Culture, Nation, & Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600-1945)

395 Pages·2003·60.988 MB·English

by  Andreas Kappeler, Zenon E. Kohut, Frank E. Sysyn, Mark von Hagen

culture
nation
and
identity
• I
Edited by Andreas Kappeler, Zenon E. Kohut,
Frank E. Sysyn, and Mark von Hagen
11
I
Culture, Nation, and Identity
The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter
(1600-1945)
Edited by
Andreas Kappeler, Zenon E. Kohut,
Frank E. Sysyn, and Mark von Hagen
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press
Kiyc
cius Edmonton 2003 Toronto
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Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press
University of Alberta University of Toronto
Edmonton, Alberta Toronto, Ontario
T6G 2E8 CANADA M5S 2J5 CANADA
Copyright © 2003 Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies
ISBN 1-895571-46-4 (bound); ISBN 1-895571-47-2 (pbk.)
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Culture, nation, and identity: the Ukrainian-Russian encounter, 1600-1945
edited by Andreas Kappeler, Zenon E. Kohut, Frank E. Sysyn ... [et al.].
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-895571-46—4 (bound). -ISBN 1-895571-47-2 (pbk.)
1. Ukraine —Relations—Russia. 2. Russia —Relations —Ukraine.
3. Ukraine —Relations—Soviet Union. 4. Soviet Union— Relations—Ukraine.
5. Nationalism —Ukraine —History. 6. Ukrainians —Ethnic identity— History.
I. Kappeler, Andreas II. Kohut, Zenon E. III. Sysyn, Frank E.
DK508.57.R9C84 2003 303.48'2477047 2003-900667-0
Publication of this book has been generously supported by the Ukrainian
Studies Fund, Inc., New York, NY.
Cover: fragments of antiquarian maps of Ukraine reproduced, by permission,
from Bohdan S. Kordan, Land of the Cossacks, Winnipeg, 1987.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the
copyright owner.
Printed in Canada
Table of Contents
Preface vii
Note on Transliteration xiv
The Early Modern Period
The Question of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in
Russian-Ukrainian Relations (Seventeenth and Early
Eighteenth Centuries) / Viktor Zhivov 1
Lazar Baranovych, 1680: The Union of Lech and Rus /
David A. Frick 19
The Question of Russo-Ukrainian Unity and Ukrainian
Distinctiveness in Early Modern Ukrainian Thought
and Culture / Zenon E. Kohut 57
Moscow and Its West: On the "Ruthenization" of Russian
Culture in the Seventeenth Century / Hans-Joachim Torke 87
The Image of Russia and Russian-Ukrainian Relations
in Ukrainian Historiography of the Late Seventeenth
and Early Eighteenth Centuries / Frank E. Sysyn 108
The Imperial Period
What Is Russia? Russian National Identity and the
State, 1500-1917 / Paul Bushkovitch 144
Mazepintsy, Malorossy, Khokhly: Ukrainians in the Ethnic
Hierarchy of the Russian Empire / Andreas Kappeler 162
The Russian-Ukrainian Discourse and the Failure of the
"Little Russian Solution," 1782-1917 / Olga Andriewsky 182
Between Subversion and Self-Assertion:
The Role of Kotliarevshchyna in Russian-Ukrainian
Literary Relations / George G. Grabozvicz 215
The Grand Narrative and Its Discontents:
Ukraine in Russian History Textbooks and Ukrainian
Students' Minds, 1830s-1900s / Serhy Yekelchyk 229
Conceptual Observations on the Russian and
Ukrainian Peasantries / Christine D. Worobec 256
The Twentieth Century
Russians, Ukrainians, and German Occupation
Policy, 1941-43 / Dieter Pohl 277
Modeling Culture in the Empire: Ukrainian Modernism
and the Death of the All-Russian Idea / Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj 298
The GPU-NKVD as an Instrument of Counter-Ukrainization
in the 1920s and 1930s / Yuri Shapoval 325
The Phenomenon of Soviet Statehood / Stanislav Kulchytsky 345
States, Nations, and Identities: The Russian-Ukrainian
Encounter in the First Half of the Twentieth Century /
Marc von Hagen 360
Afterword / Marc Raeff 375
Contributors 379
L
Preface
The series of sessions on the Russian-Ukrainian encounter held
alternately in New York and Cologne, Germany, between June 1994
and September 1995 had their origin in both the macro world of great
political events and the micro world of scholarly discussions.
Ukraine's declaration of independence following the August 1991
coup in Moscow, ratified by the referendum of 1 December 1991 and
subsequent international recognition, was followed by the dissolution
of the Soviet Union on 25 December 1991. These developments made
Ukrainian-Russian relations an international issue of cardinal impor­
tance. A new, difficult, and uncertain phase of these relations opened
with the establishment of two independent neighboring states. Since
Russia was clearly to remain a major world power, while Ukraine was
the largest and one of the most populous states of Europe, those
relations took on more than binational significance. The future of the
post-Soviet order depended largely on how these two largely Slavic
countries would work out their relations. The fact that both possessed
nuclear weapons compelled world leaders to take an interest in the
course of those relations.
While these dramatic international events made broader scholarly
and political circles newly aware of the importance of Russian-
Ukrainian relations, the content of the sessions in New York and
Cologne was shaped more directly by the scholarly interests of the
four members of the organizing committee, Andreas Kappeler, Mark
von Hagen, Zenon Kohut, and Frank Sysyn. Andreas Kappeler's work
on the peoples of the Volga and the multinational character of the
Russian Empire had made him aware of the importance of the
Ukrainians, the largest non-Russian people in tsarist Russia and the
Soviet Union. Mark von Hagen's work on the Red Army provoked his
interest in the importance of nationality issues in both the Russian
Empire and the Soviet Union, which were being explored by numer­
ous specialists in Ukrainian and other non-Russian nationality studies
in North America. Zenon Kohut had long devoted his primary
research to Ukrainian-Russian relations in the late eighteenth and
viii / Culture, Nation, and Identity
early nineteenth centuries. While Frank Sysyn had primarily worked
on Ukraine as part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, his
seventeenth-century specialization led him to focus on the first phase
of the Russian-Ukrainian encounter. The first two colleagues might be
considered typical post-World War II historians of Russia, typical also
by virtue of their non-Slavic descent, whose research had awakened
them to the importance of Russian-Ukrainian relations. The latter two
were more typical Western specialists in Ukrainian studies, a profile
that included sharing Ukrainian descent and having worked in the
two major North American institutes of Ukrainian studies. The
organizers were united in their belief that the current situation
presented an opportunity to attract scholarly interest to this important
problem, to explore new paradigms and methods, and to promote
further discussion by historians in Ukraine and Russia.
The term "encounter" was borrowed from the title of a volume of
conference papers published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian
Studies in 1992. As a definition of the subject that the organizers
wished to explore, this term was more suitable than "relations," which
assumed the existence of two fully autonomous polities or cultures.
"Encounter" allowed for an examination of all the ambiguities of
national, international, transnational, and subnational issues that had
developed in the course of three centuries of Russian and Ukrainian
interaction. While we sought to make the examination interdisciplin­
ary and comparative, our historical approach was apparent in the
chronological organization of the sessions and in the dominance of
historians among participants in all sessions except the last, which
focused on the post-1991 period.
We embarked upon our project with a certain set of assumptions.
We believed that aside from specialists in the early modern period,
few scholars in Russian studies had pondered, much less studied,
Russian-Ukrainian questions. By contrast, we presumed that most
Western specialists in Ukrainian studies were well acquainted with
these questions, but had often had to frame their research in such a
way as to defend the very validity of Ukrainian studies and their
significance for understanding Russian-Ukrainian relations.
Consequently, our goal was to encourage scholars in traditional
Russian studies to pose questions rather than to present ready-made
answers if they had not previously worked on these issues, and to
urge specialists in Ukrainian studies to shift their focus from the
impact of Russia on Ukraine in order to consider the significance of
Ukrainian issues for Russian identity, the tsarist empire, and the
Soviet state. Hoping to invite colleagues from Russia and Ukraine to
participate in our sessions, we expected that the mindset prevailing
Preface / ix
among colleagues in the West would be replicated in Ukraine and
Russia. We anticipated greater reluctance on the part of Russian
scholars to address these questions, which had become so politically
charged in the early 1990s.
Essential to our quest was to understand the construction,
destruction, and reformulation of identities among Russians and
Ukrainians of all social origins. This entailed an examination of the
emergence of national identity, a question much studied with
reference to the Ukrainians and less so with reference to the Russians.
The question is fundamentally important because of historical efforts
to create common "all-Russian" and East Slavic identities and because
of the implications of Ukrainian independence for the redefinition of
Russian identity. But the identities to be explored within the Russian
and Ukrainian contexts also impinged on other basic concerns, from
religion (Slavia Orthodoxa, Uniatism) to social status (Cossack identity,
rural and urban speech) to the Soviet internationalist experiment.
Central to the subject was the role of states and state formations:
Muscovy, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Cossack Hetman-
ate, the Russian Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy, independent
Ukraine (1917-20), the Soviet Union, including the RFSFR and the
Ukrainian SSR, interwar Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, and
Ukraine and Russia since 1991 (as well as the Commonwealth of Inde­
pendent States). The fact that from the sixteenth century to 1991
almost all Russians lived within a single state (a Russian state for
those who view the Soviet Union as such), while from the seventeenth
century at least until World War II Ukrainians were divided among
various states, was seen as essential for understanding the evolution
of their encounter. The extent of Russia's self-perception as a successor
state to the USSR and of Ukraine's acceptance or rejection of its Soviet
legacy was seen as crucial in defining the two states' current relations
and the nature of the present-day Russian-Ukrainian encounter.
Aside from having shared political boundaries, Ukrainians and
Russians professing various identities participated jointly in numerous
organizations, institutions, and endeavors, such as Orthodox monas­
teries, the tsarist army, the Soviet space program, and the colonization
of Siberia and Kazakhstan. Without assuming a priori that the
Russian-Ukrainian factor is important for all areas of Russian-
Ukrainian interaction, the organizers hoped that the question would
be addressed in relation to these and many other endeavors and struc­
tures. At the same time, they sought to promote comparative studies
of segments of society and institutions, whether on a global Russian-
Ukrainian basis or, more manageably, on a regional basis. It was
hoped that specialists in imperial Russia and the Soviet Union who
x / Culture, Nation, and Identity
have usually based their conclusions on evidence originating in
Moscow, St. Petersburg, or the Russian heartland would come to
examine Ukrainian cases, while specialists on Ukraine would place
their research in a new comparative context.
The agenda was large and could not be exhausted in forty, much
less four, sessions. The organizers were grateful that so many of their
colleagues took up the challenge. As expected, specialists in Ukrainian
studies proved much more likely to accept our invitations than those
in Russian studies. We also found that even among Russian special­
ists, North American colleagues were much more likely to respond
positively than German colleagues. This may have been due to the
North American think-piece format and our peculiar conference
culture, but it may also reflect the greater development of nationality
studies and research on the non-Russian peoples in North America.
The organizers had particular difficulty in finding colleagues from
Russia willing to participate in the project.
As might be expected, each session had its own dynamic. The
first, which focused on the early modem period and was held in
Cologne (15-17 June 1994), assembled a group of scholars most of
whom were personally acquainted and knew one another's work. If
their papers seemed arcane to the non-specialist, they often fit into a
well-developed context of cultural and religious studies. To some
extent, the early modem topics were addressed more easily than those
of later periods, as there is a consensus on the considerable differences
between Russians and Ukrainians in this period and on the import­
ance of the Ukrainian role in cultural transfer to Russia. Nevertheless,
the comments of Professor Mikhail Dmitriev of Moscow, who argued
for the uniformity of the Eastern Slavs at the time, added greatly to
the debate.
The second session, which was held in New York (13-15 Novem­
ber 1994), elicited considerable interest among specialists in imperial
Russia. It also broadened the range of fields, adding specialists in
anthropology and social history to the literary and cultural fields of
the first session, and addressed current interdisciplinary debates, such
as the degree to which the Russian-Ukrainian relationship was
colonial.
The third session, held in Cologne (15-17 June 1995), dealt with
the twentieth century—a period of manifest significance in Russian-
Ukrainian relations, since it began with an attempt to establish an
independent Ukrainian state and was followed by the formation of the
Soviet Union, which comprised both Ukrainian and Russian entities.
It involved the very prickly question of whether the Soviet state was
Russian and the degree to which communist and Soviet policies were
Preface / xi
rooted in Russian-Ukrainian relations, especially during the famine of
1932-33 and World War II. The presence of Professor Ronald Suny,
who has argued for the positive role of the Soviet period in the
nation-building of non-Russian peoples, helped ensure a productive
discussion.
The fourth session, held in New York (21-23 September 1995) with
the participation of the Russian and Ukrainian ambassadors to the
United Nations, reflected the acute interest in Russian-Ukrainian
relations on the part of current-affairs specialists. Political scientists,
sociologists, and scholars of international affairs overshadowed
historians and literary specialists at this session. Given the need to
make these observations and analyses immediately available, the
papers were published immediately after the session in the Harriman
Review.
While a primary goal of the organizers was to spark discussion
among participants, they also sought to identify scholars who might
expand their presentations into research papers. The papers assembled
here, culled from the first three sessions of the Russian-Ukrainian
encounter series, represent only a fraction of the questions addressed
at the sessions. In addition to their individual contributions to
scholarship, they serve collectively as a contribution to the study of
the Russian-Ukrainian encounter, indicating topics worthy of future
research and discussion.
The Early Modern Period
In his article, "The Question of Russo-Ukrainian Unity and Ukrainian
Distinctiveness in Early Modem Ukrainian Thought and Culture,"
Zenon Kohut traces the Ukrainian role in constructing Great Russia
and Little Russia as components of an all-Russian unity, as well as the
evolution of Little Russian identity until the emergence of the modem
Ukrainian national movement. In examining the concept of Ukrainian-
Russian unity as an intellectual construct that took shape before the
political, social, religious, and cultural merging of Ukraine and Russia
in the seventeenth century, Kohut offers an analysis that permits
comparison with other early modem supranational constructs (the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Illyrianism, British identity) and
shows how divergent have been the interpretations of the early
modern period in subsequent Russian and Ukrainian traditions. In
"Lazar Baranovych, 1680: The Union of Lech and Rus," David Frick
recreates the political and spiritual world of a prominent Ukrainian
intellectual to demonstrate how long Poland remained important in
defining Ruthenians and their relations with Muscovy. Frank E. Sysyn
analyzes the terminology and content of early modem Ukrainian