10_Birth of Nationalism

This is the tenth #generalhistory note, following 9_Empire and Enlightenment.

Napoleon and National Identity

Both the Polish and Ukrainian anthems (written in 1797 and 1862 respectively) begin with "Poland/Ukraine has not yet perished," reflecting the trauma of losing the Commonwealth and the Hetmanate. However, the Polish anthem follows this line with "as long as we are alive," indicating an understanding of the nation as bound to its citizens, not to the territory.
This notion gave hope to a wide array of stateless peoples and spread to the region through Napoleon.
More broadly, Napoleon introduced the ideas of nationhood and popular sovereignty to the rest of Europe on the back of military conquest. A clear example of this was when he created the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807 out of the territories he won from Prussia. This excited the Poles, who rallied behind him in 1812 when he invaded Russia, hoping they would get their republic back.
Their hopes were crushed after Russia defeated Napoleon. The Duchy of Warsaw was wiped off the map, with the Kingdom of Poland established in its place at the Congress of Vienna. It was, however, ruled by the Russian emperor and referred to as a Tsardom in Russia, while Alexander I granted the territory rights of autonomy.
This was a step back from Catherine the Great's unification policies, but reintroducing special arrangements for the Poles filled other groups with envy. Among these groups were Ukrainians, whose nationalism developed in opposition to Napoleon, with Russian imperial journals publishing poems written in Ukrainian.
Napoleon awakened local patriotism and national feelings all over Europe. And as Poles, Germans, and Russians expressed those in their native languages, Ukrainians decided to do so as well. Language, together with folklore, literature, and history, became building blocks of a modern national identity.

Ukrainian Developments

One of the Ukrainians fighting Napoleon was Ivan Kotliarevsky. He served in a Cossack detachment.
The war reaffirmed his Ukrainian identity, which had first become evident in 1789 when he published Eneida, one of the first poems where characters spoke in the Ukrainian vernacular.
This reflected a trend in Europe where the nation was conceptualized as a cultural entity that needed to be awakened from its sleep. To accomplish this goal, enthusiasts collected—or invented when necessary—tales and songs of the locals.
Another concurrent trend, which Kotliarevsky capitalized on, was the disintegration of Church Slavonic and the mainstreaming of the vernacular, a shift Russia experienced through Pushkin.
Kotliarevsky continued on his path, publishing five more parts of Eneida and several other works. By doing so, he birthed a new literature.
Ukrainian vernacular received its first grammar in 1818 with the publication of The Grammar of the Little Russian Dialect, followed closely by the release of the first collection of Ukrainian folk songs.
Many authors followed, writing about Ukrainian folklore and tradition. This romantic tradition stemmed from Kharkiv, where imperial authorities had opened a university in 1805. Becoming a professor there often meant taking an interest in local history and folklore—which Kharkiv could offer.
Kharkiv was the capital of Sloboda Ukraine, a separate governorate that was often referred to as "Ukraine." In fact, the first newspaper that appeared in the region around 1816 was called the Ukrainian Herald.
A core issue of these literary works was the Cossack past, as evidenced by the popularity of Istoriia Rusov (History of the Rus’). This text was written by descendants of the Cossacks who were concerned about the inequality between them and the Russian nobility, and more broadly argued for equality between Little and Great Russia.
This history book portrayed the Cossacks as a distinct and great nation. It was celebrated by romantic writers all over the empire, like Pushkin and Gogol, and also became extremely popular. Through its popularity and content, the work became an important step toward the creation of a distinct Ukrainian nation.
In this development, the Hetmanate was an extremely important myth to rely on. On top of that, it birthed most of the minds that embarked on that journey—mainly because it was the only Ukrainian territory where the landowning elites shared the culture of the local population. The rest of the territory was split between essentially Poles and Russians.

Early Russification

The Polish uprising of 1830 triggered the next stage of the Ukrainian national movement.
This uprising was a response to the decline in liberalism under Alexander I, who, once he no longer needed the support of Polish elites, disregarded the rights granted to them—such as press freedom and their parliament.
Discontented young Poles formed clandestine groups and were subsequently targeted by the police.
The Decembrist uprising in Russia in 1825, where Russian officers demanded a constitution, was also crushed. Nicholas I took power afterward and steered the Empire into reactionary conservatism.
In 1830, a mutiny by Polish officers in Warsaw quickly escalated into a broader uprising across the former Commonwealth, including Right-Bank Ukraine. Polish revolutionaries tried to rally Ukrainian peasants by promising emancipation.
The rebellion was crushed by the Empire. This hardened Russian nationalism and inspired anti-Polish rhetoric among elites, notably in the work of Alexander Pushkin.
Pushkin’s poem expressed concerns about the stability of Russian control over Ukrainian and Lithuanian territories, emphasizing Ukraine’s symbolic and strategic value to the Empire:

"Where shall we shift the line of forts?
Beyond the Buh, to the Vorskla, to the (Dnieper) Estuary?
Whose will Volhynia be?
And Bohdan (Khmelnytsky's) legacy?
Rights of rebellion recognized
Will Lithuania spurn our rule?
And Kiev, decrepit and golden domed,
This ancestor of Russian towns-
Will it conjoin its sainted graves
With reckless Warsaw?"
—Alexander Pushkin, The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, p. 153

Defending Ukraine from Polish aspirations became a cornerstone of imperial policy.
Nationalism was employed as a tool, but it required a clear definition of the nation. Sergei Uvarov provided this with his triad: autocracy, orthodoxy, nationality (which treated Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians as one people).
In the western borderlands, Ukrainian peasants were seen as ethnically Russian but religiously suspect due to their Uniate (Greek Catholic) affiliation.
The state thus aimed to undo the Union of Brest. In 1839, a Uniate Church council declared the "reunification" with Orthodoxy, endorsed by the emperor and backed by military force.
Around 1.5 million believers in Ukraine and Belarus were thus “returned” to the Russian Orthodox Church.
This religious campaign also fuelled cultural Russification: Russian replaced local languages in Orthodox seminaries.
Meanwhile, secular elites were treated differently. Before 1830, the Empire had aimed to integrate them as equals, especially in education, under the banner of Slavic unity.
The 1830 uprising ended this. Adam Czartoryski, one of the leading Polish figures behind this cooperation, now led the revolutionary government.
As a response, Uvarov pushed Russian-language education and cultural dominance in former Polish territories.
Vilnius University was shut down in 1832. A lyceum in Kremenets was closed, and its assets were transferred to Kyiv.
The empire sought to make Kyiv a loyal stronghold in the western borderlands.
A new imperial university was opened in 1834 and named after Volodymyr the Great.
Orthodox churches were restored, Jews were banned, streets were rebuilt and renamed.
In 1833, the governor proposed erecting a monument to Volodymyr to symbolize Right-Bank Ukraine's integration; it was completed in 1853 with Nicholas I’s support.
Kyiv’s new university was the third in Ukrainian lands (after Lviv and Kharkiv), designed to train a loyal elite.
Initially, this plan succeeded—descendants of Cossack officers and clergy used the university to counter Polish influence.

Early Ukrainian Nationalism

However, the authorities didn’t foresee that the university would nurture a new identity.
In 1847, a secret society aiming to transform the Russian Empire into a federation was exposed.
This was the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, which included Mykola Kostomarov and Taras Shevchenko.
Shevchenko, a popular poet in St. Petersburg, wrote in Ukrainian rather than Russian, likely due to influence from Ukrainian intellectuals who had freed him from serfdom.
He lamented the lack of Ukrainian literary output:

"A great sorrow has enveloped my soul. I hear and sometimes I read: the Poles are printing and the Czechs and the Serbs and the Bulgarians and the Montenegrins and the Russians—all are printing. But from us not a peep, as if we were all dumb. Why is this so, my brethren? [...] Let the people judge which is better." —Taras Shevchenko, The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, p. 158

Shevchenko criticized figures like Nikolai Gogol, a Ukrainian who wrote in Russian, for abandoning their identity to gain recognition.
In contrast, he admired Slovak historian Pavol Šafárik for promoting his people’s culture.
In the preface to Kobzar, Shevchenko claimed that Ukraine didn’t lack talent but that its talent served Russian, not Ukrainian culture.
His vision aligned with pan-Slavism: a free Ukraine within a broader Slavic federation.
These ideas were widespread in the Brotherhood. Kostomarov, in the Books of the Genesis of the Ukrainian People, envisioned Ukraine rising from historical obscurity to liberate other enslaved Slavic nations.
He justified this mission by referencing the Cossacks’ egalitarian traditions—unlike the hierarchical Russian and Polish societies.
The Brotherhood was small and quickly dismantled once discovered.
Most members were arrested but received relatively light punishments.
This was due in part to imperial fears of driving Ukrainophiles toward Polish nationalists.
Officials even misrepresented the Brotherhood's views as promoting Slavic unity under the tsar, to downplay their separatist aims.
Only Shevchenko received harsh treatment—for mocking the tsar’s wife in his poetry.
The Brotherhood directly opposed all of Uvarov’s triad:
- They rejected autocracy.
- They denied being Russian.
- They were not particularly Orthodox.
Their writings initiated a Ukrainian national project: articulating a distinct political program and national identity.
Their long-term influence is symbolized by the Shevchenko monument in front of Kyiv University, which eventually replaced a statue of Nicholas I.

Continuation

Continues in 11_Habsburg Ukraine.

Sources

This information was gathered from The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine (Pages 147-160).