The Russian <em>intelligentsia</em> and the Ukrainian question. A comparison between P.B. Struve and N.S. Trubeckoj.

Abstract

The article focuses on the relationship between two authoritative members of the Russian intelligentsia, P.B. Struve and N.S. Trubeckoj, and the Ukrainian question at the beginning of the 20th century. Two debates, one involving Struve and an anonymous Ukrainian in 1911-1912, and the other between Trubeckoj and the Ukrainian historian D. Dorošenko in 1927-1928, are presented and compared in order to highlight similarities in terms of content and cultural approach to the issue of Ukraine’s cultural and political independence from Russia. A shared cultural background, as well as the indisputable influence exerted by Struve on the Eurasian movement founded by Trubeckoj and other emigrant intellectuals, are considered the main causes of the convergent opinions examined in the article. In their writings Struve and Trubeckoj both express the need for a larger, pan-Russian cultural entity, in which the highest level is not achievable by Ukrainian culture by reason of its regional or local nature. Consequently, they roundly condemn the tendency towards separatism of the Ukrainian intelligentsia.