Mykola Michnowskyj

Mykola Michnowskyj

Mykola Iwanowytsch Michnowskyj ( Ukrainian Микола Іванович Міхновський ; Russian Николай Иванович Михновский Nikolai Ivanovich Michnowski ; born March 19, ^jul. / 31 March  1873 ^greg. In Turiwka in Pryluky , Poltava Governorate , today Ukraine ; † 3. May 1924 in Kiev ) was a Ukrainian politician and founder of radical Ukrainian nationalism . Michnowskyj is considered the chief ideologist of the Ukrainian statehood. The Ukrainian People's Party , which he founded in 1902, was the first political party to call for the establishment of a Ukrainian nation- state in its program .

Life

Michnowskyj was born in 1873 in the family of an Orthodox priest from an old Ukrainian Cossack family . After graduating from high school in Pryluky Michnowskyj studied law at the University of St. Vladimir in Kiev . After completing his studies in Kiev, he moved to Kharkiv in 1898 , where he ran his law firm.

As a student, Michnowskyj was involved in the secret alliances of the Ukrainian student body in Kiev and Kharkiv ( Taras brotherhood , meaning the national poet Taras Shevchenko ). In 1893 the activities of the alliance in Kharkiv were discovered by the Russian gendarmerie and the most active participants were arrested, but the network of alliances already included all university cities in Ukraine and many high schools.

After moving to Kharkiv Michnowskyj continued his political work. In 1900 the first Ukrainian political party in Central and Eastern Ukraine, which belongs to Russia, was founded there, the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party (RUP). The speech written by Michnowkyj for the Shevchenko anniversary with the demand for “a unified, free, sovereign Ukraine from the Carpathian Mountains to the Caucasus” became the RUP's program. The speech was published in the same year in Lemberg (then Austria-Hungary ) as a brochure entitled Self-employed Ukraine (Samostijna Ukrajina) .

However, the RUP gradually withdrew from the demand for a Ukrainian state and took on more and more features of a social democratic party. This turn prompted Michnowskyj in 1902 to found the nationalist Ukrainian People's Party, which was the first Ukrainian party to demand the establishment of an independent Ukrainian Republic in its program. In 1905 his project for the Ukrainian constitution "The Basic Law of Free Ukraine, a Community of the Ukrainian People" appeared in Lviv.

After the February Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the convening of the Ukrainian Central Na Rada , a provisional political representation of the Ukrainian people in Kiev, Michnowskyj and other Ukrainian officers engaged in the expansion of the combat-capable Ukrainian armed forces, which he believed should defend the young state. His radical demands for a Ukrainian republic independent of Moscow and attempts to build a resilient army failed because of the pacifism of the Ukrainian Social Democrats and the initial adherence to the concept of a federative Russia with Ukrainian autonomy by the Central Na Rada .

After the failure of the Social Democratic People's Republic of Ukraine and the establishment of the Ukrainian SSR , Michnowskyj withdrew to the Kuban area until 1923 , where he lived in Stanitsa Poltawskaya and worked as a teacher. In 1923 he returned to Kiev. Immediately after his return he was summoned several times by the Cheka . On May 3, 1924, he was found hanged in the garden of his friend Volodymyr Shemet . The exact circumstances of his death have never been established. Michnowskyj was buried in the Baikowe cemetery in Kiev .

Web links

Commons : Mykola Michnowskyj  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Mykola Michnowskyj in the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine ; accessed on March 23, 2019 (Ukrainian)
2. ↑ mystery death of Nicholas Mikhnovsky Ukrainian newspaper on Jan. 10, 2008; accessed on December 7, 2016 (Ukrainian)