Gromady

(from Ukrainian gromada, society, commune, peasant commune), liberal-bourgeois cultural and educational organizations of the Ukrainian intelligentsia that arose after the Peasant Reform of 1861. They existed from the 1860’s to the 1890’s in Kiev, Kharkov, Poltava, Chernigov, and other cities. They tried to substitute cultural activity for the struggle of the Ukrainian people against social and national oppression: legally and illegally they printed literature in the Ukrainian language, organized Sunday schools, collected folklore, and conducted other such activities. The majority of the members of Gromady believed in the nationalistic theory of the “classlessness” of the Ukrainian nation, welcomed the reform of 1861, condemned the Polish uprising of 1863–64. and sympathized with the Russian bourgeois liberals. In the 1880’s even representatives of the radical-democratic intelligentsia entered Gromady.

The most prominent members of Gromady were V. B. An-tonovich. M. P. Dragomanov, and P. P. Chubinskii. In 1861–62, Gromady published the journal Osnova (Basis) (nos. 1–9) in St. Petersburg. An edict of the tsarist government in 1876 completely prohibited the activity of Gromady. Led by Dragomanov, some members of the Kievan “Old Gromady” emigrated to Switzerland, where they published the collection Gromada from 1878 to 1882 (in 1881 they published ajournai of the same name). In the I880’s the members of Gromady in the Ukraine united around the journal Kievskaia starina (Kievan Antiquity) (1882–1906). In the early 20th century some members of Gromady joined the Ukrainian bourgeois-nationalist parties and played a counterrevolutionary role during the struggle of the Ukrainian people for Soviet power.