[Ukrainian Statehood in the Twentieth Century: Historical and Political Analysis. Kyiv: Political Thought, 1996. pp. 53-69.]

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Classocratic View

Viktor BURLACHUK (§§1-5), Borys ANDRESYUK(§6, co-author), Mykola HORELOV (§6, co-author)



The making of Ukrainian nation-statehood was the purpose and essence of life and the highest- political value for Vyacheslav Lypynsky as a man and political personality.

Lypynsky lived in a time when the idea of nation-making and nation-statehood was far beyond the range of the immediate political interests of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Educated on Marxism and inspired by the ideologies of populism and the Enlightenment (one can hardly imagine a social thinker of the turn of the twentieth century who was not carried away by socialism), the Ukrainian intelligentsia considered the state primarily an instrument of oppression, a corrupt and omnipotent bureaucratic machine that suppresses the people in every way possible. "Land and Freedom" was the dominant political slogan of the day.

Whereas others aspired and claimed to be federalists and socialists, Vyacheslav Lypynsky stood out as a champion of independence and monarchist. His political ideas and convictions ran counter the spirit of the age, assigning him the role of a romantic Utopian, a social outcast among politicians. He revived and defended such values as chivalrous honor and dignity when pragmatism and utilitarianism were the order of the day, he insisted on the expediency of a hierarchical structure of society while the spirit of freedom and egalitarianism was everywhere in the air.

This position of a chivalrous politician caused Lypynsky /54/ to often find himself in political isolation, unable to find a common language with socialists, nationalists, of communists. He took very much to heart his incongruity with the widespread ideas of the political establishment, the relatively fanciful, illusory, and fantastic character of his ideals, and called himself a political Don Quixote.




1. The Nation and the State


In approaching the theoretical problems of the state system and order, Lypynsky proceeded from a universal premise, which identified the nation and the state. History, he held, knows no stateless nation or non-nation-state.

Lypynsky's thesis requires an immediate disclaimer. Current historians maintain that, unlike ethnic groups, the nation is a child of the French Revolution and matured in Western Europe during the nineteenth century. Historically, states formed without the aid of nation, and some nations formed without the blessings of their states. The empires which arose in the wake of the decline of the ancient world and during the Middle Ages had all the characteristics of states but were neither monoethnic or monocultural. On the other hand, city-states were seldom inhabited by people of only one culture, and the cultural domain of their inhabitants ran far beyond the borders of such small states. In other words, the ancient Greeks may have been a single nation but they did not have single state. Thus, Lypynsky's rule is nearly so universal as he claimed. We shall deal with this in greater detail below.

The problem of state-building cannot be solved in practice by any one politician, since a state must rest on a certain social basis. The building of a nation-state, Lypynsky argues, is feasible only if there are social forces, strata, and classes which are vitally interested in its existence. To such a stratum Lypynsky addressed his political magnum opus, Letters to Brother Farmers: "The landed class of farmers", he writes, "arc people organically connected with one another /55/ by the very mode of their existence — they are the sole group in Ukraine whose very future depends on whether or not there is an independent Ukraine."1

Agricultural owner-producers are certainly interested in the existence of a state of their own which would guarantee their ownership of land. Vyacheslav Lypynsky was right in arguing that an agrarian society needs a state and thus creates it but was wrong when he refered to such a state as "national." In agrarian society everyone and everything — the widespread illiteracy, the gulf between the high and popular cultures, and differences between the colloquial and liturgical languages — seem to militate against drawing political borders in accordance with cultural ones, which is characteristic of the nation-state.

It is typical of stratified agrarian society that the upper class finds it advantageous to highlight, accentuate, emphasize, and play up in every possible way distinctive features of the privileged group.

The principle of social hierarchy which Lypynsky defended actually impeded, rather than facilitated, the consolidation of a single culture that would require a single national political organism on the basis of one culture — one state.

Ernest Gellner, a prominent British scholar of nationalism, once made the following cautionary remark: "Under an agrarian social system, it would be quite futile to seek to institute a single educational level for all strata and a homogeneous culture with predetermined norms codified in documents."2




2. The Hetman, the Elite, and the Class of Farmers


For Lypynsky, a social class was only the foundation on which nation- and state-building could be based, while their actual makers are small social groups — the national aristocracy and the elite. In Lypynsky's opinion, the nation and state are created by an active minority, not by the passive /56/ majority. Any nation-state in a given historical period, he maintained, has a certain group of people in it who constitute the basis for its existence as a state.

In his doctrine of the elite, Lypynsky followed the Machiavellian tradition of European sociological thought which, in the persons of such sociologists as Pareto, Mosca, and Michels, stipulates that the uppermost privileged stratum is an inalienable inherent attribute of a social system.

Historically, the elite, Lypynsky believed, is molded by people or ethnic groups of alien tribes. In Ukraine Poles, rather than Ukrainians, were the bearers of the elite culture. By assimilating with the "Ukrainian popular mass," Poles stimulated the process of separating, alienating, and singling it out from other tribes of Rus'. It is precisely this process that "is actually Ukrainianness proper, Ukraine itself."

Lypynsky suggested his own typology of national aristocracies which differ among themselves by the methods according to which they organize their power: oligarchy, "classocracy", and democracy. To characterize democracy and oligarchy, Lypynsky finds rather precise formulas and definitions. But as to "classocracy", his brain child, he created a sociological phantom, and his sociological feeling (Gefuhl) failed him altogether. For Lypynsky, "classocracy" is the form of organization of the ruling elite most appropriate to Ukraine. In contrast to Marxism, which considers property relationships to be the major class-forming feature, Lypynsky, in his definition of the notion of class, had in mind a certain organic body united by common traditions, psychological feelings, and experiences as well as blood relations. In delineating the notion, Lypynsky seemed to imply quite a different social group, like a clan or tribe, rather than class proper.

Lypynsky's definition of social class may refer, with some adjustments, to a peasantry not yet corrupted by capitalism. If for Marx the working class was primarily the major, universal class, for Lypynsky, with his romantic mind set and World view, the peasantry was such a class, which /57/ he referred to as the class of farmers. Farming for Lypynsky is an art, and it is precisely in this that it is different from modern mechanical mass production. Hired labor in farming is only a way of enhancing the individual skills of the farmer, while the hired farm hand is his employer's hand and help rather than just a necessary cog in the machine.

The industrial working class did not fit in any sense Lypynsky's notion of an "organic" class and undermined his agrarian Utopia. Lypynsky's derogatory attitude to the industrial class, which, he thought, included both workers and employers-capitalists, was governed by what he considered to be the insignificant place this class occupied in the social structure of the Ukrainian society of his day. For Lypynsky, Ukraine is, first and foremost, a mighty farming class in which there are internal contradictions between rich and poor farmers but not a struggle of two classes. Lypynsky regarded the farming class as the bearer of the national and state idea, and it was precisely to this class that he addressed his political platform.

It is reasonable to pose two questions here: was there actually a single class of farmers who might have served as the major instrument of nation- and state-building in Ukraine? Were the contradictions between landless peasants and latifundia indeed so ephemeral and negligible that they could well be ignored?

As is known, Lypynsky was a noble landowner himself, and his ideas of the peasant life and farming were not derived just from agricultural monographs. How, then, could he come to such an extreme idealization of the class of farmers? Here we seem to face a paradox: his political project was addressed to no one specifically or, to be more exact, its addressee was a Utopian one. It would appear that the task of political construction he had in mind could be carried out only by a new class. It was necessary "that a new leading Ukrainian stratum of farmers should arise from what was left of the land-owning nobility and farming peasantry," that "the most important crucial task of our class to-/58/day is to create such new leading, authoritative farming stratum," Lypynsky concluded.3

He saw the logical conclusion of his doctrine of the elite in the idea of a "superman," who could symbolize the state, crown the organic hierarchy of the social world, and personify the unity of the nation and the state. Lypynsky's idea of the Hetman is, beyond doubt, a direct reflection of his romantic-patriarchal feelings and beliefs. His vision of the state is one of a large farm, and just as a farm must have its steward, so too must the state. Quite aware of all the shortcomings of previous and extant monarchies (with his own eyes he saw the lawlessness and despotism of tsarist autocracy), Lypynsky wished to sec in Ukraine the embodiment of an ideal monarchy, the hetmanate.

In the history of the Ukrainian people, Lypynsky distinguished two periods in the reign of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, when there was an opportunity to make the office of Hetman hereditary. For Lypynsky, an elective Hetman was completely inconceivable, a democratic dictatorship, something like a Ukrainian Napoleon. By being elected, a Hetman would not be in a position to rise above inter-class and inter-party clashes, to remain uncommitted to and independent of group interests in his policies. In practical politics, Lypynsky invested his idea of the hetmanship in a real person. Pavlo Skoropadsky, a tsarist general and descendent of elected Hetman of the Left-Bank Ukraine Ivan Skoropadsky, was for Lypynsky such a man. The man on whom Lypynsky pinned his hopes for a national monarchy was hardly the best candidate for Ukrainian national leader.4 Pavlo Skoropadsky was born in Wiesbaden, studied at a military college, served with the Cavalry Guards regiment, a privileged detachment of the Russian Army, and may have known nothing until the age of 44 about the Ukrainian national movement. On 29 April 1918, Pavlo Skoropadsky did become the Hetman of Ukraine on taking power from the Central Rada (the then highest ruling body in Ukraine). But his authority rested on the bayonets of an /59/ Austro-German army of occupation rather than on mass support, of the farming class and fell at along with the occupation.

Personal relations of the author of Ukrainian monarchism with the Hetman and his entourage were far from ideal, and in the last years of Lypynsky's life they ended in a complete break. If it were not for his early death, Lypynsky would, very likely, have reexamined his views on the Hetman in nation- and state-building. Perhaps this is the fate of any romantic idea which in coming to grips with reality turns into its opposite.




3. The Peasant with Sword and Plow


A nation-state owes its establishment to a certain type of individual — a "warrior-producer". For Lypynsky, this is a type of man who has equal capacities for both peaceful creation and making war. A landowner himself, Lypynsky served with the cavalry and was equally skilled at fencing and the agricultural sciences. This is why he did not find such a personality type implausible; he found it in history, when he attempted to sort out the origins of European statehood.

To take an example, the army of William the Conqueror laid, in Lypynsky's opinion, the foundation of English statehood. In Lypynsky's words, it "took root in the land," because it was composed of Normans who had settled in Northern France but not of their roving and plundering Viking ancestors. In this way the ex-warriors were transformed into farmers. A similar process took place in Ukraine. "Our Ukrainian classocracy was born later. They were the registered urban Cossacks of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky. And precisely here there is a striking analogy between the sixty-thousand strong registered army of William the Conqueror and the sixty-thousand strong registered army of Bohdan the Great. Having won Ukraine by the chivalrous saber, it likewise settled down immediately /60/ on the land, took root there and became an army of 'producer-knights' and landowners."

By identifying the notions of state and nation, Lypynsky avoids the problem of creating a nation-state by substituting for it that of establishing a state in general.

The laws of human life in society, in the sphere of production and politics, demand cultural uniformity. Hence, the need arises for an expensive comprehensive education system, financed mainly by the state and to which is assigned the function of socializing the individual. "In the final analysis, only the state (or a little broader sector, including also a part of 'society') can bear this burden of responsibility, simultaneously exercising control over the quality of the products in this crucial industry — the production of socially well-disposed human beings capable of performing functions and work, essential to society. This becomes one of the main tasks of the state. Society needs to be made homogeneous, and this operation can be managed only by the central authorities" of the state.

If the emergence of a standardized culture is the principal precondition for creating a nation-state, in order for this precondition to work a social agent is needed to translate the potential into reality. Is the "warrior-producer," as Lypynsky maintains, the maker of the nation-state? It should be noted that there are several ways of forming a nation-state. Gellner distinguished three major ways: centralization, unification, and nation-making.

For example, centralization was achieved by dynastic states ruled from London, Paris, Madrid, and Lisbon, where local dialects not very different from the language of office workers were replaced by the language of state officials. The then existing state officialdom, rather than the agrarian stratum, was the prime mover of this process of nationalization. Moreover, the institutionalization of a centralized culture was directed against peasant culture, not based on it.

Unification as a way of creating a nation-state was carried out in areas where there already existed a highly stan-/61/dardized, uniform culture and the task was merely to grant this culture universal political status. This presupposed unifying small or medium-size states by means of war or diplomacy. Diplomats and soldiers, rather than thinkers and poets, led the process. As we can see, there were indeed opportunities for such a type of individual referred to by Lypynsky as a "producer-warrior" to emerge and carry out the task of creating a state.

Nation-building is carried out in areas where the need for a new nation is substantiated only by the cultural specificity of a territory. Here, there is not yet a culture with a definitely expressed formal basis and a state that protects this culture. To the fore comes the figure of an activist-propagandist, an intellectual who studies with enthusiasm and fervor the language, culture, and history of the oppressed nation. It is precisely this situation which is characteristic of the national movement in Ukraine. At the beginning and the close of the twentieth century, when opportunities arose for Ukrainians to form an independent nation-state of their own, individuals who received, as a rule, humanitarian-philological education (writers, poets, historians, and journalists), rather than "producer-warriors," became the most prominent figures on Ukraine's political scene.




4. Territorial Awareness as State Ideology


The notion of territory is central in Lypynsky's doctrine of what a nation is. Prior to Lypynsky, very popular was the idea, originating with Herder, that a nation was a certain linguistic community, and nationalism was considered only a linguistic political movement. Lypynsky, on the contrary, argued that one's awareness of one's own territory and a striving for establishing one's own state are the guiding factors for a national movement. Nationalism and socialism are ideologies of communities rather than territories, they are common feelings of people of the same class, the same religion, /62/ even if they live on some other territory. This "extraterritorial" ideology is, in Lypynsky's opinion, ruinous for a nation which is creating a new statehood, since it fosters confrontations and struggles among various ethnic groups inhabiting the territory.

Ukraine, Lypynsky believed, has always been a nest of extraterritorial religious solidarity, no matter whether it was genuinely Rus'ian or Polish, whether it was called Orthodox Christianity or Catholicism, Communist or Socialist ideology — the essence has always been the same: to serve as a powerful weapon in the hands of the imperial nations.




5. A Philosopher of Ukrainian Politics


Nearly all Lypynsky's sociological ideas were the direct projection of his interests in political struggle onto the field of sociology. This is also true of his doctrine of territorial awareness as the crucial point of national ideology. From their very inception, Lypynsky's sociological concepts were not universal, and they acquire the status of sociological constructs only when considered from the viewpoint of their utility and applicability to certain political purposes.

Lypynsky set this forth as the cardinal task of sociology: "What must a social theory be like in order to make it possible to build an independent Ukrainian state?" This is why Dmytro Chyzhevsky erred in claiming that Lypynsky "suggests not only a philosophy of Ukrainian politics but a philosophy of politics in general".5 Lypynsky is a philosopher of specifically Ukrainian politics. He elaborated the notion of territory or territorial ideology as a crucial element in building Ukrainian statehood because no other idea could promise success in the political struggle, not objective universal rules, in order for him to conclude: "Territorial awareness is a necessary prerequisite for bringing about the unity of any nation."

To expand, the idea of nation popular with Germans or the French cannot be applied to Ukraine, because here we /63/ are dealing with different cultural and political specifics and different forms of political struggle, rather than because that idea is objectively wrong. Germans explicate the notion of nation, Lypynsky maintains, proceeding from the notion of common racial origin, thereby reducing it to a "natural fact." This concept of nation is absolutely absurd in the colonial situation of Ukraine, with periodic migrations of people over its territory. It does not conform to the Ukrainian idea of nation, nor does the French one, which is based on "free national self-determination" and would eventually degenerate into anarchy.6




6. Lypynsky on the Threats to Ukrainian Statehood


In his Letters to Brother Farmers Lypynsky analyzed the reasons for the fall of Ukrainian statehood in the form of the UNR and hetmanate. Special attention was paid to identifying the role of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the state-building and destructive processes of the period and above all to evaluating the various forms of state structure practiced in Ukraine.

He emphasized, "The Ukrainian democratic intelligentsia, which comprised the main cadres of the so-called conscious Ukrainians in the prewar period and belonged to various so-called Russian liberal professions, could not possibly imagine themselves as builders of a Ukrainian state, and for this reason the idea of a state built by other Ukrainian classes was for them, if not hostile, at best, absolutely alien. Conversely, they wanted to take advantage of the only role they were able to play — that of an intermediary between the Russian state and the Ukrainian popular masses. They did their best to arrogate to themselves the first sprouts of the latter's national awareness."7

With historic sorrow he added, "We have beaten ourselves. The nation's leaders did not create any ideas, beliefs, or legends concerning a single, united, free, and independent Ukraine uniting all Ukrainians, did not fight for such an /64/ idea, and a Ukraine like this could not, naturally, materialize and assume real living forms."8

In 1920 he gave a strikingly exact description of the general social-psychological atmosphere pervading the crisis of Ukrainian statehood during the national liberation struggle of 1917-1918. "A social proletarian revolution for building a new social system, or an all-national and all-class revolution for building a common state and nation catering to all classes," he rightly went on, "All in the middle is political and economic robbery and ideological pharisaicism and demoralization. It is only on an ideologically and morally clean basis that a new creative Ukrainian faith can emerge."9 This formula seems to hold good even today, for, unfortunately, Ukraine has again found herself right "in the middle."

What recipes for overcoming the permanent Ukrainian crisis of statehood did Lypynsky leave for us? First of all, he advised a change in the methods of state-building.

"Our history," wrote Lypynsky, "has taught us hundreds of times over that our democracy, all these clerks and pen-pushers by trade, demagogues by tactics and careerists in spirit... were only able to destroy their own Ukrainian state-building aristocracy and the Ukrainian state to boot... But Ukrainian democracy was never able to build anything new, of their own, in that empty space. Of course, not because there were no people among them worthy of replacing the old slaughtered aristocracy but because they were possessed by a destructive, envious, spiteful as well as ingratiating, lying, and slavish spirit; because all these at times good, gifted, and kind individuals together constituted a destructive body called democracy."10

These are the emotions of a committed state-builder over the destructive activities of home-grown democrats. Both Lypynsky and his sympathizers made futile attempts to cooperate with the Central Rada and help it build a new Ukraine. Moreover, Lypynsky thought it best for our people to make use of the ethno-political experience of the USA, a /65/ truly democratic country. Warning against cultivating socialist and nationalist sentiments in society, he wrote in his Letters, "We want the local Ukrainian people in the struggle for their own state to be politically cemented together by patriotism, i.e., love for a common Motherland, rather than your socialism, i.e., by the hatred of the local poor for the local rich, or your nationalism, i.e., by the hatred of local "Ukrainians" for local "non-Ukrainians." It is only when the champions of the Ukrainian state from all local classes and nations defeat the parent state agents also to be found in all local classes and nations (including the "Ukrainian nation"!) that the Ukrainian State can emerge. And it is only in the Ukrainian State — in the process of cohabitation of Ukrainian residents on a defined state territory — that a Ukrainian nation can be formed, the way we are witnessing the emergence of an American nation in the process of the cohabitation of diverse nations and classes on the territory of the United States."11

Lypynsky may be said to have been a democrat only insofar as national democracy served the interests of building an independent Ukraine. If we consider that playing at democracy resulted in the collapse of his etatist idea, this explains Lypynsky's negative attitude to the democratic model of statehood.

It is natural therefore that he assessed the activities of socialists and nationalists from the same standpoints, often putting the equality sign between them. Lypynsky thought that neither the former nor the latter would ever be able to build a sovereign Ukraine. He based his position in this way: "You socialists and nationalists want to create Ukraine... by horizontal division. You want to separate the "alien" upper strata from the "Ukrainian" masses and have the upper strata destroyed by those masses. Where you differ is in purely verbal, superficial slogans rather than in mentality, method, or temperament. The socialists want to have the upper strata in Ukraine destroyed by the masses under the social slogan 'Beat the lords, because they're /66/ bourgeois/ and you, nationalists, want to do the same, but only under a tribal-ethnic slogan 'Beat the lords, because they're not Ukrainian.' And the goal is all too clear: seize power in Ukraine in your 'intellectual' hands with the aid of the 'socialist' or 'nationalist' people. This is why you turn so easily from socialists into nationalists and from nationalists into Sovietophiles (Smena vekh adherents, a reference to those emigres who reconciled themselves to Soviet rule on national grounds — Ed.). This is why you are both doomed to failure in Ukraine. All you think of is how to arouse the masses and surface on their backs. That is why you are being beaten and will always be. For this reason, you are not to see an independent socialist or nationalist Ukraine of your own. That will be gained not by your socialism or nationalism but by discipline, organization and, above all, by ennobling yourselves and your leaders."12

In this respect Lypynsky analyzed the role of Ukrainian foreign political orientations and their correlation with domestic policy. "Ukrainian politicians (irrespective of their ethnicity) regard orientation," he wrote, "as a way to find an ally outside Ukraine, assure him of their limitless devotion and, after thus securing his kind help, seize power over their fellow countrymen with this help."13

Having thus identified the main mistake of the Ukrainian political parties' foreign strategy, Lypynsky outlined his own views: "If we were not 40 million," we read in his Letters, "but 1 billion, and if we lived in some desert mountains or swamps and not on Europe's best soil, then we could set up our own state system and order after 'receiving' a certain amount of francs, marks, or pounds and some "ready-made" police. But, having, instead of a conscious and organized nation, a land fought for by those foreign forces which we want to use for this land's political liberation, having forty million nationally unaware individuals placed in political turmoil by various demagogues hating each other and any authority, broken down onto hundreds of hostile "parties" from above and into thousands of warring "re-/67/publics" from below, it is hardly possible that today's exhausted and sick Europe might find a force other than ourselves, which would build a state for us on our land and organize us as a modern European nation. Nobody will build us a state if we do not build it ourselves, and nobody will ever make us a nation unless we ourselves want to be one."14

We thus see a clearly expressed priority of domestic policy over foreign, a priority so habitual in the West and so incomprehensible in Ukraine.

"The unification and organization of the whole Ukrainian Nation," stressed Lypynsky, "depends on the unification and organization of the Ukrainian agricultural class."15 This thesis was well-grounded in the reality of those times. All other social strata of the Ukrainian population did not have enough force at the time to carry out a unifying mission. The author of the "Letters" also identified with extreme accuracy one of the main obstacles which might slow down such a course of events: "It is only the elimination of private ownership of land that can ruin the farming class," Lypynsky wrote, "taking the wind out of the farmer's sails, removing the creative element from the work of a farmer who is cultivating his own plot of land by means of his own individual effort. Only the socialization of land can destroy our present-day class consciousness..."16 It is quite easy to see that the Bolsheviks pulled exactly this end of the rope. However, Lypynsky saw the main threats to Ukrainian statehood in such forms as ochlocracy and democracy.

As noted above, Lypynsky attached decisive importance in the life of every state to the activities of the leading strata, the national aristocracy. He explained that he was using "the word aristocracy to define a stratum now actually ruling a given nation, be it an English lord, the Russian Council of People's Commissars, or some 'popularly elected' democrats."17 It is from this position that he interprets ochlocracy and democracy, referring in great measure to Plato. /68/

According to Lypynsky, ochlocracy is "a method of organizing a nation which, in the process of primitive material and racial development or influenced by an earlier material and racial situation, has not yet formed classes distinguishable by their means of material production or racial affinity, and which is only divided into a politically shapeless, economically and racially undifferentiated mob ("ochlos," hence ochlocracy) and those who rule this classless mob by means of their armed and closely-knit organization. This ruling ochlocratic aristocracy is recruited by training nomads from outside or the local déclassé, materially non-productive, racially and economically heterogeneous elements."18

Finally, fir him democracy "signifies a method of organizing the aristocracy of a nation which, under the influence of an inorganic and chaotic material development and of its own or alien colonial expansion, has become so mixed in terms of classes and races that natural groupings of the working people, who constitute physically, spiritually, and materially related classes, have already broken up; where the racially unstable and psychologically unbalanced type of a half-breeds has come to the fore, bringing on a chaotic conglomerate of democratically "equal" individuals (instead of organically cemented classes) alien to one other, hating each other, and bound up in one ethnic whole by those remnants of national and state organization which had been set up under the domination of a former classocratic or ochlocratic aristocracy disintegrated by democracy."19

No doubt, such generalizations in the Letters referred, above all, to Ukraine. Lypynsky was sufficiently bold to oppose for the first time the still-fashionable national patriotic legends about the alleged "eternity of the Ukrainian nation" and prove that, as far as the revival of the latter is concerned, it is all too dangerous to "boast of one's 'antiquity' and do nothing to create a nation and state attractive to the productive strata of society.

According to Lypynsky, Ukraine will be doomed forever to a dismal existence between the being and non-being /69/ without a state of her own. It is this thesis that Rudnytsky singled out when assessing Lypynsky's legacy: "In the current conditions (the 1920s — Author) Ukraine is not only enslaved and occupied but also 'stateless,' i.e., internally immature for independent existence. There is no Ukrainian nation in the full sense of the word: there is only the material for a future nation. Thus ctatist political action should be aimed, above all, at overcoming Ukrainians' own internal organic weaknesses. Lypynsky upheld the idea that "God created peoples capable of improving." Hence the supremacy of the domestic policy over foreign and of "organization" over "orientation."20

Ukraine's historic mission, Lypynsky believed, is to synthesize European and oriental Hellenic and Byzantine cultures. By fulfilling this extremely complex task, a Ukrainian state could then have ushered in a new historical epoch in Eastern Europe and provided a happier life not only for itself but also for all neighboring nations. He called this idea "Ukrainian messianism."21

Lypynsky was aware that the separation of states, above all the Slav ones, had no historical prospects. For example, Yevhen Pizyur, a researcher of his works, notes that Lypynsky had an idea of setting up a "Union of three Ruses" in Eastern Europe. However, this idea was not further developed and remains largely unclear for later students. As Pizyur thinks, a union of three nations — Russian, Ukrainian and Belorusian — was to have been based on complete independence of these states and would have been a sort of political bloc. Here, too, Lypynsky proceeded from his agrarian "conservative aristocratism" thinking that the alliance of the three peoples was necessary, for none of them was able to oppose either the "nomadic" influence (Islamic fundamentalism in modern parlance) or the domination of anonymous finance capital from the West.22 /70/







1 V. Lypynsky, Letters to Brother Farmers. On the Idea and Organization of Ukrainian Monarchy. Written in 1919-1926 (Vienna, 1926: in Ukrainian), p. XII.

2 E. Gellner, "Nations and Nationalism," Voprosy filosofii, 1989, No 7, p. 131 (in Russian).

3 V. Lypynsky, "Letters to Brother Farmers, p. 192.

4 E. Gellner, "The Advent of Nationalism: The Myths of a Nation and Classes," Put, 1992, I, p. 22 (in Russian). /400/

5 D. Chyzhevsky, "Viacheslav Lypynsky as a Philosopher of History," Filosofska i sotsiolohichna dumka, 1991, No 10, pp. 51-52 (in Ukrainian).

6 V. Lypynsky, Religion and Church in the History of Ukraine (Philadelphia, 1925).

7 V. Lypynsky, Letters to Brother Farmers, (2nd edition: New York, Bulava, 1954), p. 36.

8 Ibid., p. 16.

9 Ibid, p. 17.

10 Ibid., p. 36.

11 Ibid., p. 16.

12 Ibid., pp. 16-17.

13 Ibid., p. 65.

14 Ibid., pp. 66-67.

15 Ibid., p. 72.

16 Ibid., p. 73.

17 Ibid., p. 188.

18 Ibid., pp. 191-192.

19 Ibid., p. 192.

20 Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky, Between History and Politics, p. 156.

21 Yevhen Pyziur, "Viacheslav Lypynsky's Idea of Nation Building," Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 1985, IX, p. 325.





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Арістотель:   Призначення держави в людському житті постає в досягненні (за допомогою законів) доброчесного життя, умови й забезпечення людського щастя. Останнє ж можливе лише в умовах громади. Адже тільки в суспільстві люди можуть формуватися, виховуватися як моральні істоти. Арістотель визначає людину як суспільну істоту, яка наділена розумом. Проте необхідне виховання людини можливе лише в справедливій державі, де наявність добрих законів та їх дотримування удосконалюють людину й сприяють розвитку в ній шляхетних задатків.   ( Арістотель )



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Iзборник. Історія України IX-XVIII ст.