Читать книгу Borotbism: A Chapter in the History of the Ukrainian Revolution - Ivan Maistrenko - Страница 10

CHRISTOPHER FORD

Volodymyr Vynnychenko, one of the most well-known Ukrainian leaders in the 20th century, coined the phrase vsebichne vyzvolennia—“Universal liberation”.1 By this he meant the “Universal (social, national, political, moral, cultural, etc.) liberation” of the worker and peasant masses. This striving for “such a total and radical liberation” represented the “Ukrainian Revolution” in the broad historical sense. However the expression the “Ukrainian Revolution” may also be used in the narrower sense, of the great upheavals aimed at this object, the most noteworthy of which marked the years 1917–1920.

According to Vynnychenko, the “Universal current” which strove to realize this historical tendency of the revolution comprised the most radical of the socialist parties, the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers’ party (Independentists), or Nezalezhnyky, the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries-Borotbisty and the oppositional currents amongst the Bolsheviks in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Revolution cannot be understood without sharing the hopes, disappointments and aspirations of its participants. One such participant in those dramatic events that form the subject of this book is its author Ivan Maistrenko. His book tells the story of the revolution through the history of one element of that “Universal current”—the Borotbisty.2 One of the first significant accounts of the revolution in English, Borotbism is a unique work whose republication comes at a time of increased interest in Ukraine. Yet amidst the array of materials now available to the reader, there remains a deficiency with regard to the pivotal role of Ukrainian Revolutionary socialism in those years.

This problem of the revolution’s historiography is not new and its continuation makes this book as important today as when it first appeared in 1954. Maistrenko’s work remains the principal study of the Borotbisty, the majority left wing of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries—the largest party of the revolution.3