On the Other Side: The Russian–Ukrainian Encounter in Displacement, 1920–1939

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Notes

Works, such as those by Furman (ed.), “Ukraina i Rossiia: obshchestva i gosudarstva”; Lieven, Ukraine and Russia; Szporluk, Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union, etc.; Molchanov, Political Culture and National Identity in Russian–Ukrainian Relations; Potichnyj et al., Ukraine and Russia in their Historical Encounter; and a series of conference proceedings on Ukrainian–Russian relations (Ukraina i Rossiia: obshchestvo i gosudarstvo. Dialog ukrainskoi i russkoi kultur v Ukraine, etc.) highlight the problematic. Some works deal with the encounter of these two nationalities abroad in specific countries (Kozlitin, Russkaia i ukrainskaia emigratsiia v Yugoslavii, 1919–1945), while others are the proceedings of conferences, seminars and exhibitions: “People, Nations, Identities. The Russian–Ukrainian Encounter,” The Harriman Review 9, no. 1–2 (1996); Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian Emigration in Prague, 14–15 August 1995; Woz´niak and Puszak, Literatura Emigracyjna Rosjan, Ukraińców i Białorusinów.

The mass emigration of both the Ukrainian and Russian groups in the interwar period was the result of enormous revolutionary upheavals in the Russian Empire, which took place during the Great War and, after the collapse of the empire, were transformed into the civil war and a number of national-liberation wars until the Bolsheviks gained complete control over the region. This emigration was the largest mass exodus in the history of both nations. It is difficult to give an accurate number of emigrants, as (1) no precise statistics exist and (2) national groups from the former Russian Empire were frequently counted as “Russian.” Most sources on Russian emigration indicate an approximate number of 1 million. The number of Ukrainian emigrants is estimated at 200,000. Both the Ukrainian and Russian emigrants settled in the same countries (Czechoslovakia, Germany, and France), although there were large groups of Russians in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Turkey, while Ukrainians moved to Poland and Austria. There is also a qualitative difference, as noted by Prof. Borys Lysianskyi in his presentation on 5 December 1935: the Russian emigration is defined as a sociopolitical one, whereas the Ukrainian emigration is characterized as a national-political phenomenon that in many ways determined their relations in displacement. See Politychna istoriia Ukrainy. XX st., 28–29.

Bammer, “Introduction,” xi–xx.

Kaplan, Questions of Travel.

See, for example, Andriewsky, “The Politics of National Identity.”

Shkandrij, Russia and Ukraine, xii.

Ibid., xvi.

Chernyi, “Posovetuite, kuda luchshe pristroitsia …,” 121.

The novel was reviewed in the Russian press. See, for example, the review by Ilia Ignatov in Russkiie vedomosti (1912, no. 112); Maxim Gorky also gave his opinion of the work, criticizing the Ukrainian writer for de-idealizing revolutionaries. See Gorky, “Pismo k V. Miroliubovu,” 177–78.

Gorky, for instance, published his article “O russkoi intelligentsii i natsionalnykh voprosakh” in the Moscow-based monthly Ukrainskaia zhizn, still viewing Ukrainians as one of the tribes of one Russian nation; and Bohdan Kistiakivskyi effectively criticized Petr Struve's attempt to question the distinctiveness of Ukrainians in Russkaia mysl (“K voprosu o samostoiatelnoi ukrainskoi kulture” (May 1911), 131–46). Many intellectuals were members of socialist parties and expressed similar ideas, shared similar experiences and participated in the same events.

Fedotov, “Sudba imperii,” 325.

See review in Literaturno-naukovyi visnyk, no. 10 (1927), 285 on Melgunov's works in Golos minuvshogo (no. 5, 1927).

Doronchenkov, Emigratsiia “pervoii volny” o natsionalnykh problemalh i sudbe Rosii, 80–81.

See Shkandrij's Russia and Ukraine; and Ilnytzkyj, “Modeling Culture in the Empire,” 298–324.

White, “Geography, Literature and Migration,” 1.

Ibid.

Fedotov, “Rossiia, Ievropa i my,” 3.

Marullo, Ivan Bunin, 283.

See Glad, Conversations in Exile, 38.

Gessen, “Ievraziistvo,” 495–96.

Bunin, Zhizn Arsenieva, 350.

Bisk, Chuzhoie i svoie, 121 (my translation).

Pavel Miliukov, Natsionalnyi vopros. Izdatelstvo “Svobodnaia Rossia,” 1925, p. 117.

Kuzina, “Znacheniie ‘Dnei russkoi kultury’ v zhizni rossiiskoi emmigratsii pervoi volny,” 48.

Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation.

Rafalskii used Shevchenko's words as mottos in his poems (e.g. “Idillii.” See Rafalskii, Za chertoi, 73–79). Also, the Russian historian Dmitrii Odinets cited Shevchenko's Ukrainian poems (see Odinets, “Iz istorii ukrainskogo separatizma,” 386).

See no. 32 (1927), 388.

See no. 60 (1936), 438–48, and no. 68 (1939), 369–87, respectively.

Odinets, “Ukrainskii separatism,” 444.

Trubetzkoy, “K ukrainskoi probleme,” 127–29. Trubetzkoy represented those Russian intellectuals with their anti-Western rhetoric that is particularly evident in his view of Galician Ukraine: “National consciousness [of the Galician intelligentsia],” in his opinion, “is totally distorted by their long-lasting ties with the spirit of Catholicism as well as Polish slavery and the atmosphere of provincial and separatist (more accurately, language) struggle” (ibid., 135). Trubetzkoy and other followers of the Evraziistvo movement were among those who saw a positive sign in the creation of the Soviet Union that, in fact, helped to preserve territories of the former Russian Empire.

Bitsilli, “Natsiia i iazyk,” 416.

Ibid., 426.

Idem, “K ponimaniiu sovremennoi kultury,” 327.

Fedotov, “Sudba imperii,” 321.

Idem, “Tri stolitsy,” 102–19.

Lypa, “Kyiv, vichne misto,” 296.

Ibid., 289.

Narizhnyi, Ukrainska emigratsiia, 24.

Among them were members of the literary group “Skify” [Scythians], Yevgenii Lundberg and Aleksandr Shreider, Russian theatres (his play Chernaia Pantera i Belyi Medved was staged) and publishing houses (“Vozrozhdeniie” published his new play Zakon in 1922, and the Olga Diakova publishing house released his novel Zapiski kurnosoho Mefistofelia).

The book was positively reviewed in the Russian émigré press. See Vakar, “Basil Paneyko,” 420–23.

Narizhnyi, “Chuzhi narody v svitli ukrainskykh prykazok,” 921–26; and September (1930), 806–11.

Fedorov, “Mykyta skrypach,” 15. Fedorov, born in Kherson, had some regional sympathy to Ukraine. He spoke Ukrainian and sometimes performed in Ukrainian theatre (he played the role of Petro in Mykola Lysenko's opera Natalka-Poltavka). As an émigré, he was active in Russian circles, particularly in Prague.

Fedotov, “Sudba imperii,” 325.

See Doronchenkov, Emigratsiia “pervoii volny” o natsionalnykh problemalh i sudbe Rosii, 12–13.

Lysty Dmytra Doroshenka do Viacheslava Lypynskoho. Philadelphia, 1973. See letter dated 14 October 1924, 104.

Nova Ukraina, no. 4 (1923), 157.

Lysty Dmytra Doroshenka, 37.

Liaturynska, “Zi spohadiv,” 542.

Vynnychenko's friend in France.

Vynnychenko, Shchodennyk [diary], 9 April 1933 [manuscript]. Vynnychenko's unpublished works are situated in the Vynnychenko archive at Columbia University, New York (recently it was temporarily transferred to Princeton University, NJ). The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, based at the University of Alberta, has copies of his unpublished diary, which I used for my study.

Vynnychenko, Shchodennyk, vol. 2 (13 June 1924), 360.

The Russian term “smena vekh” means literally “change of signposts.”

Belova, “Poisk ‘tretiego puti’ rossiiskoi emigratsiiei nachala 1920-kh gg,” 67.

Shklovskii, “Belyi Kiev,” 13.

Ibid., 17.

Aldanov, Begstvo, 367–68.

See, for example, Samchuk, “Po-spravedlyvomu,” 824–53.

From the collection Stylet and Stylus, 1925. See Malaniuk, Poezii, 33; my translation.

See Ilnytzkyj, Ukrainian Futurism, 1914–1930, 105. Originally qtd. in Khvylia, “Zustrich.”

Chernyi, “Posovetuite, kuda luchshe pristroitsia,” 121.

Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 251.

White, “Geography, Literature and Migration,” 3.

Glad, Conversations in Exile, 52.

Narizhnyi, Ukrainska emigratsiia, 141.

Malaniuk, Knyha sposterezhen, 31. See also Nakhlik, “Ievhen Malaniuk pro modernizm i avanhardyzm u literaturi ta mystetstvi,” 155–67. For a summary of Russian aspects of this question, see Struve, Russkaia literatura v izgnanii; and Livak, “Making Sense of Exile,” 489–512.

Matich, “Russian Literature in Emigration,” 104.

Vynnychenko, Shchodennyk [manuscript].

Kozlitin referred to the Russian émigré newspaper Rul, 6 January 1921, 102.

Shapoval, “Ukrainska emihratsiia u Frantsii,” 145.

Vynnychenko, Poklady zolota, 120–21.

Nova Ukraina, no. 7–8 (1923), 311–12.

Narizhnyi, Ukrainska emigratsiia, 75.

Shulhyn, Bez terytorii, 58; the Czechoslovak president Thomas Masaryk was also a proponent of one strong Russia as a counterbalance to German geographical proximity, but he supported the two groups separately, assuming that they could solve their conflict themselves.

Zaritskyi, “Ne vsio-li ravno,” 103.

Lysty Dmytra Doroshenka, 30 May 1923, 48.

Ibid., 296.

Lysty Dmytra Doroshenka, 27 October 1924, 106–07.

Lysty Dmytra Doroshenka, 6 May 1925, 146.

Struminsky and Skorupsky, Materiialy do istorii literatury i hromadskoi dumky, 743.

Diaspora 6 (2004), 314.

Nova Ukraina, no. 7–8 (1923), 313.

Sovremennyie zapiski 69 (1939), 464–68.

Sovremennyie zapiski 48 (1932), 490.

Diaspora 1 (2001), 18.