people and he recognized that they were the very backbone of the
Ukrainian stock. In his lifetime he was friendly with many of the more
enlightened members of the Ukrainian nobility and with many of the
conservative writers of Russia. Never did he compromise his beliefs
that the new order was to be founded upon the rights of the common man
who must be educated to enjoy his new privileges. His ideas were often
in close agreement with those of the Russian radicals but he did not
have much personal contact with them for his belief in a liberal and
radical solution of the Ukrainian question on its own territory shut
him off from their refusal to recognize the Ukrainians as distinct from
the Russians and their attempts to create in Russia an ideal system
based only on western ideas and ideologies.
He was a peasant but he realized also that all was not well within
the peasant communities and in the peasant way of life. They were
cruel and merciless to one another, for example, in their dealings
with girls who had transgressed the moral code and it was impossible
to blame all this upon the external oppression to which they were
subjected. It was perhaps a result of serfdom and of self protection
but it was an attitude that needed to be changed, if Ukrainian life
was to be enlightened. He felt from his own experience what the
people could achieve, if they were awakened to a sense of their own
responsibilities and he worked in every way to help them. He understood
the need of education and of progress and he did not try to conceal
what he felt with the result that he gave us realistic pictures
of peasant life, avoiding both undue idealization and excessive
condemnation of the people’s weaknesses, for he knew that much of these
was due to ignorance.
Born a serf and later a soldier in the Russian army, he accomplished
with few opportunities for formal education an amazing amount. He took
the Ukrainian language as it had been developed by Kotlyarevsky and his
followers and by the force of his own genius made it into a language
capable of expressing the most refined emotions and fully adequate to
all the needs of modern literature. He voiced in that language and in
no other the thoughts and aspirations of his people. He had completely
separated Ukrainian from Russian and started it along an independent
course and he had made himself its greatest literary master. Taras
Shevchenko, the son of a serf with his fanatical faith in the victory
of democratic ideals and despite all obstacles, made himself one of
the great poets of the Slavonic world and his fame will live as long
as that of any of his contemporaries in the other literatures. No one
of them believed more firmly or voiced more clearly an unyielding and
uncompromising belief that democracy, truth and freedom would win the
day and no one worked harder or suffered more to bring it about.
CHAPTER SIX
PANTALEIMON KULISH
Shevchenko was a poet by the grace of God and a genius who set the path
for the Ukrainian people. Endowed with an iron will and firmly devoted
to the principles in which he believed, he was able to undergo all the
hardships of his sad life without giving way or varying the course on
which he had embarked. Not so with Pantaleimon Kulish who was great in
his positive activity but unfortunately equally great in his defects
and errors. He devoted himself to the cause of Ukraine but over and
over again some peculiar mode of thinking cast over his reputation a
shadow which was easily avoidable. It makes his figure unusual and
pathetic rather than tragic. He stood the buffets of fate but it is
always difficult to discover exactly what he sought from life.
Kulish was born of a small landowning Kozak family in the district of
Hlukhiv in the government of Chernihiv July 27, 1819 and was thus only
five years younger than Shevchenko. He first learned to read in Church
Slavonic from a young cousin and as a child he was greatly influenced
by a neighboring landowner Ulyana Muzhikovskaya who impressed him as a
highly superior being and almost a god.
He was sent to school but was not allowed to finish the gymnasium
because of the prejudices of his father. Despite this he succeeded in
entering the University of Kiev and paid his way by acting for months
at a time as tutor on various estates. It was from this period that
he first became interested in peasant poetry and folksongs and some
of his stories based on folk motifs were published in the collection
_Kievlyanin_, edited by Prof. Maksimovich in 1840. In 1843 he published
a collection of poems, _Ukraina_, based largely upon folksongs with
some additions of his own, and he dreamed of combining them to form a
Ukrainian _Iliad_ but he did not have the opportunity or the poetical
ability to undertake it. He was not a natural poet like Shevchenko and
seemed to avoid direct comparison with him.
On the other hand the historical novel always interested him. While he
was in the university, he had become acquainted with the works of Sir
Walter Scott and he instinctively realized that the exploits of the
Kozaks lent themselves to the same kind of treatment. Yet even then
some impulse kept him from achieving in that line the perfection which
he might have had.
At Kiev he became friendly with Kostomariv and Shevchenko and was with
them in the Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius. He very soon was
called to St. Petersburg by Pletnev to teach in the University there
and also to conduct classes in Russian for foreigners. He married the
sister of Bilozersky, another of the members of the Society, and had
just received a stipend to study abroad, when the blow fell upon the
Society. Kulish was arrested in Warsaw, as he was preparing to leave
the country, and was brought back to St. Petersburg for the trial.
He fared better than most of the others and was only sentenced to
two months in prison, perhaps through the intercession of Pletnev
who warmly recommended him as a young man of high mind and religious
principles. He was then exiled to Tula with the prohibition of writing
but the supervision over him was not so strict as that over Shevchenko
and he was able to continue his literary work by publishing under
various pen names.
On his return to St. Petersburg in 1850 he was able to resume anonymous
writing and he published the first of his studies on Gogol, the money
for which was furnished by the distinguished Slavophile Sergey Aksakov.
For a while he held a small job in the government service and then his
friends bought for him 120 desyatins of land in Ukraine and he and his
wife went there in an effort to earn his living by agriculture.
After the accession of Alexander II, he was granted an amnesty and the
permission to publish under his own name. He rapidly brought out his
_Memoirs on South Russia_ (1856), prepared the first edition of his
_Grammar_ and in 1857 he published in both Ukrainian and Russian his
main historical novel, the _Black Council_.
In his _Grammar_ Kulish set the standard for the orthography of the
Ukrainian language and his decisions were accepted as final for many
years. He made himself the authority on all kinds of linguistic and
grammatical and stylistic questions, and hoped that his work would be
employed in the proposed Ukrainian school system. He followed this book
with simpler writings intended for the common people.
The _Black Council_ was his chief work of fiction. It dealt with the
period immediately after the death of Khmelnitsky, when the various
Kozak colonels were competing for the hetmanship and when Poland and
Moscow had divided the country between the right and left banks of the
Dnieper. He emphasized the vivid contrasts between the manners and
customs of the officer class and the more unruly and undisciplined
members of the Zaporozhian Sich as Kyrylo Tur, and although he pays
tribute to their loyalty and fidelity to Kozak traditions and to the
bravery and heroic conduct which they demonstrated on all occasions,
there is always a lurking feeling in the mind of the reader that Kulish
did not after all consider these Kozaks of the Sich as the real bearers
of a national culture of a very high type.
With the love affair between Petro Shramenko and Lesya Cherivanivna,
Kulish remained true to the type of the romantic novel as it was then
understood in Europe. There are the usual scenes of adventure for
the hero, the battles, the feasts, the feats of arms, that we are
accustomed to expect. There is also a certain democratic tinge to the
novel. On the whole it is a good piece of work and it was only at the
very end in an epilogue in the Russian translation that he alluded to
the certainty that it was the undisciplined actions of the Kozaks that
had precipitated the loss of Ukrainian independence and had ruined the
country.
In 1861 his brother-in-law Bilozersky secured permission to publish a
Ukrainian journal at St. Petersburg, the _Osnova_, and Kulish, while
forbidden by the censor to take over control of the publication, was
its main contributor. It gave him an opportunity for sociological and
ethnographical studies and it also gave opportunity to his enemies
to criticize him, for in one unfortunate article, he declared that
the hetmanate was a tree rotten internally and he asserted that the
Ukrainians should not regret its destruction. Kostomariv, an infinitely
more careful and better scholar, agreed in part with Kulish but he
emphasized that the method of its destruction was the important factor
and that this had been more harmful to Ukraine than the destruction
itself.
There were other difficulties with the _Osnova_. Kulish still remained
close to the ideals of the Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius which
had been suppressed fourteen years earlier but at the same time he did
not feel free to include in the periodical the extremely iconoclastic
views on federalism which had precipitated the arrest of its members.
He was little more friendly to the radical social views of some of the
younger generation who had been influenced by the Russian radicals
of the late fifties. As a result the journal languished and finally
came to an end before the repressive measures taken by the Russian
government after the Polish revolt of 1863.
For a few years after the ending of the _Osnova_, there came a period
when severe restrictions were put upon the printing of Ukrainian books.
During this time Kulish was in the Russian service in Poland and then
in 1869 he went to Eastern Galicia in Austria-Hungary to establish
closer relations with the Western Ukraine and arrange to have his books
published in Lviv.
Here his unfortunate disposition again got him into trouble with the
leading Ukrainian circles. In 1882 in the _Krashanka_ he used certain
expressions that convinced the Ukrainians of the West that he was
taking sides with the Poles against them and he suffered again severe
criticism.
The fact was that Kulish had more or less fundamentally changed his
views during the passing years. In his younger days he had noted in
his travels that the Ukrainian customs and language had been better
preserved in the villages than in the urban centres and on the large
estates. He had already realized that this peasant culture was on a
relatively low level and he became convinced that it was largely the
result of the turbulent manners of the Kozaks. He did not take into
account the other factors of denationalization that had swept from the
Ukrainian population the bulk of the gentry and the educated class
who had been drawn off into other fields. He expounded his ideas in
the _Unification of Rus_ in 1874-7, and also in the _Falling Away of
Little Russia from Poland_ in 1889. Both of these books aroused violent
antipathy to his views and in the minds of many people they outbalanced
the work which he had done for the upbuilding of the movement.
To tell the truth, Kulish had become gradually a violent Kozakophobe
and he could hardly speak of those doughty warriors without applying to
them all kinds of opprobrious epithets, despite the fact that it was
in their camps that the Ukrainians had survived foreign pressure for
two centuries. The whole theme of many of his later poems as in the
_Village Sparks_ can be well summed up in these lines,
For thou hast perished, Ukraina mother,
Amid Kozaks and all the worthless rabble.
In blood and ruins dies the fairest flower
Of thine abundant nature.
Yet this is from the pen of the same writer who first tried to unite
Eastern and Western Ukraine and who had written interesting and
sympathetic studies of the Kozaks of the preceding centuries.
He had returned to poetry after the death of Shevchenko with his
collection _Dosvidki_ (_Experiences_) in 1862 and he brought out several
other volumes. They were good poems but they were sadly lacking in that
especial spark of genius which alone marks the great poets of the world.
At the same time and despite his unmitigated opposition to the
Kozaks and all that they stood for, Kulish continued to work at the
translation of the masterpieces of the world into Ukrainian. He
translated many of the plays of Shakespeare, the poems of Byron, and
much of Goethe and Schiller. On a more ambitious scale during his
residence in Lviv he translated the Books of Moses and then in 1870
he brought out the Four Gospels and the Book of Psalms. He continued
to work on this after his return to Russia and by his death he had
completed twenty-nine books of the Old Testament. All this was in
addition to a constant stream of journalistic work.
Kulish continued to work to the very end and often in the greatest
poverty. For long periods of time, he and his wife were compelled to
live on almost the same fare as those peasants whom he affected to
despise and for whom he was expending all his energy. Illness did not
stop his working and he continued almost to the very end which came on
February 2, 1897.
His was a sad fate. One of that brilliant group that had suffered so
much for the cause of Ukraine in 1847, he gradually drifted towards a
point of view that could benefit no one but the enemies of his people.
Yet with it all he continued his work, sacrificing more and more to
it, without being able to see the inherent contradictions between his
goal and his philosophy. With his ability and his personal integrity,
he could have been a far more attractive figure, had he ever reached
a proper balance but even without that, he has left his mark upon the
development of the language and literature and he was one of the first
to grasp the possibilities of contact between Eastern and Western
Ukraine and to act upon it. In evaluating his work we must agree with
Yefremiv that he was great in his positive achievements but also
great in his mistakes. Then and only then can we see him in his true
perspective.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MARKO VOVCHOK
The stifling bureaucratic regime of Nicholas I offered a poor
opportunity for the development of a new generation. The collapse of
the Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius was a heavy blow to the older
school of Ukrainian authors and it weighed still more heavily upon the
next generation which would have been attracted to it. At the same time
throughout Russia the old Romantic school vanished and a new era of
prose came into being. It was now the period of Turgenev and Belinsky
and it was only natural that the new tendencies would make their
influence felt upon the still weak Ukrainian literature.
There was another factor that was extremely important. Up to this time
the authors had had a personal connection with the old Ukraine in its
last phases. Shevchenko knew from his grandfather many details of the
Koliivshchina. In his youth there were still living men and women who
remembered that revolt, the Sich and the Hetman state. What would be
the spirit of the writers who had been born too late to have that
personal contact with the actors of the last scenes? That question was
still to be answered.
By the time that Alexander II had ascended the throne, Russia and all
Europe had passed out of the Romantic period. The new school of writing
paid attention not to the past but to the present, to the hardships
and difficulties of daily life rather than to the stirring deeds of
even the recent past. This was particularly true in Russia where for
nearly half a century all the writers devoted themselves exclusively to
the contemporary scene and to the movement for the liberation of the
peasants and the improvement of the conditions of the present.
Kvitka had in a way directed the attention of the Ukrainian authors
to the rich stores of material that were to be found there but his
characters were too idealized, too perfect to suit the next generation.
Besides that the predominant idea may well be called the belief in
the republican philosopher in homespun. The type appeared in France,
in England, in America, and in Russia and of course it would appear in
Ukraine. This was a school of thought that definitely emphasized the
humanity and the clear thinking of the uneducated peasant. The authors
believed sincerely that most, if not all of the evil of life, came
from the misthinking and errors of the upper classes. They saw in the
peasants, despite their rudeness, a vigor and an intelligence that only
required the possibility of free use and development to solve most of
the troubles and abuses of the day.
And those abuses were heavy. The rights of the nobles were construed
so as to deny to the peasants the most elementary human rights and
the serfs in Russia were probably never more bitterly oppressed than
they were in the last decades of serfdom. The economic pressure of
progress upon the nobles was so great that many of them, to satisfy
their supposed financial needs and to keep up with the procession of
culture, found it necessary to squeeze the last drop of income out of
their serfs and the more the landowners desired the comforts of the
nineteenth century, the more they were forced to inhuman devices to
collect the wherewithal.
Shevchenko in his last works keenly felt this oppression. He had passed
through the school of experience and after he had been able to compare
the life in the capital with the hardships of the peasants, he spoke
out strongly against this oppression. His was not the only voice that
was raised but it carried him over from the Romantic period to the age
of realism.
The author that was to be the spokesman of this new period in prose was
Maria Vilinskaya, who was born in 1834 of a Ukrainian landowning family
which had moved from Ukraine to Orel in Russia. She was educated in the
Kharkiv pension, one of the fashionable girl’s schools of the period.
When she returned to Orel, she met and married Opanas Markovich, who
was there in exile as a former member of the Society of Saints Cyril
and Methodius. The newly married couple returned to Ukraine in 1851
and for about a decade they lived in Chernihiv, Kiev, and Nemiriv. She
became interested in ethnography and began to study the peasant life,
customs, and language. Naturally the young wife became convinced of the
evils of serfdom and it was this that launched her into literature.
In 1852 Turgenev had published in book form his _Memoirs of a
Sportsman_ and these tales of peasant life speedily became the standard
for the new realistic treatment of the peasant existence. The Tsar
Alexander II read and reread them and it was often said that they
inspired him to issue the decree of emancipation. Yet it is to be noted
that Turgenev had contented himself with picturing the peasants as
human beings and had not laid stress upon those phases of life that
were most repulsive to the human conscience. He had secured his effects
by emphasizing the humanity of the peasants rather than the brutality
of the landowners and thereby he had definitely reached the higher
level of literature which many of his followers failed to attain.
In 1857 Maria Markovich sent to Kulish two stories on Ukrainian peasant
life which he read with enthusiasm and published under the pen name
of Marko Vovchok. The real identity of the author was not ascertained
for some time but the stories themselves attracted a great deal of
attention as soon as they were published. The next year, 1858, a
full volume appeared under the title of _Narodni Opovidaniya_ (_Folk
Sketches_) and it was warmly acclaimed by Shevchenko as the writing
of a prophet sent to the Ukrainian people to rouse them to opposition
against serfdom. Turgenev translated some of these tales into Russian
and Maria Markovich soon finished the translation herself.
She soon published another series in Russian under the title of
_Stories from the Folk Life of Russia_ which attracted attention. The
Russian critic Dobrolyubov used this latter work as a text for one
of his longer essays on the real strength of the peasant character,
after he had criticized her Ukrainian works on the ground that it was
impossible and undesirable socially to endeavor to create a literary
vocabulary in what was essentially an uncouth peasant dialect, an idea
which he stoutly maintained along with most of the Russian radicals and
a large part of the reactionary bureaucracy.
In 1859 she and her husband went abroad and while she was away she
published in 1862 another volume of Ukrainian stories. He returned to
Russia without her and died in 1867. During these years she became very
friendly with the radical leaders Herzen, Ogaryev, and Bakunin, and
from this time on she practically ceased to write in Ukrainian. Later
she married again and shortly before her death in 1907 brought out a
few more stories but apparently most of these had been written during
the few years when she was active.
Yet her fame really rests upon her stories in Ukrainian. As in the case
of Kvitka, her Russian works were really mediocre and this is the more
remarkable as Ukrainian was probably not really the language spoken
in her family. So striking is her mastery of Ukrainian in these days
that many critics have believed that the role of her husband in their
production was greater than has been often supposed.
The appearance of the first volume of her _Ukrainian Sketches_ was the
sensation of the year and they added to the overwhelming disgust at
serfdom which was growing among all thinking classes of society. Their
one theme was the abominable way in which the serfs were treated and
she emphasized especially the hard lot of the women who were thwarted
by the cruelty of the masters in their desires to lead a normal,
decent existence. In this they agree in style with the _Memoirs of a
Sportsman_ by Turgenev but they differ in that Marko Vovchok does not
hesitate to present shocking examples of the abuse of the peasants
by their masters, instead of merely indicating the humanity of the
peasants. Thus in _Horpina_ the peasants are compelled to work three
days on their master’s estates for him, two days for the poll tax,
and the fifth and sixth days for grinding grain, and the young master
drives his people harder than he does his cattle.
In the same story the mother takes a sick child to work in the fields
with her, because there is no one in the village to care for it, and
the master orders the overseer to take the child back and leave it
alone in her empty house, because she takes time from her labor to look
after it. In order to stop the child from crying, while it is alone,
she gives it an opiate. When the child dies as a result, the mother
from a sense of guilt goes insane.
Marko Vovchok does not hesitate to draw such stories of the callousness
of the masters and to emphasize the differences between the small
free proprietors and the serfs. Thus in the _Kozak Woman_, the girl
Olesya is the daughter of a wealthy farmer but she falls in love with
Ivan Zolotarenko, a serf. The leaders of the village express their
opposition to this union of a free woman and a serf but she insists and
submits to bondage for his sake. She spends all her money and sinks
down to the level of her companions. Then her husband is taken away
to the city by his master and dies there. At this moment she neglects
to recover her freedom because of her children and almost at once her
oldest son is taken away to serve as a companion and servant to the
son of the master. He fails to make good and dies. When she too passes
away, the master of the estate is even unwilling to bury her and the
expense of this is left to the already over-burdened serfs, who have
that sense of decency which is lacking in the master, a Russianized
Pole.