Drahomanov, Editorial Comments, Hromada, IV, (Geneva, 1879), pp. 350, 356.

35 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 256.

36 Drahomanov, "Recent Russian Articles on the Polish Question," Collected Political Works, II, p. 558.

37 Drahomanov, Paradise and Progress, p. 61.

38 Cf. Drahomanov, "The Program of the Review Hromada," infra.

39 Drahomanov, "The Russo-Ukrainian Peasants under the Hungarian Liberals," Le Travailleur (Geneva, 1877), quoted in D. Zaslavsky, M. P. Drahomanov, A Critical Biographical Sketch (Kiev, 1924), p. 86.

40 Drahomanov, "Absolutism and Capitalism," Collected Political Works, II, p. 573.

41 "Introduction to Hromada," Selected Works, p. 122.

42 Drahomanov, Letters to the Dnieper Ukraine (Vienna, 1915), p. 38.

43 Peculiar Thoughts, p. 13.

44 Ibid., p. 16.

45 Cf. Drahomanov, "Political and Social Ideas in Ukrainian Folk Son infra.

46 Drahomanov's Correspondence with M. Pavlyk, VI, pp. 151-152.

47 The Archives of M. Drahomanov, p. 308.

48 "Free Union," Collected Political Works, I, p. 350.

49 Drahomanov, Reminiscences of Austrian Ruthenia (Lviv, 1889-1892) p. 445.

50 Correspondence of M. Drahomanov, pp. 22-23.

51 "Free Union," Collected Political Works, I, p. 348.

52 Infra., part II, section 5.

53 "Introduction to Hromada," Selected Works, p. 119.

54 "Absolutism and Capitalism," Collected Political Works, II, p. 572.

55 Reminiscences of Austrian Ruthenia, p. 356.

56 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 151.

57 Drahomanov's Correspondence with M. Pavlyk, VI, p. 29.

58 Drahomanov, "Shevchenko, the Ukrainophiles, and Socialism," Hromada, IV (Geneva, 1879), pp. 199-200.

59 Ibid., pp. 206-207.

60 Ibid., p. 212.

61 Drahomanov, Editorial comments, Hromada, IV, p. 313.

62 Drahomanov, "Terrorism and Freedom," Collected Political Works, II, pp. 289 and 301.

63 Cf. D. Zaslavsky, M. P. Drahomanov, A Critical Biographical Sketch p. 100.

64 This is the basic idea of M. Hrushevsky's study, Drahomanov and His Socialist Circle in Geneva (Vienna, 1922). From the official Soviet Russian standpoint the theory of an independent origin of Ukrainian marxism is of course a capital heresy. Charges of this nationalist deviation played a role in the liquidation of the native Ukrainian Communist leaders in the 1930's. 65 Correspondence of M. Drahomanov, p. 122.

66 "Free Union," Collected Political Works, I, p. 350.

67 Drahomanov's Correspondence with M. Pavlyk, VI, p. 143.

68 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 137.

69 "Free Union," Collected Political Works, p. 344.

70 Ibid., pp. 342-343.

71 Drahomanov, "The Magic of Energy," Collected Political Works, II, p. 38!

72 Ibid., p. 384.

73 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 216.

74 "Contribution to the Biography of A. I. Zhelyabov," Collected Political Works, II, p. 427.

75 "Introduction to Hromada," Selected Works, p. 130, n.

76 This is the general thesis of Drahomanov's "Historical Poland and Great Russian Democracy," Collected Political Works, I.

77 Drahomanov, "Natural Regions and Socialist Propaganda," Collected Political Works, H, pp. 330 ff.

78 Zaslavsky, M. P. Drahomanov, A Critical Biographical Sketch, p. 109.

79 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 145.

80 Ibid., p. 49.

81 Ibid., p. 220.

82 Drahomanov, Ukrainian Literature Proscribed by the Tsarist Government (Geneva, 1878), p. 8.

83 Drahomanov, "Autobiography," Selected Works, p. 70.

84 "Shevchenko, the Ukrainophiles, and Socialism," Hromada, IV, p. 195.

85 Ibid., pp. 215-216.

86 Cf. Drahomanov, "The Lost Epoch," infra.

87 Drahomanov, "Belinsky's Letter to Gogol," Collected Political Works, II, p. 246, n.

88 Letters to the Dnieper Ukraine, pp. 17 ff.

89 Letters to the Dnieper Ukraine, p. 18.

90 Ibid., p. 22.

91 "Introduction to Hromada," Selected Works, p. 108.

92 "The Nationality Question in Russia," Collected Political Works, II, p. 866.

93 "Introduction to Hromada," Selected Works, p. 112.

94 Peculiar Thoughts, p. 94.

95 Ibid., p. 102.

96 "Contribution to the Biography of A. I. Zhelyabov," Collected Political Works, II, p. 418.

97 "Terrorism and Freedom," Collected Political Works, II, p. 287.

98 "Drahomanov's Answer to the Greetings Received on the Occasion of h Jubilee," Selected Works, p. 92.

99 Zhelyabov's message to Drahomanov is quoted in "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 213.

100 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 215.

101 "Introduction to Hromada," Selected Works, p. 147.

102 "Introduction to Hromada," Selected Works, p. 138.

103 Ibid., p. 125.

104 Letters to the Dnieper Ukraine, p. 16.

105 Cf. Drahomanov, "Political and Social Ideas in Ukrainian Folk Songs," infra.

106 Drahomanov, "Cossack Traditions and Social Needs in the Kuban Region," Hromada, V (Geneva, 1882), pp. 225 ff.

107 "Drahomanov's Answer to Greetings," Selected Works, p. 91.

108 "Drahomanov's Answer to Greetings," Selected Works, pp. 89-90; Archives of M. Drahomanov, pp. 240, 331.

109 Archives of M. Drahomanov, p. 271.

110 In the Foreword to Drahomanov's Letters to Ivan Franko, II.

111 "Free Union," Collected Political Works, I, pp. 297-299.

112 "Introduction to Hromada," Selected Works, p. 139.

113 Peculiar Thoughts, p. 20.

114 Archives of M. Drahomanov, p. 245.

115 Cf. "Shevchenko, the Ukrainophiles, and Socialism," Hromada, IV.

116 Letters to the Dnieper Ukraine, pp. 64-65.

117 The Archives of M. Drahomanov, p. 315.

118 Ibid., p. 32

119 In the Foreword to Drahomanov's Letters to Ivan Franko, II.

120 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 253.

121 Cf. infra, part II, section 3.

122 Not to be confused with the present Soviet administrative unit of the same name.

123 "Free Union," Collected Political Works, I, pp. 314 ff.

124 Max Weber, "The Condition of Bourgeois Democracy in Russia," Archives of Social Science and Social Politics, XXII (Tubingen, 1906), p. 267.

125 "Introduction to Hromada," Selected Works, p. 142.

126 Cf. Drahomanov, "Centralism and the Revolutionary Struggle in Russia," infra.

127 "Belinsky's Letter to Gogol," Collected Political Works, II, p. 248.

128 "Free Union," Collected Political Works, I, p. 344, n.

129 Drahomanov's Correspondence with Meliton Buchynsky, p. 14.

130 Drahomanov, "What has the War Brought?" Collected Political Works, II, p. 121.

131 Drahomanov, "Liberalism and the Zemstvo in Russia," Collected Political Works, II.

132 "Shevchenko, the Ukrainophiles, and Socialism," Hromada, IV, p. 202.

133 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 259.

134 Letters to Ivan Franco, I, p. 66.

135 Zaslavsky, M. P. Drahomanov, A Critical Biographical Sketch, p. 48.

136 Drahomanov, "The Jewish Question in the Ukraine," Collected Political Works, II, pp. 525 ft.

137 Zaslavsky, M. P. Drahomanov, p. 113.

138 "Historical Poland," Collected Political Works, I, p. 253.

139 Drahomanov treated the Polish question in detail in his capital work "Historical Poland and Great Russian Democracy," Collected Political Works, I.

140 Drahomanov's Correspondence with Teofil Okunevsky, p. 217.

141 Drahomanov, "Domestic Slavery and the War of Liberation," Collecte Political Works, II, p. 88.

142 Cf. Drahomanov, "Germany's Drive to the East and Moscow's Drh to the West," infra.