Ukraine, the land and its people

by Stepan Rudnytskyi

Russian culture is much more dangerous to the Ukrainian people than Polish. In its material aspect it is of a very low grade. In the spiritual field it possesses a very rich literature and a noteworthy science and art. The spiritual culture of Russia now dominates all of the Russian Ukraine, and has, to a great extent, become prevalent even among those educated Ukrainians in Russia who possess real national consciousness.

This very circumstance constitutes a great danger for the development of Ukrainian culture. For, let the Muscovite conquest extend over the Ukrainians, even in the cultural field, and there is an end of all the independence of the Ukrainian element, and its beautiful language will be, in fact, degraded to a peasant dialect. But a still greater danger lies in the quality of the Russian cultural influence. The first evil characteristic of Russian culture is the complete lack of national and patriotic sentiment, which is absolutely necessary for an aspiring culture like the Ukrainian. Russian culture is infecting the Ukrainians with an ominous national indifference. Another unfavorable [[206]]characteristic of all Russian culture, is the fact that it is undemocratic thru and thru, and very far removed from the Russian people. The Russian people did not create this culture; the educated, in producing it, took nothing from the people. An intelligent man, brought up in the atmosphere of Russian culture, is unspeakably distant from the Russian people, so that it is impossible for him to work at the task of enlightening them. The views of the Russian “lovers of the people” (narodniki), or of a Tolstoy, concerning the common people and its soul, simply offend us thru their unexampled ignorance of the peculiarities and customs of the common people.

A culture so far removed from the people as the Russian can bring no benefit to the Ukrainians. We observe this, best of all, in the condition of the muzhik, to whom the educated Russian has never been able to find an approach, and now the latter looks on indifferently, while the masses sink deeper and deeper down into the abyss of intellectual and spiritual darkness. To guide the common people along the path of organic social-political and economic progress, is a task which an intellect permeated with Russian culture can never perform. The last Russian revolution, and the beginning of the era of constitutional government for Russia, have furnished the best proof for the truth of this assertion.

The other chief characteristic of Russian culture is its manifest superficiality. Hidden beneath a thin veneer of Western European amenities lies coarse barbarism. The external manners of the educated Russian very often strike one by the coarseness, lack of restraint and brutal recklessness accompanying them. We see, then, that even the external forms of European culture have only been outwardly assumed by the Russians. Still poorer is their condition with respect to the things of the spirit. We have observed to what a slight degree the Russians have [[207]]been able to assimilate the material culture of Europe. The same holds for spiritual culture. Russian literature, particularly the latest, has brought ethical elements of the most questionable worth into the world’s literature. (Artzibashev and others). Russian science, altho it can point to some great names and has unlimited means at its disposal, stands far behind German, English or French science. In Russian science, everything is done for the sake of effect, without thoroness, without method, hence fatal gaps appear. Let us consider, for example, our science of geography. Hardly a year passes in which the Russian government does not send one or more great scientific expeditions to Asia or to the North Pole. Each expedition hands in volumes of scientific results, and, at the same time, the surface configuration of the most populous and culturally most advanced regions of European Russia, for example, is barely known in its main aspects. The best geography of Russia was written by the Frenchman Reclus. A modern, really scientific geography of Russia does not exist.

Even more emphatically does the superficiality of Russian culture appear in social and political questions. These two directions of human thought have, in most recent times, become very popular in all Russian society. But what an abyss separates a European from a Russian in this field! In Europe the theses of the social sciences or of politics are the result of life. They are adjusted to life conditions and treated critically. In Russia they are lifeless dogmas, about which Russian scholars of the 20th Century dispute with the same heat and in the same manner as their ancestors, a few hundred years ago, disputed as to whether the Hallelujah should be sung twice or three times, whether the confession of faith should read “born, not created” or “born and not created,” whether one should say, “God have mercy upon us” or “Oh God, have mercy upon us,” whether one should use two fingers in crossing [[208]]oneself or three, and so on. Naturally, at that time religious questions were the fashion. Today it is social questions. And what does it amount to? Rampant doctrinism, the eternal use of banal commonplaces, an immature setting up of principles. And the result is—extreme unwieldiness of Russian society in internal politics and in parliamentarism, in social and national work, together with a deep scorn of the depraved West (gnili zapad).

With this superficiality of Russian culture, its most evil characteristic is connected; the decline of family life and a certain moral perverseness. This phenomenon is commonly met with in all peoples who have but recently come in contact with Western European culture. The bad qualities of a high civilization are always assumed first, the good qualities slowly. In this field the Russians have far outstripped their European models.

The above facts suffice to prove that Russian cultural influences are dangerous for the Ukrainian people. The severe, rigid materialistic character of the Russian people will, without any doubt, enable it to outlast the storm and stress period of the present Russian culture, and guide it to a splendid future. But for the Ukrainian people, with its sentimental, gentle character, the assuming of Russian culture would be a deadly poison. Even supposing that the Ukrainian people might survive such an experiment, a thing which is not likely, it would forever remain a miserable appendage of the Russian nation.

And besides, such an experiment is entirely unnecessary. Either we say, “We are Ukrainians, an independent race and different from the Russians,” and build up our culture quite independently, or we say, “We are ‘Little Russians,’ one of the three tribes of Great Russia and of its high culture,” and, in that case, we may calmly lie down on the world renowned Ukrainian stove. For then it does [[209]]not pay even to work at the development of our language. A third alternative does not exist.

At present, however, the former view is generally predominant among the intelligenzia of the land, and the fact that many intelligent Ukrainians are permeated with Russian culture is due, not to an ideal conviction, but only to the powerful influence of the Russian schools and the Russian cities. How do these educated people stand beneath the Ukrainian peasant who, even on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, does not exchange his individual Ukrainian popular culture for the Russian, and deserves the scornful, but in our eyes very commendable saying of the Russians, “Khakhol vyesdie kharkhol!”

If, then, we are to remain a really independent nation, there is only one avenue open to Ukrainian culture, and that is to follow the culture of Western Europe step by step, to seek its models among the Germans, Scandinavians, English and French. And this entire development we must base upon the broad foundation of our high popular culture. Let us consider with what piety the really cultural nations of Europe preserve the little remains of their popular culture. Their few usages or superstitions, their little body of folk-songs! How much richer than they are we in all our misery! The Ukrainian people spoke a mighty first word thru Kotlarevsky a century ago; it then found the first diamond upon its path, the pure language of the people. Unfortunately, no Ukrainian has yet arisen who could speak just as mighty a second word by finding ways and means of lifting the treasures of the home culture of the land, and enabling the entire nation to work at the task of using them to advantage. This “apostle of truth and science,” as he is called by Shevchenko, has not appeared, altho he has had several ancestors, like Drahomaniv. But there are already very many Ukrainians who would place their seal upon the declaration: “that the [[210]]Ukraine possesses so rich a popular culture, that by developing all its hidden possibilities and supplementing them by elements drawn from the untainted sources of Western European culture, the Ukrainian nation could attain a complete culture just as peculiar to itself, and just as exalted among the great European cultures, as Ukrainian popular culture is among the popular cultures of other peoples.”