Boris Hrinchenko and the Brotherhood of Tarasivtsi (Sources for the Intellectual and Political Biography of an Outstanding Ukrainian)

Abstract

The article attempts to analyze the place of B. Hrinchenko in the Ukrainian movement of the late 1880s and early 1890s against the background of preparations for the creation, emergence of the program and activities of the “Brotherhood of tarasivtsi”. Despite the importance of this episode in B. Hrinchenko intellectual and political biography, it has not yet been definitively clarified. This is explained by the limitation of the documentary base and the small number and inconsistency of ego-documents for clearly highlighting the issue of B. Hrinchenko’s role in the Brotherhood. In such conditions, the authors proposed to change the search vector via the expansion of the research field. It is an attempt to examine Hrinchenko’s public activity in the broader context of the intellectual development of the young generation of the Ukrainian intellectuals, whose representatives provided the organizational forms for the nascent move ment of “Ukrainian national patriots” in the form of regional groups and circles, which united into the “Brotherhood of tarasivtsi”. The transformation of B. Hrinchenko in the late 1880s - early 1890s into one of the central figures of the Ukrainian national revival, authoritative at the sametime among “old cultural worker” and “young national patriots”, is shown. This transformation of a folk teacher into one of the public leaders was caused by B. Hrinchenko’s attempt to put T. Shevchenko’s idea of separateness and independence of the Ukrainian nation at the center of the political doctrine developed by the youth national movement. It was in such conditions that the “Brotherhood of tarasivtsi” appeared as the first attempt to politicize the Ukrainian movement in the early 1890s against the background of the dominant national and cultural work of the “senior” (“ukrainophile”) intellectuals. It was concluded that B. Hrinchenko should be considered as one of the leading creators of the ideology of “young national patriots”, which, even if only for a short time, will find practical embodiment in the youth “Brotherhood of tarasivtsi”.

Keywords

• borys hrinchenko, brotherhood of tarasivtsi, taras shevchenko, ukrainian national movement, intellectual biography, political views, ideology, nation.