About the author and his book
The author of this book, born in southern Ukraine (Tavria), is a writer in spheres of both politics and literary critioism. While still a youth before World War I, he belonged to the R.U.P. (The Ukrainian Revolutionary Party). After his escape from a Kiev priaon, he lived beyond the borders of the Russian empire and there – especially in Lviv. Western Ukraine – he continued working for the press. In 1918 he became Chief of the Press Bureau under the Hetman of Ukraine, General P. Skoropadskyj in Kiev. Then he went abroad again.
While living in Lviv, he published the monthly, «Vistnyk» (1922 – 39), and many brochures and books. The most important of these were: a brochure, published оn the eve of World War I in 1913, in which he postulated a fight against Russia for fuli independenee of Ukraine and «Nationalism» (1926), in which he outlined his doctrine of a Ukrainian militant nationalism. In «Nationalism» as well as in other woirks, as for example in «The Basis of our Politics» (translated into German as «Der Geist Russlands», in English, «The Spirit of Russia»), he formulated the idea of a return to ancient Ukrainian traditions, to the traditions of fighting the Eastern hordes in both political and cultural spheres.
In this collection the author again brings forth these ideas. He counterbalanees semi-Asiatic anti-European Moscow with Ukraine’s Western culture which he considers a vanguard of the Christian Occident in the East; Russian mysticism based on the idea of «the chosen people» («Herrenvolk») ruling the world, he counters with the historie mission and mysticism of Old Kiev. This task is to fulfilled not by those whom Edmund Burke ridiculed as the «elite» – the so-called «sophiöts, economists, and calculators» – that is, not by people of wavering opinions, materialists, and conformists who seek understandings with the enemy who is aiming at the destruction of politicai freedom and the faith of the Christian nations of Europę – but by a new «order», a new resurrected knighthood under the banner of Christ and the Sword, inspŁred with the mysticism of historie Kiev and with tbat «fighting spirit» which the West so much needs in these threatening times.
During morę than half the Century and now in this book these are the answers propounded by the author to the fundamental questions of today: What? How? and Who? should Protect the West and Christianity against the flood of barbarian Eastern hordes especially Moscow’s. Questions regarding the idea of natonalism, the idea of aotive fighting, and the idea of leadership – these are the problems broaehed in this book.
Among non-Ukrainians who refute this author’s ideas are such people as Prof. Р. Miliukov, the leader of Russian Constitutional Dernocrats in Tsarist times and Lenin before W.W.I, as weM as the Russian-Bolshevik press from 1913 until present times.
A positive evaluation of this author’s ideas may be found in the foreword to «Der Geist Russlands» by the British General, Fuller. Refer also to the book by Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism, New York. 1955.