1841–1895
Mykhailo Drahomanov
Thinker, historian and publicist
Thrown out of his university post by the tsarist authorities, he went to Geneva to speak to Europe for the Kyiv Hromada. There Mykhailo Drahomanov published the first Ukrainian political journal and became the mentor of the Galician radicals, including Ivan Franko.
Key accomplishments
- Hromada, the first Ukrainian political journal (Geneva, 1878–1882)
- Founded the Free Ukrainian Press in Geneva and, with Serhii Podolynskyi and Mykhailo Pavlyk, the Geneva Circle, the seed of the Ukrainian socialist movement
- A concept of a federal state with self-governing communities and cultural-national autonomy for Ukraine
- Political Songs of the Ukrainian People in the 18th–19th Centuries and other works on folklore and history
A lecturer is fired. What next?
Mykhailo Drahomanov was born in 1841 in Hadiach in the Poltava region into a gentry family. His sister was the writer Olena Pchilka, and his niece was Lesya Ukrainka. He graduated from Kyiv University and from 1864 taught ancient history there. At the same time he became one of the leaders of the Kyiv Hromada, a secret Ukrainian society (later known as the Old Hromada).
In 1875 the tsarist authorities dismissed him from the university for his part in the Hromada. But Drahomanov did not go quiet. The Hromada entrusted him with being its voice in Western Europe, and in 1876 he settled in Geneva.
A printing press in Geneva
There he founded the Free Ukrainian Press and published Hromada (1878–1882), the first Ukrainian political journal, as well as pamphlets telling Europeans how Ukrainians lived in the Russian Empire. With Serhii Podolynskyi and Mykhailo Pavlyk he founded the Geneva Circle, the seed of the Ukrainian socialist movement.
He kept close ties with young Galicians, including Ivan Franko, and became the intellectual mentor of the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party, founded in 1890. After a break with the Kyiv Hromada in 1886 he lost its financial support, and in 1889 he took up the chair of general history at Sofia University. He died and was buried there, in Sofia.
A state where communities decide
Drahomanov’s political ideal was a federal state with broad self-government for communities and regions, with cultural-national autonomy for Ukraine and its unity preserved. He did not believe Ukrainian independence was possible in his lifetime, so he called for the democratization and federalization of states.
Why it matters today
Drahomanov left more than two thousand works on history, folklore and literary studies. He worked hard to explain the Ukrainian question to Europeans, and he pictured a state built on decentralization and self-governing communities.
