And There Will Be No Russian Tsar and No Polish Lord…': Ukrainian Populist Utopia of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius in a Transnational Perspective

The secret revolutionary society of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius (1845–1847) was the first modern Ukrainian political organization. Its political aims were an abolition of serfdom, overthrowing the Russian tsar and democratisation of Russian tsardom. Among the Brotherhood’s members were the ‘founding fathers’ of Ukrainian national movement: Mykola Kostomarov (1817–1885), Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861), Panteleimon Kulish (1819–1897). In this paper, I describe the Brotherhood’s intellectual vision of the future Ukraine as an populist utopia of a Slavic federation of peoples-nations that would be based on freedom and equality guaranteed by unorthodox Christian ethics. Furthermore, I compare the two Brotherhood’s symbols of oppression of Ukrainian peoples, a Russian tsar and a Polish lord. I consider the Brotherhood’s populist utopia in a transnational perspective and in this regard, I demonstrate its intellectual links to other post-Napoleonic revolutionary societies and authors in Europe. I show how the Brotherhood merged the local Ukrainian Cossack myth and folk culture with internationalist slogan of the French Revolution ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’.