The Philosophical Background of Ukrainian Resistance
After a month of a war in Ukraine, a month of global help we keep getting, and a month of incredible self-organization of my compatriots, it may be the time to try and analyze the role of Ukrainian culture in all that. In this piece, I will discuss four prominent Ukrainian figures, their interpretations of freedom and the common good, and how we as a society naturally imply this way of thinking to baseline ideologies in a moment of crisis.
I do not say that these four thinkers are of a direct intellectual lineage. Sure, they influenced one another, but we are not talking about a certain school. To my mind, it makes more sense to explore a general mindset of a society that preserved some particularities over time, manifesting them all over the ideological spectrum.
I tend to explore this mindset through the lens of existentialism. What we call “humanity” is the ability to make a choice. To behave humanely, one must have an option not to, determined by some pre-accepted values (morals). We can know our humanity only in the limit situations (Grenzsituation) that allow us to self-actualize. In general terms, how we use our freedom defines us as humans.
Baroque. Hryhorii Skovoroda
Skovoroda is a late-baroque philosopher and writer with a classical background. He studied at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, a Ukrainian university responsible for founding the Russian Academy of Sciences. Humanities in Ukraine held upon Ancient Greek and Greek Orthodox traditions with a considerable Catholic influence leaked in mainly through Poland.
An independent Cossack state emerged in the Early Modern Age on this background. The rule of the land was founded mainly on the concept of права і вольності (rights and liberties) of different social strata. The leader of the state, hetman (headman), was to be elected and could be impeached. The rule of law was above everyone in the state, so a peasant could sue a nobleman to protect his rights or dignity. While the model itself stemmed from a political system in the Commonwealth, of which Ukraine was a part, it gained new traction after the Khmelnytsky uprising (1648)against the arbitrary treatment of Ukrainian and Polish nobility.
The Uprising (and the liberties it represented) was a cornerstone of the national identity of the time. A hundred years later Skovoroda would call Khmelnytsky “a father of liberty” in his poem “De Libertate” (About the Liberty). This connection is both philosophical and political. The political action Khmelnytsky took as a leader (leaving the Commonwealth) and its implications for Ukraine (self-governed state) as a whole was depicted to reflect his personal values and worldview. These close ties between individual and collective (or, rather, the way personal reflects on the collective) is a recurrent theme in Skovoroda’s poetry and philosophy.
For Skovoroda, there is a close connection between freedom, consciousness, and sanity. A “conscious” person is both moral and politically active; the Ukrainian language implies this relation. Immoral actions cause “unclear consciousness,” while a “conscious” person is the one who makes decisions according to reason, which in turn is fueled by higher values. No wonder this adjective, свідомий, has become a slur in the Russian language, an in-joke to insult politically or culturally active Ukrainians (or, more general, all those who don’t think they are the Russians).
In his poem “Each town has its custom and rights,” Skovoroda lists many different types of vane behavior, setting them against his approach. Two main points: “The only thing on Earth that bothers me is to keep a sane mind till I die”; “Who doesn’t care about the sharp blade of Death? Only he with the crystal-clear consciousness”. Freedom presents us with a choice, while sanity helps us make this choice correctly, granting us calmness in times of turmoil.
Thus the ultimate life goal is self-knowledge. We must know our needs to do our duties and achieve our goals. Skovoroda used the image of Narciss, contemplating his reflection in the pool, as a symbol for a thinker who explores himself to find the correct course of action: “Blessed is he who finds a source of joy in his own house”. The ultimate goal of this “knowing yourself” is to understand your place in this world better. Knowing ourselves, we can better satisfy our needs, make ourselves useful and understand the limits of one another’s personal space.
This approach is best summed up in the notion of “congenial toil”. We are destined to act, so everyone should choose a course of action according to their inner selves. This notion has a simplified explanation: every person has a job they suit best (they are good at it, like doing it, and are helpful) to help bring the common good. In Skovoroda’s philosophy, this concept has a broader meaning of harmony between the world and inner self. The primary means to achieve this harmony are sane reason and freedom of choice.
Romanticism. Taras Shevchenko
Not long after Skovoroda, Russian Empire has successfully canceled the Cossack’s liberties, and in 1783, full-scale slavery was introduced. History textbooks usually call the Russian system “serfdom”; however, in practice, it was slavery. Peasants were banned from leaving their village; they could have been bought and sold on special markets and had no personal rights whatsoever. Shevchenko was born into slavery, became noticed for his painting, and eventually, his friends raised some money and bought him out. Then he was put on trial for his satirical poetry and sent into exile with the prohibition to paint and write. This all was to the great disdain of his fellow painters who thought he is wasting his talent, writing poetry in Ukrainian. But it was poetry that made him a national symbol.
Sure, this bumpy life road and peculiar education (he learned to read with the “drunk sexton” in a local church but ultimately studied at Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts) has greatly influenced his works. For Shevchenko (himself of Cossack descent), old liberties existed within living memory but were gone from the real life. His poetry shows a wicked and degraded world, where children of those who were once equal became masters and slaves. He rightfully blames Russia for causing this state of affairs but does not absolve his compatriots from guilt. According to his worldview, people have the right to revolt and should do so, given the horrible attitude.
On the other hand, enslavers should remember that they are one with other Ukrainians. For Shevchenko, compatriotism and solidarity are a source of humanism. A joint effort is the root of a common cause, and this requires treating a neighbor as one of your own. While enslaved and uneducated peasants have neither enough knowledge, nor spare time to give it a thought, educated slave owners are without any excuse. The history is waiting to repeat itself: “All the bound people will soon break the chains / The Judgement will come / Dnipro and the Mountains will speak / And blood of your children in a hundred rivers / Will flow to the Black Sea”.
Sure, the ideals of the French Revolution are at work here, but Shevchenko rebuilds these ideals upon the ground of former liberties. Something not to find or create but to regain. Liberty is not a political ideal, it is the local version of a Romantic “former glory” narrative.
Socialism. Ivan Franko
While most of Ukraine’s territory was conquered by Russia, a few regions in the West went to the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the Partitions of Poland. These regions, already distinct enough, fell into a much more liberal empire which allowed Ukrainian culture to relatively prosper (especially taking into account countless prohibitions of the Ukrainian language in Russia). There was serfdom in Austria, but that was it. Peasants did not own the land but were not considered property for sale either.
Serfdom was abolished in 1848, and the democratic Constitution was issued almost two decades later to create some unexpected problems. Lack of proper education prevented former serfs from career growth or decent perspectives. Austrian Ukrainians were sometimes called “a nation of peasants and priests,” which was partly true as many educated people were of the clergy or had deep ties with the Greek Catholic Church. This state of affairs allowed for power abuse and corruption.
However, in the wake of the national revolutions of 1848 (the Spring of Nations) and national Romanticism, a new type of thinking appeared. The sentiment was fueled by several bloody uprisings that ended in vain due to the lack of organization or a common goal. Those who understood the problems strove to “open the eyes” of the common folk.
Franko’s views are best described as a continuing shift from classic socialism toward national democratism as he gradually became disillusioned with the Marxist reading of society and progress. For him, progress is not a thing to superimpose but rather to nurture. A person who possesses knowledge that the community can benefit from is due to spread this knowledge, as that is the right thing to do — society benefits from such transactions. As Franko puts it in his poem “Stonemasons”: “We are bound; however, we willingly took chains, we are slaves of freedom, mere stonemasons on the path of progress”.
Education helps one better understand the borders of other’s freedom. If we want to remain humane, we are bound to act a certain way, and freedom from this point of view works as a realized necessity. This approach is a more pessimistic counterpart to Skovoroda’s congenial toil. Given the circumstances, it’s here that baroque humanism has adequately met anti-colonial criticism. Later in his life, exhausted by petty struggles within a narrow framework Austria allowed for, Franko shifted from “paving the road” for freedom to a more “exhausted” view of Moses, who leads the Jews out of the desert despite all the opposition and despite spending all his life in an effort that yet bears little fruit.
This idea is already present in the “Stonemasons”: “Each of us knew that we would find no glory / Nor people’s memory for all this bloody toil. / That people would walk this road / When it is done and ready, / When our bones would turn to dust beneath”. However, closer to XX century this perspective matures: though some progress can already be seen, it is never enough.
Anarchism. Nestor Makhno
In the wake of the Russian Revolution, many communist, socialist and anarchist parties emerged. The question of land and the right to own it was the cornerstone for many communities, especially in central and southern parts of Ukraine, which naturally relied on farming on vast expanses of the Steppe. The communities there performed well in accord with the earlier lifestyles of Cossacks.
Makhno is the only person on this list who is not a writer. He was a charismatic leader of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, an anarchist movement in the territories around Huliaipole. From the political standpoint, he is pretty far from everyone else — Makhno disdained both the socialist Central Council and traditionalist Hetmanate; he proposed a state without a government, but worst of all, he did believe in “brotherly union with Russian people”.
I say “worse of all” because it makes him quite inconvenient in a standard political narrative. That’s part of his devilish appeal: we kind of feel worm towards his style, but not his ideas as such. We can easily understand the mindset of his actions, “taking the liberties,” as a part of our national mythos, though from earlier times.
Makhno prioritized guerilla warfare and local action, working in mobile units which were assembled when needed and armed with machine gun-mounted carts. This “nomadic” fighting style bears too many associations with the heroic past to ignore its appeal. He claimed that “anarchy is the mother of order”, meaning that communities must act upon their needs and not rely on some center to manage them. In the moment of need, one works according to the good of the community; full cooperation and support are crucial to success. In mainly peasant regions, that was the lifestyle anyway, so for the most part, Makhno was using the ideology of anarchism to support the approach which was already natural for the locals.
The Red Army ultimately defeated the Makhno movement after using their help. Nothing new here. His refusal to cooperate with other Cossack insurgents or the central government cost him dearly. While wrong in the short run, Makhno exemplifies the same approach that existed in Ukrainian thought for tens of generations: a moment of need requires a voluntary action, treated as a necessity. Luckily, we have developed a better tuning for such cooperation over time, integrating this anarchic self-help into a state apparatus.
