Works of the brothers N. and G. Volk-Karachevsky as a source from the history of the Zemstvo Liberal Movement in the North of the Left-bank of Ukraine (60-80th ХІХ сentury)

Kotelnytskyi N.A.

DOI: doi.org/10.21272/shaj.2022.i39.p.16

 

Abstract. The article analyzes the creative heritage of members of the opposition aristocratic front of northern Ukraine – the works of the brothers N. and G. Volk-Karachevsky, the absolute majority of which are being introduced to international scientific circulation for the first time. The author comes to the conclusion that the discovered set of works of the brothers N. and G. Volk-Karachevskyi is a unique primary source from the history of the Zemstvo liberal movement in the north of Left Bank Ukraine (60-80s of the 19th century). The main issues of N. Volk-Karachevskyi’s works were the development of public education and the progress of agriculture. Nikodym Nikodymovych insisted on the priority free education of the poorest strata of the population – the peasantry, especially former serfs. In the field of agricultural production, the well-known liberal advocated the imperatives of urgent irrigation of the land fund of the Russian Empire, the formation of a purposeful strategy of Zemstvo institutes to improve the economic situation of the peasantry, the introduction of the positions of Zemstvo agronomists and technicians with appropriate official status and financial support, a strategic reference point for the perspective of the union of the peasantry, the liberal nobility and democratic intelligentsia in the struggle against the regime of Russian absolutism. The small number of publications by N. Volk-Karachevskyi were devoted to the problems of the development of the agricultural industry, which were little known at that time. The oppositionist insisted on the need to borrow the progressive experience of the countries of Western Europe, such as France, where a powerful system of agricultural education was built: from primary and higher education institutions to specialized scientific institutions. It is necessary to note separately the manifestation of the national enzyme in the journalism of the authors. Articulated allusions to the history of the statehood of the so-called Little Russia – the imperial name of a part of Ukrainian ethnic lands; their past economic and industrial glory; careful, but transparent wishes regarding the use of the dominant language in the territory of northern Ukraine, clearly indicate that the ethnic component occupied not the last place in the programmatics of the researched current of the liberation movement in the Russian Empire of the second half of the 19th century. In general, the discovered works of the brothers N. and G. Volk-Karachevsky clearly reflect the social program of the Zemstvo liberal party of the Northern Left Bank and illustrate the political and ideological imperatives of the opposition aristocratic front of the region.

Keywords: Nikodym Volk-Karachevskyi, Gryhoriy Volk-Karachevskyi, journalism, Zemstvo liberal movement.

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