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OUR LIFE Monthly, published by Ukrainian National Women’s League of America FEBRUARY 1997 Editor: TAMARA STADNYCHENKO NAPOLEON AND UKRAINE BY DR. THOMAS M. PRYMAK The Napoleonic theme is an important one in the history of eastern Europe. Polish scholars stress its relevance to Polish military and political history and Count Leo Tolstoy used it as the centrepiece of his majestic novel War and Peace. In fact, the Polish national anthem was composed by Polish legionaires fighting for France in Italy and War and Peace is sometimes consi dered to be the national epic of modern Russia. By contrast, Napoleon’s influence upon modern Ukrainian history is very little known. At the time of the Napoleonic wars, in fact, Ukraine as we now know it was not a united country, but rather was divided into several parts, each retaining its own specific political and social conditions. Austria ruled in the west while Russia ruled in the east. Nevertheless, the name “Ukraine” had still not completely disappeared from the memory of Europe and recollections were still fresh of the recently abolished Cossack “Hetmanate”, which had existed in the eastern part of the country and which modern Ukrainian historians consider to have been an autonomous Ukrainian state under Russian suzereignty. Memories of Cossack freedom and legends about var ious Cossack heroes still lived on in the literature of the educated class and in the folklore of the common peo ple. Elderly folk could still be found who were born before the total eclipse of Zaporozhian Cossack glory. It is in this juxtaposition of the Napoleonic invasions of central and eastern Europe and the revival of the Cos sack traditions of old Ukraine that the Napoleonic influ ence upon the country can be explained. Although Napoleon’s relationship with Ukraine was long ignored by historians, and remains little known today, it was thoroughly explored during the 1920s and the 1930s by the historian, llko Borshchak (1892-1959), who came from southern Ukraine (Kherson Province) but spent his entire life after the revolution as an emigre in France. Borshchak devoted many years to searching the various French archives for materials relating to Ukraine and he published several books on this subject. In 1937, his Ukrainian language work Napoleon and Ukraine appeared in Lviv, the principal city of eastern Galicia, which was then a part of the Polish Republic. The book was a mild sensation when it first appeared and won the annual prize of the Ivan Franko Literary Society in Galicia. The distinguished French slavist, Rene Marte, even penned a lengthy summary of it which he published in the journal Le monde slave (The Slavic World) for the benefit of interested French readers. But the outbreak of war in 1939 and subsequent tumultuous events in Europe took attention away from Borshchak’s discoveries and they have been largely ignored ever since. They did not deserve this fate. Borshchak’s thesis, when stated in its simplest form, is that the contention voiced in the 1920s and the 1930s of various Russian parties in emigration (and also at times by certain agen cies of the Soviet government) that Ukraine was largely “a creation” of the Germans or Austrians intended to weaken the Russian state, is basically false, and that Ukraine existed as an object of international affairs and of French foreign policy long before the formation of Germany (1871) or the emergence of Soviet Russia (1917). Borshchak contends that the successive royal, revolutionary, and imperial governments of France all wished to weaken the Russian Empire and therefore tried to erect some kind of barrier to it that would limit its influence in central Europe; that is, France more less consistently supported Poland, the Ottoman Empire, and the Ukrainian Cossacks in their strivings for inde pendence from Russia. Of course, French diplomatic support for Sweden and Charles XII during his long struggle against Russia is well known. After the defeat of Charles and the Ukrainian Cossack Hetman Mazepa at Poltava (1709), Bourbon France continued to support Mazepa’s follow ers in exile. Later on, the revolutionary French govern ment made efforts to foment opposition within the Rus sian Empire while Catherine II of Russia abruptly broke 14 ’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛЮТИИ 1997 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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