Ukrainian nationalism
Encyclopedia
Ukrainian nationalism refers to the Ukrainian
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 version of nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

.
Although the current Ukrainian state emerged fairly recently, some historians, such as Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, Orest Subtelny
Orest Subtelny
Orest Subtelny is a Canadian historian. Born in Kraków, Poland, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1973. Since 1982 he has been a professor in the departments of History and Political Science, York University, Toronto, Canada.-Career:...

 and Paul Magosci have cited the medieval state of Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....

 as an early precedents of specifically Ukrainian statehood. The origins of modern Ukrainian nationalism have also been traced to the 17th-century Ruthenian
Ruthenians
The name Ruthenian |Rus']]) is a culturally loaded term and has different meanings according to the context in which it is used. Initially, it was the ethnonym used for the East Slavic peoples who lived in Rus'. Later it was used predominantly for Ukrainians...

 uprising against the Polish Empire, led by Bohdan Khmelnytskyi.

Cossack nationalism

The Cossacks played a role in re-awakening a Ukrainian sense of identity within the steppe region. A dominant figure within the Cossack movement and in Ukrainian nationalist history, Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Zynoviy Mykhailovych Khmelnytsky was a hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossack Hetmanate of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates which resulted in the creation of a Cossack state...

, commanded the Zaporozhian Cossacks and led the Khmelnytsky Uprising
Khmelnytsky Uprising
The Khmelnytsky Uprising, was a Cossack rebellion in the Ukraine between the years 1648–1657 which turned into a Ukrainian war of liberation from Poland...

 against Polish rule in the mid-17th century. Khmelnytsky also succeeded in legitimizing a form of democracy which had been practiced by cossacks since the 14th century. This sense of democracy was a key part of the ethnic identity.

Khmelnytsky is still remembered and glorified in Ukrainian history in modern Ukraine.

Bohdan Khmelnytsky spoke of the liberation of the "entire Ruthenian people
Ruthenians
The name Ruthenian |Rus']]) is a culturally loaded term and has different meanings according to the context in which it is used. Initially, it was the ethnonym used for the East Slavic peoples who lived in Rus'. Later it was used predominantly for Ukrainians...

" and recent research has confirmed that the concept of a Ruthenian nation as a religious and cultural community had existed before his revolution.

Another prominent figure in Cossack nationalism is Hetman
Hetman
Hetman was the title of the second-highest military commander in 15th- to 18th-century Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which together, from 1569 to 1795, comprised the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or Rzeczpospolita....

 Ivan Mazepa
Ivan Mazepa
Ivan Stepanovych Mazepa , Cossack Hetman of the Hetmanate in Left-bank Ukraine, from 1687–1708. He was famous as a patron of the arts, and also played an important role in the Battle of Poltava where after learning of Peter I's intent to relieve him as acting Hetman of Ukraine and replace him...

. During the early 18th century, Mazepa made large financial contributions focused on the restoration of Ukrainian culture and history. He financed major reconstructions of the Saint Sophia Cathedral
Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev
Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev is an outstanding architectural monument of Kievan Rus'. Today, it is one of the city's best known landmarks and the first Ukrainian patrimony to be inscribed on the World Heritage List along with the Kiev Cave Monastery complex...

 in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

, and the elevation the Kyiv Mohyla Collegium to the status of Kyiv Mohyla Academy in 1694. Politically, however, Mazepa was misunderstood and misrepresented, and found little support among peasantry.

Ukrainian nationalism in literature

One of the most prominent figures in Ukrainian national history, the Ukrainian
Ukrainians
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...

 poet Taras Shevchenko
Taras Shevchenko
Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko -Life:Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven...

, voiced ideas of an independent and sovereign Ukraine in the 19th century. Taras Shevchenko used poetry to inspire cultural revival to the Ukrainian people and to strive to overthrow injustice. Shevchenko died in Saint Petersburg on March 10, 1861, the day after his 47th birthday. Ukrainians - not only the citizens of Ukraine, but Ukrainians who live throughout the world - regard him as a national hero. His collection of poetry Kobzar
Kobzar (book)
Kobzar , is a book of poems by Ukrainian poet and painter Taras Shevchenko, first published by him in 1840 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Taras Shevchenko was nicknamed The Kobzar after the publishing of this book...

 was the second book almost in each Ukrainian household in the beginning of 20th century (after the Bible). He became a symbol of the national cultural revival of Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

.

Beside Shevchenko numerous other poets have written in Ukrainian. Among them, Volodymyr Sosyura
Volodymyr Sosyura
Volodymyr Sosyura was a Ukrainian lyric poet.-Brief biography:...

 in his poem Love Ukraine (1944) stated that one cannot respect other nations without respect for one's own.

World War I

With the collapse of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 a political entity which encompassed political, community, cultural, and professional organizations was established in Kiev from the initiative from the Association of the Ukrainian Progressionists (abbr. TUP). This entity was called the "Tsentralna Rada
Tsentralna Rada
The Tsentralna Rada or Central Rada at first was the All-Ukrainian council that united political, public, cultural, professional organizations. Later after the All-Ukrainian National Congress that council became the revolutionary parliament of Ukraine...

" (Central Council) and was headed by the historian, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi. On January 22, 1918, the Tsentralna Rada declared Ukraine an independent country. This independence was recognized by the Russian government headed by Lenin, as well as the Central Powers and other states. However, this government did not survive very long because of pressures not only from Denikin's Russian White Guard, but also the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

, German and Entente
Entente Cordiale
The Entente Cordiale was a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and the French Republic. Beyond the immediate concerns of colonial expansion addressed by the agreement, the signing of the Entente Cordiale marked the end of almost a millennium of intermittent...

 intervention, and local banditism (Green Army of Grigoriev
Nikifor Grigoriev
Nikifor Grigoriev was born Nychypir Servetnyk in a small village of Zastavlia was a paramilitary leader noted for numerous switching of sides and anti-Semitism...

).

Interwar period in Soviet Ukraine

As Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

 rule took hold in Ukraine, the early Soviet government had its own reasons to encourage the national movements of the former Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

.

Until the early-1930s, Ukrainian culture enjoyed a widespread revival due to Bolshevik concessions known as the policy of Korenization ("indigenization"). In these years an impressive Ukrainization
Ukrainization
Ukrainization is a policy of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of Ukrainian culture, in various spheres of public life such as education, publishing, government and religion.The term is used, most prominently, for the...

 program was implemented throughout the republic. In such conditions, the Ukrainian national idea initially continued to develop and even spread to a large territory with traditionally mixed population in the east and south that became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

At the same time, despite the ongoing Soviet-wide anti-religious campaign
Religion in the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion and its replacement with atheism. To that end, the communist regime confiscated religious property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in schools...

, the Ukrainian national Orthodox Church was created, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church
Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church
The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church is one of the three major Orthodox Churches in Ukraine. Close to ten percent of the Christian population claim to be members of the UAOC. The other Churches are the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kiev Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Russophile Orthodox...

. The church was initially seen by the Bolshevik government as a tool in their goal to suppress the Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...

, always viewed with great suspicion by the regime for its being the cornerstone of the defunct Russian Empire and the initially strong opposition it took towards the regime change. Therefore, the government tolerated the new Ukrainian national church for some time and the UAOC gained a wide following among the Ukrainian peasantry.

These events greatly raised the national consciousness among the Ukrainians and brought about the development of a new generation of Ukrainian cultural and political elite. This in turn raised the concerns of Stalin, who saw danger in the Ukrainians' loyalty towards their nation competing with their loyalty to the Soviet State and in early 1930s the "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism
Bourgeois nationalism
Bourgeois nationalism is a term from Marxist phraseology. It refers to the alleged practice by the ruling classes of deliberately dividing people by nationality, race, ethnicity, or religion, so as to distract them from possible class warfare...

" was declared to be the primary problem in Ukraine. The Ukrainization policies were abruptly and bloodily reversed, most of the Ukrainian cultural and political elite was arrested and executed, and the nation was decimated with the artificial famine called the Holodomor
Holodomor
The Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine", millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of...

.

Interwar period in Western Ukraine

After WWI, Western Ukraine were incorporated in the newly restored Poland.

World War II

With the outbreak of war between Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 and the Soviet Union in 1941, many nationalists in Ukraine thought that they would have an opportunity to create an independent country once again. Some even collaborated with Nazi administration and military units. However, the German treatment of the local population quickly put an end to this.
Many of the fighters who had originally looked to the Nazis as liberators, quickly became disillusioned and formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) , which waged military campaign against Germans and later Soviet forces. The primary goal of OUN was “the rebirth, of setting everything in order, the defense and the expansion of the Independent Council of Ukrainian National State”. OUN also revived the sentiment that “Ukraine is for Ukrainians”.

On June 30, 1941, the OUN, led by Stepan Bandera
Stepan Bandera
Stepan Andriyovych Bandera was a Ukrainian politician and one of the leaders of Ukrainian national movement in Western Ukraine , who headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists...

, declared an independent Ukrainian state
Proclamation of Ukrainian Independence
The Declaration of Ukrainian Independence of June 30, 1941 was announced by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under the leadership of Stepan Bandera, who declared an independent Ukrainian State in Lviv...

. This was immediately acted upon by the Nazi army, and Bandera was arrested and imprisoned from 1941 to 1944.

The UPA was a military group that took up arms first against the Nazis and later against the Soviets. During World War II, the UPA fought against the Polish, German and Soviet forces. After the Second World War, UPA took actions directed against Soviet rule within Ukraine. Many members of the UPA saw themselves as the armed wing of the OUN in its struggle for Ukrainian independence.

There has been much debate as to the legitimacy of UPA as a political group. UPA maintains a prominent and symbolic role in Ukrainian history and the quest for Ukrainian independence. At the same time it was deemed an insurgent or terrorist group by Soviet historiography
Soviet historiography
Soviet historiography is the methodology of history studies by historians in the Soviet Union . In the USSR, the study of history was marked by alternating periods of freedom allowed and restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , and also by the struggle of historians to...

.

Ukrainian Canadian
Ukrainian Canadian
A Ukrainian Canadian is a person of Ukrainian descent or origin who was born in or immigrated to Canada. In 2006, there were an estimated 1,209,085 persons residing in Canada of Ukrainian origin, making them Canada's ninth largest ethnic group; and giving Canada the world's third-largest...

 historian Serhiy Yekelchyk
Serhy Yekelchyk
Dr. Serhy Yekelchyk is a Ukrainian Canadian historian of Ukrainian and Russian history.-Education and career:Yekelchyk received his B.A. from the University of Kiev and his M.A. from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He did research in Australia in the early 1990s, then moved to Edmonton to...

 writes that during 1943 and 1944 an estimated 35,000 Polish civilians and an unknown number of Ukrainian civilians in the Volhynia
Volhynia
Volhynia, Volynia, or Volyn is a historic region in western Ukraine located between the rivers Prypiat and Southern Bug River, to the north of Galicia and Podolia; the region is named for the former city of Volyn or Velyn, said to have been located on the Southern Bug River, whose name may come...

 and Chelm
Chelm
Chełm is a city in eastern Poland with 67,702 inhabitants . It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some 25 kilometres from the border with Ukraine...

 regions fell victim to mutual ethnic cleansing by the UPA and Polish insurgents
Polish resistance movement in World War II
The Polish resistance movement in World War II, with the Home Army at its forefront, was the largest underground resistance in all of Nazi-occupied Europe, covering both German and Soviet zones of occupation. The Polish defence against the Nazi occupation was an important part of the European...

. Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson
Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson is a British historian. His specialty is financial and economic history, particularly hyperinflation and the bond markets, as well as the history of colonialism.....

 writes that around 80,000 Poles were murdered then by Ukrainian nationalists. Norman Davies
Norman Davies
Professor Ivor Norman Richard Davies FBA, FRHistS is a leading English historian of Welsh descent, noted for his publications on the history of Europe, Poland, and the United Kingdom.- Academic career :...

 in his book "No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939-1945" puts the number of murdered Polish civilians at between 200,000 and 500,000, while Timothy Snyder
Timothy Snyder
Timothy D. Snyder is an American professor of history at Yale University, specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Holocaust...

 writes that Ukrainian nationalists killed "between forty to sixty thousand Polish civilians in Volhynia in 1943".

Declaration of state sovereignty - 1991

The most celebrated event in modern Ukrainian nationalist history is the achievement of independence from the Soviet Union after its collapse in 1991.

See also

  • Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists
    Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists
    The Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists is a right-wing political party in Ukraine. It was founded on October 18, 1992 and registered with the Ministry of Justice on January 26, 1993. The party leader from its formation and until her death in 2003 was Yaroslava Stetsko .-History:During the 1998...

  • All-Ukrainian Union "Freedom" (Svoboda)

Further reading

  • Alexander F. Tsvirkun History of political and legal Teachings of Ukraine.Kharkov., 2008
  • John Alexander Armstrong, "Ukrainian Nationalism", Columbia University Press
    Columbia University Press
    Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by James D. Jordan and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, social work, sociology,...

    , 1963,
  • Alexander J. Motyl, "The turn to the right : the ideological origins and development of Ukrainian nationalism, 1919-1929", Published: Boulder, [Colo. : East European quarterly] ; New York : distributed by Columbia University Press
    Columbia University Press
    Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by James D. Jordan and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, social work, sociology,...

    , 1980, ISBN 0914710583
  • Kenneth C. Farmer, "Ukrainian nationalism in the post-Stalin era : myth, symbols, and ideology in Soviet nationalities policy", Kluwer Boston, 1980, ISBN 9024724015
  • Andrew Wilson
    Andrew Wilson (historian)
    Andrew Wilson is a historian and political scientist specializing in Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine. He is a senior lecturer in Ukrainian studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London...

    , "Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s: A Minority Faith", Cambridge University Press
    Cambridge University Press
    Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...

    , 1996, ISBN 0521574579
  • Ernst B. Haas, "Nationalism, Liberalism, and Progress", Cornell University Press
    Cornell University Press
    The Cornell University Press, established in 1869 but inactive from 1884 to 1930, was the first university publishing enterprise in the United States.A division of Cornell University, it is housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage....

    , 1997, ISBN 0801431085, Chapter seven: Russia and Ukraine, pp. 324–410
  • Ronald Grigor Suny
    Ronald Grigor Suny
    Ronald Grigor Suny is currently director of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies and the Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at the University of Michigan, as well as Emeritus Professor of political science and history at the University of Chicago...

    , Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union", Stanford University Press
    Stanford University Press
    The Stanford University Press is the publishing house of Stanford University. In 1892, an independent publishing company was established at the university. The first use of the name "Stanford University Press" in a book's imprinting occurred in 1895...

    , 1993, ISBN 0804722471
  • Paul Robert Magocsi
    Paul Robert Magocsi
    Paul Robert Magocsi is an American professor of history, political science, and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto. He has been with the University since 1980, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1996...

    , "The Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism: Galicia As Ukraine's Piedmont", University of Toronto Press
    University of Toronto Press
    University of Toronto Press is Canada's leading scholarly publisher and one of the largest university presses in North America. Founded in 1901, UTP has published over 6,500 books, with well over 3,500 of these still in print....

    , 2002, ISBN 0802047386
  • Andrew Wilson
    Andrew Wilson (historian)
    Andrew Wilson is a historian and political scientist specializing in Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine. He is a senior lecturer in Ukrainian studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London...

    , "The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation", Yale University Press
    Yale University Press
    Yale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....

    , 2002, ISBN 0300093098
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