Mykhailo Petrovych Drahomanov was a Ukrainian intellectual and public figure. As an academic, Drahomanov was an economist, historian, philosopher, and ethnographer, while as a public intellectual he was a political theorist with socialist leanings, perhaps best known as one of the first proponents of Ukrainian autonomism. For Drahomanov, ethnographic studies had a deep influence on his political ideas, and his politics in turn motivated study of particular areas of Ukrainian folk literature.