Acknowledgements
Ivan Maistrenko, Panas Fedenko and Vsevolod Holubnychy introduced me to the 1917 Revolution in Ukraine. I had the good fortune to meet Maistrenko and Fedenko in Munich in 1974. In their youth they took part in the Revolution and wrote extensively about it. Around the same time I came across Vsevolod Holubnychy’s writings and met him in 1976 in Toronto. A Marxist economist and historian, he was a rarity in the Ukrainian diaspora. I first glimpsed the significance of the Ukrainian national question for the working class and peasantry through the lives and works of these three people.
Edward Palmer Thompson deeply influenced me with his great historical study, The Making of the English Working Class (1963). His work showed me the value of approaching the workers’ movement through its origins in different social strata, nationalities and political traditions. This was a necessary foundation for understanding its further evolution, the difficult quest for unity in its own ranks and with the peasantry during the Revolution and Civil War. I gained the confidence to investigate a relationship that Stalinist historians dismissed as largely irrelevant and nationalist historians denied even existed: namely that between the workers’ movement and the Ukrainian national question as a problem of the radical destruction and reconstruction of state power.
I would like to acknowledge and thank the people who supported me when completing my PhD dissertation in 1986, which was the first draft of the present work: my parents, Anna and Roman Bojcun, my sister Alexandra, and my previous partner, the late Marta Danylewycz. Bohdan Krawchenko and Roman Senkus at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies supported me in those years as academics and political allies.
I thank Christopher Ford in London for sharing with me his wide knowledge of Ukrainian, English, Scottish and Irish labour history, and for repeatedly urging me to publish my work. Zakhar Popovych in Kyiv assured me that I have something new to offer to readers in Ukraine as well as other countries. Maksym Kazakov and Lesia Bidochko, who translated this work into Ukrainian, offered valuable critical observations and factual corrections which I have incorporated into my finished work.
My thanks go to Halya Kowalsky for her personal support and her hard work proofreading both the English and Ukrainian versions.
Finally, I thank Jane Greenwood, my partner in life who has given me her unfailing support over many years, which has helped me to bring this work to completion.