Socio-political life of the Ukrainian lands in the Russian Empire in the middle of the nineteenth century.

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The policy of Russian Empire’s government which had been realized on Ukrainian lands in the middle of ХІХ century is scrutinized. It is pointed that in that time there was an increasing of Empire’s regime on the territory of Ukraine, centralization increased, there was an ignorance of peculiarities of regions, social organizations were pursued. The policy of the tsarist government towards the Ukrainians was especially repressive com-pared to his attitude to other peoples of the Russian Empire. After the Polish uprising of 1830–1831, there is a sharp turning point in the «politics of nationalities» in the west of the Russian Empire. The traditional policy of cooperation with the national elite here has been defeated and replaced by the policy of forced integration. Ukrainians, who for many years were under Polish domination, were perceived by the Russian government as part of the Polish rebels. In the 40 years of the ХІХ century, the crisis of the imperial feudal-feudal system deepened, manifested in the mass peasant uprisings, the decline of the landed economy, the awareness of the need for the liquidation of serfdom by representatives of all sectors of the population. In our opinion, it is precisely at the origins of this crisis that one should look for the reasons for the rise of the Ukrainian national revival and its politicization in the middle of the ХІХ century. Socio-political life at that time was concentrated around the struggle for the elimination of serfdom, and national harassment was a significant component of this struggle. Without the liquidation of serfdom and the democratization of political life, Ukrainian national revival had no prospects.