Abstract
This article analyzes the historical significance of National Personal Autonomy (NPA) as introduced in revolutionary Ukraine by examining the process of its practical implementation in the context of Russian and Ukrainian history. Codifying the ideas of Austrian Marxist nationality theories, the Law on NPA of 1918 specified that the three major national minorities in the territory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR)—Jews, Poles, and Great-Russians—had the right to arrange their internal life through non-territorially-formed national representative organs. The main weakness of previous studies on this thema is that they hardly attempted to clarify the degree to which NPA influenced and altered existing inter-nationality relationships in Ukraine. In this article, I show that NPA for minorities in the UPR originated in the nationalization process in the imperial war effort and that its implementation paradoxically reinforced the status of Ukrainians as the ruling nation in the newly-born republic. The mobilization of nationalities during WWI paved the way for the realization of both Ukrainian territorial autonomy and Jewish, Polish, and Great-Russian personal autonomy. Ukrainian politicians used NPA as a means to relegate the languages and cultures of minority nations to a secondary position and to disseminate the official narrative that the UPR was achieving peaceful national coexistence. My analysis demonstrates that NPA can function not only as a concession to minorities but also as a means to consolidate a nation-state, notwithstanding today’s increasing interest in the historical experiences of NPA in the search for an effective solution to minority issues.
