Polish Factors in Right-Bank Ukraine
from the Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Century
Kimitaka MATSUZATO
Copyright
(c) 1998 by
the Slavic Research Center( English
/ Japanese ) All rights reserved.
-Summary-
The Revolution of 1917 completely changed the ethnic features of
Right-Bank Ukraine. First, it eliminated the Polish landed nobility
which dominated this region even after the division of the Commonwealth
(Rzeczpospolita) at the end of the eighteenth century. The remaining
Polish population in Right-Bank Ukraine, having lost their own ethnic
elite, were inevitably ukrainianized during this century. Second, the
restrictive settlement policy (cherta osedlosti) for the Jewish
population, another dominant ethnic group in the region, was abolished,
and a significant number of Jews emigrated to the central part of the
Soviet Union. Third, according to the Leninist principle of
self-determination, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was created
and Ukrainians were de jure declared to be the "representative nation"
of this region. Thus, for the first time after the Unification of
Lublin (1569) Eastern Slavs became the dominant ethnic groups,
politically and socially, in Right-Bank Ukraine. Paradoxically, as
Ukrainians were emancipated from Polish and Jewish exploitation, the
animosity between the same Eastern Slavs, i.e., Ukrainians and
Russians, came to the fore. The annexation of Galicia by the Stalinist
Soviet Union and the "exchange of the populations" (deportation of the
Polish population from Galicia to the Republic of Poland) in 1947
completed a historical cycle which had begun with the Pereiaslav
Agreement (1654), and the original raison d'etre for the "union"
between Russians and Ukrainians ceased to exist.
The ethnic features of Right-Bank Ukraine in the nineteenth century
have been misunderstood, since the post-1917 paradigm of "Ukrainians
v.s. Russians" (both insignificant ethnic groups in this region before
1917) has been retrospectively given to that century. According to the
1897 census, however, Russian speakers made up only 3.5 % of the total
population of Volyn province, 3.3% of Podoliia province, and 5.9% of
Kiev province. It is obvious that only an insignificant number of
Russians lived on the western side of the Dnepr, even after more than a
century since the division of the Rzeczpospolita. Few realize that
Right-Bank Ukraine had been a center of Polish literature during the
first half of the nineteenth century and a vigorous eastern front of
the Catholic expansion throughout the century. It is difficult to
understand why both the Russian nationalist parties in Right-Bank
Ukraine in the late Imperial period, and the officer corps of the
Denikin Army - neither of which recognized the very existence of the
"Ukrainian problem" - consisted mostly of ethnic Ukrainians, if we
ignore the predominance of Poles and Jews in this region before the
1917 Revolution.
Ukrainian studies in the West have been monopolized by the
Ukrainian diaspora, which for understandable reasons did not pay
sufficient attention to Polish factors in Ukrainian history. Soviet
historiography also - probably because the USSR and Poland were allies
under socialism - refrained from analyzing conflicts between Polish
landowners and Ukrainian serfs (or peasants, afterwards) from the
ethnic point of view, only regarding them in terms of class struggle.
As a result, the fate of Poles in Right-Bank Ukraine has been more or
less studied only in the Republic of Poland. Unfortunately, nationalist
propaganda in independent Ukraine has aggravated the situation. In
post-communist Ukrainian historiography Ukrainian history appears to be
confused with the history of Ukrainians, and the latter is confused
with the history of Ukrainian nationalist movements. Recent important
studies of Poles in the modern Right-Bank Ukraine are: Le Noble, le
Serf et le Revizor. La noblesse polonaise entre le tsarisme et les
masses ukrainiennes (1831-1863) by Daniel Beauvois (Lille, 1985); a Ph.
D dissertation by Witold Rodkievicz, "Russian Nationality Policy in the
Western Provinces of the Empire During the Reign of Nicholas II,
1894-1905" (Harvard University, 1996); and a doctoral candidate
dissertation by Nadiia Shcherbak "Natsional'na polityka tsaryzmu u
pravoberezhnii Ukraini v kintsi XIX - na pochatku XX st. Za materialamy
zvitiv mistsevykh derzhavnykh ustanov [Tsarism's Nationality Policy in
Right-Bank Ukraine from the End of Nineteenth to the Beginning of the
Twentieth Century - Based on Reports by Local State Institutions]"
(Kiev University, 1995). Affected by the paradigm of "prison of
nations," the last one analyzes tsarist policies on Ukrainians, Poles,
and Jews only separately. In my view, however, it is impossible to
understand any nationality policy, if we neglect the relations between
the nationalities in the region.
The paradigm of "prison of nations" in studying modern empires is
seriously challenged. As for the Russian Empire, John P. LeDonne
remarked that it could only expand by incorporating the ruling elite of
surrounding nations into the imperial ruling estate. Second, while the
paradigm of "prison of nations" perceives the Russian Empire as a
"cone" with Great Russians at its apex and the ruled nations at the
base, Andreas Kappeler argues that the hierarchy of empire was more
complicated and multi-dimensional. He noticed three dimensions, i.e.,
political loyalty, estate principle, and cultural distance from Great
Russians, which determined the place of each ethnic group in this
hierarchy. Simplifying Kappeler's argument, we can contrast the "tree"
model with the traditional "cone" one for explaining the ethnic
structure of the Russian Empire.
Figure 1. Two models for explaining the ethnic structure of
the Russian Empire
The cosmology of the Russian Empire was distinguished, for example,
from the Habsburg one since the former took it for granted that the
Empire, because of its western expansion, had incorporated such ethnic
groups as had a more developed statehood than Great Russians did.
However, this notion of inferiority did not always work against taking
risks of expansion but, on the contrary, led Great Russians to such an
assertion that "our civilization is undeveloped and crude, but
therefore young and vigorous. It is thus legitimate to expand toward
the West and rule such developed nations as Poles and Baltic Germans."
The third position criticizing the "prison of nations" model,
typically presented by Raymond Pearson, argues that "russification" in
the sense of ethnic assimilation of non-Eastern Slavs was unfeasible
since the tsarist regime "possessed neither the totalitarian ambition
nor the modern resources" for this purpose. "Russification" meant
nothing more than increasing the "hegemony of the Russian language,
culture and institutions." Then, how could the Russian Empire govern
its Western provinces despite its low technology of public
administration and the socio-political inferiority of Eastern Slavs in
the region? In my view, the only possible way was to "divide and rule"
or to adopt "ethnic Bonapartism." The tsarist government provoked
Ukrainian peasants to fight against "Polish latifundia" or "Jewish
parasitism," while simultaneously appeasing Poles and Jews that the
government would defend their safety and property from the assaults by
Ukrainian masses. As such, one or another general tendency in the
tsarist nationality policy (e.g., from administrative to cultural
assimilation, or Alexander II's liberalism to Alexander III's reaction)
could never exist simply because the "repression" of one ethnic group
was often combined with "tolerance" towards another. For example, in
Right-Bank Ukraine peasants' servitude was sustained artificially for
the purpose of damaging Polish landowners. It meant that the
traditional land use by Ukrainian peasants was protected by the
government. The restrictions on Polish land ownership introduced after
the 1863-64 rising could not be adopted for Baltic Germans despite
several attempts, since it might have harmed the very potential buyers
of the land sold by Poles, and thus could have damaged the cause of
de-polonization of the Western provinces. The same "trade-off"
relationship could be found between Poles and non-Pole Catholics.
The three characteristics of the tsarist nationality policy (i.e.,
incorporation of the local elite, "tree" model of imperial cosmology,
and ethnic Bonapartism) could not but be revised in Right-Bank Ukraine
since the dominant ethnic group in the Region was the Poles and it was
"Russians" (Ukrainians) that were dominated by the Poles. According to
the official terminology at that time, "Russians" meant Eastern Slavs
but not Great Russians (See Figure 2).
Figure 2.Changes in terminology of ethnic relationship in
Right-Bank Ukraine from the imperial period to the twentieth century
Therefore, obrusenie in the nineteenth century meant "Eastern
Slavonization" but not russification. Its aims were, first,
de-polonization, second, de-semitization, and third, the assimilation
of German and Czech colonists. Ukrainians could never be an object of
the obrusenie at all because they were, according to this terminology,
"Russians" from the beginning. If they could be russified, it was only
in the sense of "emancipation from Polish influences." This paper calls
Russians in the present sense Great Russians, and relies also on the
word "Russians" according to the tsarist terminology, emphasizing it by
quotation marks. Moreover, obrusenie itself was not a word often used
in the then official documents. The government preferred such
expressions as "strengthening Russian elements." Objectively, it was
also the most proper expression since whole tsarist nationality policy
in Right-Bank Ukraine was based on their inferiority complex, while the
word "obrusenie" conveys a nuance that "the strong suppressed the
weak." The inferiority complex among Great Russians was not only caused
by the socio-economic superiority of Ukrainian Poles and Jews over
"Russians" in terms of demographic weight, estate composition,
ownership of land and capitals, and literacy rates. Rather, Great
Russians were convinced that they were no match for Poles and Jews in
terms of political resources, i.e., ethnic consciousness, coherence as
an ethnic group, and political tact, to name a few.
One of the reasons for which Ukrainian Poles could resist the
assimilation for more than a century after the division of the
Rzeczpospolita is that they were not an ethnic but a political nation.
Until the beginning of this century "Poles" did not mean ethnic Poles,
it meant those who accepted Catholicism, the Polish language, polonism,
and the imperial idea of the Rzeczpospolita. It is strange that both
Russian and Ukrainian historiographies have been labeling the political
activities by Ukrainian Poles during the nineteenth century a "national
liberation movement." As a matter of fact, however, what was going on
in the South-Western provinces of the Russian Empire was not a battle
between ruling and ruled nations but a battle between two imperial
ideas and cultures, one of which luckily happened to be a winner at
that moment. If the Rzeczpospolita had defeated the Russian Empire,
Poles would have done the same thing for the Eastern Slavs that Great
Russians did for the Poles. Therefore, the idea of the restoration of
the Rzeczpospolita (but not the independence of Poland) and the
recovery of the historical (but not ethnic) territory continued to be a
lifeline which enabled Poles living in the Russian Empire to remain
Poles.
After the 1863-64 rising took place and therefore the autonomy of
Poland was abolished, Great Russian statesmen and intellectuals (for
example, Iu.F. Samarin) often suggested to Poles that if they abandoned
their ambition for the Western provinces of the Empire, the government
would reestablish the former system of crown unification between the
Russian Empire and Poland. But it was nothing but a surrender of Polish
identities as a political nation. As long as the Western provinces did
exist, Poland could not become a Finland. This was the reason why other
nationalist movements in the Russian Empire disliked their Polish
"comrades," thinking that Poles and Great Russians are spots of the
same ink.
Since the ruled ethnic group in Right-Bank Ukraine was "Russian"
(Ukrainian), the tsarist nationality policy in the region obtained a
legitimizing cause - the "emancipation of 'Russians' from Polish and
Jewish exploitation." This aim was established officially - despite the
widespread image - not after the 1830-31 rising, but after the arrival
of Dmitrii Bibikov at the post of Governor-General of the South Western
Region in 1837. Why was the traditional tsarist nationality policy of
incorporating the local Polish elite so inert that it survived for
several years even after the first Polish rising? According to Edward
Thaden, first, challenges of Enlightenment (the French Revolution,
Kosciusko's uprising and others) convinced the Russian and Polish serf
masters that they should be allied. Second, the annexation of the
Rzeczpospolita was expected to strengthen the traditional character of
the Russian Empire as "a multinational state ruled by cosmopolitan,
landowning elite." Third, since Russia deprived Turkey of the control
over the Dnepr at the end of the eighteenth century, Polish landowners
began to prefer the Black Sea route to the Baltic one for grain export
to Western Europe. Lastly, because of their experiences of government
reform in the last years of the Rzeczpospolita and under the Duchy of
Warsaw, the Polish nobility was expected to play a reforming role for
the Empire, as had been the case with Baltic Germans a century before.
However, this 40 years honey moon between the local Polish nobility
and the Russian government meant nothing for Ukrainian serfs but a
tragic continuation of infringements. According to a survey of local
court records conducted by Bibikov, in Kiev province (i.e., not
including Volyn and Podoliia provinces) serf masters or manor managers
caused injuries resulting in serfs' death or abortions as often as
almost once a month. Moreover, most of the wrongdoers were not punished
and the names of sufferers were not recorded at all. There was a case
of Count Mechislav Pototskii who built something like a harem,
gathering there beautiful serf women.
If the tsarist nationality policy of incorporating Poles was so
inert, then why had it not been resurrected until the end of tsarism,
once it had abandoned in 1837? Of course the 1863-64 rising was
decisive, but I need to add other factors. First, the banner of
"emancipation of "Russian' brothers" was such that it could not be
pulled down, once it had been hoisted. This was exemplified by the fact
that the inventory reform started by Bibikov could not but lead to an
exceptional, pro-serf variant of the Emancipation in Right-Bank
Ukraine. Second, in the mid-nineteenth century a series of geographic
and ethnographic surveys were organized by the South Western Branch of
the Imperial Geographic Society (sponsored by the Governor-General of
the South Western Region) and the Kievian School in historical studies.
Until that period, despite their official declarations, the tsarist
government and Great Russian intellectuals used to think that the
division of the Rzeczpospolita had given them a strangersÕ land
and people. But these surveys showed that the native population in
Right-Bank Ukraine had preserved their Eastern Slavic ("Russian")
character, despite the two centuries rule by the Rzeczpospolita. The
Russian government unexpectedly discovered that their traditional
slogans had a certain scientific foundation.
At the end of the nineteenth century the government realized that
the excessively pro-peasant (pro-malorus) policy was not only damaging
Polish landowners, but also intimidating Russian landowners'
immigration from the inner provinces, which made the government soften
its attitude toward the Poles. This newly adopted appeasement toward
the Poles (on the other hand, embitterment toward Ukrainian peasants)
was combined with attempts at introducing institutions uniform with
those in the internal provinces of the Empire - to introduce land
captains and zemstva on one hand, and abolish servitude on the other.
But this policy change was extraordinarily difficult to realize because
it would have injured the most fundamental legitimacy of the Russian
Empire's western rule. Moreover, the Revolution of 1905 showed that
Poles had not abandoned the ambition for their "historical territory,"
which naturally stiffened tsarism's Polish policy again. After this
revolution the epoch of mass electoral politics arrived, and both the
government and local Great Russian movements strengthened their
populist tactics to attract Ukrainian voters. The most convenient lure
for this policy was, not surprisingly, the Ukrainians' resentment
against Polish latifundia. Thus the policy of incorporating the local
Polish nobility could not be implemented until the end of tsarism.
As is shown above, there was a trade-off relationship between
tsarism's Polish and malorus policies in Right-Bank Ukraine. The
tsarist rule of this region can be divided into the
pro-Polish/anti-Ukrainian periods (until 1837; 1848, when the
government facing the European Revolution temporarily relied upon the
existing ruling elite; and from the end of the nineteenth century to
1905) and the anti-Polish/pro-Ukrainian periods (from 1837 to 1848;
after 1848 to the end of the nineteenth century; and after 1905). In
other words, out of the three elements of the tsarist nationality
policy incorporation of the local elite and divide-and-rule tactics
could not be exploited operatively in this region. On the other hand,
these difficulties in relying upon traditional imperial management
resulted in developing more modern ethnopolitical tactics, such as the
populist use of land issues or the involvement in party politics.
The data obtained from the 1897 census indicate the aristocratic,
urban, and highly literate character of Russian speakers in the
Right-Bank provinces at that time, while the same data characterize the
then Ukrainian speakers as a peasant, rural and mostly illiterate
ethnic group. This is not surprising because, as mentioned above, after
more than a century since the annexation of Right-Bank Ukraine only a
handful of Russian-speaking "occupants," i.e., high officials,
officers, clergymen, and professors, had immigrated (to make the matter
worse, only temporarily) from the other side of the Dnepr. In contrast
to their Russian and Left-Bank counterparts, Right-Bank rural youths
enjoyed few chances of social mobility because the government did not
allow the Western provinces to have zemstva (accordingly, zemstvo
schools neither) for fear of the local Polish nobility and because
cities in the region were dominated by cultures and languages the rural
youths did not understand. Therefore, Right-Bank Ukrainian youths
preferred to remain in their villages, where the "Prussian path" of
agrarian capitalism provided them with relatively abundant chances of
employment.
According to the same census, Kiev province was most russified (in
both the Great Russification sense and the Eastern Slavonization
sense). Russian speakers in Podiliia and Volyn provinces were, as
mentioned above, made up a very small group in the population. As for
Volyn province, even the Eastern Slavs as a whole constituted only
73.7% of its total population, while the percentage in Podoliia
province amounted to 84.2%. The government was anxious about the ethnic
composition of Volyn province especially after the Russo-Austrian
relationship worsened in the 1890s.
Jews in Right-Bank Ukraine constituted a "petty bourgeois," urban,
and highly literate ethnic group. For example, in Volyn province 97.7%
of Jews belonged to the "petty bourgeois estate" (meshchany); 50.8% of
its urban population and 46.4% of the population of its capitol city,
Zhitomir, were Jews; and 44.7% of Judaist (Judaism-believing) men and
21.7% of Judaist women were literate. The composition of Polish
speakers was significantly aristocratic, both urban and rural, and
highly literate. Rural Poles consisted of landowners, various
managerial workers in Polish estates, and declassed szlachta which had
been converted into various non-privileged estate groups until the end
of the nineteenth century. Urban Poles were dominant in such
intellectual professions as the law, engineering, and municipal
government. If we compare Great Russian and Polish nobles, the
percentage of "lifetime nobles" was much less among the latter (in
Volyn province 6.7% of the Russian speakers and only 1.8% of the Polish
speakers belonged to this category), probably because Poles were
excluded from the state officialdom.
While the numbers of Eastern Slavs, German and Czech speakers, and
Jews were approximately the same as those of Orthodoxes, Protestants,
and Judaists respectively in all the three Right-Bank provinces, the
Catholic population was significantly larger than that of the Polish
speakers (the Catholic population was 1.6 times larger than the
Polish-speaking population in both Volyn and Kiev provinces, and 3.8
times larger in Podoliia province). There was thus room for "divide and
rule" tactics between Poles and non-Pole Catholics.
Comparing the literacy rates of Russian-speaking Orthodoxes,
Ukrainian-speaking Orthodoxes, and Polish-speaking Catholics in the six
provinces of the Right-Bank and Left-Bank Ukraine, we can compile the
following table.
Table 1. Literacy rates of the three ethnic groups in six
Ukrainian provinces
*Total population (thousand) **Literacy rate (%)
As for Russian and Polish speakers, the more people used the
language, the lower their literacy rate. Polish speakers in Right-Bank
Ukraine were less literate than their Left-Bank counterparts, while the
opposite can be said for Russian speakers. It might be because a
significant size of a language group indicates that the language had
penetrated to the non-elite strata of the society. Ukrainian speakers
in the Left-Bank Ukraine were more literate than their Right-Bank
counterparts, probably because the former enjoyed zemstva's public
education, however insufficient it was. The fact that in Chernigov, one
of the most progressive zemstvo provinces in the Empire, the literacy
of Ukrainian-speaking Orthodox men (who, as was the case with all the
Ukrainians, were deprived of the right to be educated by their own
native language) was, although a bit, higher than that of
Russian-speaking Orthodox men challenges the Ukrainian nationalists'
assertion which attributes the then Ukrainians' low literacy rate to
tsarism's restrictive language policy.
In default of public education and the possibility to catch the
boom of urbanization and industrialization, Ukrainian national
intellectuals could not develop. According to Orest Subtelny, in 1897
Ukrainians made up only 16% of lawyers, 25% of teachers, and less than
10% of writers and artists in Ukraine. The nineteenth century was the
most humiliating century for Ukrainians. It was thus hardly surprising
that, at least before 1905, not only tsarism and the local Polish
elite, but also Ukrainophiles themselves developed their nationality
policy with the assumption that the identity of the local native
population remained at the pre-national stage.
In 1865, the proportion of "Russian" land ownership in the total
private land in the nine Western provinces was "1/70." Systematic
restrictions on Polish land ownership and affirmative actions for
"Russian" land purchases after the 1863-64 rising changed this
proportion, as is shown in the following table compiled from government
data in 1903.
Table 2. Ethnic composition of private land in Right-Bank
Ukraine (% by areas)
The apparent parity between "Russian" and Polish land ownership
shown in this table, however, was only a fiction. Privileges for
"Russian" land purchases, as is often the case with any affirmative
action, stimulated land speculation by Great Russians. Moreover, those
Great Russians who bought land with more or less serious intentions
were also temporary dwellers who lived there only because of their
duties, missing their estates left in the internal provinces. Not
surprisingly, the estates obtained by them in the South-Western
provinces were often leased, most of which (according to government
data, about 3/4) fell to Polish hands, even though the law restricted
it.
It was said that large "Russian" estates (for example,
Bobrinskiis', Shuvalovs', Tereshchenkos') were not inferior to the
Polish ones, but the situation of "Russian" medium-size farms was much
worse. Technical innovations in Polish farms were made collectively, by
mutual aid, while "Russian" agrarians worked in isolation. When local
agricultural societies began to be organized in Right-Bank Ukraine at
the end of the nineteenth century, they were economic, apolitical
organizations. After the Revolution of 1905, however, most of them fell
under the Polish nationalists' influence. Polish often became the
common language in agricultural exhibitions, which often aimed at
showing the superiority of "Polish farming." This was a reason why
"Russian" landowners, no match for Poles in civic activities, yearned
to have zemstva as a device to influence Ukrainian peasants.
Since elections for the first and second State Dumas reflected the
existing land ownership, the South-Western Poles sent a certain number
of Polish representatives to St-Petersburg. The Stolypin's coup d'Žtat
on June 3, 1907 resulted in introducing national curiae. In other
words, a ceiling was set for the number of Polish electors. As for
elections for the State Council, however, such a gerrymander was
unfeasible. Ironically, since zemstva did not exist in the region
because of tsarism's anti-Polish policy, the provincial and county
assemblies of nobilities, the domain of the Polish nobles, remained the
only electoral medium for the upper house in parliament. Thus the
representation had been monopolized by Poles until 1911, when the
zemstva were introduced into this region. What is more distinguishing
is their attitude to elections. While the "Russian" electorate were
characterized by absenteeism, especially for the State Council
elections, the Polish electorate coherently participated in elections
even for the State Duma, although their chances in these had been
contained.
A report submitted in 1909 by the chief of the Volyn gendarmerie to
the provincial governor depicted the relationship between the Orthodox
and Catholic Churches. According to the report, most of ancestors of
the local Orthodox priests were forced to convert themselves to the
Catholic or Greco-Catholic Churches under Polish rule, being thus
placed under the "intellectual and moral influence" of the Polish
nobility. Up to then (1909) they bore Polish-style surnames, were
fluent in Polish, keeping old Polish books in their home libraries.
These circumstances developed an inferiority complex among Orthodox
priests to "anything Polish." Orthodox theological seminaries lacked
any "Jesuit-style basic training," and therefore it happened that
Orthodox priests did not get angry, even after witnessing attempts by
Catholic priests to convert Orthodox believers. Knowing the miserable
life of Orthodox priests, students at Orthodox seminaries did
everything to get jobs in the government or the army, to enter
universities, and only the stragglers who failed in this exodus to
secular jobs became priests.
By 1909 (when this report was written) Orthodox clergymen were
increasingly politicized, and becoming spearheads of the Great Russian
ideology in Right-Bank Ukraine, so this picture drawn by the
gendarmerie chief seems to be obsolete. If it reflects the relations
between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches in Right-Bank Ukraine during
the nineteenth century, however, we can see why the Catholic Church
remained influential throughout the century.
To sum up, the Latin-Catholic-Polish tradition continued to outdo
the Greco-Orthodox-Russian tradition in Right-Bank Ukraine even at the
beginning of the twentieth century. Of course, Poles were not what they
had been before the 1863-64 rising, but nevertheless they had not been
ruined to the extent that Great Russians could compete with them
without various affirmative actions and discriminative laws. This was
the reason why in the region (1) the governor-generalship was kept in
operation; (2) the most dense network of secret police in the Empire
was organized; (3) zemstva had not been introduced until 1911, and only
the zemstva based on an anti-Polish discriminative electoral system
could be introduced in 1911; (4) elementary education was monopolized
by government and Orthodox parish schools; (5) marshals of the
provincial and county nobilities were not elected but appointed by the
government; and lastly (6) the system of land captains was not
introduced, and the peace mediators introduced during the Great Reforms
continued to work till the end of tsarism. As a side-effect of the
tsarist anti-Polish policy, the "Russian" elite in this region were
also deprived of a significant part of civil rights enjoyed by the
elite on the other side of the Dnepr. To use a favorite expression of
Ukrainian nationalist historiography, the system of state institutions
in Right-Bank Ukraine after the 1863-64 rising was an "occupation
regime." The only correction we need to make is that it was an
occupation regime not against Ukrainians, but against Poles and Jews. Figure
3.
Out of various inter-ethnic relations in Right-Bank Ukraine only
the one indicated by Solid Line 1 in Figure 3 has been studied more or
less intensively. The relations indicated by Solid Lines 2 and 3 have
attracted much less attention, but at least historians have been aware
of the importance of the issues. In contrast, studies of the relations
indicated by the wave lines in Figure 3 have remained at an embryonic
stage. Without this, however, tsarism's nationality policy cannot be
understood, since it could rule the Western provinces, lacking reliable
managerial and socio-political resources there, only by intervening in
and manipulating the existing tension between the ruled ethnic groups.
It would be a mistake to think that we could compile a general model
explaining the tsarist nationality policy by scraping together the
relations indicated by the solid lines. A medley remains a medley, but
it will never become an analysis of ethnopolitics. The paradigm of
"prison of nations" was generated not by the reality of tsarism, but by
the incompetence of historians.
The more the South-Western provinces were "russified" (de-polonized
and de-semitized), the more separatist the Ukrainian nationalists
became. Between stara and nova hromady [the old and new generations of
Ukrainian nationalists], i.e., from M. Drahomanov and V. Antonovych,
both of which accepted the "dual identity" (malorus and at the same
time "Russian"), to the generation of M. Hrushevskii, almost nothing
changed in Right-Bank Ukraine in terms of ethnic consciousness of
Ukrainian masses or stratification of national intellectuals. The only
visible change was that the Poles became weaker. As is well known, the
center of Ukrainophilism in the region was Kiev city, followed by
Podoliia and, finally, Volyn province. Thus, geographically also, the
more a region was "russified," the stronger its Ukrainophiles became.
Cultural anthropologists argue that the key to have an ethnic
identity is in deciding "to whom to oppose yourself." In order to
become Ukrainian nationalists, it was necessary to oppose yourself not
only to Poles and Jews but also to Great Russians. If the last
condition was lacking, you would become, as a rule, a supporter of the
"dual identity." Since so few Great Russians lived on the western side
of the Dnepr, in the eyes of Ukrainian peasants they were no more than
an abstract "authority" or an episodic being called by the nickname
"katsap." The intensity of these images of Great Russians would have
been incomparable with the vivid resentment imprinted by daily contacts
with Poles and Jews. Massive contacts between Right-Bank Ukrainians and
Great Russians began only in the 1930s. And these contacts were
remembered by Ukrainians with inseparable associations of the famine of
1933, the great terror, the Chernobyl accident and other tragedies.
Considering this, it seems to be natural that after Ukraine had been
completely de-polonized and de-semitized with the help of Soviet power,
Ukrainians decided to become independent from the Great Russians too.
*Total population (thousand) **Literacy rate (%) 
