The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U. S., Vol. VII, No. 1, 2 (23-24) 1959, pp. 1542-1566.

MYKHAYLO DRAHOMANOV, IVAN FRANKO AND THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE DNIEPER UKRAINE AND GALICIA IN THE LAST QUARTER OF THE 19th CENTURY*

YAROSLAV BILINSKY

Among the factors that have shaped the Ukrainian national movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries must be counted the specific contribution of the Western Ukrainian provinces, in particular of (East) Galicia.1 This paper attempts to make a preliminary and tentative appraisal of this contribution at the turn of the century by focusing on the relationship between two leaders of the movement: the Eastern Ukrainian scholar and publicist Mykhaylo (Michael) Drahomanov (1841-1895) and the Galician Ivan Franko( 1856-1916), who is usually cited as the greatest Ukrainian poet next to Shevchenko, as well as a scholar and an influential journalist.

In a very rough outline, the historical background is as follows:

During the Cossack wars the Ukraine was divided between her two strongest neighbors, Russia and Poland, by the Treaty of Andrusovo (1667). A century later Poland's turn arrived. In the course of the partitions of Poland, Russia annexed all Ukrainian territories except Galicia, Bukovina and the Transcarpathian province.

In the eastern territories Ukrainian statehood was progressively curtailed rather than immediately extinguished. It was not until the reforms of Catherine II in the 1770's and 1780's that Ukrainian Cossack officers were finally deprived of their traditional rights of self-government. At the same time, the Imperial Court promised to grant them equal rights with the Russian nobility if they could prove their noble descent. On the other hand, in Galicia, the most important of the three western provinces, the Poles had been much more successful in assimilating the Ukrainian landowning gentry and rich burghers. When the Hapsburgs annexed Galicia they found a strong Polish or Polonized upper class ruling an impoverished Ukrainian (or "Ruthenian") peasantry, with a number of not-yet-Polonized Uniate priests trying to defend the interests of their flocks. It was a society of peasants and priests, or of khlopy i popy, as the Poles derisively called them.

This delay in integrating the East Ukrainian elite into the multinational supporting stratum of the Russian Empire had important consequences for the history of the Ukrainian movement. With the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars and the rising tide of Romanticist ideas, came the spread of liberal nationalism. A people united in a nation as opposed to cosmopolitan aristocrats, became the object of admiration that was more or less sincere. The restrictions placed upon the Ukrainian Cossack gentry were regarded as wrongs that had been committed against the Ukrainian people as such. Research in old family documents yielded many a proof of past glory, and before long secret societies were founded among the Ukrainian nobles to defend the ancient liberties of their people.2 After the Decembrist Uprising of 1825, all of these circles were suppressed; at the same time, most of the Ukrainian gentry were placated by making it easier for them to enter the ranks of Russian nobility. But new strata -- poets and university professors -- took over their concern with Ukrainian history and culture. Taras Shevchenko, a serf who had become a society painter (1814-1861), was a patriot who inspired the patient work of his contemporaries with poetic genius. After the defeat in the Crimean war, quite a number of more or less secret societies were organized all over the Russian Empire which pledged themselves to advance the cause of the people, i.e., of the peasants. Under the influence of Shevchenko and his predecessors, some of these circles included in their programs development of the Ukrainian language and culture. They were called Hromady, which is the Ukrainian word for communities.

As a rule, the Hromady consisted of students, teachers, and university professors, with some eminent writers and a sprinkling of wealthy estate owners and bourgeois. Drahomanov, for example, had joined the Kiev Hromada in the early 1860's when he was a student at the local university. Their basic aim was furthering popular education, woefully neglected in the Russian Empire before the institution of the zemstvos3 In this they paralleled, possibly even anticipated, a similar movement among the Russian intelligentsia.4 In the 1860's the great concern with the plight of the peasantry was shared by Russian and Ukrainian intellectuals alike, though it was not until the early 1870's that it was elevated to a credo of the rapidly expanding populist movement. But the Ukrainian intellectuals differed from many of their Russian colleagues in their insistence that the peasants be first educated in Ukrainian, for that was the only language that the peasants in the Ukraine understood well. Ukrainian scholars, however, would write their learned monographs in Russian, the language that was spoken by the intelligentsia throughout the Empire.

The political and social outlook of the Hromada members m the 1860's was rather diverse. In his autobiography Drahomanov notes "that among the Ukrainian youth at that time there were hopes of creating in the Ukraine something like the ancient Cossack republic, and of a peasant uprising like that described by Shevchenko -- the Haydamaky rebellion of 1768."5 But he is quick to add that the majority were much more interested in cultural development. Nevertheless, the Ukrainophiles, as the Hromada members were usually called, did not escape accusations of Ukrainian separatism, levelled against them by extreme Russian nationalists and Russified Ukrainians. Around 1875 there existed two trends in the Kiev Hromada. The majority wanted to develop the scientific underpinning for Ukrainian nationalism: to do research in Ukrainian history, literature and folklore. They were led by the well-known Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Antonovych. A minority, however, consisting of Drahomanov, his friend Kovalevsky and the composer Lysenko, favored greater political activity to attract the youth who, interested in politics rather than Ukrainian cultural studies, tended to be sucked into the all-Russian opposition movement.6

Before 1863 the Tsarist government did not single out the Ukrainian movement for special persecution, although occasionally it would strike out sharply, as by exiling Shevchenko from the Ukraine in 1847 for the rest of his life (1847-1861). Its attitude changed, however, with the Polish uprising of 1863, when the Ukrainians, too, fell under suspicion of political separatism -- an accusation that was premature, to say the least. Occasional respites notwithstanding,7 it remained hostile throughout the nineteenth century. Specifically, it drastically restricted the publication of any books and journals in Ukrainian.8

Austrian policy in Galicia was different. In Galicia the Ukrainians were being oppressed by the Poles who themselves had been incorporated into Austria by force. Hence, when the Ukrainian national movement slowly began to develop in the West in the 1830's, a generation after its counterpart in the Eastern Ukraine, the Court at Vienna found it politic to support the Ukrainians against the Poles. In the Revolution of 1848, the Austrian Poles threatened to re-establish their independence, whereas the Galician Ukrainians pledged their loyalty to the Hapsburg Throne, declaring at the same time that they were but a part of the larger Ukrainian nation. By this move they might have won considerable concessions from Vienna, had it not been for the threat from Budapest. After granting far-reaching autonomy to the Hungarians in 1867, Vienna was compelled to look for countervailing support in the Reichsrat against the Czechs and the Croats, who had been alienated by this step. This it found in the ranks of conservative Polish landowners at the price of virtually granting them a free hand in Galicia.9 Nevertheless, the quasi-constitutional structure of the Hapsburg Empire permitted the Galician Ukrainians to continue their struggle against Polish predominance through parliamentary and bureaucratic channels.

Confronted with superior Polish force and Austrian indifference, the three and a half million Galician Ukrainians started looking for outside help. Two possible courses were open to them: they could solicit the aid of the eleven and a half million compatriots in the East,10 or they could appeal directly to the vastly more powerful Russians, who might after all be less dangerous than the Poles. Both courses were duly tried by different groups of Galician scholars and writers. In the beginning the essentially political alternatives were presented as a dispute over ways of spelling -- the Ukrainophiles or Populists (Narodovtsi) modeling their rules on the spoken language, which was very similar to that used in Eastern Ukraine, the Russophiles insisting on a more etymological spelling, which would have brought the Galician language closer to the Russian. But whereas the Russian historian Pogodin showed continued interest in his Galician admirers, the contacts with East Ukrainian leaders remained quite sporadic until the late 1850's,11 and the failure of the East Ukrainians to respond to the Galician declaration of solidarity in 1848 did not improve the position of the Ukrainophile wing in the western province. Thus by 1875 the Russophile group became the stronger by far. The Ukrainophiles might have been forced to retreat had it not been for the enterprise of one Ukrainian poet, the death of another and a premature move on the part of the Russian government.

To cut a long story short, the Eastern Ukrainian poet and scholar Panteleymon Kulish, an energetic but somewhat unstable and tactless man, was the first to establish permanent contact with his Galician compatriots in 1858.12 Three years later Taras Shevchenko died. So impressive were the popular manifestations attending the transfer of Shevchenko's body from St. Petersburg to Kaniv on the Dnieper that a large section of Galician youth, moved solely by their reading of eyewitness reports, vowed to become good Ukrainians.13 Finally, by its 1863 decree the Russian government supplemented the emotional bond by a more practical consideration: it forced the Eastern Ukrainian writers and scholars to print their works in Galicia. To facilitate this, the Eastern Ukrainians even bought a complete printing press in Lviv. Thus it might be said that when Drahomanov met Franko in 1876, the permanent relationship between the Ukrainian East and West had already existed for some fifteen years. Moreover, Drahomanov's interest in the life of the western province was eagerly welcomed by the Galicians themselves, who could not get on very well with Kulish.14

II

When in 1876 Franko was introduced to Drahomanov in Lviv, the latter was 15 years his senior in age and a great many years older in status. Franko was then 21 years old, a student of philosophy at the University of Lviv and a regular contributor of verse to the student magazine Druh (Friend). Drahomanov had already gained a reputation in the Russian Empire as a promising historian and ethnographer -- a reputation which shone the brighter when the Tsarist government cancelled his lectureship at the University of Kiev for alleged Ukrainian separatism in early 1875. He enjoyed great respect in wide Ukrainian circles, and after his dismissal from the University his compatriots voted him an annual stipend, in return for which he was to publish abroad a journal similar to Herzen's Kolokol, under the title Hromada. The disparity in age and status notwithstanding, Franko and Drahomanov soon became great friends, and their voluminous correspondence proves that they remained such until Drahomanov's death in 1895.15

Their friendship was soon to be put to a severe test. In June 1877 Franko was arrested for "socialist agitation" together with the whole editorial board of Druh and others, a total of one hundred persons, and in January 1878 an Austrian court convicted him of membership in a secret socialist society and sentenced him to six weeks in prison, in addition to the six months he had already spent in jail since his arrest. According to the prosecution, the moving spirit of the society was Drahomanov, whose radius of activity was alleged to have encompassed the whole territory inhabited by Ukrainians, from the Dnieper to the Hungarian (i.e., Transcarpathian) Rus'.16

While the available evidence indicates that the danger which threatened the Hapsburg throne from Drahomanov, Franko and their associates was more imagined than real, it is nevertheless true that about 1878 Drahomanov had a considerable influence in the Dnieper Ukraine and that his ideas had taken root in Galicia, too. In any case, according to Franko's recollections, he had sent out many letters to his Galician friends, including Franko, with rather vague but sweeping instructions to go to certain places in the countryside in order to establish contacts. The purpose of these contacts seems to have been to found a united Polish-Ukrainian Socialist Party in Galicia, which was to fill a gap in Galician politics because both the Ukrainophiles and the Russophiles tended to forget social and economic problems over their cultural disputes. But for some reason these letters were intercepted by the Austrian police.17

The trial had painful consequences for both Drahomanov and Franko. Drahomanov's name became something of a swear word in the intimidated Galician community, while Franko was brutally ostracized by the Lviv notables from all the Ukrainian organizations in the city. But it is characteristic of both men that neither would give up his political ambitions, though they had to engage in a long and wearisome process of laying the foundations for their political activity, a process that lasted for more than a decade, 1878-1890.

What support did Franko still enjoy among the Ukrainians in Lviv in 1878?

Leafing through an old issue of the Literaturno-Naukovyi Vistnyk, a journal edited by Franko in the 1890's and 1900's, I came across the memoirs of Dr. Olesnytsky, who had met Franko in 1878 when he, too, was a student in Lviv, and who in the 1890's became one of his friends and political associates. While the extracts I will quote are rather long, they are invaluable as a vivid though perhaps not wholly objective description of Galician life in the late 1870's, as seen by some of the youth.18

What I found in Lviv [apparently in the fall of 1878 -- Y. B.], disappointed me very much. The life of the Lviv Ukrainian community appeared to me pitiful indeed -- even worse than that.

The whole Ukraine-Rus of Lviv met in the club Rus'ka Besida [Ruthenian Conversation], which then occupied two small rooms at 14 Cracow Street, and beside it, in a very small room, was the Prosvita [Enlightenment].19

The Besida was frequented by a small group from the faculty of the Academic Gymnasium, two university professors (the late Ohonovsky brothers), and several officials -- from among the same group the Prosvita branch was recruited at that time. The Populists did not play any political role whatsoever, their only newspaper Pravda, appeared very irregularly, sometimes once every few months. The attempt to publish a political semi-monthly Pravda failed; one could not think of publishing it more frequently primarily for lack of the bail bond then required by law. The booklets of Prosvita were rather flat: they consisted chiefly of reprints and the warming up of older issues; besides publishing these booklets the Prosvita did nothing else. The plenary meetings of Prosvita which took place at Lviv once a year would scarcely draw a few dozen people, and they would never go beyond dry administrative reports. Once a year the Ukrainophiles would have an evening in memory of Shevchenko, and even that in a hall not their own (in the City Hall or the Sharpshooters' Club) and with forces not of their own (with the assistance of choirs and soloists from the Polish musical association . . . ). This is all there was to the activity of the Narodovtsi [Populist] community in Lviv.

Dr. Olesnytsky continues to tell how he attended a meeting of a Populist youth organization at which it was moved -- unsuccessfully -- to expel such dangerous members as Franko, and how this very proposal incited in him the "ardent curiosity to look the devil in the eye," until finally he found his way "to the very bottom of hell" -- Franko's apartment at 4 Klainivsky Street. He writes:20

There was nobody in Galician Rus' whose influence upon the contemporary youth could match that of Ivan Franko.

The reason for this lay in Franko's erudition (vidomosty) and personality. He had a critical mind and was an acute observer. Our acquaintance with Franko introduced us young people into a wholly different world; the scope of his reading, unusual for his years, his perceptiveness and his severe but just criticism of current daily affairs did not fail to impress and attract the young people around him.

On the third floor in Klainivsky Street, a real new school was opened for those who had access to him, which introduced us into the world of new principles and new views. . . .

Even then he possessed a good library which was used by the young people of his circle; we found in his library all the books which at that time could not be obtained elsewhere in Galicia: the Vestnik Europy,21 the Otechestvennye Zapiski the works of Shchedrin, Belinsky, Dobrolyubov; Zola, Flaubert, Spencer, Lassalle; and Drahomanov and Myrnyi of the Ukrainians. These were books that led us out into the world and like a sledge hammer broke out an opening in the stone wall, which had been erected around us by the public education of that time and the stagnant and soulless Ruthenianhood (rutenshchyna). Nor could the more able and sincere youth remain satisfied with the "Ukrainianhood" (ukrayinshchyna) which predominated in the community in Lviv and which was restricted to rather weak, purely formal and, in addition, rather infrequent manifestations. The school of Ivan Franko taught us to see the Ukrainophile movement in a different light, pointed out to us its real essence, and Drahomanov's forceful, ruthless critique reinforced this impression and evoked in us a reaction against the formal Ukrainophile movement that had prevailed in Galicia until then.

With the enthusiastic help of such men as Olesnytsky, with the counsel of Drahomanov, who had gone to Geneva, and with whatever funds Drahomanov and his supporters in the Eastern Ukraine could scrape together, two or three months after his release from jail Franko set about publishing a socialist journal -- a hopeless task in a conservative Galician community dreading the repressions of Austrian police. Before long, in 1880, Franko was arrested again and jailed without trial for three months—then released. This was apparently a broad hint to abstain from open political activity, and this time Franko took it.

The next ten years, from 1880-1889, were filled with great hopes, great disappointments and seemingly not a single achievement. Drahomanov continued to point out to Franko all the advantages of establishing a third party in Galicia. In 1886 he learned of an incipient conflict between the older and the younger members of the Kiev Hromada, with the young students becoming exasperated with the apolitical cultural orientation of their elders, notably Drahomanov's opponent Antonovych. In Drahomanov's opinion, the older members were passive, were looking toward Lviv. If there should be created in Galicia "a middle ground, a pure and honest ground-all would join a third party together."22

Franko tried to do his best, but under the pressure of the Austrian police and the intimidated Galician community, he failed until 1889 to establish even an independent newspaper, quite apart from a political organization. Moreover, whereas Drahomanov distrusted the nationalist Galician Narodovtsi as a matter of principle, Franko did not abandon the hope of winning over some of its socially progressive members to his cause. His willingness to cooperate on the editorial boards of several Narodovtsi organs greatly irritated his friend in Geneva, who on occasion could be quite doctrinaire.

Nevertheless, in 1883 Franko succeeded in gathering around himself a small legitimate circle devoted to the study of "the countryside in its ethnographic, statistical, geological and other aspects," which would allow its members to travel, to exchange opinions, and even to circulate books.23 Drahomanov gladly took it upon himself to advise the ostensibly apolitical circle in their choice of projects. Both through his writings in various Galician journals and through his organizational activity, Franko was successful in maintaining around him a circle of enthusiastic young followers.

In 1888 it seemed that Drahomanov's favorite project of having a third party in Galicia modeled on his ideas could never be realized: whenever Franko was about to establish anything even as modest as an independent journal, either the Austrian police would intervene or the Ukrainian community in Galicia would press him to accept some ephemeral compromise. But two years later the opportunity arrived rather unexpectedly, and Franko was not slow to take advantage of it. In 1889 he had finally succeeded in founding the independent biweekly Narod (the People). And in 1890 the Galician Ukrainophiles, who were backed in this by some Nationalist Hromada members in the Eastern Ukraine, put themselves into a vulnerable position by concluding a compromise with the Poles. This latter is important in the history of Galician and Dnieper Ukrainian relations and I shall, therefore, analyze it briefly.

As early as 1848 two prominent Czech members of the Austrian Parliament, Palacky and Rieger, suggested publicly that the Hapsburgs should use Ukrainian nationalism against Russia.24 In the late 1880's, in connection with the Bulgarian crisis of 1876-1877, the relations between Austria and Russia became tense25 and there were rumors of a possible war. It seems that the Ukraine was considered a pawn in this struggle -- possibly inspired by the German Foreign Office; the German philosopher Edward Hartmann had published, in the December 1887 and January 1888 issues of Gegenwart (Berlin), an article in which he advocated the re-establishment of the Ukrainian Kievan Principality. All this of course could not remain hidden from the right wing of the Ukrainophiles in Kiev, and in 1888 Antonovych hinted in a private conversation that the Ukrainians might support the Austrians (as early as 1885 he had intimated to a friend of Franko's that there were Austrophile sentiments in the Eastern Ukraine). In 1890 a deputy of the Ukrainophile group in Galicia, Romanchuk, declared in the Galician Diet that the Ukrainians would be ready to cooperate with the Poles in return for certain concessions in the cultural field.26 Apprised of this move, Drahomanov immediately pointed out that the rapprochement could scarcely have been made without the good offices of Antonovych, who appears to have had discreet contacts with the Polish nobility in Galicia. Be it as it may, any cooperation with the Polish ruling class in Galicia was a rather controversial issue, and a year later in elections to the Reichsrat it proved of rather dubious value, the Ukrainian parties electing fewer deputies to the Galician Diet than before the compromise in 1889 (7 instead of 17). In any case, the rapprochement was to the advantage of both Drahomanov and Franko who were able to create a regular political party, using their rejection of the compromise to create popular appeal.

The decision to form the party was made, however, in a rather improvised fashion and was not apparently directly related to the compromise. Early in July 1890 a meeting was held in Franko's apartment. Most of his guests were students who helped him publish Narod. Kyrchiv, the representative of one wing in the Narodovtsi group, had also come to complain of a certain decision three leaders of the Ukrainophile Party had made in the name of the whole Ukrainian community in Lviv.27 He proposed that an ad hoc committee be formed to protest against the unjustified assumption of power by the Ukrainophiles. Whereupon one of the young students present suggested that a new party be organized to be called the "Radical Party." Franko said that he personally did not believe that the time was ripe for establishing a new party, but if his friends thought that it was, then, "in God's name, let's start."

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the program of the Radical Party. Voznyak states in his article that it adopted a maximum and a minimum program, the maximum economic objectives including the collective use of property which was considered "socialism."28 The practical aims of the party become clear if one analyzes their election platform of 1891, which is extensively referred to by Voznyak. The platform starts out with a number of socio-economic demands, goes on to enumerate desirable political freedoms, and ends with a few provisions for cultural development touching on the national question. Among the most important economic objectives are: (1) land and house taxes are to be abolished, a progressive income tax to be introduced; (2) the authorities are not to foreclose mortgages on that portion of a landholder's property which is indispensable to his and his family's survival; and (4) the village communities (Hromady) should have priority in buying land. Furthermore, in the political and cultural sphere, the platform demanded (13) the introduction of equal suffrage, i.e., the abolition of the curia system, (14) the continuance of the policy of introducing Ukrainian into Galician schools, and (16) a free secondary education. In general, writes Voznyak, the Radical Party of Galicia was the first Ukrainian party to demand universal equal suffrage, freedom of the press, agrarian and tax reforms. Three questions are now germane to our discussion: how strong was Franko's influence in the Radical Party, how strong was that of Drahomanov, and to what extent can one assert that the Radical Party was led by a triumvirate of Franko, his Galician associate Pavlyk and Drahomanov?

Voznyak states that Franko's contribution to the Radical press constituted its main force of attraction.29 But he also cites the memoirs of one of the founders of the Radical Party to prove how great an authority Franko enjoyed in the Party, at least in the beginning. At the founding congress in October 1890, the writer of the memoirs (Budzynovsky) moved that the Party should include in its maximum program the demand for the unification of all Ukrainian territories into one independent state, and in its minimum program, an administrative separation of Ukrainian East Galicia from Polish West Galicia. This proposal was defeated chiefly by Franko, who at that time was still thinking of cooperation between the new Radical Party and the Polish Peasant Party (Polska Partja Ludowa) that had similar socio-economic objectives. Budzynovsky states that not a single hand was raised against Franko's opinion. It is true that under the influence of Bachynsky's Ukraina irredenta the Radical Party at its Congress in 1895 included in the maximum program the demand for political independence of the Ukraine, but this does not seem to have happened against the explicit will of Franko: his review of Bachynsky's pamphlet in Zhytie i slovo is favorable.30

Drahomanov's influence upon the Party is less clear. That he sympathized with its aims and supported it by his journalistic contributions is quite evident; two political treatises that represent his most mature work, the Chudats'ki dumky pro Ukrayins'ku natsional'nu spravu (Peculiar Thoughts on the Ukrainian National Cause), 1891, and Lysty na Naddnipryans'ku Ukrayinu (Letters to the Dnieper Ukraine), 1893, were published in the official organ of the Radical Party, Narod (People). Also in Zhytie i slovo there appeared two very interesting papers by Drahomanov in the projected series on old Charters of Liberty: "Vstupni Zavvahy" (Introductory Remarks) and "Serednyovichni anhliys'ki Khartiyi" (Medieval English Charters).31 Narod is also known to have received financial support from the Eastern Ukraine, which was collected by Drahomanov's staunch friend Kovalevsky.32

It is, however, rather difficult to pinpoint in what way Drahomanov directly influenced the formulation of the Radical program. From a letter of Pavlyk's it appears quite clear that Drahomanov was not consulted before the Radical program was published,33 as he had been in the case of the invitation to subscribe to the new journal Postup (Progress) in 1886.34 But a case can be made out to show that, quite apart from the difficulties of correspondence, one of the reasons for the lack of previous consultation with Drahomanov was the political advantage of making it appear as the exclusive product of Galicians. Another, though perhaps a less weighty reason, was that the program of the journal Postup, which had been mutually agreed upon between Franko and Drahomanov, was much more than a mere statement of editorial policy -- that, as Voznyak justly remarks, it actually amounted to a program of a new political party. Thus such demands, as those for freedom of the press and for establishment of free economic collectives as a guarantee against exploitation, were already contained in the program of Postup of 1886.

Drahomanov's criticism of the 1890 program is so illuminating with respect to his relationship with his Galician friends that it is worth while to reproduce excerpts from it at some length:35

Dear Friend, [writes Drahomanov to Pavlyk], I received your two letters [of October 11, 1890 and one whose beginning has been lost], and before that a brief note from Yaroshevych that the program had been enclosed. ... I have read a summary of the program in N. Freie Presse and I am waiting impatiently to see the whole thing. Judging by what I have read in the N. Fr. Pr. one can assume that the program has more of a literary than political character -- furthermore, that it is a copy of French and German socialist programs rather than the outgrowth of [specifically] Galician circumstances. If the real program is what it appears to be, and if in its practical policy the Party will not get its teeth into the current Galician affairs, then its activity will assume a purely literary character, provided, of course, that its members do not fall asleep after having done no more than edit the program. . . .

I do not care much about maximalist points in programs myself. In this I am an Englishman and think that about ideals -- maxima -- one ought rather to write books, but that one should step out into politics with something that could be achieved in a short time -- within one to three parliamentary sessions, e.g. --both by our own people and by those who could support us on the given practical points though they might disagree on others. Thus, in England certain points of the Labor platform are supported even by bishops -- from whom your program demands "rationalism." (The literary character of your platform goes so far that you have included realism in art in the program of a party, i.e., a political group.)

As a matter of principle, I cannot even condemn Ok.36 for his fear of "words" such as "socialism." As for me, I am not afraid of words -- but as far as public opinion is concerned, I should fear them in some respects. It was in the International that they adopted the word collectivism because the word communism was so widely abhorred. To a large extent, politics must be pedagogy.

In any case, I do not think that it is the maximal part [of the program] that will provide your Party with political weight now, nor in 20 or 30 years, nor will your label do the trick. I think it will depend on your ability to engage yourselves in behalf of the present affairs and needs of the people.

Finally, Drahomanov approved the point in the program limiting the activity of the Radical Party to Galicia -- it should be up to the Eastern Ukrainians to regulate their own affairs, about which they were better informed than their western compatriots.

We do not know whether the election platform of 1891 was drafted with Drahomanov's criticism of the 1890 program in mind -- this is quite possible. We do know, however, that sometimes his advice was bad and had to be rejected. Thus, e.g., in a letter to Franko, June 23, 1891, Drahomanov definitely counselled against the admission of students to the Radical Party, on the ground that when they grew older they would turn reactionary anyway.37 Franko replied that this was hardly feasible because the hard core of the Party was made up of university students. He also replied at some length that he did not think that Drahomanov was justified in his strictures against the admittedly unstable students. By joining the Radical Party the students incurred a stigma that would cling to them throughout their official and professional careers, and even a temporary membership might permanently imbue them with new ideas and conceptions.38

But apart from whatever concrete evidence may be found on the direct influence of Drahomanov, the general direction of Radical politics and the intellectual temper that prevailed in the Party were such as to justify Voznyak's claim that "the spiritual father of the Radical Party was M. Drahomanov."89 One may doubt whether the Radical Party would have become a populist party par excellence had it not been for the influence of Drahomanov. To be sure, neither the Ukrainophile (Narodovtsi) nor the Russophile group would ignore the economic plight of the peasantry entirely. But it is equally true that the two parties tended to concentrate on cultural matters, whereas it was the Radicals that made the interests of the "people," i.e., under Galician conditions of small peasants with a sprinkling of industrial workers, the main concern of their political activity. Said Franko in an election speech in 1892:40

The Radicals have the merit of being the first to have abandoned the empty and silly squabbles about nationality and of having focused all our attention on the road along which we could march with united forces to achieve a better order: prosperity. Once we are prosperous everybody will respect us, and then we shall find it easy to obtain national and political rights for us. We shall simply take them ourselves.

Furthermore, we find in Radical politics also an emphasis upon local associations, which in the 1891 election platform were called Hromady -- a term, more likely than not, derived from Drahomanov. Party members played an outstanding role in the emerging co-operative movement and in extending the network of educational societies.41 The leaders took great pains to organize local branches of the Party; they used to enlist able speakers from the peasants themselves, and would hold party congresses quite regularly -- in general, once a year. While it is true that the Radicals might have modeled their party statutes after those of the German and French Socialist Parties, the emphasis upon this particular kind of local associations seems to stem from Drahomanov, who was known as an ardent foe of any centralization.

Probably the greatest influence of Drahomanov should be sought in the pragmatic attitude of the Radical Party, its lack of doctrinaire rigidity. In a letter to Yu. Yavorsky, one of the leaders of the Party, Drahomanov wrote: "An eight-hour working day is more important than disputes about the forms of collectivism."42 I do not know anything about the reaction of Yavorsky, but Franko did certainly heed this prescription, and so did the authors of the election platform of 1891.

III

Against the background of the relations between the Dnieper Ukraine and Galicia, I have tried to show that Drahomanov had an important influence upon Franko's political activity. To what extent did this meeting of minds and hands reinforce the ties between the two parts of the country?

One might approach this question by first summarizing Drahomanov's hopes as to what he could accomplish. To justify his preoccupation with Galicia, Drahomanov wrote in his first letter to the Kiev Hromada, apparently at the end of 1876:43

Our cause will proceed smoothly only when the Galicians and Hungarians [here he refers to the inhabitants of what today is called Transcarpathia, then under Hungary -- Y. B.] will rise to the level of our ideas; and then they will do some things better than we, for they have grown up in a more normal atmosphere and in political freedom, too.
In a letter to Franko he advised him on what the editorial policy of his organ should be:44
By all means, adopt a clear attitude toward Russia: declare yourselves immediately pan-Ukrainians, but without the national-political formalism. Say that you are concerned about the freedom and the development of the whole Ukrainian people, but [that it does not matter to you] under what states it would remain.
Finally, we have already seen that in the middle 1880's Drahomanov hoped that a progressive party in Galicia could serve as a powerful magnet to attract all Ukrainian forces in the East and thus eliminate the incipient conflicts between the old and the young generation of politically active Ukrainians.

But whatever the hopes, to realize them presupposed a reasonable degree of communication between the two parts of the country. The available evidence on this point is, however, rather difficult to evaluate. Apparently it was possible for individuals from the Dnieper Ukraine to come to Galicia and vice versa (e.g., Drahomanov was in Lviv in 1876; Franko went to Kiev in 1885, and again in 1891; Konysky, an Eastern Ukrainian writer and friend of Antonovych, lived in Lviv for longer periods of time starting with 1865; Kovalevsky came to Galicia in 1889). Some of these people brought funds with them -- the Shevchenko Scientific Society and a few Galician journals and papers such as Pravda, the Ukrainophile organ, and also Franko's Narod, were supported by Eastern Ukrainians. Galician journals published poems, short stories, reports that were sent in from the Dnieper Ukraine. All this could be fully documented. But even at that the most important question remained unsolved: how many Eastern Ukrainians would read the material produced or published in Galicia? (Because of Russian censorship laws, very little was printed in Ukrainian in the East.) From the memoirs of a contemporary, it appears that the students' circles of Drahomanov's orientation in Kiev, in the 1880's and 1890's, had access to and eagerly read some Galician editions, to wit, several volumes of the literary journal Zorya, Pavlyk's study on reading rooms, the organs of the Radical Party Narod and Khliborob (Agriculturist).45 In a letter to Drahomanov, Franko also mentions that both the younger and older Ukrainophiles in Kiev were reading the Narod and that some of them were also acquainted with Pravda, the organ supported by the Narodovtsi and the rightist members of the Hromada.46 As far as government policy is concerned, we have the statements by a careful student of Russian censorship that in the 1860's "Pravda [then virtually edited by Kulish], albeit with frequent cuts, continued to enter Russia," and that during the 1880's two or three Galician newspapers were being admitted by the Russian customs.47 On the other hand, Franko implies in his cited letter that while the average member of the Kiev (Old) Hromada might have known something about Galician politics, he often found it infinitely confusing and probably not worth the trouble of clarification. Maintenance of the ties with Galicia was, so to speak, the undisputed domain of a few Eastern Ukrainian leaders, notably the rightist Antonovych, who supported the Galician Ukrainophiles, and Drahomanov's friend Kovalevsky, who helped him to aid the Radical Party. Franko even goes so far as to accuse Konysky and Antonovych of writing in Pravda goodness knows what in the name of the Eastern Ukrainians and of then hiding those issues from the eyes of the Kiev Hromada.48 If this is true, it shows that in the early 1890's most of the Ukrainians in Kiev did not really care about the issues of Galician politics, otherwise they would not have allowed themselves to be so easily deceived by old copies of Pravda. But without a comprehensive monograph on the Hromada movement in Eastern Ukraine, it is not possible to place all these bits of information into a proper perspective. It seems, however, certain that at least by 1895 one could not speak of an integrated Ukrainian national movement, encompassing Galicia as well as the Dnieper Ukraine. In any case, Drahomanov's favorite project of a Galician progressive party uniting the various wings of the Eastern Ukrainian movement failed. After his death the Galician Radical Party began to disintegrate.

But with all these admissions, it is also evident that important advances toward at least the cultural unity of the Ukraine were made. The Eastern Ukrainians benefited from the cooperation by obtaining a fairly convenient place to publish their works whenever Russian censorship was tightened up. While much of the spadework in Ukrainian history and philology continued to be done in the Dnieper Ukraine, rather than in Galicia, before Hrushevsky was sent to Lviv in 1894, one may assume that even the most devoted of the Eastern Ukrainian kul'turnyky (cultural workers) would have found it rather difficult to persist in their activity, had not Galicia provided an outlet for their popular works, such as historical pamphlets a la Nechuy-Levytsky49 and belles-lettres in Galician periodicals. To the extent, however, that an Eastern Ukrainian preferred politics to compiling dictionaries, and to the extent that he could or would keep himself reasonably well informed about Galician affairs, to that extent he was reminded of the fact that Ukrainian politics as distinct from the mixture of a national all-Russian politics and Ukrainian cultural development might still be possible even within the Russian Empire. Drahomanov's continued participation in Galician affairs since 1871 was for him, so to speak, a warranty that all those confusing disputes had a significance that was not merely provincial.

The benefits of this cooperation to Galicia appear more tangible, for they are more easily formulated in terms of ideas. We have the balanced testimony of Franko to attest to the fact that the influence of Eastern Ukrainian thought on Galicia was considerable indeed. Starting with 1848, he says, the national consciousness of the people and the intelligentsia had grown, "though only very slowly."50 It took the Galicians a decade to find out what nationality they belonged to, and still another ten years to determine what constituted "the essence of that nationality (Narodnosty)," namely, to serve the common people, "to help them achieve for themselves a free human life on a par with that of other people." (Here, it seems, we see the influence of the Populist Drahomanov.) Franko continues:

The application of the utilitarian principle to all the achievements of civilization has forced the young intelligentsia, who previously had bounced around hither and yon in dilletante fashion, to concentrate their attention on what the people need most, i.e., popular education, finding out what the social, economic and spiritual conditions of the people were, making the people aware of their national, political and civil rights.
(A person acquainted with the political thoughts of Drahomanov will have little difficulty in also tracing these ideas back to him.) Having sketched the various new concepts that had penetrated Galicia since 1848, Franko goes on to appraise their influence as follows:
It can be said with certainty that all of these ideas and directions would have developed in the Galician Rus' by themselves, without any outside influences; but I am no less certain that, given the general weakness of the Galician-Ruthenian process of development, it would have taken us not 50, but about 100 years to see them fully developed, had it not been for the strong influx of stimulating ideas that had come from the Ukraine under Russia.51
On the other hand, one should not underestimate the significance of the practical experience which Galician Ukrainians gained in parliamentary politics, in the setting up of Ukrainian language schools, in adult education and in economic associations -- all of them matters in which the Eastern Ukrainians were not very knowledgeable.52

Even more difficult than an appraisal of the significance of the Galician-Dnieper Ukrainian relations in general is an attempt to evaluate the particular role that was played in the Ukrainian movement by Drahomanov and Franko and their associates, i.e., the socially progressive trend. If one takes the crudest indicators, on the one hand, the predominance of the rightist members in the Old Hromada in the 1880's and early 1890's, and, on the other hand, the failure of most of Franko's attempts to establish an independent paper in the 1880's and the weakness of the Radical Party in the 1890's,53 it would appear that the more nationalist Ukrainophiles prevailed in both parts of the country. But the available sources are not adequate to answer the question as to how many of Drahomanov's and Franko's ideas percolated into the opposite camp while Drahomanov was still alive, and how many of them were carried into it by Franko when he left the Radical Party to join the reformed Narodovtsi in 1899.

Without doubt, however, the friendship between Drahomanov and Franko stands forth as an example of fruitful intellectual and practical cooperation between two men who had similar personalities, who shared common values and who agreed on rational means for achieving these values.

Notes

* The author wishes to express his gratitude to Professor Michael Karpovich of Harvard University, in whose seminar the paper was first discussed; to several kind persons in New York and Philadelpha, notably the late Professor Svitozor Drahomanov, who helped him with advice and materials; and last but not least, to the Trustees of the Penfield Traveling Scholarship Fund of the University of Pennsylvania, who awarded him a scholarship for 1956-1957.

1 Henceforth, the term "Galicia" is used to denote only the eastern part of that region having Lviv (Lemberg) as its capital. Western Galicia (capital: Krakow) is Polish territory both in a historical and ethnographtc sense. It remains outside the scope of this paper.

2 See, e.g., the program of the secret Little Russian Union of the 1820's, headed by Lukashevych, Marshal of the Nobility of the Pyryatyn District in the Poltava Province -- Dmytro Doroshenko, History of the Ukraine, Edmonton, Canada, Institute Press, 1939, p. 543.

3 Ihnat Zhytetsky, "Kyyivs'ka Hromada za 60-kh rokiv," Ukrayina, Kiev, l928. No. 1, pp. 91-125, 93.

4 Hugh Seton-Watson in The Decline of Imperial Russia, New York, Praeger, 1952, p. 64, mentions the Chaikovsky circle in St. Petersburg (1869-1872).

5 Mykhaylo Drahomanov, Vybrani tvory, Ukrainian Sociological Institute in Prague (Pavlo Bohatsky, ed.), Vol. 1, Prague-New York, Ukrainian Progressive Associations in America, 1937, p. 59. [Henceforth cited as Vybrani tvory.]

6 S. Hlushko, "Spomyny Iryny Volodymyrivny Antonovych pro M. P. Drahomanova," Ukrayina, Kiev, 1926, No. 4, pp. 120-134, 129. I. Antonovych refers to a meeting of the steering committee of the Kiev Hromada in 1875, at which were present twelve of the most influential members.

7 Eg., in 1873 the Government permitted a group of Ukrainian scholars (including the historians Antonovych and Drahomanov and the ethnographer Chubynsky) to establish in Kiev a branch of the officially subsidized Imperial Russian Geographic Society. Thus with the financial help from St. Petersburg, Ukrainian authors published a surprising amount of material on the past and present of their country. The branch was ordered closed down three years later.

8 By Valuev's circular letter of 1863 and the Ems decree of 1876. Best source is I. Krevetsky's article "Ne bylo, net i byt' ne mozhet," in Literaturno-Naukovyi Vistnyk, Lviv, 1904, Vol. XXVI, No. 6, Pt. II, pp. 129-158, and Vol. XXVII, No. 7, Pt. 11, pp. 1-18. More accessible, but cursory is W. E. D. Allen, The Ukraine, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1940, pp. 249-250.

9 Robert A. Kann, The Multinational Empire (Nationalism and National Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy), New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1950, Vol. I, p. 231.

10 The figures are taken from the Galician declaration of 1848. See Ivan Krypyakevych et al., Velyka istoriya Ukrayiny, Winnipeg, Tyktor, 1942, 2nd rev. ed., pp. 677-678.

11 See Myron Korduba, "Zv'yazky V. Antonovycha z Halychynoyu," Ukrayina, Kiev, 1928, No. 5, pp. 33-78. It was not until 1849 that a very wealthy and presumably well-educated Eastern Ukrainian landowner learned at the age of 30 that the Galicians were Ukrainians too. See A. Stepovych ed., "Do kyyevo-halytskykh zv'yazkiv pochatku 1870-kh rr. (z shchodennykiv H. P. Halahana)," Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Historical Section, Za sto lit, Kiev, 1930, Vol. V. pp. 183-219. Pogodin had visited Galicia in 1835.

12 Kyrylo Studynsky, "Do istoriyi vzayemyn Halychyny z Ukrayinoyu v rr. 1860-1873," Ukrayina, Kiev, 1928, pp. 6-40, 9 ff.

13 Korduba, loc. tit., p. 55.

14 See Kyrylo Studynsky "Persha zustrich Drahomanova z halyts'kymy studentamy," Ukrayina, Kiev, 1926, Nos. 2-3, pp. 70-75.

15 347 letters, 1877-1895. See Lystuvannya I. Franka I. M. Drahomanova, All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Commission for the Western Ukraine, Zbirnyk No. 52, Kiev, 1928. [cited as Drahomanov-Franko Correspondence, Academy ed. 1928], On Drahomanov's life and works, especially his political ideas, see Ivan Rudnystky, ed., Mykhaylo Drahomanov: A Symposium and Selected Writings, special issue of The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1952, Vol. II, No. 1 (3).

16 M. Voznyak, Do rozvytku svitohlyadu Franka, Lviv, Lviv University Press, 1935, pp. 148 ff.

17 M. Hrushevsky, Z pochyniv ukrayins'koho sotsiyalistychnoho rukhu. Mykhaylo Drahomanov i zhenevs'kyi sotsiyalistychnyi hurtok, Vienna: Ukrainian Sociological Institute, 1922, pp. 64 ff.

18 Ye. Olesnytsky, "A Quarter of a Century Ago (A Picture from the History of Ruthenian Academic Youth)," Lit.-Naukovyi Vistnyk, 1904, Vol. XXVII, No. 9, Pt. II, pp. 125 (?)- 132, 126-127.

19 Society for popular education, founded in 1868.

20 Ibid., p. 130.

21"European Messenger," a well-known liberal Russian journal, one of whose contributors was Drahomanov. Probably a good many Russian and West European journals and books had been acquired by Franko at the suggestion and with the help of Drahomanov.

22 Drahomanov to Franko, Feb. 25, 1886, Drahomanov-Franko Correspondence, Academy ed., 1928, p. 168.

23 Franko to Drahomanov, undated letter [1881], ibid., pp. 28-29.

24 Korduba, loc cit., pp. 70 fl.

25 See on this also Hugh Seton Watson, op. cit., pp. 174 ff.

26 One of them was the establishment of a professorship of Ukrainian history at the University of Lviv. In 1894 it was first taken over by Michael Hrushevsky, a disciple of Antonovych.

27 Mykhaylo Voznyak, "Ivan Franko v dobi radykalizmu," Ukrayina, Kiev. 1926, No. 6, pp. 115-163, 129. The particular decision by Julian Romanchuk, Natal Vakhnyanyn and Ivan Beley was not to participate in the ceremonies connected with the solemn transfer of Mickiewicz's body to Krakow.

28 ibid., p. 130.

29 ibid., p. 135.

30 Zhytie i slovo, Lviv, journal ed. by Franko, Vol. IV (1895), pp. 471-483.

31 Vol. I, pp. 102-115, 238-258; Vol. II, pp. 107-125, 252-264, 451-472.

32 Hryhoryyiv in introducing Drahomanov's Vybrani tvory, Vol. I, pp. 27-28.

33 Mykhaylo Pavlyk comp. Perepyska Mykhayla Drahomanova z Mykhaylom Pavlykom, Chernivtsi (Bukovina): 1910-1911, Vol. VI, pp. 75 ff. (11 October 1890). Cited as Drahomanov-Pavlyk Correspondence.

34 See Drahomanov-Franko Correspondence, Academy ed. 1928, pp. 202 ff.; letters F. to D., Sept. 17, 1886; D. to F., October 12; F. to D., Oct. 31; D. to F., Nov. 25, 1886. The journal was immediately suppressed by the Austrian police.

35 Drahomanov-Pavlyk Correspondence, Vol. VI, pp. 79 If. [Italics in original.]

36 Theophile Okunevsky, a deputy to the Reichsrat, sympathizing with the politics of the Radicals.

37 Drahomanov-Franko Correspondence, Academy ed. 1928, p. 350.

38 Ibid., August 31, 1891, pp. 358 ff.

39 Voznyak, "Ivan Franko v dobi radykalizmu," loc. cit., p. 115.

40 Voznyak, ibid., citing Narod, 1892, p. 67.

41 Hryhoryyiv, op. cit., p. 28.

42 In 1891. Quoted by D. Zaslavsky in Mikhail Petrovich Dragomanov (Kritiko-biograficheskii ocherk), Kiev: Sorabkop, 1924, p. 159, from Perepyska M. Drahomanova, Vol. I, p. 23.

43 Ukrainian Scientific Institute, Warsaw, Pratsi, Vol. 37, Arkhiv Mykhayla Drahomanova, Vol. I, Lystuvannya Kyyivs'koyi Staroyi Hromady z M. Drahomanovym (1870-1895 rr.), Warsaw, 1927, p. 241. Total of 130 letters.

44 Drahomanov-Franko Correspondence (1928 ed.), p. 107 (March 12, 1885).

45 M. Berenshtam-Kistyakovska, "Ukrayins'ki hurtky v Kyyevi druhoyi polovyny 1880-kh ta pochatku 1890-kh rokiv," [Memoirs], Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Historical Section, Kiev, Za sto lit, Vol. III, 1928, pp. 206-225.

46 June 8, 1891, Drahomanov-Franko Correspondence, 1928 ed., pp. 347 ff.

47 Krevetsky, loc. cit., pp. 140, 153.

48 Op. cit., (note 46), p. 348.

49 Nechuy-Levytsky, a well-known Eastern Ukrainian writer, proved quite skillful as a popularizer of Ukrainian history in Galicia -- see Korduba, loc. cit., passim.

50 Franko, review of Ukraina irredenta, Zhytie i slovo, Lviv, 1895, Vol. IV, p. 474.

51 Ibid.

52 It seems to me that if one examines closely the development in Eastern Ukraine after 1895, one will find indications that the Galician experience was utilized (e.g., in 1905 a Prosvita was set up in the East, apparently with the same purpose as the Galician Prosvita which had been founded in 1868).

53 E.g., in the elections to the Galician Diet in 1895, the Ukrainian parties elected 14 deputies, only 3 of whom were Radicals. See Hryhoryyiv, op. cit., p. 28.