Chauvinism without “liberal” masks

Much has been written about the enigmatic phenomenon of genius. Arthur Schopenhauer, the brilliant aphorist and celebrated German philosopher, best captured the difference between genius and talent: “Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.”

One thing is obvious: universality-of interests, know­ledge, and philosophical and world views-and encyclopedic knowledge are the most reliable hallmarks of genius. A genius is an individual who perceives the great idea of the unity of the world and is evolving in his of her scientific, artistic, or political creativity. One of Ukraine’s geniuses was the outstanding scientist, geochemist, mineralogist, biologist, inorganic chemist, noted philosopher, and founder of the famous concept of noosphere Volodymyr Vernadsky, who made a powerful impact on the 20th-century. He too saw a target that no one else could.

The harmonization of relations among people, between man and society, and man and nature and the boundless universe was the ideal to which Vernadsky the thinker dedicated his long life (1863-1945). Why do I call Vernadsky one of “our Ukrainian” geniuses? Ma­ny of us still remember the way he was described under the So­viets: “an outstanding Soviet Russian scientist.” After all, Ver­nadsky was a respected member of the Central Committee of the Party of Constitutional Democrats at the time of both Russian revolutions.

Therefore, before I begin my discussion of Vernadsky’s work, which is little-known in Ukraine, it is worth saying a few words about his Ukrainian character. Here are a few established facts: Vernadsky was the founder and first president of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1918. This choice was determined by his family, national, and cultural roots that resided deep in the consciousness of this scientist of encyclopedic knowledge. In his memoirs he wrote: “My father and mother were Kyivites. Both families upheld Ukrainian na­tional traditions. I spent my childhood (1868-76) in Ukraine-in Poltava and Kharkiv; I also visited Kyiv. My father and mother knew the Ukrainian language well. My mother was very musical: she had a strong mezzo soprano voice and sang Ukrainian songs so beautifully. We also had choirs at home. This produced a very strong impression on me...”

Of course, Vernadsky’s “eth­no­­graphic” interest in Uk­rai­ne and its song culture is not the issue here. His diary contains interesting entries dated 1879 and 1881. Even as a young man Vernadsky was outraged by the fact that “the authorities prohibit my native tongue, my culture.” Ukraine was his beloved native land. Later, he would refer to himself as a “Russian by culture and by the entire set-up of my life,” but he specified-and this is very important-that he was a “Russian whose whole life has always been connected with both Ukraine and the Ukrainian liberation movement.” These were not mere words, as readers will discover after familiarizing themselves with the main points of Vernadsky’s article entitled “The Ukrainian Question and Russian Society.”

He wrote this article in Ukraine (Shyshaky, in today’s Poltava oblast), in 1915-1916, at the peak of Russia’s imperialistic and chauvinistic campaign during the First World War. I hope that thoughtful readers will also appreciate the author’s fundamental know­ledge of Ukrainian history and his decisive rejection of mossy chauvinistic dogmas, specifically, the concept of “our common history” and a “single Slavic (read: Russian) people.” Sometimes these concepts also refer to a single Orthodox Slavic civilization, an integral part of which Ukraine was, is, and always will be. Today, these tenets are insistently and arrogantly imposed on us by Russia’s pro-Kremlin media.

The ideas expressed in the article by Volodymyr Vernadsky, this outstanding son of both Ukraine and Russia, are the best antidote for such poisonous falsehoods. Naturally, the article never appeared in print during the author’s lifetime, as he primarily addresses liberal Russian intellectuals, who were still not poisoned by the venom of chauvinism and whose views were close to his own. What makes his article so special is the fact that it can (and should) be read in the context of 20th-century Ukrainian, Russian, and world history. We remember all its horrors: wars, genocide, and repressions. It may be said that history itself has placed a thousandfold emphasis on the an­ti­chauvinistic spirit of Vernadsky’s article.

Below are the key points of this great thinker’s article. Owing to lack of space, I have selected only the most important passages.

“The essence of the Ukrainian question is that the Ukrainian (Little Russian) people have developed into a definite ethnographic individuality with national consciousness, thanks to which the ef­forts of close and distant relatives to turn it back into simple ethnographic material in order to strengthen the ruling people are still unsuccessful.

“Ukrainian national identity has evolved on the foundation of ethnographic distinctions, psychological specifics, cultural aspirations, and strata that link Ukraine to Western Europe, and through the historically formed life of the people, which is permeated with the democratic spirit.

“After the Polish-Ukrainian struggle ended with the voluntarily unification of the Ukrainian state with Muscovite tsardom on the basis of the 1654 treaty, there began a long period of friction between the Ukrainian population and the Russian government, still un­der­way, which was determined by the latter’s centralist aspirations.

“In the 17th and 18th centuries, Russian-Ukrainian relations boiled down to the gradual assimilation and absorption by Russia of Ukraine, an alien body politic- processes that were accompanied by the liquidation of the foundations of local cultural life (education, freedom to pub­lish books in Ukrainian) and the persecution of even ethnographic distinctions. By the end of the 18th century, the consistent development of new principles of administration had succeeded in obliterating the traces of Ukraine’s administrative autonomy, while the disintegration of social relations that ac­companied the new way of life had weakened Ukrainian opposition to Great Russian centralism.

“As under Polish rule, the upper strata of Ukrainian society to a significant degree met the government’s unifying trends halfway, while the masses, in keeping with the new socioeconomic structure that was spreading throughout Uk­raine, were being transformed into living implements of the state economy, thus losing their importance as an active force in Ukraine’s national and cultural life.

“The process of the disintegration of Ukraine’s political unity did not take place without protests on the part of conscious elements of the Ukrainian population or without extraordinary measures adopted by the state, which accelerated the introduction of a new system that was being constructed on the ruins of the old one. There were local revolts, the first hetmans’ attempts to rescue national political independence with the aid of other states. Outright military rebellions were cru­shed, only to be followed by severe repressions instituted by the central government, which adopted a variety of measures to destroy Ukraine’s military strength, including special punitive expeditions (e.g., to destroy the Zaporozhian Sich) and deportations.

“In the 19th century Ukraine ceased to exist as a political organism with its own independent internal life, having been ‘finally taken in hand by Russia,’ as Peter I declared. All traces of autonomy vanished. All local administrative specifics, which corresponded to the character of the Ukrainian people and constituted the finest achievements of national culture - the organization of public education, a specific church and religious life - had been replaced by the general Russian order that rested on the three pillars of centralism, absolutism, and bureaucracy. The revival of the Ukrainian movement and its new forms immediately met with legal repressions on the part of the government, marking the beginning of a new period in the struggle of official Russia against the Uk­rainian people, this time mostly against its national and cultural life as the real foundation of the Ukrainian intelligentsia’s national self-consciousness. In the official terminology the Ukrainian movement of this period became known as ‘Ukrainian separatism.’

“The tsarist government’s measures against the Ukrainian movement, not including the persecution of individual Ukrainian figures, were manifested in a special system of censorship that restricted the usage of Ukrainian in printed matter to the narrowest scope; the placement of obstacles in the way of Ukrainian dramaturgy and theater; the persecution of the Ukrainian language in schools; and the overall hostile attitude to any manifestation of Ukrainian national self-consciousness or even the spontaneous pull toward the national Ukrainian element.

“The extent to which the official policy disregarded the interests of education and culture in such cases is evident from the fact that the Uk­rai­nian national idea was persecuted with special viciousness in religious-ecclesiastical and school literature. What the Uk­rai­nian intelligentsia saw as the best tools of education and the straightest road to the moral and cultural elevation of the masses the government saw only as a threat to the unity of the Russian people and the strength of the state.

“This intensive struggle against the Ukrainian movement lasted, with some fluctuations and intermissions, for more than 50 years, from 1847 to 1905. This struggle was motivated by declarations of the ethnographic, cultural, and linguistic unity of the separate branches of the Ukrainian nation and the equal share they had in the formation of the Russian literary language, whose overall state role allegedly excludes the need for the equal development of other languages and literatures... At the same time, the threat of ‘Ukrainian separatism’ and the prevalence of anti-state socialist trends within the Ukrainian movement were stressed. Finally, suspicions and accusations were voiced about the alleged foreign origins of the Ukrainian movement, which had been brought about and supported by Russia’s age-old enemies, the Poles and Germans (I am strongly tempted to add Americans here - I.S.), and so on.

“During the brief period of 1905-1907, the liberation movement freed the Ukrainians from special censorship, gave them a press, and expanded the boundaries of literary work. There were even at­tempts to organize community activities in the sphere of public education. This was followed by another period of persecution of the Ukrainian movement, coinciding with the intensification of nationalistic trends in Russian society, on which Stolypin relied in his domestic policies. The struggle against the inorodtsy (foreigners, i.e., non-Russians) seeking national self-determination be­came one of the mottos of Stolypin’s administration, and Ukrainians were de­li­berately included in the numbers of these foreigners, as established by the government. In a range of circulars (di­rec­tives) issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Stolypin proclaimed the struggle against Ukrainians as a state task that Russia has borne since the 17th century.”