In this year, 2017, we celebrate two fateful dates for us – the 100th anniversary of the Ukrainian Revolution and the 75th anniversary of the founding of the UPA. And both of them are organically connected. The assertion of Ukrainian statehood during the national liberation struggles of 1917-1921 would obviously change the course of world history. And these, the future winners of the UPA, served the state not with the tragic heroics of the “knights of the absurd”, but contributed to the spread of its power, glory and wealth in all Ukrainian ethnographic areas. And, on the contrary, the emergence of the OUN, as later on its initiative the UPA, was, in particular, a reaction and reflection on the defeat of the Ukrainian Revolution.
At the same time, the revolutionary upheaval of the beginning and middle of the 20th century, the Orange Revolution of 2004, and the Revolution of Dignity were nationwide movements, which led to their victorious course at the respective stages. As Yaroslav Stetsko pointed out, “Ukrainian “belua sine capite” are headless monsters, feared by everyone for centuries… No one knew and today does not know what the Ukrainian steppes, mountains, forests, ravines are saying… Ukraine is silent, but when it speaks, it pours the basis of the entire system until now. When Khmel rebelled, the Prussians became stronger, European coalitions collapsed, and new states were created.”
But it is also belua sine capite that at each subsequent stage (let’s not talk about modern times, this is our reality, and it depends on each of us what it is and what it will be) the newly established ruling class did not take advantage of the passionate surge of the nation. Therefore, as at the beginning of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st, after euphoria, as psychological science emphasizes, “disappointment and disorientation follow, which often lead to deep depression.” Thus comes the time of populists. Social, national, liberal. That’s not the point.
As Yaroslav Stetsko convincingly proves on the example of Ruina, “Moscow began to operate, as usual, with social demagoguery with the help of our Tatar people, and on the other hand, the leading social stratum, which broke away from the people and defended only social interests, sought “guardianship” in noble Poland or to noble Moscow…Peter managed to bring Semyon Palia back from Siberia for a social rebellion against Mazepa, or at least to exclude the support of the masses for the cause of the national revolution, more precisely, for the Ukrainian national war against Moscow.”
Actually, we live in such a state. We have a sufficient number of atamanshes and atamanchiks who are ready to initiate any “Maidan” and lead any Directory, for the sake of their own political ambitions. The Ukrainian political elite (both the ruling class and the opposition, despite the illusory nature of such a division) mostly implements a palliative policy, a policy of responding to external stimuli, and often leads to political conflicts itself, accelerating its own delegitimization in the eyes of society. The enemy plays strategically and systematically, inspiring and intensifying existing political conflicts with the aim of deconstructing Ukrainian statehood. It should be mentioned here that while the Directory was announcing the mobilization to overthrow the Hetmanate, the Bolshevik “green men” gathered in Kursk under the guise of another “Ukrainian Soviet government”. When, after the overthrow of the Skoropadskyi regime, the Directory began to play a traditional Ukrainian pastime – parliamentary elections (or to the Labor Congress, but the word “premature” is still being asked for), the “militia” took Kharkiv. To all kinds of protests and appeals of the Ukrainian People’s Republic of Ukraine at the time, Lavrov, also known as Chicherin, declared quite modernly: “There are no troops of Soviet Russia in Ukraine. Military action on Ukrainian territory is conducted between the forces of the Directory and the forces of the Ukrainian Soviet Government, which is completely independent.” A month later, the Directory will already be in Vinnytsia.
Everything is clear with Russia. She is an existential enemy of Ukraine, which at all times denies the right to life of the Ukrainian nation, the very fact of the existence of Ukrainian statehood.
As always, everything is difficult with the domestic political community.
Particularity and atomization, unfortunately, are reproduced at each successive stage of national state formation.
But what is the vision of Ukrainian nationalism in the social sphere? What social model will contribute to the development of the Ukrainian Independent United State, as an institution capable not only of withstanding and overcoming the factors that threaten its existence, but also to proceed to its development and growth?
As a starting methodological basis, let’s take the almost prophetic words of Yaroslav Stetsk in the conditions of modern hybrid war: “The coming time is no longer the time of the struggle of the armies themselves, but of entire nations. In order to hold on to this battle and win it, unity, endurance, efficiency and activity of the entire nation are necessary.” In turn, such unity is possible only under the condition of an organic combination of general and individual interest in the functional purpose of the state.
Therefore, the consolidation and realization of the rights of the nation is in a dialectic unity with the individual rights of a person. The quintessence of such unity is the doctrinal principle “Freedom to the peoples! Freedom for man!”. Within the framework of the theory of Ukrainian nationalism, it is obvious that free human development is possible only under conditions of free national development, and free national development is possible only under conditions of affirmation of human rights and freedoms.
The first basis of this principle should be sought in “Independent Ukraine” by Mykola Mikhnovsky: “… in view of international relations, every nation wants to take the form of an independent, independent state, … only a state with a single tribal national content can give its members unlimited opportunities for all-round development of spiritual and realization of the best material well-being; …the flourishing of individuality is possible only in a state for which nurturing individuality is the goal.”
However, in a concentrated form, it was first proclaimed in the Manifesto of the OUN from December 1940, it found its further consolidation and disclosure in the resolutions of the II, III and subsequent Great Meetings of the OUN (r).
The theoretical content of this principle is revealed through the following three levels of its reflection:
International. As noted in the program documents of the 3rd Extraordinary Great Meeting of the OUN (r), “the system of free peoples in their own independent states is the only system that will provide a just solution to the national and social issue in the whole world.” Only with the implementation of such a model of international relations, the destruction of enslavement and exploitation of the nation, human progress, cultural and economic growth of the peoples, of which humanity actually consists, is possible. In turn, such a system of international relations should be based on mutual respect and recognition of everyone’s right to a free life.
Today, this position is generally accepted in international law. Already in the Declaration on Granting Independence to Colonial States and Peoples, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 14, 1960, it was clearly stated that “all peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of this right, they freely establish their political status and carry out their economic, social and cultural development.” This novel was duplicated in its entirety in Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights dated December 16, 1966. Declaration on the principles of international law relating to friendly relations and cooperation between states in accordance with the UN Charter dated 24.10. 1970 declares equality and self-determination of peoples as one of these principles.
At the same time, the affirmation of such a model of interstate relations comes into conflict with political regimes that base their power on imperialist ideologues. And therefore, it is both inevitable and necessary to overcome internationalist and fascist programs and political concepts, when “one people, in order to achieve their imperialist goals, “liberated”, “took under their care” other peoples, because behind cunning words hides a disgusting meaning – oppression, violence, robbery.”
Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine, the occupation of Crimea, the creation of terrorist-fake “DPR” and “LPR”, a large-scale hybrid war, against the background of “brainwashing” of both the native population and residents of the occupied territories under the guise of “Russian peace” – all this is a toolkit from the Moscow arsenal during the years of the Ukrainian revolution, with the help of which it was destroyed.
National. In the nationalist doctrine, the USSD is constructed as a national state. The basic legal acts on which modern Ukrainian statehood is based also recognize it as the result of the realization of the right to self-determination of the Ukrainian nation.
Thus, according to the Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine dated July 16, 1990, Ukraine is interpreted “as a sovereign national state developing within existing borders on the basis of the Ukrainian nation’s exercise of its inalienable right to self-determination.” The Act of Proclamation of Independence of Ukraine dated August 24, 1991, among other things, defines the right to self-determination and the implementation of the already mentioned Declaration as the basis for its adoption. In turn, the Preamble of the Constitution of Ukraine dated July 28, 1996 refers to the Act of Declaration of Independence and “the right to self-determination exercised by the Ukrainian nation, the entire Ukrainian people.”
Thus, the Ukrainian nation was and is a system-forming element of the Ukrainian people, it defines its past, present and future. The Ukrainian nation, which is the absolute majority of the Ukrainian people, determines its will, needs and interests. That is why the right to self-determination of the Ukrainian nation becomes, at the same time, the right to self-determination of the entire Ukrainian people. Which in the conditions of an independent state formalizes itself as a unity of citizens of Ukraine.
Therefore, the Ukrainian state genetically emerged as national and, at the same time, people’s. Which, accordingly, determines its social character.
The principle of the unity of the national and the social runs through the resolutions of the Grand Assembly of the OUN: the struggle for the strength and good of the Ukrainian nation is at the heart of the nationalist worldview. The highest goal is comprehensive growth, strength, health and well-being of the Ukrainian people. Only one’s own national state can be the only instrument for ensuring the given state. The direct duty of the government in such a state is to direct all economic resources and human energy to the formation of a new state fair social order, as well as to the economic development of the country and the cultural development of the people.
In this logic of the functioning of the state mechanism, we see a combination of all three parameters: national, national, social – creating conditions for a free and safe life and development of both the Ukrainian nation, the entire Ukrainian people, and individual citizens of Ukraine, hence, guaranteeing and ensuring both collective, as well as individual human rights – all this allows a new look at the social character of the state in the spirit of Article 3 of the Constitution of Ukraine.
Individual. It is at this stage that the humanistic character of Ukrainian nationalism is manifested. As Yaroslav Stetsko noted, “there is no human freedom without the freedom of the people. And there is no freedom of the people without the freedom of the person… The great revolution of the peoples is coming under the main slogans: for the freedom of the peoples – for the freedom of the person, for the person “created in the image and likeness of God”, whose dignity to trample on means committing sacrilege.”
The thesis that the Christian worldview is the basis of the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism is axiomatic. And the basis of the Christian worldview is the idea of man as a God-like being. As Roman Zvarych points out, at the center of the philosophical considerations of Ukrainian nationalism has always been the Christian-idealistic understanding of Man as a being created in the image of God, with the inherent ability to know Good and distinguish it from Evil…. In a similar perspective, Oleg Bagan reflects: “It (Ukrainian nationalism – L.Sh.) is characterized by all-round idealism, that is, nurturing everything spiritual, ideal in man and society, affirming them in the fact that the Spirit reigns over matter, which is only in the aspiration to the High , Noble, Ideal, a person will be able to find full satisfaction of the needs of his soul.”
At the same time, as Julian Vassyan wrote, “The road to God lies through the Motherland.” Man is able to fulfill his divine vocation through being-and-creating-in-the-nation. Here there is no antinomy between national and universal, all-human. One cannot but agree with Miguel de Unamuno: “Human nature is universal – true, but it is a living, fruitful universality; it belongs to each individual person only to the extent that it is clothed in the flesh of the nation, religion, language and culture and is rooted in them… Aren’t geniuses that reveal the eternal in the individual and temporary not universal? Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Ibsen belong to all mankind precisely because one of them was an Englishman, another a Florentine, a third a Castilian, a fourth a Norwegian.
Here one cannot but agree with Julian Vassian’s opinion that “for a unit, the nation is not an ideal, an absolute value, but an idea, a form of creative existence, which, despite the rich heterogeneity of its ideals, holds them in relation to a certain kinship, belonging. The unit is considered a means against the nation only from the position of consciousness that the idea of the nation exceeds the limits of its existence, therefore only in view of its temporary limited participation in the idea of the nation, while it is a goal in view of the fact that the actuality of the idea itself is determined by the continuous presence of units , which give them meaning and improve it. If the human mind were able to find itself in the state of the superpersonal subject of the nation, it would see in the unit not a means, but the ideal of the nation.”
As O. Yashchenko notes, “the correct view of society will be the reconciliation of these two points of view (individualist and collectivist, – L.Sh.) and the adoption of a synthetic theory that recognizes the two-sided nature of society as an individual-collective entity, as a balance of two moments, personal and general… There is not and cannot be a fundamental enmity between the individual and society, but only a temporary clash that occurs as a result of an individual initiative, between a previously achieved stage of social and personal development and a new one; therefore, the whole history can be understood as a gradual deepening, elevation and expansion of two-sided personal-social life.” Thus, a person exists as a socialized self-aware subject only insofar as he belongs to a certain community.
Sociologists mostly agreed that the most optimal for the functioning of society and its comprehensive development is the system of values that Bohdan Gavrylyshyn calls “group-cooperative” as opposed to the egalitarian-collectivist one, which levels the members of society and thus makes their free self-realization impossible. and therefore – the progress of the whole society, and the individual-competitive one, which a priori puts the individual in his relations with others in a state similar to the Hobbesian “war of all against all.” The optimality of group-cooperative values is due to the formation with their help of such motives of work and social functioning in general, as a sense of solidarity and responsibility to society.
And therefore, as stated in the Resolutions of the III Great Assembly of the OUN (r), “the ideal of the new society is a free person. The free initiative of a person will be the main driving force of social life. But this free initiative can only go in the social direction and must not in any case follow the line of scurrilous interests and as a result lead to the exploitation of other “free” people, as it happens under the conditions of capitalism.”
The unity of the general and individual, social and personal can be achieved only in the presence of a system of institutions and the public order organized by them, which will synthesize individual interests in the general, and vice versa, ensure compliance of the general will with the maximum number of individual wills. As we noted above, only the national state remains such a system. From this it follows fundamentally that “the Ukrainian state is the good of all citizens of Ukraine, so everyone must fight for it.”
Leontiy Shypilov
Український погляд
