The representation of landowners’ world in the first decades of the 20th century in D. Doroshenko’s memoirs

Abstract

The article presents landowners’ lifestyle, the role of large landowners in social relations and the prospects for resolving the land issues in 1917-1918 as viewed and interpreted by Dmytro Doroshenko (1882-1951), a descendant of landowners and a statesman during the period of Ukrainian Revolution. D. Doroshenko’s memoirs embraced different aspects of landowners’ world, such as organisation of farming and the landowner family’s everyday life, characteristics of landowners as participants of the Ukrainian movement, their involvement in resolving of the land issues in 1917-1918. It is stated that the evolution of D. Doroshenko’s views on landowner issues embraces three stages in his life: childhood years; studying period, teaching and public deeds (1901 – early 1917), and governmental activities (1917-1918). The author concludes that D. Doroshenko’s ideas on landowners’ organisation of farming, lifestyle and spiritual values, formed in his childhood, were patriarchal and reflected the specifics of Hlukhiv district of Chernihiv province. It is established that D. Doroshenko’s perception of landowners’ place and role in social relations was built through the prism of national but not class interests. The author of the memoirs, a professional historian, did not provide a theoretical justification for the causes of confrontation between peasants and landowners but recorded the peculiarities of the peasant struggle against landowners in late 1917 – early 1918 in Chernihiv province and explained in detail the mechanisms of increasing peasants’ oppression in the countryside. As an official of the Ukrainian State in 1918, D. Doroshenko advocated the redemption of landowners’ estates and their parcelling out among peasants, but his advice was not implemented.