The National-Political Views of M. P. Dragomanov in 1888–1895

Abstract

Mykhailo Drahomanov’s political views are of considerable interest from the standpoint of the historical studies of Ukrainian national movement in the last quarter of the 19th century, relations of national movements with each other and with the imperial center. It may also be relevant for the theoretical comprehension of «nationalism» with regards to the analysis of current events. Drahomanov was not merely an active politician but also an ideologist who aimed to elaborate the theoretical framework to justify and to describe objectively his own activities and the activity of his allies and antagonists. Being the ideologist of Ukrainian «radicalism» (i.e. socialism) from 1870s, by the fall of 1880s Drahomanov found himself in an ideological confrontation – this time not with the Great Russian/Pan-Russian nationalists, imperials and Polish nationalists – with the Ukrainian national movement itself. In the end of the 1880s-beginning of the 1890s Drahomanov published a series of works which explained his understanding of the «national» and the prospects of the «Ukrainianism». Through the consideration of the separatist attitudes he insisted that there were no conditions of the emergence of the independent Ukrainian state without «the universal disaster». Hence, the aim of the Ukrainian movement is to change the political and administrative orders of the existing states. To do this they needed to propose attractive solutions for the majority of other participants of the political life. According to Drahomanov, for the Russian Empire it could be a federative reconstruction, which will give the opportunity to fulfill the national purposes on the local level regarding the power and maturity of national and/or local movements. These concerns, as he assumed, might be of interest not only to «plebeian nations», but also to the Great Russian population.