Russians being one of the equal - rather than the
dominant nation (along with Ukrainians,
Belarusians, Poles, and even Czechs, Slovaks,
Croats, Slovenes, Serbs, and Bulgarians), with
the implementation of the liberal democratic
principles of freedom of speech, thought and
religion (Glyz, 1990: 38).
Among other national movements, there was an
Italian Unification movement, il Risorgimento
(1815-1861), which has also inspired the
participants of the Ukrainian national liberation
movement to strengthen a Ukrainian political
nation. In particular, they were inspired by ideas
of Giuseppe Mazzini (Bayly & Biagini, 2008).
The penetration of Mazzini's ideas (Mazzini,
1965) into Ukraine took place almost
simultaneously with their emergence. Despite the
"danger" of his works, as they were interpreted in
the Russian Empire, there was their limited
access to the circles of Ukrainian intellectuals. In
those times, one of the "gates" of revolutionary
ideas, along with St. Petersburg, Warszawa,
Kyiv, was also the "free city of Odessa", porto
franco, where Italian sailors were the numerous
foreigners. A lot of English, French, Italian and
German-language magazines appeared in the
capital cities of the Russian Empire via the port
of Odessa, albeit after being censored. Therefore,
legally and illegally, Mazzini's name and his
works were publicized, and make their influence
together with the ideas of German political
philosophers J. Herder with his 1773 manifesto
"Of German Character and Art" (Herder &
Goethe, 1964), J. Fichte with his famous
"Addresses to the German Nation", 1808, and
with the literary works of Romanticism authors
who inspired Ukrainian intellectuals laid the
foundations of its own modern nation-building
process in the middle of 19th century.
If we take a pan-European context, as a result of
national movements, a strange symbiosis arises:
on the one hand, large empires (Austria, the
Russian and Ottoman Empires, France, Britain)
restrain national movements. Back in 1815, the
so-called "Holy Alliance" was proclaimed, a
reactionist coalition between the Emperor
Franz I of Austria, King Friedrich Wilhelm III of
Prussia, and the Russian Emperor Alexander I.
On the other hand, new big systems are being
created under the auspices of the national revival:
this is Italy in 1861, and this is a united Germany
in 1871. In addition, small nation-states arise,
such as Belgium, which takes shape as an
independent state in 1830 as a Catholic
revolution against Protestant Holland. The
creation of national states (Staatsnation) can be
illustrated very vividly by the examples of Italy
unification, and after ten years - the Germany.
So, in the 19th century Europe, all these turbulent
changes would become the basis of global future
historical events and upheavals.
Thus, we can trace this intricate ideological
movement from the nation as estate-based
structure, in the 17th century, to the idea of the
"state-nation" in the 19th century. Then, also
arose the idea of class, the idea of race, and the
idea of internationalism. All this together - the
ideas of "political nation", "cultural nation", the
movement of romanticism, national revival,
nationalism, inter-nationalism - was combined
on various grounds, and began to operate within
the framework of centralized large states, in
some cases as colonial empires.
An important term here is the concept of "state-
forming nation" (titular nation). At this stage,
four main principles of national identification
stand out: the school, the army, the language, and
the writing of national history. European powers
were seeking to strengthen their influence by
shaping the identity of the nation-state within the
framework of school and university curricula,
with an emphasis on history of a nation, the
development of the literary language. Because,
when in 1861 Italy was created as a single state,
only two percent of Italians used literary Italian
language on a regular basis. It is widely known
the statement of famous Italian politician,
Massimo d’Azeglio: "We have made Italy, now
we have to be Italians" (Hom, 2013).
It is notable that after the Risorgimento, when the
first parliament of Italy was convened in Torino
on March 17, 1861, Italians from different
regions gathered - from Piemonte, from Toscana,
from Basilicata, from Sicilia, from everywhere.
But what language could they speak to each
other? - in French! As those times literary Italian
was spoken by an absolute minority. There were
many languages and dialects. The Italian
language had to be recreated. And the same way
as today's language of universal communication
is English, but in previous eras it was Koine
Greek, then lingua Latina, and later the French
took over this function in Europe.
Another example was France itself. Being an
"older" nation with a centralized single state,
France faced the similar language matter: when
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
was proclaimed and printed in 1789, out of 85
French departments, only 15 departments could
read it in French! Only a small percentage of the
French spoke literary French, the rest used local
dialects (Forrest & Jones, 1991). The same