‘And There Will Be No Russian Tsar and No Polish Lord…’: The Ukrainian Populist Utopia of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius in a Transnational Perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT The secret revolutionary society of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius (1845–1847) was the first modern Ukrainian political organization. Its political aims were an abolition of serfdom, overthrowing the Russian tsar, and democratisation of the Russian tsardom. Among the Brotherhood's members were the ‘founding fathers' of Ukrainian national movement: Mykola Kostomarov (1817–1885), Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861), and Panteleimon Kulish (1819–1897). In this paper, I describe the Brotherhood's intellectual vision for the future of Ukraine as a populist utopia formed of a Slavic federation of peoples-nations that would be based on freedom and equality guaranteed by unorthodox Christian ethics. Furthermore, I compare the two Brotherhood's symbols of oppression of Ukrainian peoples: a Russian tsar and a Polish lord. I consider the Brotherhood's populist utopia in a transnational perspective, demonstrating its intellectual links to other post-Napoleonic revolutionary societies and authors in Europe. I show how the Brotherhood merged local Ukrainian Cossack mythologies and folk culture with the internationalist slogan of the French Revolution ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’.