Mykhailo Hrushevsky

Mykhailo Serhiyovych Hrushevsky (; Chełm, 29 June (17 June Old Style) 1866 — Kislovodsk, 26 November 1934) was a Ukrainian historian and statesman, one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century. He was the country's greatest modern historian, foremost organizer of scholarship, leader of the pre-revolution Ukrainian national movement, head of the Central Rada (Ukraine's 1917-1918 revolutionary parliament), first president of the Ukrainian People's Republic of 1918, and a leading cultural figure in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1934.

Historian

As a historian, Hrushevsky authored the first detailed scholarly synthesis of Ukrainian history, his ten volume History of Ukraine-Rus', which was published in the Ukrainian language and covered the period from pre-history to the 1660s. In this work, he balanced a commitment to the common Ukrainian people with an appreciation for native Ukrainian political entities, autonomous polities and such, which steadily increaced in the final volumes of this, his master work. In general, Hrushevsky's approach combined rationalist enlightenment principles with a romantic commitment to the cause of the nation and positivist methodology to produce a highly authoritative history of his native land and people. Hrushevsky also wrote a multi-volume History of Ukrainian Literature, an Outline History of the Ukrainian People in Russian, and a very popular Illustrated History of Ukraine which appeared in both Ukrainian and Russian editions. In addition to these major works, he wrote numerous specialized studies in which he displayed a very acute critical acumen. His personal bibliography lists over 2000 separate titles.

In Hrushevsky's varied historical writings certain basic ideas come to the fore. Firstly, Hrushevsky saw continuity in Ukrainian history from ancient times to his own. Thus he claimed the ancient Ukrainian Steppe cultures from Scythia, through Kievan Rus' to the Cossacks as part of the Ukrainian heritage. (This flew in the face of the official scheme of Russian history which claimed Kievan Rus' for Imperial Russia.) Secondly, to give real depth to this continuity, Hrushevsky stressed the role of the common people, the "popular masses" as he called them, throughout all these eras. Thus popular revolts against the various foreign states that ruled Ukraine were also a major theme. Thirdly, Hrushevsky always put the accent upon native Ukrainian factors rather than international ones as the causes of various phenomena. Thus he was an anti-Normanist who stressed the Slavic origins of Rus', put the emphasis upon internal discord as the primary reason for the fall of Kievan Rus', and emphasized the native Ukrainian ethnic makeup and origins of the Ukrainian Cossacks. (He thought run-away serfs especially important in this regard.) Also, he stressed the national aspect to the Ukrainian renaissance of the 16th and 17th centuries and thought the great revolt of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Cossacks against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a largely national and social rather than simply religious phenomenon. Thus continuity, nativism, and populism characterized his general histories.

With regard to the role of statehood in Hrushevsky's historical thought, contemporary scholars are still not in agreement. Some believe that Hrushevsky retained a populist mistrust of the state throughout his career and his deep democratic convictions reflected this, while others believe that Hrushevsky gradually became more and more of a partisan of Ukrainian statehood in his various writings and that this is reflected in his political work on the construction of a Ukrainian national state during the revolution of 1917-18.

Scholar

As an organizer of scholarship, Hrushevsky oversaw the transformation of the Shevchenko Literary Society which was based in the Austrian controlled province of Galicia into a new Shevchenko Scientific Society. This organization published hundreds of volumes of scholarly literature before the First World War and quickly grew to serve as an unofficial Academy of Sciences for the Ukrainian people living on both sides of the Russian-Austrian border. After the revolution of 1905 in Russia, Hrushevsky organized the Ukrainian Scientific Society in Kiev, after the 1917-1921 revolution, he founded the Ukrainian Sociological Institute in exile in Vienna, and after his return to Ukraine in the 1920s became a major figure in the newly founded All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev.

Politician

As a political leader, Hrushevsky first became active in Austrian Galicia, where he spoke out against Polish political predominance, against Ruthenian particularism, and in favor of a national Ukrainian identity which would unite both eastern and western parts of the country. In 1899, he was a co-founder of the Galician-based National Democratic Party. This party looked forward to eventual Ukrainian independence. After 1905, Hrushevsky advised the Ukrainian Club in the Russian State Duma or Parliament and advocated Ukrainian national autonomy within a democratic Russia. In 1917, he was elected head of the revolutionary parliament, the Ukrainian Central Rada in Kiev and guided it gradually from Ukrainian national autonomy within a democratic Russia through to completely independent statehood. At this time, Hrushevsky was clearly revealed as a radical democrat and a socialist.

Later years and death

After the failure of the Ukrainian revolution, Hrushevsky went into exile in Vienna and remained there until 1924 when he returned to Soviet Ukraine to take part in the work of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Until 1931, when, with the onset of Stalinism he was exiled to Moscow, he was the leading cultural figure promoting an independent national identity in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1934, under the close watch of the Soviet political police he died in Kislovodsk in the Caucasus. It is unknown what role these police played in his unexpected death.

Legacy

Although Hrushevsky's political career remains controversial and is viewed by some as having been disastrous, he is presently regarded as Ukraine's greatest scholar of the twentieth century and one of the most prominent Ukrainian statesmen in the country's history. His leadership of the Central Rada and the Ukrainian People's Republic set precedents in parliamentary democracy and independence that were never completely forgotten during Soviet times and remain important today. Hrushevsky's portrait appears on the fifty hryvnia note. One museum in Kiev and another in Lviv are devoted to his memory, and monuments to him have been erected in both cities. A street in Kiev that bears his name houses the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) and many governmental offices. The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences recently initiated the publication of his Collected Works in fifty volumes.

References

Dmytro Doroshenko, "A Survey of Ukrainian Historiography," Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the US, V-VI, 4 (1957), 262-74.
Thomas M. Prymak, Mykhailo Hrushevsky: The Politics of National Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987). ISBN 0802057373.
Lubomyr R. Wynar, Mykhailo Hrushevsky: Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation in Historiography (Toronto-New York-Munich: Ukrainian Historical Association, 1988).
Thomas M. Prymak, "Mykhailo Hrushevsky in History and Legend," Ukrainian Quarterly,LX, 3-4 (2004), pp. 216-30. A brief summary of this author's views.
Serhii Plokhy, Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). ISBN 0802039375.

1866 births 1934 deaths | Presidents of Ukraine | Ukrainian politicians before 1991 | Ukrainian historians