Ukraina and the Peace-conference

Front matter

THE UKRAINIAN PROBLEMS.

8 No. 6. 8

1919

I. The Right of Self-Determination of Peoples.

Important and difficult problems are put before the Peace Conference of the Allied Powers. There is urgent need of establishing a new system of the world on the ruins of old ones, broken down by the war. The first task must be to bring a general and permanent peace to the peoples stirred up by the Great War, and it is obvious that this object cannot be secured by merely proclaiming the ideas of "right and justice" and the principle of self-determination of peoples, but those ideas and that principle will have to be realized, to lead the peoples of the universe into the peaceful paths of order and of pacific and orderly international traffic. Even the idea of a genuine League of Nations can only be accomplished, if provision is made that all peoples, who as members of the League of Nations must on principle enjoy the same rights, shall obtain equal rights, and no people shall be ruled by another people or dependent on another people's mercy.

Without solving and actually carrying through the problems, which helped to bring about the Great War, permanent peace is an impossible thing.

From the defeat of Imperialism and Militarism all consequences must be drawn, and an order must be established, which shall raise the nations again on the basis of genuine democracy, liberty, and national independence. Though the catehword of "Self-determination of Peoples" was coined only during the war, the problem itself was not new, on the contrary, it had been alive already before the war and was the fundamental idea, which brought about the Great War.

A short glance at the history of the past and the present century will suffice to convince oneself of the fact, that the striving of the nations for political and cultural emancipation was one of the principal causes of the Great War.

There is in modern times no closer tie than of the community of men, which is called a people or nation. This is the result of a development originating in the French Revolution. The impulse came from Rousseau's theory of the sovereignty of the people.

The French Revolution asserted the Rights of Man and put all men of all ranks and classes on an equality with each other. This feeling of equality and harmony brought the elements of the nations nearer to each other and the consciousness of national kinship arose among them. This was followed by endeavours at the political union of the national elements and with this is connected the tendency towards the formation of national states.

The coherent national elements that, by the principle of state-formation then in force, had been dismembered into several states, united at last and were joined into a national union. Thus in the course of the nineteenth century the German Empire and the Kingdom of Italy took birth.

Not all nations, however, were allowed, by the formation of national states to attain the ideal of national union. Nor was this ideal altogether attained in all national states, as for instance large portions of the German nation were left outside the German Empire in the frame of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, while on the other hand the Germans, by the annexation of French and Polish territories, incorporated large heterogeneous elements in their political organism.

It is universally known, to what extent the annexation by the Germans of heterogeneous national territories called forth the Great War.

In other states, where several peoples lived together, who did not form independent communities, the nations could not immediately rend asunder the political organisms. Here the idea of nationalism lead to fights for national freedom, first of all on the Balkan Peninsula.

It is to the idea of nationalism that Greece, Servia and Bulgaria owe their birth.

At the Berlin Congress, however, the national Balkan problems were not thoroughly solved. On the one hand the new states did not obtain all their national territories, for rather considerable national territories, that ought to belong to them, were left with Turkey; on the other hand territories were assigned to the new states, which by nationality were connected with other political organisms.

Furthermore taking into consideration, that it was not full independence, that was granted to the Balkan States at the Berlin Congress, but that they got into a great dependency on the neighbouring states, it is obvious how the Balkan Peninsula came to be the hotbed of incessant combat among the nations, and that the neighbouring great powers made the Balkan Peninsula the theatre of their wrestling for hegemony. Nor could the Bucharest Treaty bring an adjustment of the national conflict, since it disregarded the ethnographical boundaries of the national territories. Thus a gulf, not to be bridged over, opened between the Bulgarians and the Servians, and that is why in the Great War we see Bulgaria on the side of the Central Powers.

That the Balkan Question gave the first impulse to the Great War is a fact universally known.

Surveying the development of the national problem in the other states of Europe, we come in short to the following results:

In Russia, before the war, Tsarism kept down the numerous nationalities by strong measures, in other states, where several nations lived side by side, efforts were made some way or other to do justice to the national problem.

It could be made no secret that the idea of nationalism, which in the course of the nineteenth century had led to the formation of new states, would exercise great influence on all other nations. In the meanwhile the nations tried to obtain such political power in the states, as was to warrant political independence to their own nationality within the frame of strange political organisms. To comply with their endeavours modern states (setting Tsaristic Russia aside) have taken two ways.

In Belgium as well as in Switzerland the democratic endeavours of the nations were met by the concession of extensive political liberties and the recognition of the equality. of all nations, so there arose no need to split up the sovereignty of the state according to national territories. Nevertheless Belgium, owing to the imperfect equalization of the Flemish language with the French language of the Walloons, could not be spared vehement political combats, carried on for many years between both nations of the country, which created a deep antagonism between them.

Another way was chosen by Austria. Here the principle of equality of rights was expressly established by the constitution, but was turned into the reverse on being carried out. The empire was not divided according to national territories, but according to provinces, and in the provinces the nations, who were in the minority, were delivered up to other nations, who often had only a chance majority. So an antagonism arose on the one hand between the imperial government and the province governments, the majority nations trying to shake off the remaining part of their dependency on the supreme power of the state, and on the other hand an antagonism between the nations, the minorities endeavouring to free themselves from the rule of the majority nations.

In consequence whereof a conflict was kindled among the nations of Austria, which affected the whole state machinery.

When the Great War broke out, indeed all nations of Austria were forced to fight on the side of the Central Powers, but it was obvious a priori, that each nation was aiming at her own deliverance and that the nations had gone to the war for their own right of self-determination.

So there can be no doubt, that the main fact that called forth the Great War was, that the problem of nationality had to choose this way of being brought to a definite solution. The re-annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, the independence of the "small nations", the restitution of Poland,—these are the forms, in which the problem of the deliverance of nations made its first appearance in the war; soon other national questions followed, such as the Czecho-Slovak, the Yugoslav, the Ukrainian questions etc., and when in consequence of the events of war Russian Tsarism with its "jail of nations" collapsed, the Russian revolution proclaimed the Rights of the People and first of all the right of self-determination of peoples. It was not by mere chance that President Wilson made Self-determination of Peoples a point of his programme and that it was agreed to by all Allied Powers.

So the question is: On what principles is the Peace Conference to act, to secure self-determination to the peoples?

Self-determination of the Peoples is no arbitrary conception, but has sprung from the long combats of modern nations, and was given sanction to by the Great War through the defeat of Imperialism.

Self-determination belongs to the nature of modern peoples. To decide upon the principles of this right of self-determination one must first make up one's mind, as to what has to be the condition of a community to become the subject of self-determination, in short, what is the nature of a people or a nation in a modern sense of the word, which preliminary conditions are required to make it partake of national self-determination?

On the definition and the political importance of the idea of the People a large literature has arisen, which shows distinct traits of the political currents of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the same measure as those currents changed, the relation between state and people was subject to ever varying criticism, so pre-war political science gives us no conclusive judgement of their relation, but represents the picture of a chaos, making arbitrary distinctions without regarding the natural development of things. Although it was evident, for instance, that there are different peoples in one state, some scholars did not shrink from representing the whole population of a country as one people in a technical sense of the term; or to obscure the true, natural relation between people and state, a distinction was made between people and nation, nation being represented as something higher, having no immediate connection with the formation of states, while people, being something lower, purely ethical, was to subject itself to the state at all risks.

To justify further inequalities a distinction was created between "historical" and merely "ethnical" peoples, as though not all peoples were historical and ethnical at the same time.

All those scholastical distinctions were thoroughly thrown over by the war. Into the fight the peoples entered as such without caring much, whether by others they were considered to be peoples or nations, historical or ethnical peoples (e. g. the Roumanians and the Yugoslavs in Hungary). On the contrary, the protection of the so-called "small nations" was one of the most important problems of the War of the World.

Nowadays in politics nation and people, whether big or small, are identical terms, since they have shaken off all the attributes arbitrarily assigned to them.

A people or nation is a larger community of men, based on common descent, but beyond that a cultural union, created by manners and customs, by common historical traditions, and as far as possible by common language as well as by historical connexion with a certain territory.

On further examination of the nature of modern peoples the following points must be taken into consideration: Each people is the result of a historical process in which two main factors, nature and culture, are perceptible. First the individuals connected by descent join into closer unions, which are called tribes, and the tribes afterwards unite into a large ethnical unit, that forms a people, the tribes developing vigorously by mutual interbreeding and by perpetual absorption of new elements of culture. This process is in general the product of an assimilation of the two main factors: nature (descent) and culture. The importance of descent in this process is proved by the results of scientific research, different anthropological characteristics often being found in different peoples. But since peculiar cultural features, too, are part of the nature of a people, anthropolical differences must not be acquiesced in. Each people has a culture of its own and a history of its own, distinguishing it from other peoples.

But there is a third factor to be considered: To become a real unit, notwithstanding the right of the individual to move about and the influence of different civilizations, a people must have a firmly established basis, fit to secure them a firm and stable position in life. This substantial basis is the territory. A community of men can only become a people, if they have an abode of their own, their own territory. Single individuals or families indeed can live outside the territory of their own people, but this is only an exception that does not affect the rule. Besides, such individuals and families remain in an ideal connexion with their national territory, and these ties can only be undone: by their assimilation to another people.

But how far does the national territory extend? Without an exact answer to this question the problem of self-determination of peoples cannot be solved.

First of all it is quite certain that a fundamental distinction must be made between the territory of a state and the territory of a people. Seldom the territory of a state and the territory of a people will coincide. State territories have frontiers settled by constitutional law, while the frontiers of the territories of peoples have not yet been recognized by constitutional law.

The essential difference between the territory of a people and the territory of a state is, that the latter is based on conquest, while the territory of a people is formed irrespective of conquest, not by arbitrary action, but by nature and civilization. Though in general it may be true, that the historical origin of all formations of peoples can be traced back to conquest, yet there can be no doubt, that it is not merely be conquest that they have become peoples in a modern sense of the word. Where the native population did not abandon their primary settlements and the conquerors were not able, by a definite process of assimilation, to transform the native population into a nationality common with the conquerors (which in earlier centuries was the case in Italy and in England, in modern times in America), conquest by foreign powers cannot forthwith involve annihilation of nationality to a people.

The territory, which a people is historically connected with by perpetual settlement, is the national territory of a people. The notion of a national territory in this sense of the word, however, is of an exclusive nature: Never can a territory be the national territory of two or more peoples at the same time, but each people has its own separate national territory, while in other national territories it plays the part of a conqueror or of a stranger. Therefore these peoples, who have subjected other peoples to their rule but have not been able to permanently settle in their place and to entirely assimilate them, must not claim the territory of the conquered people as their own national territory.

Hereat the following observations are to be made: As it is a question of accomplished permanent settlement, national territory under modern circumstances, especially considering the great mobility of trade and industry, depends more on the character of the country population than of the town population. Larger towns therefore are, properly speaking, exterritorial as regards nationality by the incessant influx of foreigners and penniless persons. Owing to modern commercial intercourse even landed-proprietors in towns cannot be compared to landed-proprietors in the country, estates in towns very often changing hands and seldom involving the residency of the proprietors. For the nationality of a territory, therefore, the country population is more decisive than the population of the towns.

On the other hand there are also within a coherent national territory small foreign-national islands, where another nationality has its home.

But neither by the foreign-national population of single towns nor by interspersed foreign-national islands can the character of a coherent national territory be made doubtful. The sea does not cease to be the sea for the islands which are in it. The entireness of the national territory must be maintained, because only such territories can be considered as separate units, based on constitutional law.

Only national territories in this sense of the term can form political organisms of their own. Single towns or islands cannot be torn out of the organism and incorporated into other national states. The territory principle can only be applied to national territories in the above sense.

So the national territory is identical with the coherent ethnographical territory of a people, including also single foreign-national places on islands. It is based on the ethnographical principle.

Concerning self-determination of the peoples we come to the conclusion, that peoples can lay claim to an existence as independent states only on their national territory, established on the ethnographical principle. To this is opposed the so-called historical principle, which aims at granting their former state-territories to peoples, who in former historical periods united also foreign nations in their political organism, including the territories of foreign nations. (As for instance the Poles lay claim to the re-creation of the old Polish Empire from the Baltic to the Black Sea, with annexation of Lithuanian, White Russian and Ukrainian territories.) This principle is utterly inconsistent with the idea of self-determination of peoples, since to some peoples it grants the privilege of ruling over others, while it excludes others from self-determination on their own national territories. (Justly, therefore, President Wilson's formula apportions to the Poles the undoubtedly Polish territories, i. e. the territories. ethnographically belonging to Poland).

If, therefore, the Peace Conference wishes a just solution of the national problem, if they will solve it thoroughly conform with the proper meaning of the victory gained by the peoples of Europe and America, they must, on creating new national states and establishing their frontiers, have regard only for the national territories of the peoples and in doing so make valid the pure ethnographical principle in the above sense. By the ethnographical principle all annexations by foreign peoples are undone, and thus it is decided for the future, that no people is justified in enriching itself at another people's expense, and that no people must strive for the territory of another people.

So much of the delimitation of the frontiers of new national states. But it must be observed that the peoples ought to be at liberty to unite with other peoples and to establish common political organisms with them (Such is the case at present in Belgium and Switzerland, and for the future the Slovenes, Croats and Servians wish to form a joint Yugoslav state). But it will not do to refuse those people, who wish to form independent states on their own national territories, the right of establishing them. Such procedure would be entirely inconsistent with the idea of self-determination.

But since, as was said before, there will actually never be any territory, that is inhabited by only one people, also those peoples, who live on the territory of a foreign nation, must be offered the opportunity of making the most of self-determination. In this case the minority nations must indeed, as aforesaid, subordinate themselves to the territorial sovereignty of the majority people on its national territory, but what is not essential to territorial sovereignty, must be left to the free determination of the minority peoples. The self-determination of national minorities on the territory of a foreign nation is limited only by the principle, that it is not allowed to be at variance with the self-determination of the majority people domiciled on that territory, and that they have to submit to anything that may result from territorial union.

Speaking in the terms of political science, peoples on their own national territory are entitled to the establishment of national states of their own, with all the consequences resulting from a national state, by virtue of the territory principle; those peoples, however, who live on the national territory of a foreign people as individuals or larger groups in the places or interspersed 'islands', are entitled to self-determination by virtue of the personality principle, to an extent which results from the same.

II. The Ukrainian Nation.

II. The Ukrainian Nation.

Among the European peoples, striving for self-determination as the necessary consequence of the Great War, is the Ukrainian people, not, indeed, one of the "small nations", which the Allied Powers have taken under their protection since the beginning of the war, but a great people of 40 million, who in their time had sacrificed very much for European civilization as a safeguard against the Mongols, Turks, and Tartars, but had already lost their independence in previous centuries.

Till the present day the Ukrainian people remained under foreign rule, doomed by the Russians and Poles to annihilation of their nationality, and forgotten by the rest of the world.

But suppression could not annihilate the living soul of the great people, and its dismemberment among several hostile communities could not weaken the idea of national union. Though excluded from the European Concert, the Ukrainian people, in South Russia as well as in Poland, and after the partition of Poland on the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, never ceased to strive for the attainment of political autonomy and national independence. When the Great War brought the triumph of the ideas of democracy, the Ukrainian people, too, applied for the participation in the European community of nations. Everybody knows that the Ukrainian troops were the first to proclaim the revolution in Petrograd. It is in a large measure due to the Ukrainians, that the Russian revolution proclaimed self-determination of the peoples, which the Allied Powers afterwards made their own device.

It is this great Slav people that those, who ruled it till the present day, want to deprive of the right of participating in self-determination.

But the Ukrainian nation actually exists, and has all the properties necessary for the existence of a political organism.

But as the political and national enemies of the Ukrainian people, especially the most influential political circles among the Russians and the Poles, are incessantly spreading false and designedly fictitious information about the world concerning the Ukrainian people, and do not shrink from the basest means of calumny, to enrich themselves on the expense of this people, abundantly blessed with natural resources, it is necessary sine ira et studio to state the true facts about Ukraina and the Ukrainian people, and to furnish proof, that the latter is indeed a nation in the modern sense of the word, and that according to the parole of "right and justice" it is to be granted self-determination on its whole national territory. At the same time it shall be demonstrated, how much it will be to the interest of the Allied Powers and mankind in general, if the Peace Conference will help Ukraina to political independence.

If in Europe and in America, before the War, so little was known about the Ukrainian people, it must be attributed to te fact, that both peoples, who ruled the Ukrainians, wanted to persuade the world, that there were no Ukrainians, only Poles and Russians, and that the Ukrainians formed only an individual tribe of the Polish or the Russian nation.

As for the Poles, in the first place, in all their political endeavours they always thought of the re-establishment of the old Polish empire from the Baltic to the Black Sea. So in all geographical records of Polish scholars we always find the notion of the former Polish empire in its largest dimensions, i. e. including the Lithuanian, White Russian, and Ukrainian territories. When in the nineteenth century with the rise of the idea of nationalism it became necessary to pay heed to national differences, and the Ukrainians asserted their national rights, the Polish politicians at once defined their position regarding them, declaring that the Ukrainians from the San to the Dniepr formed only a part of the Polish nation, that their language was only a country dialect of the Polish language, and only their creed and some of their manners and customs were different from the Polish. Especially to those Ukrainians, who lived on the territory of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, they disputed the right of appearing as an independent people, and of asserting their national identity with the Ukrainians living in Russia: moreover, referring to the name of "Ruthenians" customary in Austria, they alleged, that the "Ruthenians" were invented in 1848 by Count Stadion, and they used all possible means to persuade the world, that the so-called "Ruthenians" were no separate people and had nothing in common with the Ukrainians living in Russia under the name of "Little Russians".

Against this assertion it must here already be observed, that the name of "Ruthenians" is derived from "Rusj", the original name of the ancient Ukrainian State of Kieff, and by its very etymology proves the connexion of the Austrian "Ruthenians" with the Ukrainians living in Russia (for further particulars see third chapter). On the other hand the description of the Polish politicians meets with the opposition of the Russian policy, which also lays claim to the Ukrainians, and under the official name of "Little Russians" describes them all as forming an integrant part of the Russian nation. To Russian imperalism all Ukrainians, hence also those, who had ever lived under Polish rule, appear as Russians and the Ukrainian language as a Russian dialect.

The Polish theory, which counted the part of the Ukrainian people, that formerly was under Polish rule, among the Polish nation, had the only effect, that many Ukrainian noblemen as well as Ukrainians belonging to the middle classes and Ukrainian merchants adopted Polish civilization and attached themselves to the Poles. But the masses of the Ukrainian nation remained faithful to their national traditions, took part in the national rebellions of former centuries against Polish hegemony, and maintained their national independence against all Polonizing tendencies. When after the partition of Poland East Galicia came to Austria, a political struggle arose between the Poles and the Ukrainians on the territory of the Austrian constitution, at the bottom of which was the idea of emancipation of the Ukrainian people from Polish hegemony. Although those in power in Austria delivered up the Ukrainians to the discretion of the Poles, the Ukrainians used the small fragments of liberty to make East Galicia and North Bukowina a national Piedmont for the whole Ukrainian people, and, in spite of the Russian cordon, to cultivate the ideal community of interests with their brothers of Ukraina.

Much more dangerous for the Ukrainians was the Russian unitarian theory, which was first upheld by the Russian Tsar Peter the Great. Under his rule Ukraina lost her separate position and was incorporated in the Muscovite State of the Tsar. (For particulars see III. chapter). By him the name of "Rossia" and the "theory of the union of the Russian nation" were introduced. According to this theory the Russian nation consists of three tribes: Great Russians, Little Russians, and White Russians, whose idioms are supposed to differ no more from each other than dialects of one language. Since that time the Ukrainians are officially styled only as "Little Russians". (Not till half a century after the Union between the Muscovite state and Ukraina the idea struck Peter the Great, that the Ukrainians belonged to the same nation as the Muscovites.) Official Russia declares urbi et orbi that all these tribes are connected by a common, i. e. the Russian, literary language, by race, customs and tradition. The Ukrainian literature is not recognized, the Ukrainian history is curtailed and made an essential part of the Russian history. Hand in hand with this conception goes the ruthless ruppression and persecution of every manifestation of the independence of the Ukrainian people: the use of the Ukrainian language in literature is prohibited and not even in elementary schools the Ukrainian language is allowed. Yet the Ukrainian peasant remains faithful to his national language and is very strongly conscious of his national independence against every Russian. Marriages between Ukrainian peasants and Russians wellnigh never take place and the Ukrainian peasants seclude themselves almost entirely from the Russians.

For all these reasons, and owing to the circumstance that into the Ukrainian territory official Russia deliberately sent Russian officials, dislocated Russian troops, and provided for the admittance into the Ukrainian industrial centres (Kieff, Kharkoff, Odessa) of Russian workmen, the impression forced itself upon any foreign traveller before the War, that on all Ukrainian territories (i. e. in South Russia) there lived only one, the Russian, nation. The great political importance, which before the War Russia had in Europe, effected that the world of science and literature adopted the Russian unitarian theory in the History, Geography, and Statistics of Eastern Europe without further investigation, and the consequence was, that official European political science before the War did not know, that there is a large country in Europe, called Ukraina, and that in this country there lives a separate nation, called the Ukrainians, who have their own history and are leading their own national life.

But the great War forthwith brought the enlightenment. Among the first peoples to come forward after the proclamation by the Russian revolution of the principle of self-determination of peoples was the Ukrainian people; to those, who iurabant in verba magistri, a sudden surprise, to others, however, who knew the prevarications of Tsaristic theories only the natural. development of things.

But it must really not be concealed from any scholar, that the Ukrainian is an old people and that the roots of the development of the Ukrainian nation are to be found as early in the middle ages as those of the English, French and German nations. The only essential difference is that, while the course of development of the great European nations was continual and uninterrupted, the development of the Ukrainian nation was slackened by the immediate vicinity of Mongols, Tartars and Turks, and was greatly interrupted by foreign suppression. But the preliminary conditions necessary for the existence of a nation are no less to be found with the Ukrainian nation than with other European nations. But one has to look truth openly in the face and not to be mislead by deliberate prevarications.