Rival Cultural Strategies in Ukrainian Culture of the late XVIII - mid-XIX Centuries 2 страница
T. Shevchenko (1814–1861), Ukrainian bard and famous artist, was amongst members of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. Ukraine’s national bard and famous artist. Born a serf, Shevchenko was orphaned when he was twelve and grew up in poverty and misery. He was taught to read by a village precentor and was often beaten for ‘wasting time’ on drawing. At the age of 14 he became a houseboy of his owner, P. Engelhardt, and served him in Vilnius (1828–31) and then Saint Petersburg. Engelhardt noticed Shevchenko's artistic talent, and in Saint Petersburg he apprenticed him to the painter V. Shiriaev for four years. Shevchenko spent his free time sketching the statues in the capital’s imperial summer gardens. There he met the Ukrainian artist Ivan Soshenko, who introduced him to other compatriots, such as Yevhen Hrebinka and Vasyl Hryhorovych, and to the Russian painter A. Venetsianov. Through these men Shevchenko also met the famous painter and professor Karl Briullov, who donated his portrait of the Russian poet Vasilii Zhukovsky as the prize in a lottery whose proceeds were used to buy Shevchenko's freedom on 5 May 1838.
Soon after, Shevchenko enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg and studied there under Briullov’s supervision. In 1840 his first poetry collection, Kobzar, consisting of eight Romantic poems, was published in Saint Petersburg. It was followed by his epic poem Haidamaky (The Haidamakas, 1841) and the ballad Hamaliia (1844). While living in Saint Petersburg, Shevchenko made three trips to Ukraine, in 1843, 1845, and 1846, which had a profound impact on him. There he visited his still enserfed siblings and other relatives, met with prominent Ukrainian writers and intellectuals (eg, Hrebinka, Panteleimon Kulish, and Mykhailo Maksymovych), and was befriended by the princely Repnin family (especially Varvara Repnina). Distressed by the tsarist oppression and destruction of Ukraine, Shevchenko decided to capture some of his homeland’s historical ruins and cultural monuments in an album of etchings, which he called “Picturesque Ukraine” (1844).
After graduating from the academy of arts in 1845, Shevchenko became a member of the Kyiv Archeographic Commission and traveled widely through Russian-ruled Ukraine in 1845 to sketch historical and architectural monuments and collect folkloric and other ethnographic materials. In 1844 and 1845, mostly while he was in Ukraine, he wrote some of his most satirical and politically subversive narrative poems, including “A Dream”, ‘The Heretic/Jan Hus”, “The Blind Man”, ‘The Caucasus”. He transcribed them and his other poems of 1843–45 into an album he titled “Three Years”.
While in Kyiv in 1846, Shevchenko joined the secret Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. Like the other members of the brotherhood, he was arrested, on 5 April 1847. The authorities’ confiscation and discovery of his anti-tsarist satirical poems in the ‘Try lita’ album brought Shevchenko a particularly severe punishment—military service as a private in the Orenburg Special Corps in a remote region by the Caspian Sea. Tsar Nicholas I himself ordered that Shevchenko be forbidden to write, draw, and paint while in military exile. While serving at the Orenburg and Orsk fortresses, however, Shevchenko managed to continue doing so. He hid his secretly written poems in several handmade ‘bootleg booklets’ (1847, 1848, 1849, 1850). Many of the drawings and paintings he made while in exile depict the life of the indigenous Kazakhs. Owing to Shevchenko’s skill as a painter, he was included in a military expedition to survey and describe the Aral Sea (1848–9).
In 1850 Shevchenko was transferred to the Novopetrovskoe fortress (now Fort Shevchenko in Kazakhstan), where the terms of his captivity were more harshly enforced. Nevertheless, he managed to create over a hundred watercolor and pencil drawings and write several novellas in Russian. Finally released from military exile in 1857, two years after Nicholas I’s death, Shevchenko was not allowed to live in Ukraine. After spending half a year in Nizhnii Novgorod, he moved to Saint Petersburg. He was allowed to visit relatives and friends Ukraine in 1859, but there he was detained and interrogated and sent back to Saint Petersburg. Shevchenko remained under police surveillance until his death. He was buried in Saint Petersburg, but two months later, in accordance with his wishes, his remains were transported to Ukraine and reburied on Chernecha Hora (Monk’s Mountain) near Kaniv. Since that time, his grave has been a ‘holy’ place of visitation by millions of Ukrainians. Today it is part of the Kaniv Museum-Preserve (est 1925).
Shevchenko has had a unique place in Ukrainian cultural history and in world literature. Through his writings he laid the foundations for the creation of a fully functional modern Ukrainian literature. His poetry contributed greatly to the growth of Ukrainian national consciousness, and his influence on various facets of Ukrainian intellectual, literary, and national life is still felt to this day.
Shevchenko's literary oeuvre consists of one mid-sized collection of poetry (Kobzar); the drama Nazar Stodolia and two play fragments; nine novellas, a diary, and an autobiography written in Russian; four articles; and over 250 letters. Already during his first period of literary activity (1837–43), he wrote highly sophisticated poetic works. He adapted the style and versification of Ukrainian folk songs to produce remarkably original poems with a complex and shifting metric structure, assonance and internal rhyme, masterfully applied caesuras and enjambments, and sophisticated alliterations grafted onto a 4 + 4 + 6 syllable unit derived from the kolomyika song structure. He also abandoned use of the regular strophe. Innovations can also be found in Shevchenko's use of epithets, similes, metaphors, symbols, and personifications. A man of his time, his worldview was influenced by Romanticism. But Shevchenko managed to find his own manner of poetic expression, which encompassed themes and ideas germane to Ukraine and his personal vision of its past and future.
Shevchenko’s early works include the ballads ‘Prychynna’ (The Bewitched Woman, 1837), ‘Topolia’ (The Poplar, 1839), and ‘Utoplena’ (The Drowned Maiden, 1841). Their affinity with Ukrainian folk ballads is evident in their plots and supernatural motifs. Of special note is Shevchenko’s early ballad ‘Kateryna’ (1838), dedicated to Vasilii Zhukovsky in memory of the purchase of Shevchenko's freedom. In it he tells the tale of a Ukrainian girl seduced by a Russian soldier and abandoned with child—a symbol of the tsarist imposition of serfdom in Ukraine.
Although Shevchenko's early poetic achievements were evident to his contemporaries, it was not until his second period (1843–5) that through his poetry he gained the stature of a national bard. Having spent eight months in Ukraine at that time, Shevchenko realized the full extent of his country's misfortune under tsarist rule and his own role as that of a spokesperson for his nation's aspirations through his poetry. He wrote the poems ‘Rozryta mohyla’ (The Ransacked Grave, 1843), ‘Chyhyryne, Chyhyryne’ (O Chyhyryn, Chyhyryn, 1844), and ‘Son’ (A Dream, 1844) in reaction to what he saw in Ukraine. In ‘Son’ he portrayed with bitter sarcasm the arbitrary lawlessness of tsarist rule. Shevchenko’s talent for satire is also apparent in his 1845 poems ‘Velykyi l'okh,’ ‘Kavkaz,’ ‘Kholodnyi Iar,’ and ‘I mertvym, i zhyvym …’ (To the Dead and the Living.). ‘Velykyi l'okh, ’a ‘mystery’ in three parts, is an allegory that summarizes Ukraine's passage from freedom to captivity. In ‘Kavkaz’ Shevchenko universalizes Ukraine's fate by turning to the myth of Prometheus, the free spirit terribly punished for rebelling against the gods, yet eternally reborn. He localizes the action in the Caucasus, whose inhabitants suffered a fate similar to that of the Ukrainians under tsarism. In his poetic epistle ‘I mertvym, i zhyvym …’ Shevchenko turns his bitterness and satire against the Ukrainians themselves, reminding them that only in ‘one's own house’ is there ‘one's own truth’ and entreating them to realize their national potential, stop serving foreign masters, and become honorable people worthy of their history and heritage, in their own free land.
Similarly, in his poem ‘Try lita’ (1845), which has also been used as the name of the second period of Shevchenko’s poetic creativity and the body of work he wrote at that time, he presents his own ‘awakening’ to the shame around him. Shevchenko laments his lost innocence and scorns the coming new year ‘swaddled’ in one more ukase. His scorn for the inactivity of his compatriots is also echoed in the poem ‘Mynaiut' dni, mynaiut' nochi’ (Days Pass, Nights Pass, 1845), in which somnolent inactivity is seen as far worse than death in chains. In December 1845 Shevchenko composed a cycle of poems titled ‘Davydovi psalmy’ (David’s Psalms).
Shevchenko wrote his poetic cycle ‘V kazemati’ (In the Casemate) in the spring of 1847 during his arrest and interrogation in Saint Petersburg. It marks the beginning of the most difficult, late period of his life (1847–57). The 13 poems of the cycle contain reminiscences (the famous lyrical poem ‘Sadok vyshnevyi kolo khaty’ [The Cherry Orchard by the House]); reflections on the fate of the poet and his fellow members of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood; and poignant reassertions of his beliefs and his commitment to Ukraine. Throughout his exile, Shevchenko's views did not change. But his poems grew more contemplative and reflective. In his ‘bootleg booklets’ he continued writing autobiographical, lyrical, narrative, historical, political, religious, and philosophical poems. Of special interest is his long poem ‘Moskaleva krynytsia’ (The Soldier's Well, 1847, 2d variant 1857), which reveals Shevchenko's preoccupation with the themes of inhumanity and the capacity to accept and forgive. A comparison of its two variants provides an insight into Shevchenko’s maturation as a poet and thinker.
Varied and rich are the poems devoted to narratives and description motivated by his memories of peasant life. Shevchenko uses folk-song elements to depict sadness, parting, loneliness, folkways, motherhood, women’s harsh fate, and the longing for happiness. His poetic style is marked by the use of simple language, concrete descriptions, metaphors, and personification. Shevchenko consistently refined his use of folkloric material. He expanded the use of ancient symbolism and made full use of the expressivity of folk songs. His adaption and transformation of folkloric elements was so successful that many of his poems became folk songs (such as Reve ta stohne Dnipr shyrokyi [The Mighty Dnieper Roars and Bellows]) in their own right.
Shevchenko sporadically reiterated his political convictions and continued pointing to the tsarist enslavement of individuals (serfdom) and nations. In his poem ‘Poliakam’ (To the Poles, 1847), he once again called for a Polish-Ukrainian pan-Slavic brotherhood. Shevchenko used a Kazakh legend in his short poem ‘U Boha za dveryma lezhala sokyra’ (Behind God’s Door Lay an Ax, 1848) to describe in allegorical terms the Kazakhs’ misfortunes under Russian rule. Satire remained part of his poetic arsenal. In the poem ‘Tsari’ (Tsars, 1848, revised 1858) he presented killing, debauchery, incest, and adultery as typical of royal courts, including those of King David of Israel and Grand Prince Volodymyr the Great. The successful combination of an offhand burlesque style with bitter invective gave Shevchenko a powerful but somewhat veiled weapon in his attack on monarchism in general and tsarism in particular. Much more direct are his accusations against the tsars in ‘Irzhavets'’ (1847, revised 1858).
Parallel to the motifs of the seduced girl and the unwed mother, which occur frequently in Shevchenko's poems, is the motif of incest. It appears in ‘Tsari’ and ‘Vid' ma’ and forms the basis for ‘Kniazhna’ (The Princess, 1847). Although in many of his poems Shevchenko harshly attacked the hypocrisy of the church and clergy, he remained steadfast in his belief that divine justice would triumph one day not only in Ukraine, but throughout the world. His millenarian vision appears in many of his poems, but it is perhaps best encapsulated in the following lines from ‘I Arkhimed i Halilei’ (Both Archimedes and Galileo, 1860): ‘An d on the reborn earth / There will be no enemy, no tyrant / There will be a son, and there will be a mother, / And there will be people on the earth.’
The last period of Shevchenko's creativity began after his return from exile in 1857 and ended with his death in 1861. It is marked in his works by more frequent allusions to the Bible and classical literature and by the increasingly dominant role of contemplative lyricism.
The novellas Shevchenko wrote while in exile were not published during his lifetime. They reflect the influence of the satirical-exposé prose of Nikolai Gogol, but also contain many asides (excursions into the past, inserted episodes, authorial comments, reminiscences, and commentaries). Although written in Russian, they contain many Ukrainianisms. The first two of them—‘Naimychka’ (The Servant Girl, 1852–3) and ‘Varnak’ (The Convict, 1853–4)— share the anti-serfdom themes of Shevchenko's Ukrainian poems with the same titles. ‘Kniaginia’ (The Princess, 1853) is similar in theme to his poem ‘Kniazhna.’ The remaining six novellas—‘Muzykant’ (The Musician, 1854–5), ‘Neschastnyi’ (The Unfortunate Man, 1855), ‘Kapitansha’ (The Captain’s Woman, 1855), ‘Bliznetsy’ (The Twins, 1855), ‘Khudozhnik’ (The Artist, 1856), and ‘Progulka s udovol’stviiem i ne bez morali’ (A Stroll with Pleasure and Not without a Moral, 1856–8)— are not thematically similar to any particular poems. Shevchenko also kept a daily diary in Russian; it is of great value in interpreting his poetic works and an important source for studying his intellectual interests and development.
Shevchenko has held a unique position in Ukrainian intellectual history, and the importance of his poetry for Ukrainian culture and society cannot be underestimated. His Kobzar marks the beginning of a new era in Ukrainian literature and in the development of the modern Ukrainian language. Through his poetry, Shevchenko legitimized the use of Ukrainian as a language of modern literature. His poems’ revolutionary and political content found resonance among other captive peoples. The earliest translations of his poems—mainly into Polish, Russian, Czech, and German—appeared while he was still alive. By the 1990s parts of the Kobzar had been translated into more than 100 languages. Shevchenko's poetry has also become a source of inspiration for many other works of literature, music, and art.
Although Shevchenko is known primarily because of his poetry, he was also an accomplished artist; 835 of his art works are extant, and another 270 of his known works have been lost. Although trained as an academic artist in Saint Petersburg, Shevchenko moved beyond stereotypical historical and mythological subjects to realistic depictions on ethnographic themes, such as his painting A Peasant Family (1844), often expressing veiled criticism of the absence of personal, social, and national freedom under tsarist domination. His portraits have a broad social range of subjects, from simple peasants and petty officials to prominent Ukrainian and Russian cultural figures, Ukrainian historical figures , members of former Cossack starshyna families, and members of the imperial nobility. They are remarkable for the way Shevchenko uses light to achieve sensitive three-dimensional modeling. He painted or sketched over 150 portraits, 43 of them of himself. He also painted and drew numerous landscapes and recorded such Ukrainian architectural monuments as The Vydubychi Monastery (1844), Bohdan’s Church in Subotiv (1845), The Ascension Cathedral in Pereiaslav (1845), The Ruins of Subotiv (1845), The Pochaiv Monastery from the South (1846), and Askoldova Mohyla (1846). While in exile he depicted the folkways of the Kirghiz and Kazak people. Shevchenko frequently turned in his paintings and drawings to literary, historical, and mythological motifs. He was also very proficient in watercolor, aquatint, and etching. On 2 September 1860 the Imperial Academy of Arts recognized his mastery by designating him an academician-engraver.
4.Styles in arts of that period demonstrated the variety and richness of manifestations. The end of the XVIII century was marked by intermingled rococo and baroque influences. Rococo, also referred as “late Baroque”, became the style of ornate, florid, and playful decorativeness. Rococo influences in Ukrainian sculpture can be seen in iconostases, where carved shell motifs and interlace patterns replaced grapevines and acanthus foliage. Examples of Rococo style in Ukraine are: the Cathedral of God’s Mother Nativity (1752–1763) in Kozelets; the Roman Catholic Churches of the Dominican order in Lviv (1747–1764); the town hall (1751) in Buchach, Galicia.
Classicism in sculpture was represented by Ivan P. Martos and M. Kozlovsky, who worked in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and by K. Klimchenko, who worked in Rome. Ukrainian classicist painters had an important influence on the development of Russian painting; among these painters were A. Losenko, who founded the historical school at the Russian Academy of Arts; D. Levitsky, who was the leading portraitist of his time; and Levitsky's student V. Borovikovsky, who painted icons and portraits. All of them worked in St. Petersburg.
Losenko, Antin, ( 1737 -1773 ) Painter; a leading exponent of historical painting in the classicist style. He was brought to Saint Petersburg to sing in the imperial court choir in 1744. After his voice changed, he was sent to study art under I. Argunov (1753–8) and at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1759–60), which gave him bursaries to study in Paris (1760–5) and Rome (1766–9). Losenko became a member of and professor at the academy in 1770, served as its director (1772–3), and wrote its textbook on human proportions (1772). His oeuvre includes paintings on biblical and mythological themes, such as The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (1762), Abraham's Sacrifice (1765), Cain (1768), Abel (1769), Zeus and Themis (1769), and Hector's Parting with Andromache (1773); paintings on historical themes, such as The Holy Apostle Andrew (1769) and Grand Prince Volodymyr and Rohnida (1770); portraits of prominent personalities; a self-portrait; and approx 200 drawings of nude figures and parts of the body, which were held up as models of excellence to students at the academy for many years. Losenko introduced to Russian painting the pompier style and influenced the work of several artists, including I. Akimov, P. Sokolov, and G. Ugriumov. Most of his works are preserved at the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg and the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow.
Levytsky, Dmytro H. ( 1735 -1822 ). The most prominent portraitist of the classicist era in the Russian Empire. He acquired his basic training from his father, Hryhorii K. Levytsky, and helped him do engravings for the Kyivan Cave Monastery Press. In 1753–6 he helped his father and Aleksii Antropov decorate Saint Andrew's Church in Kyiv. From 1758 to 1761 he worked in Saint Petersburg, where he likely studied with Antropov, L.-J.-F. Lagrené, and G. Valeriani. From 1762, while living in Moscow he was a portraitist in great demand among the Russian aristocracy. He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1769, and he won the highest award at the summer exhibition in 1770 held by the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts and was elected a member of the academy. A teacher of portraiture at the academy (1771–88), he retired to Ukraine in 1788, but in 1795 he returned to Saint Petersburg to become portraitist at the imperial court.
Building on the baroque, classicism, and Western European traditions, Levytsky created a school of portrait painting. His portraits reveal his expert knowledge of drawing, composition, color, and the appropriate gesture. He executed over 100 portraits, including ones of Empress Catherine II (Portrait of Catherine II, 1783), other members of the Russian imperial family, King Stanislaus I Leszczyński, the French encyclopedist D. Diderot (now in the Geneva Museum of Art and History), his own father, brother, and daughter (Portrait of the Artist's Daughter), and six of the first graduates of the Smolny Institute for aristocrats' daughters. Many Ukrainian (eg, L. Myrypolsky, S. Maiatsky, L. Kalynovsky) and Russian portraitists studied with Levytsky at the academy, and his works influenced Volodymyr Borovykovsky.
Borovykovsky, Volodymyr ( 1757 - 1825 ). Iconographer and portrait painter, son of Luka Borovyk (d 1775) who was a Cossack fellow of the banner and an iconographer. Borovykovsky was trained in art by his father and uncle and then in 1788 went to study portrait painting under Dmytro H. Levytsky at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. In 1793 he became an academician there. Until 1787 Borovykovsky lived and worked in Ukraine. During his career he painted many churches, icons, and iconostases, only some of which have been preserved: the icons of Christ (1784) and the Virgin Mary (1784 and 1787), now in Kyiv, the icon of SS Thomas and Basil (1770s, in Myrhorod), the iconostases and wall paintings in the village churches in Kybyntsi in the Poltava region and Ichnia in the Chernihiv region, several icons in the Church of Saint Catherine in Kherson, the religious painting King David (1785), now in Saint Petersburg, and the iconostasis in the Church of the Holy Protectress in the village of Romanivka in the Chernihiv region (1814–15). Borovykovsky's religious art departed from the established norms of Byzantine iconography in the Russian Empire and tended towards a realistic approach.
Borovykovsky painted about 160 portraits, among them Ukrainian public figures, including the Poltava burgomaster P. Rudenko (1778), O. Kapnist (1780), the wife of Oleksander Bezborodko with his daughters (Portrait of O. Bezborodko with her Daughters, 1803), Bishop M. Desnytsky, the mayor of Kyiv P. Borshchevsky (1816), Dmytro Troshchynsky (1819), and A. Rodzianko (1821). Among the large number of official portraits he painted are the full-figure portraits of Catherine II (Portrait of Catherine II, 1794) and Paul I (Portrait of Tsar Paul I, 1800), Prince A. Kurakin (Portrait of Prince Kurakin, 1799), and the Russian poets G. Derzhavin (Portrait of G. Derzhavin, 1811) and Vasilii Zhukovsky. At the beginning of the 1790s Borovykovsky began to paint miniatures and portraits of women in the Ukrainian iconographic style. Adhering to the spirit of classicism, he promoted West European traditions through his art. The largest number of Borovykovsky's works can be found in the museums of Saint Petersburg and Moscow. In Ukraine they can be seen in the museums of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Poltava, Dnipropetrovske, Kherson, and Symferopil. A few of his paintings are in the United States.
In architecture classicism is represented by palaces of Ossolinskis in Lviv (1827), P. Galagan’s palace in Sokirintsy (1829); city architecture such as the new building of the Kiev Mohyla Academy (1822), the Bezborodko Nezhin Lyceum (1824), the Kiev University (1837–1842): church architecture of the Church Rotunda on the Askold Grave in Kiev (1809–1816), the Transfiguration Cathedral in Bolgrad (1833–1838), the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Paul in Sevastopol (1843).
A special place in Ukrainian fine arts belongs to T. Shevchenko, the alumnus of the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. He was interested in realistic depiction on ethnographic themes, in portrait painting, and etching. He painted or sketched over 150 portraits, 43 of them were of himself. He also painted and drew landscapes and architectural monuments. While in exile, he depicted folkways of the Kirghiz and Kazakh people. In 1860 the Imperial Academy of arts recognized his mastery by giving him the rank of an academician-engraver
Practical Class 7
Ukrainian Culture on the Path to National Revival (1850s – 1921)
1. The main epoch tendencies of the European culture.
2. Education and sciences in Ukrainian lands in the context of Gromada movement.
3. Variety of trends in Ukrainian arts.
4. Cultural life at the turmoil of revolutionary events.
1.During the second half of the XIX century Europe passed through historical events that dramatically changed its cultural space. The idea of freedom manifested in the period of French revolution (1789–1794) assumed a new political content: struggle for national freedom and state independence. Period of 1848–1849 is usually called the Spring of Nations; it was the time when peoples of many European countries, among which there was Austria-Hungary, maintained their right to social freedoms and independence. Revolutions and civil revolts took place over all the Europe. Revolutionary inspirations in European culture were connected with spreading of ideologies (logical and scientifically relevant sets of ideas that constituted goals, expectations, and actions of social groups/ classes). Since the mid-XIX century the most popular were the following ideologies: nationalism (initiated by romantically oriented German intellectual J. Herder in late 1770s) that declared the right of a nation to statehood; liberalism (initiated since the Age of Enlightenment) that declared the importance of liberty and equal rights, constitutionalism, capitalism, freedom of religion and socialism (has initiated by French utopian philosopher K. Saint-Simon at the beginning of the XIX century) that advocated common ownership and cooperative management; Marxism (a modification of socialism, founded by K. Marx and F. Engels in the mid-XIX century) that centered around political tools to revolutionize society for communism. Often ideological preferences of cultural agents defined directions and content of their creative activity.
Liberal reforms in Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires were mixed with recurrent ideological pressure and permanent oppression of any manifestation of Ukrainian idea, which was actively elaborated in arts and Humanities of that period. Partly liberal reforms in Russia, especially abolition of serfdom in 1861, and implementation of local territories governing (zemstvo), marked the very beginning of civil society. Educational policies, medicine service, public welfare, elaboration of social infrastructure were managed by zemstvo.
Ideological and social innovations of the epoch were accompanied by impetuous industrial and technological development. Close link of science and technology intensified their mutual dependence and development and provoked educational reforms. New era of technologies started: machine tools were used by engineers to manufacture other machines. Invention and improvement of steam engine provoked a new wave of Industrial Revolution. Since that time all technological inventions and innovations has been based on scientific achievements.
2.Since the XIX century the general tendency of Ukrainian culture has been outlined: Ukrainian culture was researched by Ukrainian scholars in the framework of Humanities and was developed by them; Ukrainian scholars, scientists, artists who were besides Ukrainian cultural studies in Ukrainian lands under Russian rule were identified with Russian culture, and those in Ukrainian lands under Habsburg rule were identified with Austrian culture.
Development of Ukrainian culture of that period was closely connected with gromadas, clandestine societies of Ukrainian intellectuals, which appeared in Ukrainian lands of the Russian Empire in the second half of the XIX century. At the beginning gromada members avoided any revolutionary declarations and regarded their own activities as strictly cultural and educational. Only at the end of the XIX century gromadas began to promote political issues and were involved in political actions. Then a generational difference emerged among gromadas: associations consisting of young people became known as “young gromadas” and those with older members became known as “old gromadas”.
The hromada movement, which originated in the Russian Empire in the late 1850s, played a decisive role in the Ukrainian national revival and the development of Ukrainian national consciousness. Because of police persecution and the mobility of their members, most hromadas existed for only a few years. Members differed in political conviction; what united them was a love for the Ukrainian language and traditions and the desire to serve the people. The general aims of the hromadas were to instill through self-education a sense of national identity in their members and to improve through popular education the living standard of the peasant masses. Members were encouraged to use Ukrainian and to study Ukrainian history, folklore, and language. Each hromada maintained a small library of illegal books and journals from abroad for the use of its members. The larger hromadas organized drama groups and choirs, and staged Ukrainian plays and concerts for the public. The hromadas were active in the Sunday-school movement: they financed and staffed schools and prepared textbooks. Avoiding contacts with revolutionary circles, the hromadas regarded their own activities as strictly cultural and educational. However, in the 1880s, under pressure from younger members, these societies gradually became involved in some political activity as well