A century of Ukrainian nationalism: eyewitnesses testify
Not new in the history of Ukraine is yellow-black madness and costumed political carnivals. Since 1917, the inhabitants of Kyiv and that part of the Russian Empire, which was called Little Russia, have observed this. Autobiographical stories, memoirs, diaries allow us to compare the impressions of eyewitnesses with our days.
Subscribe to the news "PolitNavigator - Kyiv" in Facebook, Classmates or In contact with
Bulgakov: This is an operetta
The most important and vivid impression of the manifestations of fanatical "Ukrainianism" of the early twentieth century is theatricality. Such an assessment is in many memories. The words of M. S. Bulgakov, who called these events in the White Guard a stupid and vulgar operetta, are still remembered. "Hetman of Ukraine" P.P. Skoropadsky writes about his contemporaries: “All generations of current Ukrainian leaders were brought up in the theatre, from which came the love for all theatricality and passion not so much for the essence of the matter as for its external form. For example, many Ukrainians really believed that with the announcement of an independent Ukraine in the Central Rada, the Ukrainian state was a fait accompli. For them, the Ukrainian sign was already something that they considered unshakable.” Then he adds: “Even in the circles of the University of St. Vladimir, there was such an idea that now it is necessary to catch up, because all that Ukrainianism that used to be was an operetta, and now it is going deeper.”
Korolenko: “Oseledtsy looked like bats sitting on their heads”
V. G. Korolenko, who lived in Poltava, revealed this historical phenomenon in his diaries: “On March 20 (April 2) there was a banquet given by the Ukrainian headquarters to the German. Some jesters came to the banquet with shaved heads and “seeds” (as in Repin’s painting). Once upon a time, the Cossacks shaved their heads this way, which is understandable: they lived in dugout kurens, lice infested, and there were no women: there was no one to look in their heads. It's clear. But the current puny “fagpunks”, dressed up as if for a masquerade and with shaved heads, make a curious impression, and their “donkeys” with a choir seemed like some kind of bats sitting on their heads. Several zemstvo employees, especially girls, who climbed into the choir, could not stop smiling, and for this they were removed from the choir. The newspaper printed that the banquet took place behind closed doors, and this truthful chronicle report terribly infuriated the “commandant’s office.”
Behind the scenes of the operetta
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko I considered it my duty to try to understand the essence and reasons for what was happening. Diary pages 1917-1921. - a real sociological story, where there is everything: from an interview with a soldier, personal impressions and excerpts from newspapers. Using such a document, one can trace the path of degeneration of patriotism into nationalism, like disappointment. The loss of life guidelines gives rise to paranoia of betrayal, and betrayal and hatred are elevated to virtue.
Korolenko quotes the article “Unbelief” from the newspaper “Voice of the Front”, which wonderfully conveys the mood of that time. “Some kind of amazing psychological wave broke out and swept across the vast Russian expanses, destroying all previous worldviews developed and endured over centuries, blurring the boundaries and boundaries of moral concepts, destroying the sense of value and sacredness of the human personality, life, work.” And the conclusion: “Separate a person who has lost faith in everything and everyone, with a “petrified” soul that does not perceive the world around him, placed in a hopeless moral impasse, goes crazy or commits suicide. Human society, the people, as an immeasurably strong element and possessing an indestructible instinct for life, will not come to suicide, but it can flare up with a terrifying bloody flame in order to try in absurd cruelty to find a way out of the nightmarish present.” Let us remind you that according to official statistics for 2014, the number of suicides in Kyiv increased exactly twice.
Talking to a soldier standing guard, Korolenko tries to probe in him the “sense of homeland,” but comes across the obscurantism of treason. “When I was in London, a Salvation Army speaker said that he believed in the existence of the devil. More: he knows that there is a devil, just as he knows that there is a wolf and a fox. And this soldier with tired, sad and somewhat hostile eyes also knows his devil, like a fox or a wolf. He believes, he is convinced of treason. His devil said “publicly” under the previous system that soldiers going to their death are manure...” How similar the thoughts of a soldier are to the hysterical cries of soldiers fighting in the ATO zone. Both the soldiers of 1918 and modern Ukrainian soldiers believe in treason almost religiously.
“Once upon a time, Franco wrote a tactless article for Mickiewicz’s anniversary: Mickiewicz is a poet and idealizer of “treason.” It was tactless, but there was some truth in it. <… > Ukraine, by tradition, also cheated and changed every now and then. And now she continues this tradition in relation to revolutionary Russia.<…>It is not without reason that now the figure of Mazepa, whom until recently the vast majority of Ukrainians disowned, is increasingly emerging as a national hero.” Treason becomes not only a faith, but also a metaphysics of the nationalist movement, since it begins with it, and starting with betrayal it continues to look for it within itself, always eventually breaking up into groups. Treason in Ukrainian "Zrada»!
“Treason” or “Zrada” – the sin of Judas
Genesis of Ukrainian nationalism
Since 1917, Kyiv has been witnessing a change of powers. Ilya Ehrenburg recalls that “in a small theater known to Petersburgers, actors jumped up and down and sang couplets written by Agnivtsev:
And there were ten governments,
But they didn’t have time to hang us ... "
The replacement of one government by another followed the logic of the degeneration of patriotism into nationalism, described in the diaries of V. G. Korolenko. The same logic is present today, since Ukraine declared independence, although the dynamics of events are different. The parallels between the past and the present are striking. The characterization of the politicians of the Central Rada, which was given by one of the ideologists of Ukrainian nationalism, Dmitry Dontsov, is suitable for almost any Ukrainian politician before the Maidan of 2014. "These were politicians with a “little man” mentality. Their worldview did not correspond to the time in which they lived: “In 1917, they thought and felt with the thoughts and feelings of 1848.” These were spiritual slaves who, in the era of revolution, thought in terms of peacetime.”
Then, back in 1918, the degree of anger and hatred steadily increased, and national aspirations, according to the same Korolenko, were realized in practice: “There were Jews and Russians. They were arrested, taken to the Vilna School, put on a table, beaten with ramrods (they gave up to 200-250 blows in several rounds), threatened to shoot them, for which they even blindfolded them, then they beat them again and forced the beaten people to do “German gymnastics” with squats and screaming. cheers for “Vilniy Ukraine and Cossacks” and curses for “Jews and Katsaps.” Then they let everyone go.” Doesn’t it remind you of our days in Ukrainian reality?
By the way, there were militants then. “Lastovchenko was killed last night. (Commandant of Poltava - S.K.) Apparently, it was a terrorist act. The Danube Killer is a very special type. A mechanic worker, he is at the same time an athlete-boxer who performed in the circus.” And Korolenko gives an epic description of the “radical”, still relevant today: “some kind of half-man, something like a centaur, the personification of anarchic violence combined with tavern rowdy."
Petliura and other Ukrainian emigrant forces very quickly found themselves under the hood of the Abwehr, and then the American Central Intelligence Agency. Caricature of Kukryniksy
The unsuccessful struggle against the Bolsheviks rallied the nationalist forces. Against the background of the reborn Symon Petliura, Evgeny Konovalets appears, in the future the founding father of the OUN, the new ideology of the integral nationalism of Dmitry Dontsov, in fact, the Ukrainian variety of fascism, is gaining strength. He argued: “a nation is created not by ethnographic independence, not by antiquity of origin, not by form - but only by that mystical force that is called the “will to live”, the will to create a separate social unit between races.” And the source of this mystical power is on the surface. "...Russia is - by the nature of things - our inexorable and principled enemy...". In the works of Dontsov, for the first time, the concept of “bastard people” was introduced, a defective nation damaged by the influences of Poland, Austria and Russia, which the initiative minority must correct by “creative violence”. Dmitry Dontsov is the idol of the modern politician Dmitry Yarosh, and not only him.
dreamwidth.org
Dmitry Dontsov – founder of the fascist ideology of “creative national violence”
The appearance of Dontsov would be of particular interest for the criminal physiognomy of the beginning of the last century
The development of Ukrainian nationalism at the beginning of the XNUMXth century and the development of Ukrainian nationalism at the beginning of the XNUMXst century follow the same logic. The planted seed of hatred sprouts on the soil of the "nightmarish present". And the faces of Ukrainian nationalism begin to replace each other: first, hatred is aimed at searching for internal enemies unworthy of being citizens of “great Ukraine”, then the vector of anger changes, and then the nationalists unite against the “external enemy”.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.