SUMMARY:

All three archival documents presented here date from 1908 and refer to a crucial chapter of Russian-Ukrainian relations in the last period of the Russian Empire. Reflecting two different positions in the struggle for power, they deal with the question of whether the Russian government should allow the Ukrainian language to become the language of school lessons. However, the battle between the two positions touches not only the issue of school education. Rather, two mutually exclusive conceptions of national identity form the center of the discussion. From the pro-Russian point of view, it was about the question of whether the ongoing process converging the three East Slavic ethnicities to one all-Russian nation could be successful. This endeavor allowed the Russophiles to care exclusively for one common language of literature – the Russian language. Thus, the Ukrainian language question endangered the very foundation of the way Russians perceived their nation.
In the first document, 37 deputies of the Russian State Duma feverishly plead for their draft bill allowing Ukrainian to become the language of school lessons in primary schools in areas populated by “little Russians.” In the second document, the minister of education, Aleksandr Shvarts, refuses the draft bill, justifying his rejection with the project of the “Great Russian Nation”. In the third document, the newly founded extreme right Kievan Club of Russian Nationalists supports the minister’s position from the viewpoint of Russophiles within Ukrainian territories.