Yakiv Mykolaiovych Beckman: between Russian Democracy and Ukrainian Patriotism

Abstract

The figure of Jacob Beckman (1836–1863) is one of the most interesting, but insufficiently developed in modern historiography. The purpose of this article is to study the personality of J. Beckman in the context of the ideological search between Russian democracy and Ukrainian patriotism. The subject of the study is his worldview, forms and methods of organizational and propaganda activities on the eve of the bourgeois-liberal reforms of the Russian tsar. The research methods are historical-genetic, historical typological and historical-biographical. The source base is based on updated Russian and Ukrainian archival and published forensic materials, memoirs of contemporaries and historiographical works of predecessors. The results of the investigation are the establishment of factors shaping the worldview of J. Beckman, in particular, such as self-improvement, the influence of the European Revolution of 1848–1849 and the Crimean War of 1853–1856, illegal publications of Herzen. It is proved that important stages in the formation of the worldview of the figure were his stay at Poltava Gymnasium, Kharkiv University and St. Vladimir’s University in Kyiv. It is substantiated that J. Beckman demonstrated leadership qualities in the Kharkiv-Kyiv secret society, in which he took care of organizational and propaganda activities. In the ideological sense, he was under the influence of Russian revolutionary democracy, at the same time began to form as a Ukrainian patriot, and after his arrest and imprisonment, in exile in Vologda, maintained contacts with members of the Poltava Ukrainian community. J. Beckman was unable to develop a wide range of public activities, being an isolated tsarist regime during the rise of democratic movements in the early 1860’s. Peculiarities of worldview and social practices put this figure between Russian democracy and Ukrainian patriotism. J. Beckman took his prominent place in the opposition and revolutionary movement at the turn of the 1850–1860s, his life path well illustrates the complex process of formation of Ukrainian national consciousness.