Public Education and Schooling in the Concept of Ukrainization and the Assertion of Ukrainians’ National Identity in the Second Half of the 19th Century

Abstract

Throughout the second half of the 19^th century, the issue of public education and the spread of literacy among all strata of Ukrainian society remained one of the main priorities for representatives of our national elite. Moreover, during the late 1850s and early 1860s, in the context of a brief period of liberalism in the Russian Empire’s politics, this activity was initiated with extraordinary speed and promising success. However, in 1863, 1876, and thereafter, repressive restrictions by the authorities caused divergent views among Ukrainian public figures regarding work priorities. In fact, some of them shifted to emphasizing the problem of social liberation and the struggle for improving living conditions of the physically working classes; while simultaneously neglecting the issue of providing these classes with a clear national and cultural self-awareness. Subsequently, Ukrainian sympathizers of the struggle for social liberation fully joined the all-Russian movement opposing the ruling autocratic regime, in the context of defending the political ideas of socialism and Marxism – thereby losing sight of the importance of establishing a sense of national identity among Ukrainians.

Thus, the purely cultural movement of the mid-19^th century, traditionally referred to as Ukrainophilism, gave rise to several ideological currents within the Ukrainian elite. Some of them went to the people, continuing their activities strictly within the realm of ethnographic cultural work. It can be said that they sought to merge with the people, adopting all the peculiarities of the common folk’s life, aiming to dissolve into it. Others, during the 1880s and 1890s, shifted to positions of political struggle, including freeing themselves from the duty of nurturing national-cultural Ukrainian traditions, merging in their work with the all-Russian political movement of resistance to tsarism. And only a small part of the elite, while engaging in political struggle, recognized the importance of promoting education solely on national principles, thus establishing among all layers of the Ukrainian population an awareness of their own national identity.