INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF THE USSR Ukrainian Review MUNICH 1956 The views expressed in the ~ev~ew are those of their authors. They are not bound by any single political philosophy nor are they to be construed as representing the point of view of the INSTITUTE. Material contained herein may be reproduced, provided reference is made to this publication All comments and inquiries are most welcome and should ' be addressed to: Institute for the Study of the USSR Editor, The Ukrainian Review Augustenstrasse 46 Munich, Germany Verantwortlich fiir den Inhalt: Prof. Petro Kurinny Herausgeber und Verlag: Institut zur Erforschung der UdSSR, e. V., Miiccfien 37, AugustenstraDe 46, Telefon 5 81 27. Printed in Germany by Buchdrudrerei Dr. Peter Belej, Miinchen 13, SchleiDheimer Strafie 71 The UKRAINIANREVIEW is a publication of the INSTITUTEFOR THE STUDYOF THE USSR. Its purpose is to present the free world an analysis of contemporary events and detailed studies of Ukrainian history and culture by persons who know the system intimately. The INSTITUTEFOR THE STUDYOF THE USSR was organized on July 8, 1950. It is a free corporation of scientists and men and women of letters who have left the Soviet Union and are now engaged in research on their homeland. Any member of the Soviet emigration, irrespective of his national origin, political affiliations or place of residence, is eligible to take part in the work of the INSTITUTEprovided he is not a Communist Party member or sympathizer. All comments and inquiries are most welcome and should be addressed to: Institute for the Study of the USSR Editor, Ukrainian Review Augustenstrasse 46 Munich, Germany - CONTENTS V . Holubnychyj. The Views of M . Volobuyev and V . Dobrohaiyev and Party Criticism .............. 5 V . Plushch. The union for the Liberation of the Ukraine . '13 I . Krylov. Educational and Pedagogical Aims of the Union for the Liber- ation of the Ukraine ............ 31 B . Krupnytsky. Mazepa and Soviet Historiography . 49 A . Poplujko. The Economy of the Ukraine Today . 54 A . Hirsh. Conditioned Reflexes and Despotism . 88 A . Kravchenko. A Case of "Voluntary" Resettlement . 98 Notes and Reviews .............. 122 The Views of M. Volobuyev and V. Dobrohaiyev and Party Criticism V. HOLUBNYCHYJ. This article aims at elucidating the role of Volobuyev in Ukrainian economic affairs in the 1920's. It is hoped also to make the contemporary phenomenon of Ukrainian national Communism clearer to the reader. Mykhailo Volobuyev entered contemporary Ukrainian history through writing only two articles called, "On the problem of the Ukrainian economy" which were printed in the central theoretical organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine Bilshovyk Ukrainy, Nos. 2 and 3, 1928. Those who knew Mykhailo Volobuyev personally maintain that he was not an economist bu.t merely a pedagogue.' This statement is supported to a certain extent by my own observation of Ukrainian and Russian economic publications of the 1920's where Volobuyev's name is never mentioned. More- over, before Volobuyev wrote his articles, he was unknown to the readers of the principle Party newspapers and journals including Bilshovyk Ukrainy. His name cannot be found among the more important Party members in the Ukraine at that time. However, as his articles were carried by such an influential journal, it can be assumed that he was either a teacher in a Party school, that he had strong supporters in the Central Committee or among the editors of Bilshovyk Ukrainy, or lastly that the ideas which he put forward were similar to those of the Central Committee at that time. Volobuyev's economic conception is not new. His historical merit lies only in the fact that he successfully generalized and combined a number of facts into one system and voiced it at a most expedient moment. This was the period of Shumskyism and Khvylovism in the Communist Party of the Ukraine, a national Communist philosophic, artistic and political doctrine of Ukrainian Soviet independence. This doctrine needed an economic basis and it was provided by Volobuyev. In his articles Volobuyev gives facts, ideas and theses already known from the works of historians of the Ukrainian economy such as Professors M.. Slabchenko and 0. Ohloblyn and in the writings of his contemporaries - Viktor Dobrohaiyev and Hryhoryz Hrynko which he united into a new doctrine. Volobuyev borrowed the principle arguments concerning the Ukra- P. Radcfienko and K. Batyu. Nasha Borotba (Our Struggle), Regensburg, No. 3, 1946, p. 58. inian economic situation within the USSR from Viktor Dobrohaiyev, who should really be considered the inspirer of Volobuyevism. Viktor Dobrohaiyev was a young and able economist who wrote on the budget in the Kharkov journal Khozaistvo Ukrainy, taught economics and also worked in the Narkomfin (People's Commissariat of Finance) of the Ukrainian SSR. Du~ingthe revolution he was a member of the so-called national group of Kobelaky Communists, but did not join the Communist Party. He died of tuberculosis in the early 1930'~.~ Mykhailo Volobuyev's work was divided into two main parts: the economic situation of the Ukraine in tsarist Russia and its situation in the USSR. In the first part which was based on factual material from Professors Slabchenko and Ohloblyn and on the Lenin-Marxist doctrine on imperialism, Volobuyev defined the colonial situation of the Ukraine within the economy of the Russian empire and st the same time develops a new thesis on the meaning of the colony. While formulating his own theoretical theses, Volobuyev starts by discus- sing the teaching of the Russian Marxist historian, M. Pokrovsky who main- tained that the Russian empire itself was a colony of the West European imper- ialists, but at the same time had its own colonies in the conquered borderlands. However, Pokrovsky includes only the countries of Central Asia and the Cau- casus as Russian colonies and does not mention the Ukraine, Belorussia, Poland or Finland. This is not by chance, for according to Pokrovsky's definition, a colony is a country which is less civilized than the metropolis but which supplies the metropolis with its raw materials and serves for the export of capital. Volobuyev pointed out that Pokrovsky's definition is too general and, "un- suitable for determining the place of the Ukraine, Poland and other countries in the economy of the empire because these countries were not and are not on a lower cultural level than Russia" and in addition, he commented: "The economic r61e of these countries can be described as a market for raw materials. All of them had their own processing industries. But this does not mean that they were not colonies of Ru~sia."~ Volobuyev, therefore, defined colony differently. He declared that a colony is not necessarily more backward economically than its metropolis. In order to prove this thesis, he introduced new meanings and divided the term colony into "European" a.nd "Asiatic" types. In the Asiatic type, the backward economic formations are exploited by the advanced capitalistic economy of the metro- polis. The European type is capitalist and developed, but politically dependent. The Ukraine belongs to the European type of colony. Volobuyev quotes sta- tistical indices on the exploitation of the Ukraine by tsarist Russia. According to this data, from 1893 until 1910, Russia had 32,896 million rubles of revenue from the Ukraine, but plowed back only 25,052 million rubles. In the second part of his work, Volobuyev hinted that the economic situation of the Ukraine in the USSR had not changed, compared with pre-revolutionary times. Here he referred to articles by Dobrohaiyev in Khozyaistvo Ukrainy in which the latter showed on the strength of budget data from the Narkomfin of Ibid., p. 58. Bilshovyk Ukrainy, Kharkov, 1928, No. 2, p. 12. the Ukrainian SSR, that Moscow witheld 20°/o of the state revenue of the Ukraine during 1925-1927. At the same time, Volobuyev sharply criticized the "remnants" and the "heritage" of colonialism which still existed in the USSR. He said: One of the most glaring manifestations of the old heritage is the fact that a considerable number of Soviet officials at the center and on the spot regard the Soviet Union not as a union of equal units whose aim is the free development of national republics, but as a step toward the liquidation of those republics and as a beginning of the so-called "sole and indivisible" state. Volobuyev also criticized in detail the Gosplan of the USSIZ for its project to divide the Ukraine economically into two parts. Basing this argument on Hrynko's article, he wrote that: "The All-Union organs should approach the Ukraine as a national, economic entity." Quoting the well-known discussion between Stalin and Trotsky concerning the question of socialism in one country, Volobuyev though supporting Stalin, went even further. He asserted that it was possible to build socialism in the USSR because the USSR was not one country! In addition, Volobuyev demanded that the Gosplan of the USSR should: "Accelerate the rate uf increase of Ukrainian industry", especially the metal- lurgical, textile and consumer goods industries. He attacked Gosplan for trans- ferring the center of the sugar industry from the Ukraine4 and ridiculed the fact that the Institute of the Sugar Industry was built in Moscow and not in the Ukraix~e.~ Lastly, referring to the first half of his work, Volobuyev argued his general thesis on the necessity of the economic independence of the Ukraine as follows. As the Ukraine was (and he hints remains), a European type of colony, that is to say, advanced and civilized compared with the metropolis, it must join the future world socialist economy as an independent economic unit and not as a part of the USSR.