October 14 marked the 62nd anniversary of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Although it was not a jubilee, this date makes us once again reflect on what we actually know about the UPA’s ideology — not the ideology that was distorted by Soviet ideologues — and about all those people whose views, ideas, and cultural achievements were the foundation, albeit mostly indirectly, of the UPA’s struggle. This time our regular column (which is thematic to an extent) features a story about two prominent figures of the Ukrainian national movement, Yuri Lypa and Yevhen Malaniuk, whose ideas and works left a distinct mark on the history of the UPA.
His heart bled at the sight of his beloved Ukraine groaning under the yoke of bondage. Yevhen Fylymonovych Malaniuk (1897-1968), a celebrated Ukrainian poet, thinker, journalist, and civic and cultural figure, dedicated his entire creative life to combating those Ukrainian national traits that he identified as submissiveness, lethargy, and crippling servility, which he detested wholeheartedly. As a 25-year-old young man (with combat experience as an officer of a machine-gun company during WWI and three years of fighting for the young Ukrainian National Republic in 1918-1920 under his belt, followed by bitter years of immigration), he wrote with his innate clarity of thought and emotionalism: “For a state to rise or vanish, there must be an idea of such a rise and fall.” This extraordinary individual saw the sense of his existence in serving the revival of the Ukrainian state with arms in hand and with his inspired verse. Until his dying day (February 16, 1968, in New York), his heart belonged to his native land. After decades of restrictions and censorship taboos, his creative heritage is finally returning to Ukraine, but regrettably too slowly.
Why too slowly? Because as a journalist — and here we will be examining only this side of his multifaceted creative life — he possessed the gift of writing about his people without glorifying them and resorting to trite compliments and metaphors. He always wrote the truth, however bitter, even terrible, it was. For that reason the noted poet’s journalist heritage — primarily his article “Malorosiystvo” [Little Russianness] (1959), his essays on Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, and Lesia Ukrayinka, as well as such works as Sketches on the History of “Our Culture” (1954), A Book of Observations (1962-66), and Apropos of the Problem of Bolshevism (1956) — may serve as reference works for those who are concerned with problems connected with the Ukrainian national idea, statehood, and culture.
We will dwell on what is perhaps the most vivid example of Malaniuk’s journalism, his article “Malorosiystvo.” The very title sounds like a diagnosis of a grave disease or the name of a deadly virus that was studied by a writer who was deeply concerned about the condition of the Ukrainian national organism (Malaniuk stresses that the notion originates from Shevchenko), for the sole purpose of destroying it. The author is fully aware that the future of his people largely depends on whether this virus is overcome and annihilated. So what is malorosiystvo?
Malaniuk’s first definition (but not the only one) of this shameful phenomenon is paralysis of the nation-state’s will. However, an analysis of this phenomenon is possible only after a thorough investigation of the inner essence of the carrier, maloros, the Little Russian. Here the author’s ideas stray far from established concepts. He notes, “We are fatally convinced that the Little Russian is a poorly educated, primitive, underdeveloped Ukrainian without a national identity; in a word, these people are the dark masses. All that’s necessary to enlighten them, instill new concepts in them, and make them nationally conscious is the help of the Prosvita Society. However, anyone who has bothered to investigate the problem knows how remote this pattern is from reality.”
Demonstrating the talent of a poet and the skills of a historian and sociologist, Yevhen Malaniuk writes, “Malorosiystvo was always a semi-intellectual and primarily intellectual malady, affecting a stratum meant to act as the nation’s think tank. Herein lies the gist of the problem.” He then explains, “Here one must immediately discard that type of common folk who were fond of repeating that they always minded their own business, or who, when they were being conscripted by the Poles, would insist that they were Polishchuks or locals; or who would say they were Russians during Soviet censuses — this was none other than mimicry and self-defense, born of bitter experience throughout the ages.” He believed therefore that the main carrier of the lethal disease known as paralysis of the nation-state’s will was by no means “our national mass, the peasantry,” but a far more educated stratum.
Reaching deeper into history, the noted poet and journalist analyzed the stages of this advanced national disease. Briukhovetsky and Teteria (“two faces of malorosiystvo during the period of the Ruin”), Martyn Pushkar, Colonel Poltavsky (who becomes “a sinister symbol of malorosiystvo after Bohdan Khmelnytsky”), the Kochubei period (“the result of long decades”) — these are only some of the most vivid examples of the Little Russian spirit that was predominant in Ukrainian history until the disastrous Battle of Poltava.
Note, however, that Malaniuk, whose concepts by no means fit the Procrustean bed of historical patterns, refutes several widespread stereotypes concerning malorosiystvo. He believes that “contrary to the popular assumption, Malorosiystvo is not Russophilism or any other - philism. This is a malady, a severe internal national crippling. In seventeenth-century Muscovite officialese, this was a ‘trait of the Cherkasy.’ Catherine II expertly formulated it as ‘Little Russian selflessness.’” Further on he writes: “Russophilism or any other -philism (we know of several in our history) is a course our politics may take...but Malorosiystvo is not politics, not even a tactic, only an invariably a priori and total capitulation. Capitulation before the battle.”
In other words, Yevhen Malaniuk believed that Russophilism (assuming, of course, that this is a way to defend national interests, and not what he condemned as “instability,” “treacherousness,” even “treachery and espionage”) is a political trend that is not disastrous as such for the Ukrainian nation-state idea. Malorosiystvo, in contrast, is a “vivid manifestation of the paralysis of political will and thought; it is always beyond rational politics.” Moreover, relying on his own experience and archival materials, the author arrives at the following important historical conclusion: “Future historians will not be able to explain the Central Rada’s politics other than by the presence there of political malorosiystvo, a concept poisoning the minds of that generation; lack of the slightest national instinct and paralysis of political will were obvious...History had to be made there and then; power, however limited, had to be exercised every minute because they were pressed for time.” Does this not explain the historical defeat of the national-liberation struggles in 1918-20? Does this not serve as an answer (albeit not an exhaustive one) to the question, why was Poland able to restore its independence under Pilsudski while Ukraine failed? Malaniuk notes incidentally that there were a number of “Little Poles” in Poland (e.g., Roman Dmowski, a prominent politician). One should bear in mind, however, that the Polish nation was consolidated during this and subsequent periods by such factors as national pride, Catholicism and its corresponding impact on national consciousness, the traditions of the Polish aristocracy; and that the Ukrainian nobility was partly destroyed and partly bribed by the Muscovite tsars.
We seem to have deviated from the topic. What in Malaniuk’s view made malorosiystvo so dangerous? He explains, “In the normal mentality of every son of his nation, who is unaffected by malorosiystvo, one finds conditioned reflexes of sorts, a national instinct distinguishing between black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, clean and dirty, divine and devilish. With malorosiystvo, these reflexes fade and weaken, at times disappearing altogether. Under the circumstances, intellectual work as such does not help because all such efforts invariably prove belated. National political thought, even if it is well developed, recorded, and entered in archives (which, more often than not, no one bothers to read) cannot reward that instinctive intellect that we sometimes describe as natural and other times as peasant, and which is closely connected to will and character. This ‘natural’ intellect cannot be replaced with any school, title, or academic degree.” Because, apart from everything else, “ Malorosiystvo also means a dimmed, weakened historical memory, which at times becomes extinct.” People free from malorosiystvo are the repositories of this memory.
Yevhen Malaniuk was keenly aware of malorosiystvo (his other definition is “the equivalent of our deprivation”) as a problem that was by no means an abstract academic one. It was “one of the most important, if not focal, problems directly involving our problem of building a national state. Moreover, it is precisely this problem that the leaders of the Ukrainian State will encounter first. This problem will remain a high priority for a long time in the process of maturation and stabilization of statehood, and will serve as a formidable memento for that statehood. And so, following the poet and historian’s train of thought, we have every reason to infer that the outcome of Oct. 31 will largely depend on the extent to which this malorosiystvo virus has affected the immunity of our national organism. Let us be optimistic and hope that our immune system will prevail.
