While the leaders of Russian Provisional Government and White
movement, as mentioned above, in the short time of war and revolution
simply rejected the existence of separate Ukrainian states in 1917-1920,110
and to a considerable extent repeated the prewar liberal and
conservative considerations of Ukraine, the Russian political thought
on emigration again demonstrated a new degree of the scholarly and
theoretical attitude toward the Ukrainian question.
The Ukrainian problem was very widely envisaged in the studies of
the representatives of a well-known trend in Russian political thought
- evraziistvo.111
The territory of Russia -the USSR -Eurasians perceived as a special
historical and geographical world belonging neither to Europe nor to
Asia, as peculiar historical and geographical individuality.112
According to one of the founders of evraziistvo, the son of
Vladimir Vernadskii - Georgii Vernadskii (1897-1972), the total Slavic
population of Eastern Europe was largely inclined toward unification
and making a united Russian people, which would build a united country.
Vernadskii gives a general history of the Eastern European population,
i.e. Slavs and their neighbours.113 As to the Russian
history, he stands on the positions of the old historiography: be it
Kiev or Novgorod, Smolensk or Moscow - they are "Russian" towns. "The
division of the Russian people into three branches: the Great Russians,
the Malorussians and the Belorussians" - he writes - "goes back to a
much later period. Until the thirteenth century there was no, more or
less, distinct branching."114 To Vernadskii,
the understanding by a people of its "place - development" (mestorazvitiia)
leads to the establishment of its organic conception of the world. The
historical world outlook of the Russian people (or its ruling classes)
is far from being always connected with its perception of the "place -
development."115
In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, in place of the
All-Russian federation, all the members of which used the same
constitution, we find a sharp division between the Eastern Rus'
(Muscovite - V.P.) and the Western Rus'. In addition, military powers
of a new type (the Cossacks) had appeared in the southern borderlands
of both of them.116
They had represented old Russian democratic traditions, though these
traditions now received a new peculiar form: a military brotherhood.
Aristocratic element of the authority had not only been preserved in
the Western Rus', but it had been even more intensified under the
Polish influence. It was this element that had become the foundation of
the Western Rus' (Ukrainian and Belorussian - V.P.) political system.117
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Russian state had
come to a vast expansion, and "the Russian people almost in its
complete composition had found themselves within a single country."
But, after that had been achieved, the attempts of separatist strivings
began out of the middle of the Russian nation by a part of Ukrainian
and Belorussian activists. The separatists try to ground the state
independence of Ukraine and Belorussia by the cultural originality of
the Ukrainians and the Belorussians, which, essentially, according to
Vernadskii, is a political fiction, since the Ukrainians and the
Belorussians are the branches of a single Russian people. The
reunification of the seventeenth century had resulted in a movement
from Malorussia to Moscow and to increase of the cultural influence of
the former on Moscow. "Russians born in Malorussia, - noted Vernadskii,
- had worked in all branches of culture."118 In the nineteenth
century this process had been even more intensified, since those "born"
in the Malorussia not only had been accepted by the All-Russian
cultural movement, but they had even headed it for some time.
Vernadskii concluded that "the Empire's statehood, culture and language
should not be considered as being only of the Great Russians; all this
is a product of the whole Russian people."119 The underlying
forces in the political make-up of Eurasia were psychological
similarity. Though Great Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians, each of
whom represents a cultural branch of Eastern Slavs, have some
differences, politically and psychologically (the desire of a strong
state power, Orthodox religion, and so on) they stand together. Both
the century-long westward expansion of the Mongols and the later
eastward expansion of the Russians, Vernadskii maintained, were
dictated by "geopolitical" conditions and a common striving for the
realization of one and the same idea of a Eurasian state.120 The Union of
Ukraine with Russia he perceived as the decisive event in the attitudes
among the eastern Slavs and Poland, and accordingly of the formation of
the Russian empire and Eurasian statehood.
Nikolai Trubetskoi saw fit to argue for the vitality of the
"All-Russian" cultural idea while accentuating the unproductiveness of
its Ukrainian counterpart. His argument, in summary, consisted of these
major points: "It is obvious that Ukrainians participated actively and
on an equal footing with the Great Russias not only in the genesis but
in the development of this all-Russian culture; and they did so as
Ukrainians, without abandoning their ethnic identity... This culture
lost over time any specific Great Russian or Ukrainian identification
and became all-Russian... It is simply impossible to deny the fact that
Russian culture during the post-Petrine era is All-Russian and that it
is not foreign to Ukrainians."121
Trubetskoi's reasoning was reminiscent of ideas that echoed in
Ukrainian society during 1860s and 1880s: in the 1920s, however, his
ideas were a glaring anachronism that went against prevailing Ukrainian
cultural self-perceptions. In many respects Trubetskoi was speaking the
language of P. Kulish, M. Kostomarov and M. Drahomanov. Like
Trubetskoi, the three renowned nineteenth-century intellectuals
conceptualized Ukrainian culture in relationship to, and in terms of,
all-Russian culture, which, of course, was ubiquitous in the life of
every Ukrainian living in the Empire. These men posited Ukraine and
Russia as regional societies within a bi-cultural (Rus') state. "A
regional and tribal differentiation of Russian culture" - wrote
Trubetskoi - "should not extend to the very top of the cultural
edifice, to cultural assets of a higher order. There must be no tribal
or regional boundaries (i.e., Great Russian or Ukrainian) on the top
story of Russian culture in the future... Any new Ukrainian culture
would fail because talented people... given completely free choice...
will quite naturally opt for the culture of the ethnological whole
(i.e. all-Russian culture - V.P.) and not for the culture of a part of
that whole (i.e. Ukrainian culture). It follows that the only people
who could opt for Ukrainian culture are those biased in some way or
limited in their freedom of choice."122
Ideally, the obligation of that bi-cultural (Rus') state was to
preserve and cultivate the cultural identities of both Slavic peoples
in a fair and equitable manner. In the eyes of Trubetskoi, Ukrainian
culture was certainly not a "variant" of Russian (Muscovite) culture,
but it was, nevertheless, acknowledged to exist in a complementary and
auxiliary relationship within a larger, i.e., imperial (Russian) system
that, significantly, was conceived as something (at least partially)
"native." Trubetskoi remarked: "However likely it is that a new
Ukrainian culture would resolve the problem of conforming the bottom
story (low culture - V.P.) of its edifice to its foundations in the
people, it will never resolve even partially the other problem:
creating a new top story (i.e., high culture) that could satisfy the
needs of the intelligentsia more fully than the top story of the old
all-Russian culture did. A new Ukrainian culture would be in no
position to compete successfully with the old culture in meeting these
spiritual and intellectual needs."123 This concept of
Ukrainian culture reflected the existential reality of individuals like
Kulish and Kostomarov (and before them many other, including Gogol')
who played dual roles in the Empire as preeminent contributors to both
Ukrainian and all-Russian (Imperial) society. Trubetskoi, like Kulish,
Kostomarov and Drahomanov in the nineteenth century was to concede that
Ukrainians were generally neglected and "under- appreciated" in the
Empire.124
Trubetskoi thought that thus the differences between the Russian
(Eastern-Slavic) tongues - Great Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian are
not so great as to prevent communication between the speakers of these
tongues, it was not linguistically necessary to create a separate
Ukrainian literary language.125 To Trubetskoi, in
the poetical works of Shevchenko, Kotliarevs'kyi and other better
Ukrainian authors the language is deliberately popular, deliberately
nonliterary. Stressing that without the link of Ukrainian influence
Europeanism could hardly have taken root on Russian soil and that the
Ukrainization of Great Russian culture opened the Russia road to
Europeanization, he argued that from the other hand Russian literary
language naturally became the language of educated Ukrainians.126
Trubetskoi remarked: "A literary language must choose adequate means
for the expression of concepts or shades of thought which are alien to
the thinking of the uneducated popular masses and for that very reason
it is obvious that the popular language must lack the means necessary
to express such concepts. The literary language of the majority of
educated Ukrainians was the Russian literary language. This, of course,
by no means excluded the use of purely popular Ukrainian in works of a
certain literary genre in which the author, himself belonging to the
intelligentsia, deliberately limits his outlook to that of an
uneducated person."127
Trubetskoi believed that in future the Ukrainian language and
culture would cease to be the instrument of a narrow national
self-restriction and separation but would become the instrument of
creating a really great culture, a Ukrainian individuation of the
All-Russian culture, equal in rights and value with the Great Russian
culture. He wrote that for the Ukrainians he considered as the most
proper the following form of self-perception: "for the Ukrainians there
is, first of all, the understanding that they are not only Ukrainians,
but also Russian, and not only Russians, but also Ukrainians, that
there is no "Russian" outside "Ukrainian," as the Russian nation -
individuality, actually, does not exist outside, but only within its
individuations: the Great Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian."128
The main opponents of the Eurasians - the "Europeanists," being
mainly from the camp of Russian historian positivist emigrants -
Miliukov,129
Evgenii Shmurlo (1853-1934), Petr Bitsilli (1879-1953), Georgii Fedotov
(1886-1951) and others, unambiguously in their geopolitical dimensions
of Russian national identity, side with the Euro-Atlantic community,
thus continuing the quest started by Peter the Great. They do not much
differ from their intellectual predecessors, the nineteenth century
Westernizers, who also looked at Russia as, potentially, a normal
European power, though somewhat delayed in its development.
Professor of history of Novorossiisk and, later, Sophia University,
Petr Bitsilli, remarked, that in the USSR there is a "very funny and
awful process of artificial language - made from the dialects of the
Russian language - Ukrainian and Belorussian."130 This Ukrainian
culture, which is constructed under the coercion "is not a culture, but
only its vision."131
Bicilli, believing that if there is no culture, there is no nation and,
recognizing the existence of the Ukrainian culture, nevertheless,
classified the Ukrainian nation as an underdeveloped one. "For those
Ukrainians" - he wrote - "who realize and appreciate their ties with
the Russian culture, the Ukrainian language is either "only a dialect,"
or "the second language," just like, for a Provençl, the Provençl
language is: but to no Provençl would ever come to head to renounce,
for Mistral's sake, Racine and Balsac. For those Ukrainians, who do not
feel and appreciate these ties, the Ukrainian language is the only one
(sic by Bitsilli) "native language."132 So, according to
Bitsilli's deepest belief, any Ukrainization would have to be carried
out by force, since the Russian culture is to that extent powerful
that, in the conditions of a free competition, the Ukrainian language
is unable to develop close to it. He believes that it is impossible to
make the Russified Ukrainians adopt the Ukrainian culture, because the
Ukrainian people, if given the freedom of "cultural self-determination"
will assimilate with the Russian people. "It is insane to stand in the
way of the people's free (sic by Bitsilli) assimilation
process... Let us presume that the Ukrainian people had freely and
unnoticingly for itself adopted the Russian (i.e. the All-Russian)
language. The Ukrainian people would not "lose its identity" by doing
this; it would become unified with the Russian people; it would receive
communion to "the soul" of Pushkin and Tolstoi, just like, in his time,
Gogol' had received communion to it, who, in his turn, had very
immensely enriched "the Russian soul."133 Bitsilli viewed
the Ukrainians only as an ethnic group. Though he presupposed, that
Ukrainians could become a nation in future, he considered the creation
of a separate Ukrainian identity as a useless goal, because only with
the help of "differentiation without disintegration" Ukrainians could
recall and recover their own native culture.134 The notions of
Ukrainian "separatists" that every ethnic group can obtain its own
state and thus become a nation he called utopian. "In reality" - wrote
he - "the mutual attitudes among 'the nation' (culture) and ethnography
(narod) - are more complicated."135 Bitsilli was
convinced, that Kiev will be never transferred, in contrary to L'vov,
into Ukrainian town.136
Historian and philosopher G. Fedotov announced that the
representatives of the Russian political and historical thought
themselves stressed the way to Ukrainian separatism, because they
investigated the Ukrainian question, particularly the legacy of Kievan
Rus' without significant background. He considered the attitude to the
third of the three capitals, i.e., Kiev, as the phenomenon, which
touches on the very essence of the Ukrainian-Russian relationship. "It
seems strange to speak about Kiev in our times, - remarked Fedotov.
Until very recently, we ourselves used to renounce Kiev's glory and
infamy, tracing our descent from (the banks of) the Oka and the Volga
(rivers). We ourselves gave Ukraine away to Hrushevs'kyi and paved the
way for Ukrainian separatism. Did Kiev ever occupy the center of our
thought, of our love? A striking fact: modern Russian literature has
completely left Kiev out."137
At the same time, in Fedotov's opinion, "the returning of Russia's
image to its rebelling sons" in the USSR during the repressions against
the leaders of the national republics was a very positive fact. "In the
USSR 'Motherland' was announced as a sacred word!" - he concluded.138