Ems Ukaz - Background

Background

In the 1860s, a decade and a half after the Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius was broken up in Kiev, and its founder Nikolay Kostomarov and other prominent figures exiled or arrested, Ukrainian intellectuals were gaining further awareness of their cultural background. Hromada cultural associations were started in a number of cities, named after the traditional village assembly, and Sunday schools in the cities and towns (education had been neglected by the Russian Imperial administration). This was partly driven by publication in both Russian and Ukrainian, including journals (such as Kostomarov's Osnova, 1861–62, and Hlibov's Chernyhosvs’kyy Lystok, 1861–63), historical and folkloristic monographs (Kostomarov's biography of Cossack hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Kulish's two-volume Zapiski o Yuzhnoy Rusi, ‘Notes on Southern Rus’’, 1856–57), and elementary primers (Kulish's Hramatka, 1857, 1861, Shevchenko's Bukvar Yuzhnoruskiy, 1861). In Osnova, Kostomarov published his influential article "Dve russkiye narodnosti", ‘Two Russian Nationalities’.

Although Ukrainianism had been considered popular and somewhat chic in Russian cultural circles, a debate began at the time over its relation to the ideology of Russian Pan-Slavism—epitomized by a quotation of Pushkin: "will not all the Slavic streams merge into the Russian sea?"—and a rhetoric of criticism emerged. Conservative Russians called the Ukrainian movement a "Polish intrigue", while Polish commentators had been complaining that Ukrainianism had been used as a weapon against Polish culture in right-bank Ukraine.

After the 1861 emancipation of serfs in the Russian Empire, many landowners were unhappy with the loss of their serfs, while peasants were generally displeased with the terms of the emancipation. In this atmosphere of distrust, increasing reports reached the imperial government that Ukrainian leaders were plotting to separate from Russia. The 1863 January Uprising in Poland raised tensions around the issue of ethnic separatism in general even further. Several Ukrainian activists were arrested, Sunday schools and hromadas were closed and their publication activities were suspended.

A new Ukrainian translation by Pylyp Morachevsky of parts of the New Testament was vetted and passed by the Imperial Academy of Sciences, but rejected by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox church, because it was considered politically suspect. In response, Interior Minister Count Pyotr Valuyev issued a decree through an internal document circulated to the censors on 18 July 1863. Valuyev's circular implemented a policy based on his opinion that "the Ukrainian language never existed, does not exist, and shall never exist". It banned publication of secular and religious books (apart from belles-lettres), on the premise that not only is the content of such publications potentially questionable, but their very existence implied the anti-imperial idea that a Ukrainian nation could exist.