키릴-메토디우스 형제단과 근대 우크라이나의 민족 정체성 - 형제단 지식인들의 담론 구성을 중심으로

Abstract

The secret society Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood (which existed around from the end of 1845 till March 1847) occupies a special position in the development of the Ukrainian national consciousness. Though there were influential Ukrainian intellectuals in the first half of the nineteenth century, nobody presented the question of the Ukrainian national consciousness in the language of modem political thought except the Brotherhood. This organization was the first and only group of Ukrainian national intellectuals who elaborated the concept of identity and future of the Ukrainian nation. In this paper 1 did not try to examine the activities itself of the members of the Brotherhood or persons related with it in a chronological order, but only scrutinized some aspects of their thought in relation to the Ukrainian national identity. 1 analyzed their discourses focusing on five points: 1) the name of the country 2) the separate existence of the Ukrainian nation 3) Pan-Slavism and Ukraine 4) West and Ukraine 5) the Cossacks and the Ukrainian identity. The Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood was a group of Intellectuals who consciously used the name Ukraine instead of Little Russia and acknowledged the existence of Ukrainians as a separate nation that has its territory in the both Banks of the Dnepr River. For them the religious differences between the East - and the West Bank did not matter in the building of national identity. The Brotherhood intellectuals were advocates of liberal Pan-Slavism. They thought that solidarity of all Slavic people and their unification into a confederation would give possibilities to overcome the pains Ukrainians were experiencing under the oppressive Tsarist regime. Though there were some critical remarks against west Europeans and their civilization, the Brotherhood intellectuals did not try to base the Ukrainian national identity on the West-Slav(Ukraine) dichotomy. Rather there was a slight tint of Russia-Ukraine dichotomy in their discourses. Intellectuals around the Brotherhood were people who wanted to unite the Ukrainian people by the legacy of Cossack identity. These elements are also present in the process of state-building of the independent Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union.