Prosopographic portrait of the founding fathers of the Ukrainian independent state and the Republic of Lithuania: a comparative analysis

Abstract

The prosopographic portraits of the founding fathers of the Ukrainian independent state and the Republic of Lithuania, restored in 1990 and 1991, are revealed. The research is based on general scientific and special historical methods, among which the comparative method and the method of prosopography occupy a special place. The first part of the article is dedicated to the leaders of those sociopolitical organizations that formed the core of the opposition movement against the dictatorship of the Communist Party - Vytautas Landsbergis, Vyacheslav Chornovol and Levko Lukyanenko. Thanks to the appropriate methodological tools, it was possible to reveal the common and distinctive features of leaders in both countries: national-democratic bias, duration of dissident activity, belonging to one or another social stratum, participation in political activities, personal contribution to the development of the country's independence, etc. Attention was also drawn to the fact that the leader of the national-democratic forces of Lithuania V. Landsbergis was the highest political figure of the Restorative Seimas for almost three years (1990-1992), while the leaders of the Ukrainian democratic movement were given mediocre roles in the shadow of the communists. Which at that time dominated the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. The second part of the study paints a prosopographic portrait of the first presidents of Ukraine and the Republic of Lithuania. Ukraine is considered number one here because the institution of the presidency was founded on its territory in 1991, and in Lithuania in 1993. Despite the fact that the presidency of Leonid Kravchuk and Algirdas Brazauskas is considered taking into account the time factor, it depicts significant differences in the strategies of the state behavior of these two natives of the same communist system, who were almost the same age. In particular, this concerns the issue of distancing from the Russian Federation and the country's geopolitical choice of joining the European Union and NATO. Thus, in conclusion, we see that the path to independence in both countries was paved by national-democratic movements led by the intelligentsia. However, not everyone achieved the final result of the activity. We also notice that both in Ukraine and in Lithuania, former Communist Party members became the first presidents.