Borotbism: A Chapter in the History of the Ukrainian Revolution

The Russian intervention in 2014 posed an existential threat to Ukraine. It generated a surge in national consciousness with the mass self-activity flowing from Euromaidan into a resistance that checked and isolated the aggression. But whilst the occupants of 1914 contributed to the fermenting of the 1917 revolution, the 2014 aggression assisted in the subverting of the original ideals of the Euromaidan revolution. Hopes for social and democratic change have been inhibited by the failure to dislodge the oligarchic elite, who have used the cover of the necessities of war to safeguard their own position and mold policies that serve their needs.

This situation has also flowed into the history of the Ukrainian Revolution, which is refracted through the prism of current politics. In this context Maistrenko’s Borotbism is more than just an historical document. The debates during and after the revolution of 1917–1921 about the relative importance of national and/or social emancipation are of great importance in contemporary Ukraine. As a consequence of recent events Ukraine has veered further from Moscow’s orbit, naturally posing new considerations of how the nation defines itself, which in turn have become enmeshed with how history is understood.

A new turn in the approach to history has taken place since 2014, which poses such choices as between “two models of historical memory—the patriotic nation-building and the communist-imperialist”.16 After many years in which the history of Ukraine has faced severe constraints, during which Stalinist and Russophile political forces have fiercely resisted a Ukrainian alternative. In this context the recognition now afforded the Ukrainian Revolution can be considered a progressive development. Nevertheless this decolonization of history whilst seeking to escape past constraints is simultaneously fostering new ones set out in an official state historical narrative overseen by the group of publicists who run the Ukrainian Institute for National Remembrance (UINR).17

In the new state narrative the revolution of 1917–1921 is placed within a unilineal historical development towards statehood. Instead of a fetishized Lenin and Stalin we are presented with Petlyura, Skoropadsky and above all Bandera, as if they alone represent the Ukrainian movement and almost Ukraine itself.18

In this new narrative, movements such as the Borotbisty are outsiders from a revolution of which they were a vital element. The continuity and similarity of approach by the current nationalist and former Stalinist narratives is striking. This is illustrated by their treatment of the national cultural revival of the 1920s, driven forward by former Borotbisty and other Ukrainian left-wing socialists. In the USSR the Borotbisty were concealed for decades and only ever cited in the pejorative. Today their role is demeaned again with Volodymyr Viatrovych Director of UINR crassly comparing the 1920s “blossoming of Ukrainian culture” to the “successes in Hitler’s economic policies” asking “should this blossoming, which eventually grew into an executed renaissance in the subsequent decade, serve to justify a regime guilty in the intentional murder of millions of Ukrainians?”.19 (One can only speculate how long the memorial to Oleksander Shumsky, the Borotbist leader, will stand in Zhytomyr.)

The current official history seeks to sanitize the revolution of radical socialist content, and places conservatives centre stage. None more so than the wartime era integral nationalists notably the Stepan Bandera led Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.20 The latter are presented as heirs to 1917–1921 revolution. The glorification and paradoxes of Bandera in contemporary Ukraine deserve a study in its own right. But in relation to approaches to the revolution of 1917–1921 it brings to the fore a clash of conceptions of Ukraine which are not new, and were already posed when Bandera re-emerged after the war seeking to influence the Ukrainian emigrants in displaced persons camps in Europe.

Maistrenko, the former Borotbist, castigated the Bandе́rivsti in an article in the left-wing paper Vpered, “Considering the Ukrainian National Revolution and Nationalist Reaction”, branding Bandera as “the ideological mummy from Galicia in the 1930s” and “a nationalist, but of an old, reactionary school”.21 The revolution envisaged by the Bandе́rivsti tradition diverges from the revolution of 1917, whose leadership belonged to the Ukrainian socialist parties.22

This retrogression we see today was already being challenged by no less a figure than Volodymyr Vynnychenko, one of the most popular figures of the revolution and leader of the first independent Ukrainian State. After meeting with him in France Maistrenko and his comrades of the Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party, published a pamphlet by Vynnychenko which speaks to our current controversies.23 Recalling that their “Ukrainian spring” had faced numerous enemies, Vynnychenko argued their defeat was not only due to physical power but their political disorder. The Bolsheviks had an “intense fear of losing the colony” but also “raised the banner of the most decisive social and economic revolution which was the cry of the Ukrainian worker-peasant masses.”24 The question was posed as: “either national liberation, or social, or ‘Ukraine’, or ‘land and factories”. The central body of the revolution, the “Central Rada did not try to combine these two slogans”, believing “the enthusiasm of the national rebirth would be above all other interests.” And in the Central Rada, there was a lack of sufficient understanding of the moment, unanimity, and the determination to become the vanguard of the masses, to act as an expression not only of their national but also their social and economic interests.25

Vynnychenko saw this as a recurrent problem, the followers of Bandera taking an even more dogmatic approach and refusal to learn from history:

The Bandero-UHVRist youth, teaching me how to fight for Ukraine, categorically told me that only idiots and traitors raise the question of what Ukraine should be. For them, this question has no weight, only Ukraine.26

Vynnychenko saw a different historical tendency of the revolution than the uniform one set forth in today’s official historical narrative in Ukraine. In contrast Vynnychenko emphasized they did not all think the same way, the revolution created a current of “one-sided liberation” (odnobichnoho vyzvolennya) focused on national-statehood—and the “Universal current” that sought a “comprehensive liberation” (vsebichnoho vyzvolennya) both social and national.27 The members of the “Universal current” comprised the left-wing Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionaries (Borotbisty) and left-wing Ukrainian Social Democrats (Ukapisty).28 Maistrenko was active is both parties. One reviewer of Borotbism wrote: “It is almost impossible to speak accurately of Ukrainian nationalism; rather there are many factions of Ukrainian nationalists”.29

Maistrenko’s Borotbism presents a different view of the revolution than those which see to shroud it as a fight between an undifferentiated mass of Ukrainian people in struggle with the Russian Empire. It is a valuable record of events that were pivotal to the development, if not a foundation event of modern Ukraine.

2. The Colonial Terrain and Social Forces

of the Revolution

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.