Dmytro Dontsov

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In this name that follows
East Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Ivanovych and the family name
is Dontsov.

Dmytro Dontsov
Saint Petersburg University (1907)
Literary movementIntegral nationalism
SpouseMaria Bachinsky (1891–1978)
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Dmytro Ivanovych Dontsov (

Ukrainian nationalist writer, publisher, journalist and political thinker whose radical ideas, known as integral nationalism, were a major influence on the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, especially the Banderite generation.[1][2][3]

Biography

Early life and education

Dontsov was born in

Bolshevik underground (though he would later be arrested on false charges regarding his association with Dontsov in 1938 and executed) and the Russian imperial bureaucracy respectively.[4]

In 1900 Dontsov moved to

Austro-Hungarian Empire, in April 1908.[4][6]

Recovering from a chronic illness contracted during his imprisonment, Dontsov moved to a resort town in the Tatra Mountains where he became acquainted with the leading theorist of Ukrainian conservativism Vyacheslav Lypynsky, a pro-independence monarchist.[4][6] At this time, Dontsov advocated a federalist position that envisioned an autonomous Ukraine part of a social democratic Russia and believed in the possibility of coordination between the USDRP and its Russian counterpart. On the movement to establish a Ukrainian university in Lviv, Dontsov wrote in 1911:

“Moreover, the history of the struggle for a Ukrainian university proves for the hundredth time that in politics it is the argument of force, not the force of argument, that matters.”[4][a]

Dontsov settled in Lviv in 1912 where, in May of that year, he married Mariia Bachynska (meeting in 1909 as students in

feminist, and public intellectual from a wealthy family who would go on to head the Ukrainian Women's Union from 1926-1927 before being ousted due to her association with Dontsov amid his later political works.[4]

Disillusioned with the utopian promises of

Russophobic worldview rooted in Realpolitik concerns that advocated for Ukraine's alignment with Mitteleuropa as an Austro-Hungarian protectorate in the inevitable clash between the 'progressive' West and 'reactionary' East.[4] He presented this political programmme, with complete separatism from Russia at its centre, to the IInd All-Ukrainian Students’ Congress in July 1913, attaining notoriety for what at the time was a deeply controversial and exceptionally radical position that saw him ostracised from the USDRP whom he castigated for placing their trust in Russian liberalism's commitment to self-determination which he characterised as subterfuge.[4]

First World War and the Ukrainian War of Independence (1914-1921)

At the outset of the

President Woodrow Wilson on the grounds of self-determination.[4]

Opposed to the initially pacifist and pro-dialogue

Bread Peace had seen the Central Powers recognise the UPR and the German Empire militarily occupy Ukraine in return for deliveries of grain to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, the Central Rada's socialist agrarian reforms intefered with these deliveries and lowered productivity, leading the German military authorities to conspire with the UDKhP to effect a coup d'état in April that installed the Ukrainian State under Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi.[4]

In May, Dontsov joined Skoropadskyi's government as director of the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency (UTA) and press bureau, overseeing the production and dissemination of news and pro-Hetmanate propaganda.

Treaty of Riga negotiations that concluded in 1921 with the partition of Ukrainian lands primarily between Poland and the Bolsheviks.[4]

Interwar period and Ukrainian integral nationalism (1921-1939)

Having advocated that Ukraine become a part of

Judeo-Bolshevism myth.[4]

Dontsov became closely connected to the

Ukrainian SSR, leading him to agree to adhere to a pro-Polish agenda.[4]

In 1926, Dontsov published the book Natsionalizm (Nationalism), his most successful work designed to incite a fanatical devotion to the Ukrainian integral nationalist programme that cemented his position as an idol of the Ukrainian nationalist youth in

anti-clerical positions.[4]

A dwindling readership and a crisis in contributing authors who clashed with Dontsov's authoritarian editorship led to the demise of the LNV in 1932, later restarted under the name Vistnyk (Herald) in 1933 with the financial support of the UVO and Bachynska-Dontsova.[4][6] With Adolf Hitler's rise to power that year, Dontsov enthusiastically supported the new Chancellor and advocated for an alignment with Nazi Germany whereby Ukraine would assume a place in the propagandised fascist New Europe.[4] Having long espoused antisemitic views largely inflamed by the 1927 Schwartzbard trial, Kurylo & Khymka note that in the early 1930s, "anti-Jewish themes began to appear in almost all his articles", with Dontsov in the late 1930s "propagating Hitlerite methods of “resolving the Jewish question”" by which time they considered him to have formulated 'a Ukrainian version of fascism'.[7][8]:264

Second World War (1939-1945)

Due to his pro-

castes: Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, and Oriental.[4] Due to Rusov's position as editor, Dontsov also contributed to the Hetmanite publication Ukraïnskyi robitnyk (Ukrainian Worker).[4]

Following the

liberal democratic façade in 1943 in private correspondence with the organisation's leadership.[4]

Post-war exile

With the advance of the Red Army, Dontsov left Prague for the American occupation zone in early 1945 from where he travelled to Paris and then to London in 1946, before moving to New York in 1948.[4] In 1949, he crossed the border into Canada on a tourist visa and, despite a public investigation into his wartime activities, was permitted to settle in Montreal where he taught Ukrainian literature at the French-language Université de Montréal.[4][6]

Dontsov attempted to promote his Russophobic

Christian fundamentalist audience during the Cold War and excised pro-Nazi and antisemitic elements from his republished works.[9][4]

Death

Dontsov died on 30 March, 1973 in Montreal, aged 89, and is buried in

World Congress of Free Ukrainians, the Organisation for the Defense of Four Freedoms for Ukraine, and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.[4]

Ideology

Historian Trevor Erlacher characterises Dontsov's personality and the all-encompassing taxonomy of his fluid body of work as

iconoclastic authoritarianism, asserting that he "reserved the right to modify his ideological [programme] whenever and however he saw fit" and "moved chameleon-like between political, cultural, and philosophical trends".[4]:20 Erlacher characterised Dontsov's seminal 1926 work Natsionalizm as being "a collection of impressions and expressions designed to have an emotional effect and undermine the reader’s trust in reason", going on to write that "[p]atent falsehoods, such as Dontsov’s misrepresentation of the Ukrainian anarchist Drahomanov as a "convinced Russian statist," either evade detection and are accepted prima facie, or anger the reader and turn them immediately against the book".[4]
:246

Dontsov was critical of ideas about

Hitler.[10] His theories came to be considered integral nationalistic
but authentically Ukrainian.

In a style of analysis more typical of the Russian intelligentsia, Dontsove exhibited a doctrinaire turn of mind with simplified, reductionist formulas, and radical ideological solutions, which, alongside his mixed heritage, became a longstanding crutch for his critics who accused him of 'importing Russian culture'.[9][4] His writings lambasted the failures of Ukrainians to achieve independence in 1917–1921, ridiculed Ukrainian figures from that era, and proposed a new "nationalism of the deed" and a united "national will" in which violence was a necessary instrument to overthrow the old order. In his writings, Dontsov called for the birth of a "new man" with "hot faith and stone heart" (гарячої віри й кам'яного серця) who would not be afraid to mercilessly destroy Ukraine's enemies. He believed in the sacredness of national culture and that it should be protected by any means necessary. His fiery exhortations had a profound influence on many of Ukraine's youth who experienced the oppression of their nation and who were disillusioned with democracy. Although he did not become a member of the

Volyn as well, where OUN influence had been negligible before 1941 and the local Ukrainian movement had been led by the Communist Party of Western Ukraine
and where his writings were sold even more than in Galicia.

Legacy

According to Eastern Europe historian Timothy Snyder, Ukraine rejected Dontsov's theory that it should be exclusively for and about people who spoke Ukrainian and shared Ukrainian culture. His brand of ethnic nationalism lost out in favor of the pluralistic form championed by Vyacheslav Lypynsky and Ivan L. Rudnytsky.[11]

References

  1. S2CID 144888682
    .
  2. doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2015.06.002
    .
  3. ^
    JSTOR 1878147
    .
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-067-425-093-2
    .
  5. ^ Oleh Bahan (29 July 2008). "A romantic in the era of pragmatism". The Day.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Dmytro Dontsov: Biography". Thought Tree (in Ukrainian). 2024. Note: source used to corroborate details from Erlacher (2021).
  7. ^ Carynnyk, Marco (2011). "Foes of our rebirth: Ukrainian nationalist discussions about Jews, 1929–1947". Nationalities Papers. 39 (3): 315–352. Retrieved 27 June 2025. [p.319] In 1910 Dontsov had attacked the writer and ethnographer Olena Pchilka for spreading "antisemitic and religious fog" and "nationalist demagoguery" (Levynskyi 35). After the trial of Petliura's assassin he began to do the same.
  8. ^ Kurylo T., Khymka I. (2011). "How did the OUN treat the Jews? Reflections on the book by Volodymyr Viatrovych". Ukraina Moderna (in Ukrainian). 13 (2): 252–265. Retrieved 27 June 2025.
  9. ^ a b Rudnytsky 1987, p. 433.
  10. ^ Rudnytsky 1987, pp. 433–434.
  11. ^ Snyder 2022, timecode 37:39-43:41.

Bibliography

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  1. ^ This appears to be a reference to William Browne's mid-18th century epigram: "The king to Oxford sent a troop of horse; For tories own no argument but force; With equal care to Cambridge books he sent; For whigs allow no force but argument."
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