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Characteristics of the Borderland Legal Conscience: the Ukrainian Variant of the Idea of Federalism
Taking into account these provisions of the UPR Constitution it is possible to say,
that they are close in spirit to liberal ideas of personal autonomy. The Charter of the state
system of the UPR defines the state as a public union. Nevertheless, the political practice
of 1916-1918 showed certain evolution of views of adherents of federalism regarding the
parity of rights of the state and rights of an individual to national-cultural self-determi-
nation.
From the idea of personal autonomy and cultural-territorial autonomy Ukrainian in-
tellectuals moved to the idea of national sovereignty. V.V. Ivanovsky spoke about sover-
eignty as a feature of power which testifies to the maturity of a certain public union. Oc-
currence in national movement of demands of territorial autonomy testified to qualitative
changes of national self-identification and rooting of the idea of the domination of rights
of the civil union in the state. The national state practically turned
into a liberal model of
the social union: a set of individuals, social groups united by supreme power. However,
public groups are formed not under the state influence but are a result of the process of
activity of civil society.
The idea of autonomy and federalism is founded in the liberal idea of community as
a subject of law. During the Enlightenment the nation acquired features of the subject
of world policy and in the Õ²Õ century after a wave of national-liberation movement in
Austria-Hungary and Russia it received features of the subject of law. M.M. Kovalevsky
expressed similar views in his lectures on state theory.
According to M.M. Kovalevsky, formation of a state is a historical process which pro-
vides for the change of several forms of community: people – land – political formation –
world federation. The base position of the state system in the given scheme is the over-
coming of the contradiction between equality and freedom. Equality assumes rejection of
the idea to live at the cost of conquering Another, thus, repeating the principle of histori-
cal social development insisted upon by adherents of social Darwinism. However, M.M.
Kovalevsky offered the idea of solidarity as an original moral principle of self-regulation
of a certain community or a union of communities.
Using M.M. Kovalevsky’s
concept as the basis, it is possible
to claim that Ukraine dur-
ing the times of revolutions of 1917 moved to the level “land - political formation”. Ter-
ritorial autonomy and then demands to create a sovereign state are a step of development
of the “solidarity” idea, meaning “solidarity” with other nations in the right to self-de-
termination, to the country’s own form of political formation. “Solidarity”, according to
M.M. Kovalevsky, in the form of social institutes, public orders, and political dynamics of
changes finds its bright echo in historical processes and political practice of 1917-18.
The concept of “solidarity” as an integral element of progress and the moving force
of transformation of the state system was also discussed in the works of B.A. Kistjakivsky.
State power in a constitutional state “is linked to the people”, they make common cause
in the achievement of the main purpose of social life, i.e., to guarantee full rights and
personal freedoms. The constitutional state “is an example of solidarity of state power
and the people”.
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Andrey Artemenko
People’s representation in the constitutional state enables “to place the state on the
strong ground of social unity” but this social unity should contain space for national com-
munity. B.A. Kistjakovsky believes that people’s representation combined with the idea of
national representation creates conditions for public solidarity. Thus, the idea of personal
autonomy can serve as a variant of elimination of the national conflict and achievement
of social solidarity.
Positions of M.P. Dragomanov, M.S. Grushevsky and B.A. Kistjakivsky concerning the
ethnic question were very similar. However, there was a difference in the general dialectics
of the parity of the universal and the national. This affected the solution of the question
of national autonomy and federation as a state system which corresponds to the principle
of a free choice by the citizen of any national community to belong to. In the conditions
of gradual sociopolitical transformations, problems of the solution of the Ukrainian ques-
tion were not separated from the general question regarding the reorganization of the
state on the basis of equality of nationalities and regions. National-territorial autonomy
was considered by the Ukrainian adherents of liberal ideology
a natural step in liberaliza-
tion of human rights to self-determination. Nevertheless, the liberal movement of Russia
and Austria saw in this a feature of separatism. P.B. Struve openly criticized the position
of progressivists on the pages of the newspaper “Russkaja Ideja” (“Russian Idea”). In his
article “Obshcherusskaja kultura i ukrainsky partikulyarizm”
12
the Russian liberal analyzes
the demands of Ukrainians viewing them as a threat to the unity of Russian society; he
also studies the demands of cultural and educational character treating them as destruc-
tive tendencies which should be stopped. Peculiar understanding of “solidarity” by the
right wing of Russian liberals put him into an open opposition to the national movement
in Russia. Great Russian liberals saw in social changes at the beginning of the XX century
a transition not to a liberal-democratic model of the state but a replacement of the order
from centrist-bureaucratic to constitutional-centrist.
Elimination of the opposition which developed among adherents of liberal ideology
due to their different attitude to the ethnic question, in the opinion of L. Yurkevich, was
possible only under the condition of elimination of radicalism of both parties. He paid
attention to the concept of “national pride” which is “free from the feeling of superior-
ity over neighboring peoples”. L. Yurkevich offered his own concept of social solidarity
which consisted in the understanding of the role of the middle class as a moving force of
social progress. The middle class specifically creates the basis for the rise of society culture
common to all social classes. The middle class “stays away from class differentiation and
is the closest to people”
13
; therefore, the middle class serves as the foundation of universal
solidarity and can be used to overcome the opposition of “historical” and “non-historical
nations”. The idea of the middle class as a carrier of the organizing culture leads to the
development of the concept of synthetic national culture that is free from contradictions
of social character.