M.P. Dragomanov and Russian socialists: discussion on federalism

In modern scientific literature an idea dominates that with all natural for various political trends of Russia of the 19 century approaches to the national-state policy, all of them were close in stating the inevitability of the Great Russian hegemony in the Slavic world and messianism of the Russian nation. M.P. Dragomanov was one of the first to offer the given approach. He thought that Russian socialist movement, was ill with chauvinism, as well as Russian society as a whole. M.P. Dragomanov's works caused a wave of indignation among Russian socialists and gave rise to a fierce dispute. To understand its essence it is necessary to allocate two aspects. The first concerns the actual positions and variants of solving the ethnic question. Socialists of 1840-1850s considered national-liberation struggle of the Slavic people as a force, capable to shake the state foundations of Europe of that time. On the wave of emancipating revolutions they expected to solve the problem and social updating by radicalisation of national movements and introducing socio-political purposes. Therefore, on the whole, the attitude of Russian socialists to the liberation movement was positive. However in 1870-80s the situation changed considerably. At preservation the positive attitude to the idea of the federal structure of post-revolutionary Russia, socialists of the radical wing in the system of ideological priorities reduce the ethnic question to a minor level, solved during a social revolution. As for Russian socialists' chauvinism, M.P. Dragomanov obviously transferred aspiration of populists to centralization of revolutionary organizations for solving the ethnic question as a whole. Here we have approached to considering the second, organizational aspect in the discussion of populists and M.P. Dragomanov. In revolutionary movement of 1880s the idea of primacy of social problems resulted in the notion of solidarity of purposes of workers of all nationalities. The consequent requirement of organizational universality of revolutionary movement, negative perception of the idea of creation of national organizations or groups by the national principle followed. M.P. Dragomanov saw the federal structure of revolutionary movement as a most active part of the society as a guarantee and a prototype of the future federal relations in the Russian state. Therefore, it was important that within the socialist movement federalism was realized not only ideologically, but also organizationally - through creation of national parties or independent national organizations within a single party. M.P. Dragomanov's and Russian socialists' views on the prospects of solving the ethnic problem in Russia differed not only and not so much at the program-declarative level, but at the level of the concrete mechanism of their realization. But these distinctions excluded the possibility of allied relations and further on kept away the Russian socialist (in Marxist and neo-populist variants) and the Ukrainian national movements.

Keywords

Authors

References