HRUSHEVSKY, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH (1866-1934), a public and political figure, one of the leaders of the Ukrainian national movement, a historian of Ukraine and Russia, was born on September 17 (29), 1866 in the town of Holm, Lublin province (now Chelm, Poland) in the family of a teacher.
Soon the family moved to the Caucasus, where Grushevsky spent his childhood and adolescence in Stavropol, Vladikavkaz and Tiflis.
After graduating from the gymnasium in 1885, he entered and in 1890 graduated from the historical and philological faculty of Kiev University.
He studied under V. B. Antonovich, under whose guidance, while still a student, he prepared works on the southern Russian castles of the first half of the 16th century and the history of the Kiev land.
Under the patronage of the scientific supervisor, a capable student was accepted to the Department of history a year after graduation for "preparation for a professorship".
The young scientist passed the master's (candidate's) exams, in 1894 he defended his master's thesis Lordly starostvo.
Historical essays on the history of a separate administrative territorial unit of Poland of the 15th 16th centuries with a predominantly Ukrainian population (in the same year, a separate book was published).
After the defense, Hrushevsky went to Austria Hungary, to Lviv, where he took the Department of General History at the local university, which actually became the Department of History of Ukraine.
In Lviv, the scientist headed in 1897.
The Shevchenko Scientific Society, having turned it into a kind of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (the historical, philological and natural mathematical sections worked in the society, a museum, a library, a printing house, a bookstore operated under it), became the editor of the mouthpiece of the Ukrainian intelligentsia – the "Notes" of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.
Reading an annual course of lectures at the Lviv University, the young scientist at the same time decided to create a generalizing History of Ukraine – Russia that had not been written by anyone before (in Ukrainian, volumes 1-10, in 13 books, 1896-1936).
Initially, Grushevsky intended to publish a three volume work.
But as the research work grew, the work in the final version is an unfinished ten volume book (the author intended to finish the presentation by the end of the 18th century, but brought it only to 1658).
In this essay, summarizing the results of the research of his predecessors, using the data of archeology, ethnography and philology, extensive documentary material from the archives, the scientist proved that the ancestors of the Ukrainians are the ancient tribes of the Ants, the first independent Ukrainian power was Kievan Rus.
Unlike most representatives of Russian science, Hrushevsky considered the successor of Kievan Rus not Vladimir Suzdal, but Galician Volyn land, which gradually lost its independence and was incorporated by neighboring states Lithuania, Poland, Hungary.
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in his opinion, was the same equivalent center of unification of the ancient Russian lands as Moscow.
However, with the Catholicization and polonization of the principality, the contradictions between the Lithuanians and the Orthodox Eastern Slavs (Belarusians and Ukrainians) intensified, and the latter reoriented to Moscow Russia.
Having lost their independence and being part of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and Moscow Russia, the Ukrainians, Grushevsky concluded, were either simply a passive object of management, or were in opposition to the authorities.
The only content of their history now remains cultural and economic processes.
The scientist described the anti Russian and anti Polish speeches of Ukrainians sympathetically, although he was far from idealizing the leaders of these speeches.
Grushevsky outlined his concept in the most concise form in the article published in 1904 and which became widely known, The Usual scheme of" Russian " history and the case of a rational presentation of the history of Eastern Slavs.
Enthusiastically received in the circles of Ukrainian nationalists, the article met, with rare exceptions (A. A. Shakhmatov, A. E. Presnyakov), rejection and condemnation in Russian historiography.
Hrushevsky took up political activity in Lviv, joining the Galician National Democrats party.
During the First Russian Revolution, the scientist went to St. Petersburg to participate in the work of the Ukrainian faction of the first State Duma.
In numerous journalistic articles, he advocated the autonomy of Ukraine as part of a federal Russia, called on the government to pursue a policy of stimulating the languages and culture of national minorities.
On the eve of the First World War, Hrushevsky intended to leave the department of the Lviv University and move to Kiev.
This was facilitated by the contradictions within the Ukrainian national democratic movement in Galicia.
Some of its participants went to cooperate with the Poles, which the scientist objected to.
In 1913, during the election of the new leadership of the Scientific Society named after T. Shevchenko, Hrushevsky's supporters were defeated, he himself resigned.
But the war broke the plan of moving.
The scientist went first to Hungary, then to Austria.
Because of the persecution of the police, who saw him as an agent of the Russians, he moved to Italy, and then through Romania to Russia.
In Kiev, Hrushevsky was imprisoned on charges of collaborating with the Austrians.
The authorities intended to send the scientist to Siberia, and only the intercession of some famous Russian historians mitigated the punishment – he was exiled to Simbirsk, then allowed to move to Kazan and Moscow.
After the February Revolution, Hrushevsky returned to Kiev, joined the Party of Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionaries (SRS), leading the left wing of the party.
He was elected head of the Central Rada (Central Council) of Ukraine.
Hrushevsky still advocated the autonomy of Ukraine within Russia as a federal democratic republic.
After the October Revolution, his political attitudes changed somewhat.
Under the threat of the Bolshevik offensive, together with other members of the Central Rada, Grushevsky fled Kiev and returned to the city with German troops.
The Fourth Universal of the Central Rada, compiled by Hrushevsky, proclaimed the independence of Ukraine on January 11, 1918.
After the seizure of power in April 1918 by Hetman P. P. Skoropadsky, Grushevsky moved to an illegal position.
However, according to contemporaries, they knew about his whereabouts, but they did not arrest him, considering him not dangerous.
At the end of 1918, when the Ukrainian Directory replaced the hetmanate, Hrushevsky came out of hiding, tried to revive the ideas of the Central Rada, but, meeting opposition from the new government, he left Kiev.
He lived for a short time in Kamianets Podolsky, then in Galicia, went to Vienna, moved to Prague.
Gradually moved away from politics, in 1922 he left the ranks of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, where supporters of the armed struggle against the Soviet government took over.
Hrushevsky focused on his scientific work: he wrote a multi volume History of Ukrainian literature devoted to the study of Ukrainian spirituality.
During the author's lifetime, five volumes were published, brought to the beginning of the 17th century, the sixth volume was published only in 1995.
Grushevsky sympathized with the formation of the USSR and after receiving permission from the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) in March 1924, he returned to Kiev.
He was elected an academician of the All Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, head of the historical and Philological department.
Volumes of the History of Ukraine – Rus began to be published again, and his other works were published.
The closest assistant of the scientist was a talented historian and sociologist, the only daughter – Ekaterina (later she was repressed, died in prison).
The attack on the pre revolutionary professorship undertaken by the Communist authorities at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s also affected Grushevsky.
His works were ostracized, the scientist himself was suspended from work at the All Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and on March 23, 1931, on the way to the session of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow, he was arrested.
By that time, the OGPU authorities had fabricated the case of the "Ukrainian National Center", the head of which was allegedly an old academician.
The "center" was accused of trying to tear Ukraine away from the USSR and restore bourgeois order there.
The scientist spent more than half a month in prisons in Moscow and Kharkiv, where he was subjected to intensive interrogations.
Grushevsky was released after the petition of his cousin, Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR G. I. Lomov Oppokov.
However, the release did not bring joy: the scientist was still being poisoned, he lived in Moscow under the vigilant control of the OGPU bodies, he was not allowed to return to his homeland.
Grushevsky died in Kislovodsk (where he was being treated during an operation) on November 25, 1934.
He was buried at the Baykov Cemetery in Kiev.
LITERATURE Grushevsky M. S.
An essay on the history of the Ukrainian people.
Kiev, 1990
An illustrated history of Ukraine.
Kiev, 1996
