Mykhailo Hrushevsky

Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866 - 1934) was one of the most important Ukrainian public figures of the 20th century. He was the country's greatest modern historian, foremost organizer of scholarship, leader of the pre-revolution Ukrainian national movement, head of Ukraine's 1917-1918 revolutionary parliament, the Central Rada, first president of the Ukrainian People's Republic of 1918, and a leading cultural figure in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1934.

As a historian, Hrushevsky authored the first detailed scholarly synthesis of Ukrainian history, his ten volume History of Ukraine-Rus', which was published in the Ukrainian language and covered the period from pre-history to the 1660s. In this work, he balanced a commitment to the common Ukrainian people with an appreciation for native Ukrainian political entities, autonomous polities and such, which steadily increaced in the final volumes of this, his master work. In general, Hrushevsky's approach combined rationalist enlightenment principles with a romantic commitment to the cause of the nation and positivist methodology to produce a highly authoritative history of his native land and people. Hrushevsky also wrote a multi-volume History of Ukrainian Literature, an Outline History of Ukraine in Russian, and a very popular Illustrated History of Ukraine which appeared in both Ukrainian and Russian editions. In addition to these major works, he wrote numerous specialized studies in which he displayed a very acute critical acumen. His personal bibliography lists over 2000 separate titles.

As an organizer of scholarship, Hrushevsky oversaw the transformation of the Shevchenko Literary Society which was based in the Austrian controlled province of Galicia into a new Shevchenko Scientific Society. This organization published hundreds of volumes of scholarly literature before the First World War and quickly grew to serve as an unoffical Academy of Sciences for the Ukrainian people living on both sides of the Russian-Austrian border. After the revolution of 1905 in Russia, Hrushevsky organized the Ukrainian Scientific Society in Kyiv, after the 1917-1921 revolution, he founded the Ukrainian Sociological institue in exile in Vienna, and after his return to Ukraine in the 1920s became a major figure in the newly founded All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv.

As a political leader, Hrushevsky first became active in Austrian Galicia, where he spoke out against Ruthenian particularism and in favor of a national Ukrainian identity which would unite both eastern and western parts of the country. In 1899, he was a co-founder of the Galician-based National Democratic Party. This party looked forward to eventual Ukrainian independence. After 1905, Hrushevsky advised the Ukrainian Club in the Russian State Duma or Partliament and advocated Ukrainian national autonomy within a democratic Russia. In 1917, he was elected head of the revolutionary parliament, the Ukrainian Central Rada in Kyiv and guided it gradually from Ukrainian national autonomy within a democratic Russia through to completely independent statehood. At this time, Hrushevsky was clearly revealed as a radical democrat and a socialist. After the failure of the Ukrainian revolution, Hrushevsky went into exile in Vienna and remained there until 1924 when he returned to Soviet Ukraine to take part in the work of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Until 1931, when, with the onset of Stalinism he was exiled to Moscow, he was the leading cultural figure promoting an independent national identity in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1934, under the close watch of the Soviet political police he died in Kislovodsk in the Caucasus. It is unknown what role these police played in his unexpected death.

Bibliography:

Thomas M. Prymak, Mykhailo Hrushevsky: The Politics of National Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987).

Lubomyr R. Wynar, Mykhailo Hrushevsky: Ukrainian-Russian Confrontation in Historiography (Toronto-New York-Munich: Ukrainian Historical Association, 1988).

Serhii Plokhy, Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005).