Cosmopolitism: Ukrainian Version

Mykhailo Drahomanov was the major figure representing cosmopolitism in the ideological sphere of Ukraine. Drahomanov’s interest not only was social and political, it also encompassed the cultural aspects of cosmopolitism in their internal unity. The idea of the rights of individuals and communities to self-administration, land providing their autonomy, and federal unity are at the core of Drahomanov’s social and political cosmopolitism. Not a national state, but a world confederation of free unities – communities or, at least an “EU–wide confederation”, where national principles will disappear, is the model for the sophist. Drahomanov emphasized the virtues of the cosmopolitan position, contrasting it with nationalism in the persona of Ukrainocentrism. In his opinion, the main disadvantages of the latter are, first of all, conservatism and a focus on the past, whereas his cosmopolitism was based on progressivism; secondly, the absolutization of national signs, which he considered as merely relative; and finally, compulsion, ascribed by Drahomanov to nationalism in opposition to the liberating mission of cosmopolitism. The disadvantages of nationalism can be overcome or weakened, in his opinion, only when “patriotism is placed under the control of cosmopolitism”. For Drahomanov, a cosmopolitan, national culture cannot be interpreted as a cultural cosmos as it is not a self-sufficient part of the real whole, the world of panhuman culture. For him, initially a person of Russian culture, the immediate, existentially essential embodiment of European culture was “All-Russian” culture. Ukrainian culture, in his opinion, being part of it. Namely, the “All-Russian” for him was the supranational culture cosmos. Thus, Drahomanov, belonging to the Russian whole and adhering to Russian culture, was the sequential opponent of Ukrainocentric views, to which he contrasted the cosmopolitan explanation of the world, deployed on Russian cultural ground.