INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF UKRAINE FEATURES
April 2009

Populist ideals, which began to crystallize in Russia and Ukraine following the Crimean War during the reign of the Russian tsar Alexander II, had a profound impact on Ukrainian literature in the second half of the 19th century. The main tenets of Ukrainian populism (narodnytstvo) were federalism, the emancipation of the peasantry, and the recognition of the cultural distinctiveness of the Ukrainian people. Study of the Cossacks induced romantic visions of rebellions against landlords and national oppressors and of the existence of a Cossack republic based on equality and brotherhood. Those ideas, reinforced by the fiery poetry of Taras Shevchenko, inspired a younger generation of Ukrainophiles, some of whom were also influenced by Western European utopian socialists. By the end of the 1870s Ivan Nechui-Levytsky and Panas Myrny had written some of their most important works, and Ivan Franko had made his literary debut. Despite the ban on the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian literature had become established in its own right by the 1880s, that is, during the period when it was most evidently populist in orientation. Treating literary works as effective tools for propagating socio-political ideas, populist writers began to examine new, previously unexplored, themes in Ukrainian literature, such as the role of the intelligentsia and the women's question, in addition to the well-worn theme of the fate of village folk...   Learn more about the legacy of Ukrainian populist writers in Russian-ruled Ukraine by visiting: http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/featuredentry.asp or by visiting: http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/ and searching for such entries as:

RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN POPULISM. Ukrainian and Russian populists idealized the people (narod), which, practically speaking, meant the peasantry. Populists believed that their theories reflected the interests of the peasantry, and that it was their duty to try to help them. Russian populism, as ideology, was socially more radical and utopian than Ukrainian populism. Idealizing peasant traditions, especially communal farming, Russian populist thinkers believed that the peasant commune could serve as the foundation of a future socialist Russia. Ukrainian populists were involved primarily in cultural and educational work. The Cyrillo-Methodians were the first to formulate a populist political platform based on social and national emancipation, albeit couched in religious and romantic terms. In 1862, Volodymyr Antonovych, leader of the khlopomany, issued a typically populist manifesto in which he called on the nobility to renounce their privileges and work for the benefit of the people among whom they lived, the Ukrainian peasantry...

NECHUI-LEVYTSKY, IVAN (pseud of Ivan Levytsky), b 25 November 1838 in Stebliv, Kaniv county, Kyiv gubernia, d 15 April 1918 in Kyiv. Writer. Upon graduating from the Kyiv Theological Academy (1865) he taught Russian language, history, and geography in the Poltava Theological Seminary (1865-6) and, later, in the gymnasiums in Kalisz, Siedlce, and Kishinev. He began writing in 1865, but because of Russian imperial censorship his works appeared only in Galician periodicals. His works about the lives of peasants and laborers established him as a master of Ukrainian classical prose and as the creator of the Ukrainian realist narrative. Nechui-Levytsky was the first to provide fictional characterizations of various classes of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, ranging from students and teachers to high-ranking members of the Russian civil service. Against a background of colonial repression and thoroughgoing Russification Nechui-Levytsky sought to depict the stirrings of national consciousness in the Ukrainian intelligentsia...

MYRNY, PANAS (pseud of Panas Rudchenko), b 13 May 1849 in Myrhorod, d 28 January 1920 in Poltava. Writer. He worked in various government offices and eventually achieved the rank of full government councilor (1914). The works of Taras Shevchenko had the greatest influence on the formation of Myrny's worldview, artistic preferences, and ideology. His early literary attempts included poems, dramas, and short stories. His best-known work is the novel Propashcha syla (The Ruined Strength), also titled Khiba revut' voly, iak iasla povni? (Do the Oxen Bellow, When Their Mangers Are Full?, 1880). The work can be characterized as a sociopsychological novel-chronicle; it covers almost a hundred years in the history of a Ukrainian village, from serfdom to the postreform era. In it Myrny depicts social oppression, internal strife between different social groups, the tsarist legal system, the harsh life of a soldier during the time of Tsar Nicholas I, police violence, and spontaneous protests against lies and injustice...

HRINCHENKO, BORYS, b 9 December 1863 at Vilkhovyi Yar khutir in Kharkiv county, d 6 May 1910 in Ospedaletti, Italy. Prominent public figure, educator, writer, folklorist, and linguist. For 10 years he taught in elementary schools in Kharkiv gubernia and Katerynoslav gubernia. In 1894 he settled in Chernihiv, where he organized there the largest publishing house in Russian-ruled Ukraine, which published 50 popular-educational books despite severe censorship. In 1902 he moved to Kyiv, where the Hromada of Kyiv entrusted him with the task of compiling a dictionary of the Ukrainian language. Hrinchenko's literary work was directly linked with his journalistic work and was to a large extent subservient to it. In his realistic short stories and novelettes he depicted Ukrainian peasant life while raising urgent social questions, the attitude of the intelligentsia to the peasantry, the education and denationalization of the rural population, and the relation between nationalism and radicalism or socialism...

STARYTSKY, MYKHAILO, b 14 December 1840 in Klishchyntsi, Zolotonosha county, Poltava gubernia, d 27 April 1904 in Kyiv. Writer and theatrical and cultural activist. Orphaned in childhood, Starytsky was raised by his uncle, the father of Mykola Lysenko. He studied at the Poltava gymnasium (until 1856), Kharkiv University (1858-60), and Kyiv University (1860-6). Starytsky was first published in 1865. An important part of his literary legacy is his poetry on social issues, which is characterized by populist and patriotic motifs, glorification of the Ukrainian past, and protests against tsarism. Starytsky made a considerable contribution to Ukrainian theater and dramaturgy. In 1883 he headed the first Ukrainian professional theater and in 1885 founded a new troupe with young actors. He wrote several original dramatic works as well as librettos for many of Mykola Lysenko's operas. During the last years of his life Starytsky wrote several historical novels on Ukrainian themes in Russian and Ukrainian...

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