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Is it possible to unite feminism and nationalism? On the one hand, these two ideologies have distinctly different goals, so it may seem that they are mutually exclusive. However, certain approaches enable us to work with the intersections between different characteristics and, therefore, with the intersections of feminism and nationalism.
In this article, I propose to look at the interaction of feminism and nationalism for early Ukrainian feminists. I agree with Yana Lys and have elaborated in more detail in another article[1] that an intersectional optic is relevant for analyzing the experience of Ukrainian women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Kimberlé Crenshaw. Photo by Mohamed Badarne, licence CC-BY-SA-4.0
Intersectional feminism is associated with the American lawyer and researcher Kimberly Crenshaw. Based on an analysis of U.S. court cases, Crenshaw found that Black women are not protected in cases where their claims do not fall under purely gender or racial discrimination. For example, in one lawsuit, Black women were denied discrimination because the defendant company hired a substantial number of women (white). Crenshaw proposed intersectionality as an approach to help avoid such problems. An intersection is a crossing of roads, and she suggested imagining a situation where an accident is caused by cars coming from different directions at an intersection.[2] Intersectional feminism is an approach that takes into account intersectional discrimination that occurs simultaneously on several grounds and is exacerbated by the combination of these features.
Intersectionality is useful for working with early Ukrainian feminism, as these women experienced cross-discrimination based on gender and nationality, as at that time Ukraine was not an independent state and was divided between two empires (Russian and Austro-Hungarian) and women were just beginning to gain their first rights. Consequently, the Ukrainian women’s movement did not focus solely on women’s rights, but also took into account the importance of national identity and unity. Like many of us today, it was important for early Ukrainian feminists not only to be women, but also to be Ukrainian.
In this text, I focus on four well-known Ukrainian feminists: Natalia Kobrynska, Olena Pchilka, Olha Kobylianska, and Lesya Ukrainka. Each of them is important as a separate figure, but they are also interconnected. Olena Pchilka and Natalia Kobrynska collaborated on publishing the first almanac of Ukrainian women’s literature, Pershyi vinok [The First Wreath], in 1887. Natalia Kobrynska also coordinated with Olha Kobylianska on collecting signatures for the Czech women’s petition for the right to higher education.[3] Olena Pchilka is Lesya Ukrainka’s mother, and Olha Kobylyanska and Lesya Ukrainka are known for their close relationship. Through their texts, I want to demonstrate how nationalist elements were intertwined with feminist ones.
Natalia Kobrynska (1855 1920)
Natalia Kobrynska is known as a writer, public figure, and the founder of Ukrainian feminism. In 1884, she founded the Society of Rusyn Women, the first Ukrainian feminist organization in Stanislaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk), and in 1887 she co-edited Pershyi vinok, which also included a number of her essays.
Natalia Kobrynska
Researcher Alla Shvets calls nationalism one of the constants of Kobrynska’s worldview, along with Europeanism and feminism. Like Marta Bohachevska-Homiak, Alla Shvets attributes Kobrynska’s awareness of the importance of nationalism to the influence of Ivan Franko. The researcher emphasizes that Kobrynska spoke out against the “unwelcome guardianship” of Ukrainians by Russians and Poles.[4]
It is clear from Kobrynska’s texts in Pershyi vinok how feminist and national aspects are intertwined for her. The feminist repeatedly draws attention to the fact that the almanac and Ukrainian women’s literature in general are a unifying factor for the Ukrainian nation, because the almanac united women in the name of national unity[5], and literature unites politically divided Ukraine into a single whole.[6]
In the article Ruske zhinotstvo v Halychyni v nashykh chasakh [Russian Women in Galicia in Our Time], Natalia Kobrynska is concerned about how often Ukrainian intellectuals did not defend Ukrainian interests and looked at other nations until they realized that “only on their own soil can a true culture grow,” and “cutting off one’s own roots equals depriving oneself from vitality.”[7] In this text, the author draws attention to the problems of the patriarchal system, the low level of Ukrainian women’s education, and domestic violence.
Her reference to education intersects the women issue with the national one, as she sees a separate problem in the Polonization of education: “Elder women say that they were already taught to read and write in Polish and alienated from their people and ordered to speak Polish.”[8] She also recalls the negative influence (“dark ages”) of a Galician proponent of Moscow, a “retrograde” and “almost illiterate” man Severin Shekhovych, who advised Ukrainian women to look like Lada, the goddess of love and beauty, to become loving wives and wise “household-builders.”[9] In the context of education, it was also important to the feminist that Ukrainian women were actively working to “enlighten the people,” playing a key role in some reading rooms, as well as reading books in Ukrainian to villagers on holidays and weekends.[10]
Alla Shvets aptly notes the characterization given to Natalia Kobrynska by Ukrainian public figure Kyrylo Tryliovskyi, that her work is important not only for women but also for Ukrainian society in general, because “the effort to gain equal rights for the majority of the nation and to engage this majority in civic work, in the struggle for the highest national goal is a collective, great and, to be honest, decisive national feat.”[11]
Olena Pchilka (1849-1930)
Olena Pchilka is known primarily as Lesya Ukrainka’s mother, but this writer, feminist, and nationalist deserves attention for her work and her art.
Olena Pchilka
Olena Pchilka fought against Russification throughout her life. During her lifetime, she faced demands that Ukrainians and Ukrainian women speak Russian at public events. In 1876, she had to publish a book in Kyiv about Ukrainian folk ornamentation in Russian because of the ban on publishing books in Ukrainian in the Russian Empire.[12] In 1903, at the unveiling of a monument to Ivan Kotliarevsky in Poltava, she ignored the demand of the Russian imperial authorities to speak in Russian and delivered her speech in Ukrainian. And in 1920, already under Bolshevik rule, at a celebration in honor of Taras Shevchenko at the Hadiach gymnasium, she wrapped his bust in a yellow and blue flag, and when the commissar tore the flag down, her cry of “Shame!” was echoed by the entire hall.[13]
Opening of the monument to Ivan Kotliarevsky in Poltava
Pchilka’s personal experience of discrimination on both ethnic and gender grounds shaped her feminist position, for which the national component was important. Marta Bohachevska-Homyak notes that Pchilka was ahead of the famous Ukrainian nationalist Mykola Mikhnovsky in realizing the importance of taking Ukraine’s political independence into one’s own hands.[14]
In my opinion, one of the most famous theorists of Ukrainian nationalism, Dmytro Dontsov, clearly clarifies the meaning of these words and Olena Pchilka’s nationalism in his article. He writes that Olena Pchilka was underestimated by the society of her time; she was perceived as an eccentric and criticized for her “limiting nationalism.” She had a firm character and an unwavering disposition, which was reflected in her political views.[15] Dontsov explains that at the time, the Ukrainian community opposed the Russian tsar, “but the ideals of the Russian liberal or socialist intelligentsia were also the ideals of Ukrainian intellectuals; they believed that a free new Russia would give us freedom; that only with it, not against it, would our path be laid; they adored the so-called ‘great Russian literature,’ and an even small critique of Tolstoy, Turgenev, or Pushkin was an insult to every freedom-loving Ukrainian.” Instead, Pchilka thought more independently, considered cooperation with Russian liberals to be disastrous, and urged not to trust them. She also criticized Pushkin and was outraged by the initiative of the Chernihiv Prosvita branch to celebrate the anniversary of Leo Tolstoy’s birthplace with all Prosvitas.[16]
Reading these words, I once again find myself thinking how similar the events and problems of the Ukrainian nation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are to those of the present. Currently, there are similar discussions about cooperation with Russian liberals and Russian literature. However, finally at last, Pchilka’s position does not seem too radical.
But the anti-Semitism of which Pchilka was accused during her lifetime would have raised many questions. For example, a Ukrainian public figure of the time, Yevhen Chykalenko, recalls that Pchilka complained about the boycott of her magazine Ridnyi Krai [Native Land] because of the defense of Jews by the Rada newspaper.[17] Dontsov believes that Pchilka’s accusations are groundless and based on a misunderstanding of her national position, but Dontsov himself is not an authority on anti-Semitism, as he is known to have sympathized with Hitler in the 1930s.[18] Such examples and discussions once again prove the importance of realizing that no matter how prominent certain figures were, they were human beings with their own flaws and prejudices, and an analysis of their achievements should in no way be perceived as their glorification.
Cover of the magazine ‘Ridnyi Krai’
Olena Pchilka’s intersection of feminism and nationalism is most evident in her story Tovaryshky [Comrade Sisters], published in the aforementioned Pershyi vinok. This is a story about two Ukrainian women who lived in the Ukrainian territories under the Russian Empire and decided to go to Zurich to get a medical degree. They faced a lack of understanding from their families about the need for women to pursue education and the profession, as well as various challenges during their studies. Raisa and Lyuba are both concerned about the feminism issue and strive for some kind of self-realization, but they are fundamentally different in terms of their national identity. Lyuba has been fascinated by the Ukrainian language and culture since childhood, and (like another character, Kost’) is motivated to get an education to help the Ukrainian people. Raisa, on the other hand, shuns the Ukrainian language as a “rustic language” and does not understand why she has to make efforts to improve the welfare and intellectual development of her people.[19] Because of these differences, discussions often arise in the novel as Raisa is being persuaded to change her position.
Feminist and national issues are regularly raised in the novel (the latter mainly expressed through the problem of Russification). For example, a significant feminist achievement was that Raisa became the first woman in the history of the university to deliver a scientific presentation. Kost’ commented on this as a recognition of women’s rights and proof “that our woman is able and capable of not only listening but also speaking the word of science from the podium.”[20]
Raisa eventually remains as an assistant at the university, and Lyuba goes to a midwifery course in Vienna before returning to Ukraine. For her, it is important to “someday reduce the extent of women’s labor, to be a skillful counselor to less lucky sisters, and maybe even a liberator from death for some of them.” In Vienna, she also meets Ukrainians from Galicia and admires their Ukrainian language, lamenting the fact that among Ukrainian men and women of her circle living under the Russian Empire, it is customary to switch to Russian when discussing important matters. She reflects that she owes it to Buchynsky from Galicia that she returns home “with stronger national ‘convictions.’”[21]
With this work, which transmutes women’s problems into national ones and vice versa, Pchilka demonstrates that feminism and nationalism can be harmoniously combined, and it is this combination that Lyuba from Tovaryshky embodies.
Olha Kobylianska (1863-1942)
The patriarchal system greatly affected Olha Kobylianska’s life. Without doubt, she occupies a prominent place among Ukrainian intellectuals of that time, although she had only four grades of formal education, as the family did not have enough money to continue educating all the children and prioritized the boys.
Interestingly, even considering her biography, Kobylianska simultaneously developed a feminist interest and an awareness of her national identity.[22] The future writer and feminist read a lot, studied, and at the age of 18 became interested in the topic of emancipation under the influence of Natalia Kobrynska and Sofia Okunevska. They advised her, as Ukrainian women, to write in Ukrainian, because before that Kobylianska had written in German.
Olha Kobylianska
Olha Kobylianska formulated the idea of Ukrainian feminism, which is that a woman should be “a goal for herself.” She formulates this idea at least twice: in a speech to the Bukovyna Women’s Society in Chernivtsi in 1894 entitled Deshcho pro ideiu zhinochoho rukhu [Something about the idea of women’s movement] and in her novel Tsarivna [The Princess Royal] published in 1896.
In her speech, Kobylianska criticizes the skeptical attitude toward the need for women’s education, the reduction of women’s role to motherhood, and the negative attitude toward unmarried women. She considers these views to be outdated (for the 19th century!) and emphasizes that nature has given women not only the opportunity to marry and become mothers, but also the right to “be their own goal” in the same sense that a man can be his own goal and can study and “be his own master –until he decides to take on the responsibilities of becoming a husband and a father.” This is an interesting feminist idea of women’s self-realization: living not for the sake of a man or children, but for the sake of oneself. And this is where the intersection with nationalism comes in, because at the end of the speech, the feminist calls on the sisters to unite to be the pride of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and “the support of our people, the foundation of our nation.”[23]
In Tsarivna, the protagonist Natalka not only expresses similar thoughts, but also tries to be a goal for her own life. Natalka read The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill and became deeply concerned with the feminism issue. She had a desire to have “freedom to be my own goal” in terms of self-development, enrichment of one’s own spirit, and “to become either something great for one person forever or commit to working for many others.”[24] At the same time, Natalka is concerned about the fate of the Ukrainian people, their longing and regret for the past. She is worried about Polonization, but she is sure that the Ukrainian people will survive all the hardships if even one hundredth of them are as concerned about their fate as the main character is. She is “imbued with its (Ukrainian people) essence, like a plant with sunlight,” and believes that as a woman she can do enough for the Ukrainian people if she loves them fervently and does not shy away from her national identity.[25]
Gradually, Natalka becomes more and more independent, fulfills herself as a writer, and marries a man who supports her professional realization. The story ends with the beginning of a qualitatively new stage in her life, her noon (as Kobylianska writes, influenced by Nietzsche’s philosophy). But she believes that noon will come for the Ukrainian people as well, and she is proud of those representatives of the nation who “bear the blows of enemies or bad fate with a smile on their lips.”[26]
Lesya Ukrainka (1871-1913)
Lesya Ukrainka’s worldview was largely shaped by the influence of her mother Olena Pchilka and her uncle Mykhailo Drahomanov. The children in the family were primarily educated at home, as Pchilka wanted to protect them from Russian influence. They read Ukrainian literature and foreign literature translated into Ukrainian.[27]
Lesya Ukrainka
Lesya Ukrainka is known to have had a close relationship with Olha Kobylianska. According to the Ukrainian literary critic and feminist Tamara Gundorova, Lesya learned about Olha from the Ukrainian nationalist Mykhailo Pavlyk, who gave her a copy of Tsarivna. The story made a profound positive impression on Lesya, and in 1899, they began to correspond and met in person that same year. Their relationship became increasingly close, with correspondence containing more and more intimate references to each other. According to Gundorova, their relationship “can be called lesbian platonic love.”[28]
In the spring of 2024, social media was full of heated discussions about the inclusion of the relationship between Lesya Ukrainka and Olha Kobylianska in the 2023 Russian edition of Russoyazycnie kviry v Berline v XVIII-XX vekakh [Russian-speaking queers in Berlin in the XVIII-XX centuries].[29] And while queerness is a space for discussion and debate here, the inclusion of Lesya Ukrainka and her relationship with Olha Kobylianska in a Russian publication about “Russian-speaking queers” is outrageous and colonial, as the feminists had a distinct Ukrainian national identity.
Lesya Ukrainka’s attitude toward Russia is particularly notable in her play Boyarynya (1910). Feminist and national elements are intertwined in a very interesting way. The action takes place during the Ruin of the second half of the 17th century, a period of wars and the collapse of Ukrainian statehood. This is a story about a Ukrainian woman, Oksana, who meets a Ukrainian man, Stepan, when he comes from Moscow to visit his family in Ukraine. They fall in love, get married, and Oksana moves to live with him in a foreign country, Moscow.
As can be seen from the play, Oksana is constantly surprised by the cultural differences between Ukraine and Moscow, and she is painfully aware of the adoption of Moscow customs by her husband’s family. These differences are based on both national and feminist grounds: in the customs Lesya Ukrainka formulates in the play, Ukrainian women have much more freedom and respect than Moscow women. In church, people whisperingly call her and her mother-in-law “khokhlushkas” [a mocking name] and find it strange that they, Ukrainian women, do not cover their faces in church.[30] Among other differences, the following are mentioned: according to Moscow customs, it is inappropriate for an unmarried woman to travel (even with her brother) or walk around the city alone; women wear long clothes “like a priest’s cassock”; women should not participate in men’s conversations but must treat the boyars and accept their kisses; young boys and girls cannot meet and spend time together until they are married, etc.[31] Because of all this, Oksana becomes increasingly sad and longs for the Ukrainian land and freedom. Her relationship with Stepan also becomes tense, as Oksana is dissatisfied with Moscow’s customs, and he is also in a vulnerable position as a Ukrainian in the tsar’s service. Particular tension arises when it turns out that Oksana wants to support her Ukrainian comrade sisters financially, and through them to transfer money to Hetman Petro Doroshenko for national liberation causes. Oksana is eager to visit Ukraine or at least keep in touch with her relatives and comrades, but Stepan asks her not to because he is afraid of the Moscow tsar’s reaction. She says that she is withering away and cannot live like this, and Stepan agrees that “flowers do not grow in a dungeon.” Oksana starts to get sick, gets weaker and weaker, and when “Ukraine has fallen under Moscow’s feet,” she no longer wants to go there and resigns herself to the idea of her death in the near future.[32]
This story shows how important Ukrainian national identity was to Lesya Ukrainka. The protagonist is literally near death from captivity in Moscow and homesickness for her homeland. At the same time, the writer shows the cultural difference between Ukrainian and Moscow customs through a distinctly feminist prism: Oksana feels bad in Moscow not just as a Ukrainian, but as a Ukrainian woman.
Results
It is impossible to cover all the achievements and thoughts of Ukrainian feminists in one article. However, I wanted to show that feminism is intertwined with nationalism in the works of four of them. Ukrainian national identity was important to them, and their feminism was permeated with nationalist elements.
In my opinion, such a perspective should not be considered a shortcoming or underdevelopment of feminist ideas, or a surrender of positions in favor of nationalism. On the contrary, thanks to intersectionality, we can see a harmonious combination of the former with the latter as a result of the experience of cross-discrimination.
[1] Pugach, Veronika. Rannii ukrainskyi feminizm ta natsionalizm: intersektsiinyi pidkhid [Early Ukrainian Feminism and Nationalism: An Intersectional Approach] (2024), Ukrainska feministychna merezha [Ukrainian Feminist Network].
[2] Crenshaw, Kimberlé. Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black Feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 8, p. 141-150.
[3] Bohachevsky-Chomiak, Martha. Feminists Despite Themselves: Women in Ukrainian Community Life, 1884-1939. CIUS, 1988, p. 87.
[4] Shvets, Alla. Naibilsha zhinka halytskoi zemli, yaka zavzhdy vmila “buty soboiu” (do 160-littia vid dnia narodzhennia Natalii Kobrynskoi) [The greatest woman of the Galician land, who always knew how to “be herself” (on the 160th anniversary of Natalia Kobrynska’s birth)]. Slovo i Chas [Word and Time], No. 10, 2015, pp. 69-70.
[5] Kobrynska, Natalia. Perednie slovo [Foreword]. // Kobrynska, Natalia and Pchilka, Olena. Pershyi vinok [The First Wreath]; Lviv: Drukarnia Tovarystva im. Shevchenka [Lviv: Printing House of the Shevchenko Society], 1887, pp. 1-3.
[6] Kobrynska, Natalia. Pro pervisnu tsil Tovarystva ruskykh zhinok v Stanislavovi. [On the original purpose of the Society of Rusyn Women in Stanislaviv]. // Ibid.
[7] Kobrynska, Natalia. Ruske zhinotstvo v Halychyni v nashykh chasakh [Russian Women in Galicia in Our Time] // Ibid, p. 68.
[8] Ibid. p. 74.
[9] Ibid. pp. 79-84.
[10] Ibid. p. 100.
[11] Shvets, Alla. Zhinka z khystom Ariadny: Zhyttievyi svit Natalii Kobrynskoi v heneratsiinomu, svitohliadnomu i tvorchomu vymirakh: monohrafiia [A woman with the talent of Ariadne: The Life World of Natalia Kobrynska in Generational, Worldview and Creative Dimensions: A Monograph]. / Alla Shvets; Instytut Ivana Franka NAN Ukrainy; Lektorii SUA z zhinochykh studii UKU; VHO “Soiuz Ukrainok”. [Ivan Franko Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; UWA Lecture on Women’s Studies at UCU; National CSO “Soyuz Ukrainok”], Lviv, 2018, p. 236.
[12] Bohachevsky-Chomiak, Martha. Feminists Despite Themselves: Women in Ukrainian Community Life, 1884-1939, CIUS, 1988, p. 11-12.
[13] Dontsov, Dmitry. Maty Lesi Ukrainky (Olena Pchilka) [Lesya Ukrainka’s mother (Olena Pchilka)], Dontsov, Dmytro. Dvi literatury nashoi doby, Lviv: Prosvita [Two Literatures of Our Time, Lviv: Prosvita], 1991, p. 174.
[14] Bohachevsky-Chomiak, Martha. Feminists Despite Themselves: Women in Ukrainian Community Life, 1884-1939, CIUS, 1988, p. 26.
[15] Dontsov, Dmitry. Lesya Ukrainka’s mother (Olena Pchilka) // Dontsov, Dmytro. Two Literatures of Our Time, Lviv: Prosvita, 1991, p. 155.
[16] Ibid. pp. 163-166.
[17] Chykalenko, Yevhen. Shchodennyk [Diary] (1907-1917), Kyiv: Tempora, 2011, p. 40-41.
[18] Erlacher, Trevor. Ukrainian Nationalism in the Age of Extremes: An Intellectual Biography of Dmytro Dontsov, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, p. 302.
[19] Pchilka, Olena. Tovaryshky [Comrade Sisters]. // Kobrynska, Natalia and Pchilka, Olena. Pershyi vinok, Lviv: Drukarnia Tovarystva im. Shevchenka [The First Wreath, Lviv: Printing House of the Shevchenko Society], 1887, pp. 253-265.
[20] Ibid. p. 305.
[21] Ibid. pp. 319-325.
[22] Polyukhovych, Olha. “Buty i sobi samii tsilliu”: aktyvnyi i spohliadalnyi feminizm Olhy Kobylianskoi. // Buntarky: novi zhinky i moderna natsiia [“To Be a Goal For Oneself”: Olha Kobylianska’s Active and Contemplative Feminism // Rebels: New Women and the Modern Nation] / Ed. Vira Ageieva. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2020, pp. 157-159.
[23] Kobylianska, Olha. Deshcho pro ideiu zhinochoho rukhu [Something about the idea of women’s movement] (1894), Biblioteka Ukrainskoi Literatury [Library of Ukrainian Literature].
[24] Kobylianska, Olha. Tsarivna [Princess royal], Kharkiv: Rukh, 1927, pp. 164-165.
[25] Ibid. p. 206.
[26] Ibid. p. 400.
[27] Polyukhovych, Olha. Ukrainski arystokratky ta arystokraty: salonna romantyka i kulturne prosvitnytstvo u tvorchosti Oleny Pchilky [Ukrainian aristocrats: salon romance and cultural enlightenment in the work of Olena Pchilka]; Buntarky: novi zhinky i moderna natsiia [Rebels: New Women and the Modern Nation]/ Ed. Vira Ageieva. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2020, p. 64.
[28] Gundorova, Tamara. Lesya Ukrainka i Olha Kobylianska: “Shchos take, chomu nazvy nema v liudskii movi” [Lesya Ukrainka and Olha Kobylianska: “Something for which there is no name in human language”] (2021), Zbruch.
[29] Rosiiany vkliuchyly Lesiu Ukrainku v doslidzhennia pro rosiiskomovnykh kvir-liudei. Potim vybachylysia. [Russians included Lesya Ukrainka in a study about Russian-speaking queer people. Then they apologized.] (2024), Chytomo.
[30] Ukrainka, Lesya. Boyarynya (1910), Biblioteka Ukrainskoi Literatury [Library of Ukrainian Literature].
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid.
