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Annotation
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Current events in Ukraine have required domestic historians to answer the question about the features and stages of the formation of Ukrainian identity. One of the serious attempts of such a response is the monograph of V.A. Matveyev “The Ukrainian crisis of 2014: a retrospective measurement” (Rostov /on Don, 2015). The author of this article seeks to highlight one of the fateful moments of the formation of the Ukrainian nation, which V.A. Matveyev considers in the above-mentioned work, relying on the original literary sources, which, in our opinion, is an interesting addition to the work of this author. This moment was a period of civil war. The sources that we analyze are M.A. Bulgakov’s novel "White Guard", and his play "Days of the Turbins", as well as the edition of one of the early chapters of the "White Guard". Reference to them makes it possible to saturate with ethnopolitical and sociocultural specifics the atmosphere of the events of late 1918 – early 1919 in Ukraine and especially in Kiev from the point of view of the realities and prospects of the policy of "Ukrainization" conducted by the then local political forces. We conclude that, based on the works of M.A. Bulgakov, two models of “Ukrainization” can be characterized – the hetman and the “Petliura” ones. The first is distinguished by a certain tolerance for non-Ukrainian elements, the second – by absolute intolerance towards them. The population of Kiev of that time was represented mainly by Russian speakers (the intellectual class, middle classes), which did not approve of Ukrainization (for example, the Turbins family, their environment, etc.). The Ukrainianspeaking layers of Kiev (completely or in part) were, above all, the proletarian and lumpen-proletarian layers. The growth of pro-Ukrainian sentiments in their extremist version experienced a rapid upward trend during the influx of Petliura Directorate troops in Kiev. At the same time, among the speakers of the Ukrainian language in Kiev were supporters of Bolshevism, proletarian internationalism, brotherhood of nations. Petliurism, total Ukrainization, etc. did not then enjoy the general support of the Ukrainian population. At the same time, “parochial elements” played the role of an accelerator of the Ukrainian ethnic mobilization. With their active participation, a phenomenon matured slowly but steadily later critically called in Soviet times “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism”. Today, Russian historical science is faced with the important task of debunking this phenomenon, which inflicts great harm on Russian-Ukrainian relations, and to this end, domestic historians can and must use sources of diverse nature that can reveal the genesis of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism to combat its manifestations.
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Keywords
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Ukrainian identity, Ukrainian crisis, South Russian separatism, “Ukrainization”, Central Rada, hetman, Directory, “White Guard”, “Days of the Turbins”, Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism.
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