From Manichaeism to Politics: New Ukrainian Research Provides Additional Evidence for Eric Voegelin’s Conception
Eric Voegelin’s approach to modern ideologies is often criticized for its overly general framework. However, the case in Ukrainian history provides specific evidence supporting some of his ideas. This case concerns Mykhailo Drahomanov’s folkloristic research on folk thinking and the political consequences it sparked at the turn of the 20th centuries.
Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841-1895) was a Ukrainian sociologist, cultural scholar, political philosopher, and historian. The value of his multidimensional legacy lies in two domains: first, he was one of the most politically influential Ukrainian intellectuals of the last third of the 19th century;[1] second, he initiated valuable studies dedicated to dualistic heresies with Gnostic origins. Carl Gustav Jung used Drahomanov’s study on the dualistic creation of the world in his Aion: Researches into Phenomenology of the Self in the chapter dedicated to image of fish in alchemy. Jung included Drahomanov among his sources to support the main point of his book: that Gnosticism was an ancient pre-scientific form of collective unconciseness psychology. Ten years later collection of Drahomanov’s studies on dualism was published in English, increasing his influence. Currently, his legacy is an inspirational source for social and cultural anthropologists as well as folklorists. Florentina Badalanova Geller, a fellow at the Royal Anthropological Institute in London, stated that: “Dragomanov became one of the most quoted Slavonic scholars in the West; he enjoyed tremendous popularity and had a significant impact upon the work of many renowned folklorists, anthropologists and ethnographers.” Zoltan Magyar, a senior researcher at the Center for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, considers Drahomanov “one of the pioneers of European mythology research.” His contributions are referenced in a variety of places, from research papers and syllabi in socio-cultural anthropology and folklore studies to popular blogs and channels on religion and myths.
The dualist topic was not an episode in Drahomanov’s career. Jung used Drahomanov’s late study from the 1890s, but the first mention of dualist topic can be found in his 1876 book dedicated to the Ukrainian folklore. It was commented collection of folk tales from different regions of Ukraine, including Creation and Blessing the World by God and Satanail, which he attributed to Bogomil origins [Драгоманов 1876, 89-91, 429, 445]. This marked the beginning of his systematic study on the dualistic worldview. As a politically active Ukrainian, Drahomanov was forced into exile the year this book was published due to the Ems Ukaz and Tsar’s decree to banish him. He lived for a few years in Switzerland before being invited to a newly established Principality of Bulgaria as a professor of world history at the High School of Sofia (now Sofia St. Kliment Ohridski University). Bulgaria, a region where dualistic heresy developed during the Medieval Ages, provided Drahomanov with a unique opportunity to study the topic in a greater depth.
Bogomilism was a dualist religious teaching, Gnostic in origin, which emerged in the Balkans in the 10th century. After a series of defeats from the Byzantium Empire, it became a form of Slavonic cultural resistance to Hellenization. The Western reception of Bogomilism provoked the emergence of the Cathar heresy. Since the reception of Christianity in Ukraine was supplemented by Bulgarian influence, it is likely that Bogomilian also influenced the Ruthenian-Ukrainian lands. The main feature of the heresy (heresy, for sure, from the Orthodox perspective) was the dualistic view of creation: the material world was created by a demonic demiurge (usually called Satanail or mentioned by other names), while the invisible spiritual world was created by the true God. Ordinary Christians were mistakenly worshiping that they were worshiping the demon, the creator of the material world, because they were alienated from the truth (Gnosis) and did not know God.
Contrary to Jung, Drahomanov was interested not in psychological but in the social dimension of the dualistic myth. Even from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, it is clear that dualism is a very suitable framework for utopian thinking because it emphasizes a gap between the materially existed and the spiritually desired.
Due to Drahomanov’s great influence in Ukraine, interest in dualism grew tremendously since the 1890s [Крымскій 1894; Франко 1894; Франко 1896; Крымскій 1899; Грушевський 1993: 91; Грушевський 1995: 30-39].
Reception of traditional Ukrainian culture through a dualistic prism was widely accepted, even among foreigners from non-scientific fields. A notable example is Rainer Maria Rilke’s short story “Das Lied von der Gerechtigkeit” (The Song about Truth) written based on his impressions from a journy in Ukraine [Рільке 1986]. The story is a stylized folk tale inspired by the traditional Ukrainian canto “The Song about Truth and Wrongness,” often considered the most clearly dualistic piece of Ukrainian folklore. In Rilke’s story, a young man joins Bohdan Kmelnytsky’s Uprising, he was inspired by oldman who performs the song. Indicatively, active and agential motif appears in the usually non-politcal Rilke. In the case of Ukrainian political activists it was even more visible.
Drahomanov wrote in “The Strange Thoughts on Ukrainian National Cause”: “Regarding us, Ruthenian-Ukrainians, it is not even easy to say what faith should be considered as ‘national’. If we consider folklore heritage and characterize folk beliefs according to it, we will see in these beliefs under their naturalistic and pantheistic ground, Manichaean-Bogomil religion… Thus, if it necessary to attribute our people in terms of religions, I would attribute them to Bogomilism; and I affirm that I could win an academic dispute on this issue” [Драгоманов 1915: 108, my translation from Ukrainian – V. S.].
Originally written as a series of letters to the editors of the journal “Narod” (“People,” in Ukrainian) and published in 7-21 issues of 1891, the work was actively republished by radicals and revolutionary socialists (so-called “esers”) for agitation purposes.
Contrary to Western social and cultural anthropology, Drahomanov used his discovery for political purposes, motivated by national reasons. During the politicization of the Ukrainian national movement in the last third of the 19th century national identity needed to became confessionally inclusive. Additionally, the state-dominated Orthodox Church in the Russian Empire was an important institutional tool for assimilating Ukrainians. As he wrote, “Greek-Russian Orthodoxy could not be sympathetic to progressivists as any other Islam” [Драгоманов 1894: 140, my translation from Ukrainian].
“The Strange Thoughts on Ukrainian National Cause” was a complex work in which religious topic was one among many, while his comparative study “Tales on Envious Gods,” written during his Bulgarian period, focused exclusively religious issues. He compared religious beliefs across different cultures, arguing that ancient gods were usually envious, treated their people without moral consideration. An important change in religious beliefs was the shift from the concept of envious God to moral ones, often activated by sacrifice (Prometheus motif). The work was first published in Ukraine in the radical journal “Khliborob” (“Husbandman”, in Ukrainian) and was republished at least five times between 1894 and 1918. Radical politician and Drahomanov’s intellectual collaborator Mykhailo Pavlyk (1853-1915) regarded it as a key Drahomanov’s text for mass dissemination [Павлик 1918: 3]. Reviewers clearly felt the political tendency of the “Tales…” [Крымскій 1895: 139].
Besides its political tendency, the work also had a significant metaphysical aspect: the envious god was seen as a demonic creator of material elements, and people should be liberated from its power through critical knowledge that provided a moral view on the world. On metaphysical level Drahomanov’s view on the history of religions could be seen as neo-Gnostic.
Left-wing activists believed that researchers like Drahomanov had discovered an immanent structure of the collective consciences – the dualistic myth – and they tried to use it for political purposes. Drahomanov’s works were often republished and used by radicals, social democrats and esers.
Among the eight brochures by M. Drahomanov published by esers in their party’s printing house before and during the early period of WWI, four were dedicated to religious issues[2]. The list also announced publication of the short story “The Struggle” (“Borotba,” in Ukrainian) by Volodymyr Vynnychenko, a leading member of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Labor Party and one of the most successful Ukrainian writers of the time, who later became the first head of the independent socialist government in Ukraine. “The Struggle” was written from the perspective of a former student, excluded from the University. He was mobilized into tsarist army as punishment for revolutionary activity and witnessed the secret side of Russian military service, with the abuse of young sectarian-maliovanets Mykyta Kravchuk. The Maliovantsi (Мальованці, in Ukrainian) was a real sect that emerged in the 1890s in the Kyiv region, named after illiterate Kindrat Maliovanyi, a founder who was proclaimed Jesus Christ. The sect was oppressed by imperial authority due to very strict laws against religious dissidents. Its key features included eschatological expectations, dualistic differentiation of people between the perfects and the announced, and an allegorical interpretation of the Bible, in which Jesus had not yet come and the New Testament will be fulfilled in the future [Франко 1902: 157-160]. The other essential feature of the movement was pacifism, which formed a foundation of the story’s plot. Kravchuk refused to take an oath, was forced by authorities to accept it, and, along with his friend, tried to escape service, ultimately killing a captain who was his main abuser. The narrator assisted them in obtaining new documents under new names. Later, he received a letter from a party comrade, stating that Kravchuk’s friend (also sectarian) finally rejected his faith, while Kravchuk wanted to combine faith with revolutionary struggle and agitate among peasants [Винниченко 1919: 84]. From a sectarian to revolutionary activist – that was the path described by Vynnychenko, finding complimentary patterns of thought in folk religious movement and modern political ideology. The short story aimed to revolutionize both sect members and ordinary people.
For the same purpose – for mass agitation – Vynnychenko wrote one of the famous of his short stories “The Soldiers!” (“Салдатики!” in Ukrainian). This short story was adapted into a film in 2014 and much earlier included to the school curriculum in Ukraine. This story focused on the main moral dilemma of traditional conciseness: truth vs wrongness. The village gathering took place in the shadow of a crop failure, where peasants discussed political brochures “Battle on – and win you battle!”[3] when one of them, Yavtukh proposed using grains they had given to a landowner to save their lives. Vynnychenko created a character of an agitator who was not a “professional activist” but an ordinary representative of people who came to the conclusion of protest on his own: “We need to expel the wrongness… The wrongness now is everywhere… We do it as well. We live not according to the truth. As said: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat”… Who are not doing that is not living according to the truth and who is supporting this is not living according to the truth. We are supporting our landowners to do what is wrong …” [Деде 1906: 9, my translation from Ukrainian – V. S.]. He is a kind of modernized bard with a song about truth (with only a few years between Rilke’s and Vynnychenko’s stories). The military division was invited to suppress the peasants’ riot. Yavtukh asked for a speech. Dualistic contrasting peasants and solders was a key literary tool for the emotional impact. The officer was modeled as a demiurgic character who wanted soldiers to remain in ignorance. “You know nothing, – said Yavtukh, – He wouldn’t like to allow me to speak to you, and he is afraid… You see, he is afraid[4]…” [Деде 1906: 17, my translation – V. S.]. Sensing the soldiers’ incertitude, he killed Yavtukh, and was immediately killed by one of his own soldiers. Yavtukh’s character was written following a hagiography pattern. Like Christ, he provided the truth (with a strong Gospel’s allusion in his speech), suffered for it, but his death opened salvation for the serfs of illusory material demiurge.
The proximity of Drahomanov’s texts to this kind of fiction is significant. Despite Drahomanov not relying on a salvation paradigm, he was more focused to step-by-step politics with real world solutions; his discoveries pushed the left-wing agitation into a purely Gnostic type of political activity. Drahomanov’s ambition was motivated by national reasons, while Ukrainian socialist agitators re-oriented it towards the social domain.
The weak side of Voegelin’s approach was that he searched for similarities between modern political ideologies and Gnosticism. This research provided strong evidence that the strategy of left-wing agitation in Ukraine in the early 20th century, derived from Drahomanov’s discovery, was not modeled by some analogy with Gnosticism but inspired by a truly Gnostic worldview. This research could lay the foundation for a new discussion: the Gnostic origin of modern political activity was not always truly totalitarian. It was also a tool for liberation movements. For instance, anticlerical propaganda by radicals in Galicia, inspired by Drahomanov’s discovery, motivated the Greek-Catholic Church to adopt a socially-oriented agenda and became more sensitive to the national liberation movement. Therefore, consequences of co-called neo-Gnostic politics were not as one-dimensional as they are usually interpreted in common interpretations of Voegelin’s ideas.
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Please cite according to this: Шелухін, В. (2024). Від маніхейства до політики: ідеологічна інструменталізація соціальної антропології Михайла Драгоманова з боку українських лівих. Соцiологiя: теорiя, методи, маркетинг, 3, 67–81, <https://doi.org/10.15407/sociology2024.03.67>
NOTES:
[1] About this dimension see, [Lysiak-Rudnytsky 1987a]. For instance Drahomanov influenced on Max Weber in domain of national issues and democracy [Lysiak-Rudnytsky 1987, 244; Levandovsky 1996].
[2] The full list with publications presented on the last four pages in “On the Modern Nationalism” by Engelbert Pernerstorfer, its Ukrainian translation [Пернерсторфер 1915].
[3] The quotation, in translation from Ukrainian by Vera Rich, from Taras Shevchenko’s epic poem “The Caucasus” (1845) used in agitation by Ukrainian parties.
[4] Claim “to not afraid” is a Gospel’s reminiscence that could be found in different passages. Vynnychenko used Matthew 10:28 as epigraph to his “The Struggle.”
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