The roots of popular Ukrainian nationalism: A demographic, social and political study of the Ukrainian nationality to 1917

In 1917 Ukrainian patriots took advantage of revolutionary upheaval in the Russian Empire to bid for national self-determination. On the eve of the Revolution political opinion in Russia dismissed the Ukrainian movement as a small group of nationalistic intellectuals striving futilely to mobilize politically unconscious peasants. By the end of 1917 this appraisal was belied by repeated popular demands for national autonomy and the decisive victory of Ukrainian populists in regional elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly.; The historical literature on Ukrainian nationalism and the Ukrainian Revolution has concentrated on political and intellectual currents, a methodological bias which neglects important factors conditioning the emergence and outcome of modern national movements. The present study approaches Ukrainian nationalism as a problem in social history to understand how national sentiment emerged as an unexpectedly dynamic force in the Ukrainian village in 1917.; The dissertation draws heavily on contemporary censuses, statistical yearbooks and zemstvo surveys to characterize the sociological background of nationality relations in the Russian Empire's Ukrainian provinces before the Revolution. Class and ethnic cleavages corresponded to an extraordinary degree in the Ukraine. This circumstance manifested itself in mutually reinforcing socio-economic and socio-ethnic grievances in the Ukrainian village, thus providing a basis upon which to build national sentiment among the peasantry.; The study further considers how Ukrainian populists translated these grievances into support for the national movement. Zemstvos, rural cooperatives, the Peasants' Union and other organs played a crucial role in linking patriotic populists with the peasantry. Memoirs and contemporary periodicals, including newspapers published in Kiev, Kharkov, and Odessa, provide unique information on nationalist currents in the Ukraine and the peasants' response between 1905 and 1917.; The dissertation concludes that the root cause behind the Ukraine's failed bid for self-determination was not the putative absence of national feeling in the village but rather the sociological "incompleteness" of the Ukrainian nation. The socio-economic development of the region deprived Ukrainian nationalism of weighty constituencies in key cities and industrial centers, while the peasantry provided an inadequate resource base to sustain the movement against its Russian opponents.