Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/329

Rh of the United Slavs. The poet Ševčenko expanded Kostomarov's ideas to constitute a more profoundly conceived cultural panslavism. Kostomarov's society was suppressed in 1847. Kostomarov, Ševčenko, and several other members, were banished from Little Russia and punished in other ways, Ševčenko being forced into the army and treated by Nicholas as previously described. Henceforward the use of Little Russian was regarded with increasing disfavour. On the other hand, under Austrian rule, Lemberg tended more and more to become the literary centre of the Little Russians.

Both in Russia and in Galicia the Little Russian problem was increasingly complicated by the growth of socialism and the development of political propaganda. The Little Russians became involved in relationships, not merely with the Russian administrative machine and with Russian tendencies towards economic centralisation, but also with the Poles and the Jews. There are now in Ukraine more than five million Jews whose civilisation is divergent from that of the Russians, so that they constitute an ethnographical and cultural whole. Whilst Kostomarov regarded the problem from the nationalist outlook and was influenced by the national panslavist movement, Dragomanov, who had been dismissed from the university in 1876, in his political writings of the eighties interpreted the essential ideas of Kostomarov's federation in the sense of autonomy and self-government, endeavouring to effect an organic union between these ideas and the demands of moderate socialism and democratic constitutionalism. This was done without prejudice to the scientific question whether the Little Russians really constitute a peculiar nationality. Dragomanov did not favour the idea of political separatism, and in a literary feud with Lamanskii he actually opposed the separatist movement.

I am here concerned solely with the facts of historical development, and shall not enter into a detailed discussion of the question whether extant linguistic and other differences suffice to constitute a distinct literature and a distinct nationality. History teaches that languages and peoples differentiate owing to the co-operation of numerous factors, and that, among these, political factors play a notable part. When the inhabitants of a particular area feel themselves to be a distinct nation and organise a national literature for themselves, it is their will to this end that is decisive, and the sentiment