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ing government bureaucrat, was fascinated by her energy; although some of her actions made his profes sional life difficult; he did not stand in her way. But her brother, Mykhailo Drahomanov, who, under the guise of enlightened rationalism, set up the principles by which his own household was run and his daughter educated, was quite critical of his sister. She was not very intelli gent, he wrote to Franko, but she made up for it by hard work. This about a woman who educated her four child ren at home lest they become Russified in the state-run schools; who translated the classics of literature for them into Ukrainian; who developed a “great books” reading progrm for them; who was the first woman to publish a book on ethnographical ornament. Her life simply made men unconfortable. Drahomanov was quick to point out that he was for women’s rights, provided someone minded the children. In his opinion, his sister spent too much time on public matters. He also consi dered her literary output, in which she portrayed posi tive, nationally conscious, educated women, lacking in real substance. Olena Pchilka, however, maintained that her protagonists “are drawn from real life, but I do not choose the types of heroines of [Marko] Vovchok, or [Panteleimon] Kulish, or even of Shevchenko—those gentle sweethearts, sisters, wives; I choose rather the figure of the woman patriot.”3 Lesia Ukrainka, Olena Pchilka’s famous daughter, grew up surrounded by active women. Yet, she questi oned the validity of the women’s movement in general. Like many successful women, she maintained that anyone could achieve what he or she wanted by dint of hard work and talent. Lesia, who always thought her own talent to be inferior, saw her own household tasks as most natural. She took care of her younger sisters, sewed, embroidered, made jams. At public meetings she knitted quitly until asked to speak. This deference was carried over into her public life. In 1905 Lesia Ukrainka was the one who kept drafting the by-laws of the new, legal organizations. Like other women, she also gravi tated toward clerical work, courier duty, and other sub ordinate functions. The first modern political organizations of the Ukra inians were predictably all male. (So was the Kiev Hromada, which survived until 1917; it functioned as an influential old-boys’ club, which justified the exclusion of women by recalling the traditions of the Sich.4) The Ukrainian movement in the nineteenth century, how ever, was so dependent upon the activism of a small number of families that the women perforce had to play a role in it. Frequently, because they were not em ployees of the government, they were able to do more work than the men. The women were considered by the Okhrana, the Russian secret police, to be more danger ous and more revolutionary than the men, although this opinion may reflect the male bias of the police itself. Women were active in the major political currents in the Russian Empire—national, democratic, liberal, social- revolutionary, socialist and communist. They were most visible in the terrorist movement, to which many dedi cated their energies and even their lives. Catherine Breshko-Breshkovskaia, “the grandmother of the revo lution,” came from Ukraine. Sofiia Perovskaia, who was hanged in 1881 for her complicity in the assassination of the tsar, was remembered in Ukraine as a descendant of the last hetman of Ukraine, Rozumovsky. Ukrainian women, like women all over the world, agonized over their choice of priority—the family or the cause. Breshkovskaia abandoned her infant for the revo lution; Perovskaia had no life beyond the revolution. Sofiia Lindfors-Rusova, the politically active educator, was jailed when her children were small. She brooded over the effect her absence might have on her children, but resolved the conflict by convincing herself that unless radical change were brought about in the Rus sian Empire, the lives of her children would be misera ble anyway. Mariia Tkachenko-Livytska, the wife of one of the presidents of the Ukrainian National Republic in exile and the mother of another, wrote openly about the difficulty she had choosing between motherhood and political activity.5 Educational opportunity, self-education and writing accustomed the Ukrainian women to public activity. Writers in Ukraine were always public figures, creators as well as symbols of the modern Ukrainian ethos. The best women writers, however, were those who re nounced the joys of family life: Lesia Ukrainka, Olha Kobylianska, Olena Teliha. Olena Pchilka, who tried to combine both writing and family life, was one of the most active feminists in eastern Ukraine. In 1905 she, along with other women, forced the Russian feminists to recognize the right to national self-determination. Ukrainian political activists and writers have consigned this manifestation of Ukrainian patriotism by the women to complete obscurity. Frequently, men have extolled their own picture of women instead of the actual achievement of women. Stepan Smal-Stotsky, in an article in honor of Kobyli- anska’s forthieth anniversary as a writer, wrote about the woman who never married or bore children: “The intrepid struggle of Kobylianska has nothing in common with the emancipation movement, for the highest ideal of women that Kobylianska puts forward throughout is the ideal of a good wife, a good mother.’’6 Not only was this untactful, it was incorrect; but Smal-Stotsky’s authority could not be challenged. At this time, in the 1920s, even a Ukrainian chapter of the Association of Women with a Higher Education disintegrated because the women could not stand the ridicule. In times of crisis, individual women rose to the occasion. Young Galician women, protesting the un qualified support for the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Ukrainian political parties, initiated a national emer gency fund early in 1913. It was to be used to transform the impending war into a national liberation strugge.7 During the First World War, Olena Stepaniv was the first woman to enlist in the Austrian army in preparation for
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