Progress and the degree of man’ s freedom according to Mykhailo Drahomanov

The fantastic creative heritage of Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841-95), Ukrainian thinker, theoretician and practitioner, historian, philosopher, politician, analyst, public figure, folklorist, publisher, literary critic, and journalist, did not and still does not fit into any set patterns. In fact, even such giants of Ukrainian thought as Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, and Panteleimon Kulish do not give cause for such debate.

He cuts a figure soaring over all “isms” (nationalism, socialism, liberalism), remaining true to universal human ideals. All his life Drahomanov championed the highest priority and antecedence of humanist principles in politics; he believed in mankind’s spiritual advance, overall progress, and that there were vast opportunities to develop man. He constantly studied, because progress “depends on continuous intellectual development.” Quite often he would reject his own ideas and was too cross in assessing even people of like mind.

In certain respects he took a firm and unwaveringly principled stand. Not all of his concepts are acceptable today. Suppose we open and glance through that huge and dusty folder labeled Drahomanov (in the 1930s- 1980s, he was branded as a nationalist by Soviet propaganda for no reason whatever; paradoxically, his works have appeared in print very seldom, even now in independent Ukraine), so we can prove the originality of his creative quest.

It is impossible to embrace the boundless, so we will have to make do with the historical, philosophic, political, and national aspects of the celebrated Ukrainian’s legacy; singling them out in any manner is difficult; they are too closely interrelated.

A theoretician as well as practitioner, striving to utilize past moral and ethical experience, that accumulated by people the world over, receives what can be described as a supplementary compass. All his life Drahomanov carefully studied broad, versatile, and applicable aspects of history. Current phenomena always allow parallels with the past. Interesting studies of Greek or Roman, British or Swiss history, works “On the Ukrainian Cossacks, Tartars, and Turks,” “The Struggle for Spiritual Power and Freedom of Conscience in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Reformation in Europe)” — these topics helped the scholar grasp the essence of political and economic processes in society. Drahomanov wrote (and it is still relevant) that “the first (requirement — Author) is that science in man’s activities within a society — i.e., with regard to past activities, or history — allow generalizations as precise as those found in other sciences... Even our ancestors wanted to grasp the connection between historical events... Another new requirement is that... it (scholarship — Author) allow inferences as practically applicable as those derived from other sciences.” (From “The Status and Tasks of the Science of Ancient History.”) He noted that “systemic classification of phenomena by their properties” is very important for a researcher.

Drahomanov constantly stressed the need to study historical phenomena from the standpoint of sociology, in other words, expanding the scope of the historical quest (in this sense he was a trailblazer, in Eastern Europe anyway); he insisted on systematizing the available historical findings and the importance of parallel — and thus mutually enriching — studies of facts from ancient and modern history. In the rationalistic and positivistic vein, he argued the thesis that the historical process is connected “not only with changes in the relationships and forces of production, but also with ascertaining the degree of man’s freedom.” What made Drahomanov’s historical method so powerful? Romanchenko, a note researcher of his heritage, wrote that “he could discern that which was general and personal, national, and generally human, individual and social in their close interrelationship, in the unity of the specific historical process.” History was important to Drahomanov as a science, not only as an analysis of past events, but as an aid in glimpsing the future.

In the twilight of his life, living in Sofia and working as a professor of world history at the Higher School (currently the University of Sofia), Drahomanov begot extremely important ideas. His fundamental “Particular Ideas about the Ukrainian National Cause” is a sharp critique of Ukrainian nationalist intolerance of everything relating to Moscow. The nationalists, in turn, ruthlessly attacked Drahomanov, accusing him of inveterate “anti-Ukrainianism.” Yet even a paragraph from his “Particular Ideas makes one resolutely disbelieve the assumption: “... one must take a closer look at our history in its entirety, at all periods in history: princes and cities, Lithuanian feudal lords, Polish aristocrats, Cossacks, Russian tsars... paying attention at every such stage to progress or regress in terms of humanness, economy, state order, public opinion and official views, education, Ukrainian involvement in or with European history and culture, on all class and cultural levels... comparing it to the history of other peoples of Europe.” There is every reason to state that we Ukrainians have not fulfilled that important “task from Drahomanov” in 120 years from the date of publication of that work.

Anatoly Kruhlashov, Ph.D. in history from Chernivtsi, believes that “Drahomanov treated the European trends in Ukrainian history as a manifestation of progress inherent in Ukrainian society, essentially similar to the general European process of civilization.” (From Mykhailo Drahomanov’s Political Ideas). Drahomanov’s inclination toward socialist ideas was rather practical. Ivan Franko wrote, “Socialism concerned [Drahomanov] inasmuch as political combinations ... crossed the threshold of inevitable social reforms in the distant future.” Drahomanov considered that “the people is the subject of history” and that “the idea of history is created by a people aware of its national identity and showing public activity.” He reached his creative peak as an emigre (he was sent on a “business trip” abroad by the Old Hromada (Society) to avoid arrest by Russian tsarist authorities, working in Vienna, then in Switzerland and Bulgaria). There, especially in Bulgaria, the Ukrainian thinker was free from official as well as internal censorship; the latter was nonetheless heavy on Ukrainian minds at the time. Now at last his ideas were acquiring practical importance. He worked on a comprehensive plan to develop the national liberation movement. From the Old Hromada in Kyiv, with its federalist concepts, Drahomanov passed through the “provincial-liberal” period (e.g., an attempt to form a mass opposition organization to struggle for a democratic state with extensive guarantees of the freedom of conscience, nations, and the individual), arriving at the formulation of tasks and forms of the liberation movement.

The reader may well ask why Drahomanov was not sure that Ukraine could and would be independent. First of all, the Ukrainian thinker relied on facts from his current realities. He was a staunch exponent of social progress and supremacy of the law; he saw the West’s indifference to the so-called national issue. Therefore, it was easier for him to work over and above all party affiliations. He thought national progress and making Ukraine’s cherished dream of independent statehood a reality possible only after the formation of a political nation, using the fundamentals of all ideological trends (democratic, liberal, socialist, and nationalist) in the broad sense and not only within the Ukrainian frontiers. His federalism was historically justified; Ukraine was a part of large multinational imperial polities: the Russian Empire and the Habsburg Austria- Hungary. Kruhlashow writes that he “saw Ukraine as a component of a federated union in Eastern Europe. He inferred two options of independence: an independent state or a federation of autonomous republics. The scholar considered that multinational imperial states would be replaced by national ones...” Drahomanov was sure that building a federated, rather than imperial, Russia would guarantee freedom of the individual, which was to him the highest imperative.

He stood by the cradle of modern Ukrainian political science and theoretically substantiated a thesis which remains extremely important today: to satisfy the national interest, it is necessary to learn to make use of any situations in this tempestuously evolving world.

There is a striking diversity of assessments of Drahomanov’s legacy. Some consider him an exponent of Ukrainian national independence; others claim he was generally a Russophile, still others maintain he stood for autonomy. Serhiy Yefremov and Volodymyr Doroshenko believe he was a socialist; B. Kystiakovsky thinks of him as a constitutional democrat; Mykola Pavlyk sees him as an anarchist and simultaneously the author of a program of Ukrainian state unity.

As a scholar, Drahomanov was really close to his brilliant niece Lesia Ukrainka. As the brother of her mother, Olena Pchilka, he played an exceptionally important role in asserting Ukrayinka’s place in the pantheon of Ukrainian spirit.

“All practical human wisdom can come down to perceiving the direction of world movement, its degree and law, and serve that movement. Otherwise that movement will be directed against us and will crush us,” he wrote. Yevhen Marchuk used these words of the brilliant Ukrainian thinker as an epigraph for his fundamental work Ukraine: A New Paradigm of Progress. This statement emphasizes the importance of the perception of the strategy and direction of “world progress and formulation of one’s own strategy of an effective, stable, and secure development in this changing and cruel world.”

If we citizens of Ukraine are aware of ourselves as a world nation, one picking up the gauntlet of the times (primarily in conjunction with globalization), the threat of a degrading intellectual resource will not face us. Mykhailo Drahomanov’s legacy is hard to overestimate, despite numerous questions remaining open. He awakened Ukrainian consciousness with both words and deeds.