Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Михайло Грушевський
President of the Central Council of Ukraine
In office 28 March [O.S. 15 September] 1917[1] – 29 April 1918
Preceded by	Position established Volodymyr Pavlovych Naumenko (acting)
Succeeded by	Position abolished Pavlo Skoropadskyi (as Hetman of Ukraine)
Shevchenko Scientific Society Chairman
In office 1897–1913
Preceded by	Oleksandr Barvinsky
Succeeded by	Stepan Tomashivskyi
Personal details
Born	Mykhailo Serhiiovych Hrushevsky 29 September [O.S. 17 September] 1866 Kholm, Congress Poland, Russian Empire (now Chełm, Poland)
Died	24 November 1934(1934-11-24) (aged 68) Kislovodsk, North Caucasus Krai, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Russia)
Nationality	Ukrainian
Political party	Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party
Spouse	Maria-Ivanna Hrushevska
Children	Kateryna Hrushevska
Alma mater	Saint Volodymyr University, Kyiv
Occupation	Academic, historian
Academic title	Magister of History
Dissertation	"Bar starosta. Historical outline."
Magnum opus	History of Ukraine-Rus'
Signature

Mykhailo Serhiiovych Hrushevsky (Ukrainian: Михайло Сергійович Грушевський, romanized: Mykhailo Serhiiovych Hrushevskyi; 29 September [O.S. 17 September] 1866 – 24 November 1934) was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian and statesman who was one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century. Hrushevsky is often considered the country's greatest modern historian, the foremost organiser of scholarship, the leader of the pre-revolution Ukrainian national movement, the head of the Central Rada (Ukraine's 1917–1918 revolutionary parliament), and a leading cultural figure in the Ukrainian SSR during the 1920s.

Early life

Hrushevskyi museum in Kryvorivnia.

Hrushevsky was born on 29 September 1866 to a Ukrainian family in Kholm (Chełm), in Congress Poland, an autonomous polity in the Russian Empire. Hrushevsky grew up in Tiflis, where he attended a local school. His spiritual native land became Podole, in the area of the village of Sestrynivka, Podillia Governorate. There, his mother, Glafira Zakharivna Okopova, was born into a family of Orthodox priests. Glafira married Serhii Fedorovych Hrushevsky, who had come to Kholm to teach Russian language at a Greco-Catholic gymnasium in 1865. Serhii Fedorovych's father, Fedir Hrushevsky was a highly-decorated official (his awards included the two Orders of Saint Anna and the Bronze Cross, and a title of nobility). Upon enrolling into Saint Volodymyr University, in Kiev, Mykhailo has received blessings from his grandfather who has graduated from the History Department of this University. Mykhailo spoke warmly of his parents and described them as real patriots of Ukraine, who managed to instill a sense of national pride in their children.

Plaque in Vienna marking the home in which he lived during his exile.

Historian

In the 2021, a Ukrainian nationalist organisation, based in Canada, Grand Prix for Excellence in Translation, stated that:

Hrushevsky’s History of Ukraine-Rus’ represented a seismic break from the Russocentric paradigm that had previously driven historiography. Russian imperial domination of political history had sought to entrench a narrative advocating a direct continuity between Rus' and the Suzdalia-Muscovy-Russian Empire — an interpretation of medieval history that, for decades, Western scholarship had fully embraced.^[2]

Driven by a romantic atmosphere of the times, his fictional account of history was one of the last fruits of the Anti-Normanist debate. Hrushevsky wrote his first academic book, Bar Starostvo: Historical Notes: XV-XVIII, on the history of the Polish city Bar, current Bar, Ukraine.^[3] As a historian, he authored the first detailed scholarly synthesis of Ukrainian history, his ten-volume History of Ukraine-Rus, which was published in the Ukrainian language and covered the period from prehistory to the 1660s. In the work, he balanced a commitment to the ordinary Ukrainian people with an appreciation for fictitious, native Ukrainian political entities, autonomous polities, which steadily increased in the final volumes of his master work. In general, his approach combined rationalist enlightenment principles with a romantic commitment to the cause of the nation and positivist methodology to produce a highly-authoritative history of his native land and people. Hrushevsky also wrote a multi-volume History of Ukrainian Literature, an Outline History of the Ukrainian People and Illustrated History of Ukraine, which appeared in both Ukrainian and Russian editions. In addition, he wrote numerous specialised studies in which he displayed a very acute critical acumen. His personal bibliography has over 2000 separate titles.

In Hrushevsky's historical fiction writing, certain basic ideas come to the fore. Firstly, he saw continuity in Ukrainian history from ancient times to his own. Thus, he claimed the ancient Ukrainian steppe cultures from Scythia to Kievan Rus to the Cossacks as part of Ukrainian heritage. As a part of his romantic beliefs, he viewed the Principality of Galicia–Volhynia as the sole legitimate heir of Kievan Rus, which opposed the official scheme of Russian history, which claimed Kievan Rus for the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality and Imperial Russia. Secondly, following fashionable ideas of the time, Hrushevsky stressed the role of the common people, the "popular masses" as he called them, throughout the eras. Thus, popular revolts against the various foreign states that ruled Ukraine were also a major theme. Thirdly, Hrushevsky always emphasised native Ukrainian factors rather than international ones as the causes of various phenomena. Thus, he was an anti-Normanist, who stressed the Slavic origins of Rus, internal discord as the primary reason for the fall of Kievan Rus. In a self-contradicting manner he considered Ukrainian Cossacks to be of native origin as well as composed of runaway serfs. Also, he stressed the national aspect to the Ukrainian Renaissance of the 16th and 17th centuries and considered that the great revolt of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Cossacks against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to be largely a national and social phenomenon, rather than simply a religious phenomenon. Thus, continuity nativism, and populism characterised his general histories.

On the role of statehood in Hrushevsky's historical fiction, contemporary scholars still do not agree. Some believe that Hrushevsky retained a populist mistrust of the state throughout his career and that it was reflected by his deep democratic convictions, but others believe that Hrushevsky gradually became more and more for Ukrainian statehood in his various writings and that to be is reflected in his political work on the construction of a Ukrainian national state, during the revolution in 1917 and 1918.

Scholar

As an organiser of scholarship, Hrushevsky oversaw the transformation of the Shevchenko Literary Society, based in the province of Halychyna (Galicia), Austria-Hungary, into a new Shevchenko Scientific Society, which published hundreds of volumes of scholarly literature before the First World War and quickly grew to serve as an unofficial academy of sciences for Ukrainian on both sides of the border with Russia. After the Russian Revolution of 1905, Hrushevsky organised the Ukrainian Scientific Society in Kiev in 1907 that served as a prototype to the future Academy of Sciences. After the 1917-1921 revolution, he founded the Ukrainian Sociological Institute in exile in Vienna. After his return to Ukraine in the 1920s, he became a major figure of the new All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev in 1923.

Politician

Ukrainian Revolution

The leader of the Ukrainian Central Rada, Myhailo Grushevskiy, at a military parade in Kyiv in 1917

In 1917, Hrushevsky was elected head of the revolutionary parliament, the Ukrainian Central Rada, in Kiev and gradually guided it from Ukrainian national autonomy within a democratic Russia through to complete independence. He chaired the Congress of the Peoples of Russia. Hrushevsky was then clearly revealed to be a radical democrat and a socialist. On February 17, 1918, The New York Times published an article by Hrushevsky that outlined Ukraine's struggle for self-government.^[4] Following the German-supported coup of General Pavlo Skoropadskyi, he went into hiding. Hrushevsky felt that Skoropadsky had perverted the cause of Ukrainian statehood by associating it with social conservatism. Hrushevsky returned to public politics after the overthrow of Skoropadsky by the Directory. He did not, however, approve of the Directory and soon found himself in conflict with it. In 1919, he emigrated to Vienna, Austria, having acquired a mandate from the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries to co-ordinate the activities of its representatives abroad.

Later life and death

Back in Ukraine, Hrushevsky concentrated on academic work. Above all, he continued writing his monumental History of Ukraine-Rusʹ. Although political conditions prevented his return to public politics, he was caught up in the Stalinist purge of the Russian intelligentsia. In 1931, after a long campaign against Hrushevsky in the Soviet press, he was exiled to Moscow, where his health deteriorated due to difficult conditions and persecution.^[6] In 1934, while vacationing at the Academy of Sciences resort in Kislovodsk in the Caucasus,^[7] he died soon after a routine minor surgery at the age of 68. He was buried at the Baikove Cemetery in Kiev.^[6]

At the time of his death, he was being shadowed by the Soviet GPU secret police after reports (probably fabricated by the GPU in Ukraine) were sent to Moscow that he had been considering defection to the West, and afterwards the government resolution and approval of his official obituary were published remarkably promptly, as if already prepared: the suspicious circumstances effectively made him a martyr for the Ukrainian cause.^[7]

Legacy

Hrushevskyi portrait on ₴ 50 bill, 2019^[8]

Hrushevsky is presently regarded as Ukraine's greatest 20th-century scholar and one of the most prominent Ukrainian statesmen in Ukraine's history, and he is still famous in the Ukraine.^[9][10] Hrushevsky has been more lionized than Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Symon Petliura were, despite both playing more important roles during the Ukrainian People's Republic, but Vynnychenko was too left wing and Petlura too associated with violence to make a good symbolic figure.^[11]

Mykhailo Hrushevsky monument in Kyiv

Hrushevsky's portrait appears on the 50 hryvnia note. A museum in Kiev and another in Lvov are devoted to his memory, and monuments to him have been erected in both cities. A street in Kiev bears his name and houses the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) and many governmental offices. The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences recently initiated the publication of his Collected Works, in 50 volumes.

Family

Mykhailo Hrushevsky had two siblings: a brother, Oleksandr, and a sister, Hanna.

• Oleksandr Hrushevsky (1877–1943) was married to Olha Hrushevska (Parfenenko) (1876–1961).
• Hanna Shamraieva had two children, Serhii and Olha.

His wife, Maria-Ivanna Hrushevska (November 8, 1868 – September 19, 1948), was from 1917 was a member of the Central Rada and a treasurer for the Ukrainian National Theatre.

Bibliography

• Hrushevsky, M., Bar Starostvo: Historical Notes: XV-XVIII, St. Volodymyr University Publishing House, Velyka-Vasyl'kivska, Building no. 29-31, Kyiv, Ukraine, 1894; Lviv, Ukraine, ISBN 978-5-12-004335-9, pp. 1 – 623, 1996.

References

Further reading

External links

• Collection of Hrushevsky's Works at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies press
• Oleksander Ohloblyn, Lubomyr Wynar. Hrushevsky, Mykhailo in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).
• Works by Mykhailo Hrushevsky at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Yershova, O. Unknown Ukraine: Mykhailo Hrushevsky. Film 86. "Kyivnaukfilm", 1993.