From Manichaeism to Politics: an Ideological Instrumentalization of Mykhailo Drahomanov’s Social Anthropology by the Ukrainian Leftists

Abstract

In the history of Ukrainian sociology, the legacy of Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841-1895) is primarily analyzed in terms of his socio-political writings or early methodological ones. However, when considering Drahomanov's long-term and internationally recognized contribution to social sciences and humanities, it is his works at the intersection of folklore studies and social anthropology that are much less often in the focus of sociologists' attention. An important component of these works was Drahomanov's prolonged interest in dualistic heresies and the views on social reality as divided between truth and falsehood, transmitted by the. This interest, which guided the scholar’s research interests for twenty years, had far-reaching consequences for the politicization of the Ukrainian national movement at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The author argues that Drahomanov's folklore and social-anthropological writings, which attracted the attention of researchers of Gnosticism and dualism like C.-G. Jung, as well as contemporary anthropologists, led him to the conviction that the traditional Ukrainian folk worldview tends towards a dualistic, Bogomil-Manichaean, origin-based perspective on the world. He used this conviction for political purposes, and the younger generation of activists of the Ukrainian national movement, who gave rise to radicals, socialist revolutionaries, and social democrats, widely exploited this socio-anthropological discovery for their own political agitation. The conclusions of the study lay the groundwork for further movement in several possible directions: research of the left-wing press to identify specific strategies for the application of the dualistic myth in propaganda, providing a more general historical-cultural context for contemporary studies of populism in Ukraine, as well as a general revaluation of different components in Drahomanov's legacy in the contemporary history of Ukrainian sociology.