A new document on Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi, liberal democracy, and Ukrainian Freemasonry

ABSTRACT

It has long been known that the Ukrainian historian and political leader Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi was for a time associated with Freemasonry. This paper and document describe that association and provide evidence that his type of Masonry was marked by a commitment to both liberal democracy and ethno-cultural tolerance and acceptance, particularly with regard to Jews.

RÉSUMÉ

On sait depuis longtemps que l’historien et le chef politique ukrainien, Mykhaïlo Hrouchevsky, était pendant un temps lié à la Franc-maçonnerie. L’article et le document décrivent cette association et démontrent que son type de Franc-maçonnerie a été marqué par un engagement en faveur de la démocratie libérale ainsi que de la tolérance ethnoculturelle, surtout à l’égard des Juifs.

KEYWORDS:

• Hrushevs'kyi
• Hrushevsky
• Freemasonry
• liberal democracy
• Margolin
• Jews

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge with thanks Professor Frank Sysyn of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, who first brought Arnol'd Margolin’s letter to my attention, and Dr Ksenya Kiebuzinski of the Petro Jacyk Central and East European Resource Centre at the University of Toronto Libraries, who discovered it in the CIA Archives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. There is, for example, an enormous number of popular-style articles online which deal with Masonry and the Russian Revolution. For a particularly hard-hitting, though carefully stated, article, complete with some interesting video footage, see “Freemasonry and the Russian Revolution Exposed.” Extremists, such as the compilers of the above-noted video, state that even Lenin and Trotskii were Masons, and they imply that this somehow influenced their politics. On the Jewish connection, which continues to have implications even for contemporary politics, see, for example, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brief but carefully phrased statement: “80% of the First Soviet Government Were Jews.”

2. Serkov, Russkoe masonstvo, 1731–2000.

3. See my book: Prymak, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, 89; Stakhiv, “Chomy M. Hrushevs'kyi povernuvsia,” 146. Works by Margolin include: Margolin, From a Political Diary; Margolin, Derzhavnyi ustrii Spolychenykh Shtativ Ameryky; and Margolin, Ukraine and the Policy of the Entente. All of these titles reflect Margolin’s deep commitment to liberal democracy.

4. Liubchenko, “Margolin, Davyd Semenovych.”

5. See Lass and Smolnikov, “Margolin, Arnol'd, Davydovych”; and Troshchyns'kyi, “Margolin, Arnol'd”, which give further references. Indeed, there is even a film by Oleksander Muratov about him titled Arnold Margolin: Outstanding Ukrainian and Jew. Also see the discussions in Likhman, “Arnol'd Margolin”; and Khiterer, “Arnold Davidovich Margolin.”

6. Hrushevs'kyi penned the Beilis article immediately after the accused was found innocent by a jury of 12 simple Ukrainian peasants, a fact that was clearly pointed out by the Ukrainian historian. See Hrushevs'kyi, “Na ukrains'ki temy,” and the discussions in Prymak, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, 91 (on Beilis), and 125–79 (on the Revolution).

7. See Khiterer, “Arnol'd Davidovich Margolin,” especially 152, citing Elias Tcherikower, Antisemitizm i pogromy na Ukraine 1917–1918 gg.: K istorii ukrainsko-evreiskikh otnoshenii (Berlin: Ostjüdisches Historisches Archiv, 1923), 66, 138.

8. Lass and Smolnikov, “Margolin, Arnol'd, Davydovych”; Khiterer, “Arnol'd Davidovich Margolin,” passim; and “Margolin, Arnold.” Matvii Stakhiv was a long-standing editor of the weekly Narodna volia.

9. Iefremov, “Masonstvo na Ukraini.” I wish to thank the Prague-based researcher Nadia Zavorotna for the online reference.

10. Kryzhanovs'ka, Taiemni orhanizatsii v Ukraini, 76. On Kovalevs'kyi more generally, see Spektorski, “Kovalevsky, Maksim Maksimovich.” After Hrushevs'kyi returned to Russia in 1905, Kovalevs'kyi, who was elected to the First State Duma and was an editor of the liberal Viestnik evropy, collaborated with the Ukrainian Club in the Duma and helped the Ukrainian historian to publish in Russian the thematic encyclopaedia on Ukraine, Ukrainskii narod v ego proshlom i nastoiashchem (The Ukrainian people: its past and present). Only two of four planned volumes appeared before the outbreak of war with Germany stopped it. Also on Kovalevs'kyi, see Oleksander Lotots'kyi-Bilousenko’s memoirs: Lotots'kyi-Bilousenko, Storinky mynuloho, especially II, 454–6, III, 14, 30, 117–18, et passim.

11. A Ukrainian form of Masonry also existed in Austrian Galicia from at least the 1870s, where it seems to have been especially strong among some senior members of the Prosvita or Popular Enlightenment Society, with which Hrushevs'kyi sometimes worked. See Zayarnyuk, Framing the Ukrainian Peasantry, 135–6.

12. Galperin even reports that at first Hrushevs'kyi objected to the very word “Russia” in the name. See Galperin’s conversation with Boris Nikolaevskii recorded by the latter in Nikolaevskii, Russkie masony i revoliutsiia, 53–5; Kryzhanovs'ka, Taiemni orhanizatsii v Ukraini, 76; Brachev, Masony v Rossii, 275. Also see Avrekh, Masony i revoliutsiia, 144–5, who writes that the “Ukrainian organization headed by Baron Shteingel was very strong.” More generally, see Kiasov and Serkov, “Masonstvo,” esp. 51.

13. On Kerenskii, who only reluctantly accepted some ritual to satisfy his French “brethren” abroad, see Kryzhanovs'ka, Taiemni orhanizatsii v Ukraini, 34, who in turn cites Serhii Iefremov, “Pro masonstva v Ukraini,” Narodna hazeta, no. 16 (197) (1995), 4. This article seems to be a paraphrase or partial reprint of Iefremov’s article of 1918, but was unavailable to me at the time of writing. In the original, Iefremov does not mention Kerenskii or the events of 1917–18, though there is general agreement among historians of Russian Masonry that in the twentieth century, traditional Masonic rituals were not stressed.

14. See Hrushevs'kyi, “Avtobiohrafiia-1926,” 85; and his memoirs: Hrushevs'kyi, “Spomyny, Chastyna II,” 103–54; and my own account in Prymak, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, 120; and Kryzhanovs'ka, Taiemni orhanizatsii v Ukraini, 77. Kerenskii’s appointee and fellow Mason, the Director of the Kyiv Military District, K. Oberuchev, helped ensure that Hrushevs'kyi’s arrival in Kyiv was safe and unhindered by complications. As to literature on this subject, there also exists a sensationalist and highly speculative account of Hrushevs'kyi, Masonry, and the revolution: Ianevs'kyi, Proekt “Ukraina.” Ianevs'kyi insinuates in places that Hrushevs'kyi was an Austrophile, whose conflict with Kerenskii in 1917–18 led to the Bolshevik revolution, and that in the internal struggle within Ukrainian circles the historian was mostly supported by Jews. In fact, Hrushevs'kyi had fled the Habsburg Monarchy to neutral Italy in fear for his life, the conflict with Kerenskii was only one factor among many in the rise of Bolshevik power, and there was no more popular figure than “Bat'ko” Hrushevs'kyi during the Ukrainian revolution, at least during its earliest stages.

15. CIA Archives. Foreign Nationalities Branch of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, File: INT-29, UK110. Microfilmed files. Washington, DC.

16. On George Vernadsky, who early in his career had authored a history of Russian Masonry, and whose father was strongly Ukrainophile and during the revolution became the founding president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, see Torbakov, “Rethinking the Nation.” On George’s circumscribed but real Ukrainian sympathies, see the brief remarks in Prymak, Gathering a Heritage, 314, note 13, which gives further references. In a letter to Luke Myshuha of the Ukrainian National Association, who was sympathetic to the ODVU, Vernadsky explained that he considered himself to be “Ukrainian and Russian at the same time.” While Vernadsky’s “Eurasianism” has been extensively studied, his Ukrainian sympathies have been largely neglected, even to some extent in the most recent biography of the historian. See Dvornichenko, Russkii istorik Georgii Vernadskii, especially 610, where the author states that Vernadsky always saw the histories of Ukraine and Russia as “an undivided whole,” one without the other being always incomplete. As to the Ukrainian radical nationalists in the United States and Canada, while supporting the OUN’s militant nationalism in Europe, and the 1938 Nazi partition of Czechoslovakia, both the UNO in Canada and the ODVU in the USA seem to have had no objections to liberal democracy in North America, though they at times may have considered democracy ill-equipped to fight Communism head-on. In the USA in the 1930s, at least one writer in the non-Communist Narodna volia accused the ODVU of being made up of “Ukrainian-American Nazis,” and the organization was investigated by the US Congress House Committee on Un-American Activities, though no action was taken against it. See Kuropas, Ukrainian Americans, 268–94, especially 270–1.

17. Skoropads'kyi had made a speech on the matter as a member of the very conservative Fourth Duma. His ancestor had been an autonomous ruler or “Hetman” in Left-Bank Ukraine during Cossack times. See Kryzhanovs'ka, Taiemni orhanizatsii v Ukraini, 89.

18. Margolin makes a slip here. “C” in the Cyrillic alphabet is the equivalent of the “s” in our Latin alphabet. Hrushevs'kyi’s patronymic, usually coming second in East Slavic usage, was “Serhiiovych.”

19. Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine. For more on this publication, including an analysis of the critical reviews, see my “General Histories of Ukraine Published in English During the Second World War: Canada, the United States, and Britain,” in Prymak, Gathering a Heritage, 119–32.

20. Margolin is mistaken here. In fact, Hrushevs'kyi lived quietly in Kyiv and the surrounding region throughout the ascendancy of Skoropads'kyi, who deserves some credit for not pursuing him. He only left Ukraine in 1919, visited Switzerland, where he attended a socialist conference, and France, where he briefly attended the Peace Conference, and then settled in Vienna. See Prymak, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, 180–207.

21. In fact, Hrushevs'kyi was resident in Vienna for most of his time in emigration. When the Ukrainian Free University, which had been founded in Vienna, moved to Prague at the invitation of the new government of Czechoslovakia, Hrushevs'kyi refused to join it because of political differences and personal disputes with many of its members. The historian tended to be more leftish and more politically radical than most of his academic colleagues. See Ibid.

22. There remains some mystery about the causes of Hrushevs'kyi’s death, which occurred after a relatively minor operation to remove a carbuncle on his neck. The Soviet political police, the NKVD, which oversaw the operation, has been accused of causing the doctor in question to cut too deep. See Prymak, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, 257–9; and most recently, Pyrih and Tel'vak, Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi, 520–1.

23. Margolin mentions the Khazars because of their reputed Jewish connections. Some of their leadership is even said to have converted to Judaism. The English “translation” of Hrushevsky, which in many places is merely a paraphrase, makes no mention of this, though the Ukrainian edition, from which it was translated, does mention the influence of “many Jews” (“bohato Zhydiv”), and explains in a footnote that the term Zhyd in the Ukrainian language is not a pejorative, as it is in Russian. See Hrushevs'kyi, Iliustrovana Istoriia Ukrainy, 47.

24. Margolin’s statement here is quite careful and considered. In fact, the Ukrainian National Association’s newspaper Svoboda (New Jersey) seems to have remained quite sympathetic to the ODVU over many years, as was its leading historian, Myron Kuropas. His book on the Ukrainian Americans deserves comparison with Orest Martynowych’s book on the Ukrainian Canadians covering these same years. See Martynowych, Ukrainians in Canada.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas M. Prymak

Thomas M. Prymak, PhD, is Research Associate at the Chair of Ukrainian Studies, Departments of History and Political Science, University of Toronto. He has taught history and Slavonic studies at several Canadian universities and is the author of four books and over 160 articles and reviews in the field. His most recent book is titled Gathering a Heritage: Ukrainian, Slavonic, and Ethnic Canada and the USA (University of Toronto Press, 2015).