Brotherhood of Tarasovs

Brotherhood of Tarasovs (Ukrainian: Братство тарасівців) was an underground student organization. It was established in 1891 during a visit of Taras Shevchenko burial grounds near Kaniv.

The founders included Vitaliy Borovyk, Borys Hrinchenko, Mykola Mikhnovsky, Ivan Lypa, and others. Beside cultural propaganda Tarasovs were expressing political statements for the liberation of the Ukrainian nation from under the Russian occupation, full autonomy for all people of the Russian Empire, and social justice.

In the small town of Hlynsk near Romny where the students operated by the end of summer 1891 was established the program of the Brotherhood. Some of them were as such:

• Independent sovereign Ukraine: united and undivided from San to Kuban, from the Carpathian mountains to the Caucasus mountains free among the free, equal among the equal, and without a class stand-off in a future.
• Federation of Left-bank, Right-bank, Steppe Ukraine, Kuban, and Galicia.
• A head of state is hetman as the president and seym as parliament.
• Freedom of religion, division between church and state, national army.
• We won't be us, if for Ukraine there is no freedom nor fate.

The ideological fundamentals of the organization were prepared by Ivan Lypa and were published in Pravda magazine in April 1893. Those ideas were later propagated by B.Hrinchenko in his Letters from the Dnieper Ukraine and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky in his fairy tale Kho.

In summer 1893 some of them were arrested in Kharkiv, but another their centers reappeared in Kiev, Odessa, Poltava among the few. Among other participants the members of the Brotherhood were Volodymyr Samiylenko, Vasyl Sovachiv, Yevhen Tymchenko, Oleksandr Cherniakhivsky, Volodymyr Shemet, and others. The organization discontinued in 1898, but under its influence another organization, Stara Hromada reestablished itself as the General Ukrainian Organization in 1897 under the initiative of Oleksandr Konysky and Volodymyr Antonovych, while the younger generation of the Hromada created the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party in 1900.

Bibliography

• Encyclopedia of Ukraine in 10 volumes. Ed. Volodymyr Kubiyovych. Paris, New York. "Molode Zhyttia", 1954-1989.
• Small dictionary of history of Ukraine. Ed. Valeriy Smoliy. Kiev. "Lybid", 1997.
• Ivan Lypa Тарасівці (Tarasovs). (Letter from Prosvita, parts 11-12). Lviv, 1922.
• Volodymyr Samiylenko. З українського життя в Києві в 80 pp. XIX ст (Out of the Ukrainian life in Kiev in 1880s). Nova Ukraina, vol. 1 — 2. Praha, 1923.
• S.Kozub. Коцюбинський у Братерстві Тарасівців (Kotsiubynsky in the Brotherhood of Tarasovs). Works of Kotsiubynsky, vol. 7. Kharkiv — Kiev, 1930 —1931.
• V. V. 45-ліття Тарасівців (45th anniversary of Tarasovs). Chronicles of Chervona Kalyna, vol. 1 — 2. Lviv, 1936.
• Братерство Тарасівців (Brotherhood of Tarasovs). Ukrainian Informer, vol. 15. Berlin, 1943.