What did the Russians think about the Ukrainians and the Ukrainian idea before the revolution?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Throwing such expressions as "Ukrainophobia" has become fashionable now. Say, Putin's Kiselevism paints a propaganda image of Ukrainians that is being implanted in the country. It is worth understanding how the Ukrainian idea was perceived among authentic Russians - before the Revolution and in the White emigration.

First, it is worthwhile to understand that the “Ukrainians” we know and love (at least we know) were born in the Soviet Union and with the support of the Soviet regime. The very concept of Ukrainian nationalism existed before the Revolution, it appeared in the second half of the 19th century. But that “Ukrainianness” was a marginal phenomenon; we wrote about its origins. In Russian society, these people were considered freaks, sectarians. The most diverse strata of the population criticized the Ukrainians, both among the guardians of the Black Hundred movement, and among the nationalist critics of the Tsarist government. On the conservative side, it is worth noting Andrei Vladimirovich Storozhenko, a famous historian, Slavist and literary critic. He is considered one of the main specialists in the history of Ukraine and was a member of the Kiev Club of Russian Nationalists, one of the main right-wing intellectual centers in the country. After the Revolution, the Bolsheviks shot members of the Club according to lists; Storozhenko is one of the few who managed to escape from the Cheka.

Storozhenko interpreted Ukrainian nationalism as a cultural atavism; as a retreat from Russian culture provoked by the Poles and Austrians. In his opinion, the Russian population, having lost Russian culture, is becoming a barbaric under-denomination. A. Tsarinny cites in his book “Ukrainian separatism in Russia. The ideology of national schism”quote from Storozhenko, in which he outlined these thoughts very briefly:

Because on the territory of the so-called "Ukraine" there is no other culture, except for the Russian one, Ukrainians or "Mazepians", as they were called before the Revolution, have to turn to other cultures, including autochthonous ones, i.e. nomads. As Storozhenko notes:

Storozhenko was a prominent specialist in the history of southern Russia, a real polymath and a staunch Russian patriot and nationalist - he was a member of the Kiev Club of Russian Nationalists and the All-Russian National Union. After he was nearly shot by the Bolsheviks, his works were banned in the Soviet Union. They were declared "bourgeois-landlord, great-power" literature, since they interfered with Ukrainization.

The Ukrainian idea itself was by no means associated with Little Russians or even Galicians. Especially the Galicians were still Russian patriots then, to the point that the Austrians had to build the Tallerhof concentration camp and massively hang Russian nationalists from Galicia. By the way, at one of these trials, the great-grandfather of the famous Ukrainian nationalist Oleg Tyagnibok, Longin Tsegelsky, acted as a witness for the prosecution.

The carriers of the Ukrainian idea, in addition to sectarians from Austrian test tubes and urban madmen, were primarily perceived as Poles and Jews. For example, the famous Russian nationalist and publicist Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov describes a demonstration of Ukrainian nationalists in 1914 near the Austrian embassy in Kiev as follows:

Three years earlier, the founder of the All-Russian National Union and personal friend of Stolypin, Menshikov, gave the following characterization to the Ukrainian movement:

It is obvious that these people, in general, had little in common with modern Ukrainian nationalists. The Ukrainian nationalist before the Revolution is an urban madman who is trying to introduce more Polish words into the Russian language and who suggests intercourse with Jews in order to move away from Great Russian inheritance. Just a few years later, Ukrainian nationalism became famous for organizing such monstrous Jewish pogroms in the person of Petliura that the "white punisher" Ungern nervously smoked on the sidelines.

The latest, militant version of Ukrainian nationalism was faced by Russian nationalist White Guards after the Revolution. First of all, Ukrainian nationalists were perceived as Judas, traitors, traitors. One of the leaflets of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia for 1919 announced:

At the same time, the traitors knew that they were traitors, and at first tried to avoid clashes with yesterday's brothers in arms. Pavel Feofanovich Shandruk, staff captain of the Russian Imperial Army, later a prometheist and cornet general of the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, described in his memoirs a case at the very beginning of the Civil War: his Ukrainian armored train drove into Melitopol, where he found some soldiers speaking -Russian. Thinking that they were Bolsheviks, he ordered to open fire on them. In response, the "polite people" fired back and raised the Russian tricolor. The soldiers turned out to be a detachment of Mikhail Gordeevich Drozdovsky, they were in the famous "Drozdovsky campaign" from Romania to the Don. Shandruk sent an envoy to Drozdovsky, and Drozdovsky announced that he would leave the city - with or without a fight. Shandruk, realizing that he would have to deal not with the grimy Red Guards, but with the "First Brigade of Russian Volunteers", got scared of them and ordered to let them through. The Drozdovites calmly continued on their way.

Drozdovsky, a hero of the First World War, a Knight of the Order of St. George and a monarchist, left a note in his diary about his attitude towards the Ukrainians. Of particular interest is the behavior of the Germans, who had no illusions about their murziloks:

“The Germans are enemies, but we respect them, although we hate them … Ukrainians have only contempt for them, as for renegades and unbridled gangs. Germans towards Ukrainians - undisguised contempt, bullying, prodding. They call it a gang, a rabble; when the Ukrainians tried to seize our car, a German commandant was present at the station, shouting at the Ukrainian officer: "So that I don't have to repeat this again." The difference in attitudes towards us, hidden enemies, and towards Ukrainians, allies, is incredible. One of the officers of the passing Ukrainian echelon told the German: it would be necessary to disarm them, that is, us, and received the answer: they are also fighting the Bolsheviks, they are not hostile to us, they pursue the same goals with us, and he would not have turned his tongue to say that, he believes dishonest … The Ukrainian bounced back …"

There were no negotiations with the separatists. General May-Mayevsky clearly stated that "Petliura will either become a united, indivisible Russia with a broad territorial identity on our platform, or he will have to fight us." The hostilities and the capture of Kiev followed - in fact, these events are the only episode in history that can be called a "Russian-Ukrainian" war. This war was brilliantly won by the Whites (i.e. the Russians), and the White Guards who entered Kiev dispersed the entire army of the UPR. In Kiev, there were 18 thousand regular soldiers of the UPR, in addition, there were 5 thousand partisans in the area of the city. 3,000 White Guards and a thousand more soldiers from the officers' squads entered the city - the Ukrainian "army" surrendered without offering resistance. General Bredov announced after the "battle" that "Kiev has never been Ukrainian and never will be."

There were no further negotiations - only with "Western Ukrainians", or rather, with Russian people from the Ukrainian Galician Army. Bredov continued negotiations with them and achieved the Zyatkov agreement - the entry of the Galician army into the Armed Forces of the South of Russia. The rest of the so-called "Ukrainians" Bredov ordered to convey that "… let them not come, they will be arrested and shot as traitors and bandits."

However, the White Guards clashed with the Ukrainians not only in the South. Wildfields patriots came across in other regions, which sometimes led to funny episodes. The Knight of St. George and the hero of the White Struggle in Siberia, General Sakharov, describes one of these cases:

The controversy with the Ukrainians continued after the victory of the Bolsheviks, in exile. Even more - it was only in exile that the Ukrainian traitors were finally able to calmly write their separatist books and draw maps with Ukraine from the Carpathians to the Kuban, since, unfortunately, there were no longer the steel regiments of the White Army nearby.

One of the most notable Russian responses to the Ukrainians was published in Belgrade, in 1939. It was written by an ambiguous and controversial figure - V. V. Shulgin, but we cannot disagree with his arguments in this work. This work is called "Ukrainians and We". In it, he briefly describes the history of Ukrainians, proves the absurdity of their historical and national concept, and gives an overview of the current situation. In his opinion, the established Ukrainian nation is a product of unsuccessful historical events and, naturally, the defeat of Russia. He summarizes:

This is the verdict of the Russian people. Whoever of the real Russians came across the so-called Ukrainians - tsarist scientists, nationalist publicists, White Guard officers, ordinary Russian peasants - they all greeted the Ukrainians with enmity. As convinced supporters of Historical Russia, who see it as a moral ideal, we can only repeat the prophecy and dream of Shulgin, which he put at the very end of his work:

"The time will come when, instead of the lies and misanthropy of the Ukrainian schismatics, truth, harmony and love will prevail under the high hand of the United Indivisible Russia!"

Kirill Kaminets