The origin of Ukrainian separatism

Born in the Russian Empire and made into a Soviet historian, Nikolai Ulyanov found himself in occupied territory during World War II and was sent to forced labor in Germany in 1943. After the war, he moved to Casablanca (Morocco), and in the spring of 1953 he moved to Canada , where he lectured at the University of Montreal . Since 1955 he settled in the United States , where, with the assistance of the emigrant historian George Vernadsky, he got a job as a teacher of Russian history and literature at Yale University .

Ulyanov began work on his monograph in Casablanca and continued for fifteen years, and in 1966 published it at his own expense. The book was printed in Madrid , but New York is considered the formal place of publication. The text was stylized as a Russian pre-reform spelling, but without a terminal hard mark ^[1] .

The first time after the release of the book remained almost unknown. There is a version that most of the circulation was bought up and destroyed after its release ^{[1] [2]} .

The monograph is associated with a large number of articles, essays and reviews by Ulyanov, such as Russian and Great Russian, Rus-Little Russia-Ukraine, False Prophet, Shevchenko Legendary, Bogdan Khmelnitsky, etc. ^[3]

In 1996, the book was reprinted in Moscow and since that time has become available to the Russian reader ^[1] .

The monograph can be divided into three parts: the first is devoted to the consideration of the separatist sentiments of Cossack foreman in the 17th century , the second to the revival of the “Little Russian Cossackophilia” at the beginning of the 19th century , and the third to the design of the ideology of autocracy in the late XIX - early XX century ^[3] .

The monograph examines in detail the process of forming the ideology of the Ukrainian movement, where it is presented as created with the aim of substantiating an alternative to all-Russian identity. Methods of suppressing the Russian ethnocultural movement in the regions of Austria-Hungary inhabited by Rusyns are studied in the late XIX - early XX centuries. ^[four]

The central idea of ​​Ulyanov’s work is to consider the Ukrainian movement as “separatist”, artificial and far-fetched. The author writes: “In contrast to European and American separatism, which developed most often under the sign of religious and racial differences or socio-economic contradictions, Ukrainian cannot remain on any of these principles. The Cossacks prompted him an argument from history, composing an autocratic scheme of the Ukrainian past, built entirely on lies, fakes, contradictions with facts and documents. ” Based on this view, the author claims that, besides these dubious historiographical constructions, there are no other convincing reasons for the separation of the Ukrainian and Russian states among themselves ^[5] .

There are numerous assessments of this work by Ulyanov as the only fundamental scientific research, the central theme of which is the phenomenon of the so-called “Ukrainian separatism” ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]} .

In 1985, the writer of the second wave of Russian emigration V.F. Samarin expressed an opinion on the concepts of Ulyanov’s work ^{[3] [6]} :

They are needed precisely in our time, when a murky wave of Russophobia spreads through the pages of books, magazines, newspapers, when the concept of international communism is replaced by the concept of Russian imperialism, when the West implements a policy directed not against communism, but against historical Russia - a policy that threatens global catastrophe.

In his review of the modern reprint of Ulyanov’s monograph, the Ukrainian historian and archaeographer Yaroslav Dashkevich wrote that his author sought to surpass his predecessor, Sergei Shchegolev (1862-1919), the founder of Russian “separatism”. According to Dashkevich, it’s quite possible to apply to Ulyanov’s work the characteristic that Lenin once gave to Shchegolev ’s work “The Ukrainian Movement as a Modern Stage of South Russian Separatism” : “Detective Zitatensack (bag of quotes)!” It scolds everything Polish with saliva at the mouth, and he writes with polonisms ... He writes illiterate ... The ignoramus ... The Black Hundred is mad! Scolds Ukrainians with vile words! ” ^[1] .