Читать книгу Borotbism: A Chapter in the History of the Ukrainian Revolution - Ivan Maistrenko - Страница 12

The events presented in Borotbism took place in a setting very different from our own time; on the eve of the revolution the world generally knew little of Ukraine. The territory inhabited by Ukrainians was partitioned between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires, the majority having been held in a colonial position by Tsarist Russia for over two and a half centuries. But contrary to the prognosis of some the development of capitalism did not render permanent its status as a so-called “non-historic” nation.30 Though this was not for the want of trying; in the mind of Moscow there was no Ukraine; only the southern province known derogatorily as Malorossia—‘Little Russia’.

Pursuing the policy of Russification and consolidation of its power in Ukraine, the Tsarist government deprived the Ukrainian people of the right to develop their culture, including the language. In 1720 a decree prohibited publishing (except religious books), in 1863 the ‘Valuev Circular’ declared “no separate Ukrainian language has ever existed, exists or can exist”. In 1876 the Ems Ukaz banned not only printing but bringing Ukrainian books from abroad. The ban lasted until 1905, by 1908 harassment saw publishing plummet again.

In the provinces of Galicia and Bukovyna, under the rule of the Habsburgs the legal Ukrainian movement developed apace. From this “Ukrainian piedmont” it exerted influence and provided a base for the movement in the Russian Empire. In contrast under Tsarist absolutism the Ukrainian movement faced a protracted struggle, Tsarism responding with hostility qualitatively different from its attitude towards a number of other nationalities. This can be explained by the role Ukraine played in the foundation of the Empire.

Ukraine’s subordination to Moscow can be traced to the mid-17th century, after the Cossack-led revolution against the Polish-Lithuanian rule, the new Ukrainian state entered into the Treaty of Pereyalsav with the Tsardom of Muscovy. It is matter of controversy to this day; in Russian history it was a ‘reunion’ which gradually saw Russia gradually supplanting Polish influence. The subsequent ingestion of the ‘republic of the Cossacks’ by the Tsardom of Muscovy, brought with it the acquisition of the black earth belt, the coasts of the Black Sea and rich natural resources. This metamorphosed Muscovy into the Russian Empire, a factor of no small importance in the mind of Russian nationalism to this day.31

The social and economic geography of Ukraine was changed drastically under Russian rule. Previously autonomous Ukraine had boasted for the time a relatively representative form of government, a free peasantry, an industry and agriculture more advanced than in Russia. It was transformed into what the 1920s Soviet economist Mykhaylo Volobuyev characterized, as a colonial dependence of a “European type”.32 A combined drive of the Russian state and western European capital saw huge strides in the development of capitalism at the turn of the century. French, Belgian, British and German capitalists owned much of coal, ore, iron and steel in Ukraine. This growth generated contradictory tendencies for the economic terrain, as Volobuyev observed:

Those who speak of unity of the pre-revolutionary Russian and Ukrainian economies, have only in mind the first tendency and forget about the second—the centrifugal, or rather—of the desire to join the world economic system directly, and not through the intermediary of the Russian economy. The process of concentration on a capitalist basis is reflected in the contradictory forms of autarchic tendencies. Therefore we should not deceive ourselves by the fact of concentrating tendencies in the Russian pre-revolutionary economy. Alongside these tendencies it is necessary to also see the separatist forces of the Ukrainian economy. Therefore, the question, of whether there was a single Russian pre-revolutionary economy, should be answered as follows: it was a single economy on an antagonistic, imperialist basis, but from the viewpoint of centrifugal forces of the colonies oppressed by her, it was a complex of national economies. In this way, we provide the answer to the first question that was posed at the beginning of this article. The Ukrainian economy was not an ordinary province of Tsarist Russia, but a country that was placed in a colonial position.33

Stifling key sectors of indigenous industry, the policies of Tsarism were designed to transform Ukraine into a supplier of raw materials for Russia, a market for Russian manufactured goods, and protect Russian industry from Ukrainian competition.34 Symptomatic was the transport system; as opposed to railways which ran from Ukrainian centers to Black Sea ports and west, they were instead constructed on a north-south axis reflecting the needs of Russian business interests.

The colonial position of Ukraine impacted on the state, capital, labor relations and composition of the social classes. The capitalist class was non-Ukrainian, prompting Ukrainian socialists to consider their nation as bourgeoisless (bezburzhaunist).35 The small capitalist class considered itself the regional section of the all-Russian bourgeoisie; politically it was an outpost of Russian conservatism.

In 1897 there were a total of 1.5 million workers, of whom 44 per cent were Ukrainian; seasonal agricultural workers comprised an estimated 2 million.36 By 1917 the working class numbered 3.6 million, employed in industry, railways, urban and village artisan workplaces, construction, servants, transit and over one million were agricultural laborers.37 In 1917, inclusive of their dependents the working class accounted for 6.5 million people, 20.8 per cent of the population of Russian-ruled Ukraine. The largest contingent of the working class was formed by agricultural laborers -1.2 million.38

Alongside the high levels of industrial development, European investment and enterprises with the latest western machinery was dreadful social conditions. In 1910 wages in Ukraine were one-quarter that of Western Europe, housing and working conditions were amongst the worst in Europe. In the Left-Bank and Right-Bank of Ukraine where the majority of Ukrainian workers were located, wages were amongst the lowest in the Empire. In 1897, 52 per cent of Ukraine’s industrial working class was illiterate, exacerbated by an absence of schools in the native language.

The working class bore the stigmata of colonialism; it was not formed by a transfer of the Ukrainian peasants to the proletariat. In 1917, 40 per cent of workers were Ukrainian (largely in rural areas), Russians formed 40 per cent, Jews 10 per cent, and the remainder other nationalities. In industrial centers, a pattern of Russian hegemony could be found in factory labor and plant management, a Russian and Russified upper strata developed in the higher paid skilled posts.39 Ukrainian new entrants found Russian not only the language of the state but of the labor regime, the factory owner and foreman.40

These developments posited the national question at the point of production through a division of labor which relegated Ukrainians to the lower strata, under-represented in heavy industry and over-represented in service and agricultural sectors. Flexible labor was widespread, there were a high proportion of temporary workers in factories—in the Donbas almost all temporary workers were Ukrainian.41

It was not coincidental that Russian nationalism expressed itself in extreme forms in Ukraine where the notorious Black Hundreds were well organized. The working class was not immune to chauvinism; the observations of a blacksmith in Yuzovka (Donetsk) of a demonstration during 1905 provide a flavor: ‘who’s running this?…. A bunch of Khokholy and Zhidy’, derogatory terms for Ukrainians and Jews.42

Anti-Semitism was deliberately fostered, previously Russia forbade Jews on its territory, when the Tsar acquired Right Bank Ukraine (lands west of the Dnipro River) it contained a considerable Jewish populace. The Tsar Catherine created the notorious “Pale of Settlement” in much of Ukraine, Belarus and parts of western Russia. An area Jews could settle but not own land with proscriptions on movement. The five million Jews were subjected to institutional discrimination; recurrent violence and poverty that saw two million emigrate between 1881–1914.

Colonial dependency characterized the process of urbanization; this relationship reshaped old cities and established new ones. The stimulus to urban growth was both strategic and economic, the need to establish a strong Russian presence and the extraction of raw materials. The imposition of serfdom in Ukraine after the Russian conquest tied the peasant to the land and curtailed social mobility, obstructing their movement to cities. The cities and large towns evolved into enclaves of Russians and Russified colonizers. As industrialization accelerated, the landscape became a scene of social and national disparities. According to the Imperial census of 1897, Ukraine had a population of 23,430,000; Ukrainians predominated on the Left-Bank and Right-Bank but by a narrower majority in the southern steppe region. This overall demography is presented in Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1. National composition of Russian-ruled Ukraine—189743

Nationality	Number	% of the total
Ukrainians	17,040,000	71.5
Russians	2.970,000	12.4
Jews	2,030,000	8.5
Germans	502,000	2.1
Poles	406,000	1.7
Romanian/Moldovans	187,000	0.8
Belarusians	222,000	0.9
Tatars	220,000	0.9
Greeks	80,000	0.3
Bulgarians	68,000	0.3
Czechs	37,000	0.2
Others	71,000	0.3
Total	23,833,000	99.9

Table 2. Nationalities in Provinces of Russian-ruled Ukraine—189744

Province	Ukrainians	Russians	Jews	Total
Katerynoslav	1,456,000	365,000	99,000	2,113,000
Kharkiv	2,009,000	441,000	13,000	2,492,000
Kherson	1,462,000	575,000	322,000	2,733,000
Kyiv	2,819,000	209,000	430,000	3,559,000
Podillia	2,442,000	99,000	369,000	3,018,000
Poltava	2,583,000	73,000	110,000	2,778,000
Volhynia	2,096,000	105,000	395,000	2,989,000
Total	14,867,000	1,867,000	1,738,000	19,682,000
%	75.5	9.5	8.8

The contrast between the overall population and that of the cities can be seen when compared to the gubernia in which they were situated. As illustrated in Table 3. The colonial pattern of urbanization ensured the primacy of Russians and other non-Ukrainian minorities in the urban power centers, illustrated in the composition of the Civil Service in Ukraine of which 47 per cent were Russians and 31 per cent Ukrainians.45 Whilst Ukrainian speakers constituted 80 per cent of the rural population, they constituted one-third of the urban population.46 Ukrainians who migrated to cities were subject to pressures of assimilation in a Russified environment. This was not accidental but corresponded with the colonial policy of the Imperial government.47

Table 3. Nationalities by language in cities of Russian-ruled Ukraine—189748

City	Total Population	Ukrainians (%	Russians of Total)	Jews
Odessa	403,815	9.4	49.0	30.8
Kyiv	247,723	22.2	54.2	2.1
Kharkiv	173,989	25.9	63.2	5.7
Katerynoslav	112,839	15.8	41.8	35.4
Mykolaiv	92,012	8.5	66.3	19.5
Zhytomyr	65,895	13.9	25.7	46.4
Kremenchuk	63,007	30.1	19.3	46.9
Yelisavetgrad	61,488	23.6	34.6	37.8
Kherson	59,076	19.6	47.2	29.1
Poltava	53,703	56.0	20.6	19.9
Berdychiv	53.351	8.2	8.6	77.1

Remarkably, despite mass migration of a million peasants, and the loss of 1.2 million inhabitants in the First World War, the population of Ukraine saw a 33 per cent increase to 31,214,000 between 1897 and 1917.49 The urban population doubled from the three million inhabitants of 1897, increasing from 13.2 per cent of its total population to 20 per cent in 1917. These demographic shifts however did not change the social-class structure, and Ukrainians remained marginalized.

Analysis of the population of the strategically vital urban centers illustrates the predicament of the Ukrainian movement. In 1917 the intelligentsia and white-collar staff formed 26 per cent of the total urban population, and the petty-bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie another 29 per cent. These middle-class strata represented some 55 per cent of the urban population, with the proletariat, at 23 per cent, and the semi-proletariat, at 21 per cent. Ukrainians were poorly represented in the first two groups, and formed a majority of the latter.50 In Kyiv two thirds of Ukrainians were classed as workers, servants or unemployed.51 The resulting alienation was captured by the Ukrainian Marxist Vasyl Shakhray considered this demography:

reflected the centuries-old government of the Tsarist bureaucracy and the Russian bourgeoisie, landowners and capitalists. As in a “drop of water the sun is reflected in all the colors of the rainbow, so these figures reflect the result of the national, social, political and cultural oppression that Ukraine had experienced for centuries.52

In considering the awakening Ukrainian masses, Shakhray asked how it can be a surprise that the Ukrainian peasant was so suspicious of their foreign overlords, of ‘the Jewish-merchant, the Great Russian-official, an assistant to the Polish-landowner, the clerk.’ Writing through the eyes of a peasant Shakhray wrote:

The city rules the village and the city is ‘alien’. The city draws to itself all the wealth and gives the village nothing in return. The city extracts taxes, which never return to the village, to Ukraine. During the 14 years from 1900–1914, 8 of the Ukrainian provinces gave 7507 million, and of that only 4099 million (54 per cent) was spent on Ukraine, and 3409 million (45.6 per cent were lost to Ukraine. In the city one must pay bribes to the official, be freed from bullying and red tape. In the city the merchant is lying, selling and buying. In the city the landlord eats good things collected in the village. In the city the lights are burning, there are schools, theatres, and music plays. The city is expensively dressed as for a holiday, it eats and drinks well, many people promenade.

In the village there is, except for hard work, impenetrable darkness and misery, almost nothing. The city is aristocratic it is alien. It is not ours, not Ukrainian. It is Great-Russian, Jewish, Polish, but not ours, not Ukrainian.53

Regarded the breadbasket of Europe, Ukrainian was synonymous with peasant. In 1917 Ukraine remained an agrarian country; 80 per cent of the population lived in the countryside and 68 per cent relied on agriculture for their livelihood.54 It was here that the social and national questions became enmeshed in an explosive cocktail, setting the scene for the agrarian revolution of 1917 and the base of movements such as the Borotbisty.

In the four years prior to the ‘Emancipation’ reform of 1861, Ukraine saw an estimated 276 peasant uprisings, but the end of serfdom did not solve the agrarian problem. The reform created new obstacles, the peasantry faced the curtailment of the area of land available for their use, an excessive redemption, preventing buying back the land which was originally theirs, they were burdened by excessive payments, iniquitous income tax, land tax, an array of dues and a series of labor duties leftover from serfdom.

A process of social differentiation of the peasantry occurred in the context of capitalist development though not as presented by certain historians and Soviet literature.55 The latter placed particular emphasis on the rich peasants the ‘kulaks’ (kurkul in Ukrainian)—a term of abuse used frequently for any expression of Ukrainian nationalism. The standard categories of Soviet literature of which much historical data has been drawn, divided the peasantry into poor, middle and rich famers, the kulak. These categories are based on landholdings, and on this basis almost half of the peasant population of Ukraine in 1917 was poor, one-third middle strata.56 A high proportion of poor peasants’ worked elsewhere, agricultural laborers, or in trades, over a million left their homes each year to work in seasonal worker.57

The national composition of the class of landowners further entwined the national and agrarian question. Of some 25 million rural inhabitants the class of landowners comprised 1.1 per cent yet controlled 30 per cent of the land.58 Alongside the Russian state, church and monasteries, a third of arable land was held by a class of which three out of four were Russians or Poles.59 There was further estrangement from the petty traders who bought the grain at the cheapest price and in return sold manufactured goods at the highest price; only one out of seven was Ukrainian.60 In Right-Bank Ukraine, in Kyiv, Podillia and Volhynia provinces where large latifundia remained since the era of Polish rule; poverty was the most acute in the Empire.61

Already in 1902 mass peasant strikes in Poltava and Kharkiv began to fuse social demands with that of an autonomous Ukraine.

Socio-economic inequality of the colonial agrarian system was a major factor in the developing revolutionary ferment in the Ukrainian provinces, but as Holubnychy points out there were several factors to take into account. It is also necessary to appreciate that the agrarian revolution that unfolded in 1917 was not in isolation but was part of a wider revolutionary situation. The experience of the 1902 strikes and the 1905 revolution was alive, education was spreading literacy in the countryside and assisted the extensive socialist and cooperative agitation, youth had gained experience in the Army, and the overall acute situation was exacerbated by the war.62 Karl Kautsky the foremost figure of international socialism before 1917 had observed of Ukraine:

Capitalism develops in only one dimension for the Ukrainian people—it proletarianizes them, while the other dimension—the flowering of the productive forces, the accumulation of surplus and wealth—is mainly for the benefit of other countries. Because of this, capitalism reveals to Ukrainians only its negative, revolutionizing dimension...it does not lead to an increase in their wealth.63

The development of capitalism in Ukraine was not an isolated process, it occurred in the context of an expanding capitalist system which integrated the Russian Empire into the world economy through social, economic, military and political connections. Divided between rival empires that were part of two opposed camps, the Ukrainian question was situated in a vital strategic vector of European capitalism. It was in the strategic interests’ of European capital to prevent a Ukrainian republic emerge, especially one constituted by the labor and socialist movement.

In Ukraine a nation of workers and peasants with no nationally conscious capitalist class it logically followed that the driving forces of the revolution should correspond to the nation’s character. This had already been illustrated in the influential work of the leading theorist of the Ukrainian Social Democrats, Mykola Porsh that the:

Thus only the proletariat can assume the leadership in the struggle for autonomy.... the Ukrainian national movement will not be a bourgeois movement of triumphant capitalism as in the case of the Czechs. It will be more like the Irish case, a proletarian and semi-proletarianized peasant movement.64

These contours of the Ukrainian movement were already apparent in 1905, having produced its own organic intellectuals and organized in political parties, unions, co-operatives, cultural and Prosvita educational associations. The movement which emerged at the start of the 20th century contained an energetic current which was strongly influenced by socialist thought and the struggles of the worker-peasant masses. It was the starting point of a new period for the Ukrainian movement. The scale and power of the revolution in Ukraine would come as a surprise even to those who had expected it and worked for it.