Bochkowska Olga.The Science of the Nation and Its Life.New York, 1958

“Race is a collection of people according to certain physical characteristics, while a nation is a socio-historical community.”

O. I. Bochkivskyi. The Science of Nations and Their Life / [publisher’s preface by Dr. Mykola Sydor-Chartoryi].

New York: Hoveria Publishing House, 1958. — 79 pp. — (Studio-Scientific Materials; Part 2). Reprint of two brochures published by Lviv’s Narodnyi Universytet and Samovyst Publishing House: “The Birth of a Nation” (No. 112, March 1939) and “The Life of a Nation” (Nos. 113–114, April–May 1939). The title page, publisher’s preface, and table of contents were typed.

Softcover with cream-colored paper: red printed border and title; author’s name on the front cover—on a separate sticker. The cover is yellowed, more so along the edges and spine, with spots and slight soiling at the bottom of the front cover; minor paper loss along the spine edge on the back cover. The text block is stapled; there are small tears in the paper near the staples on the spread of pp. 78–79. The paper is evenly toned; there is a brown stain on the blank page opposite the title page. A faded oval stamp appears at the top of the title page. Condition: good.

The book has historical and cultural value and is of collector’s interest.

INFORMATION

Written in the spring of 1939, this little book directly challenges the racial theory of Hitlerism: for the author, race is a biological category, while a nation is a socio-historical one, and history knows no “pure races.” This is a popular exposition of “nationology,” the science of nations, in four parts: ethnogenetics (how nations emerge), nation analysis (the structure of a nation—territory, language, spiritual community), ethnopolitics (nation and state, self-determination, national minorities), and nation-philosophy (nationalism, nation and humanity, “nation-states”). The text concludes with a prediction that “pan-nationalist psychosis” will pass, just as religious fanaticism did, and that humanity will follow Franz Grillparzer’s famous formula in reverse—from savagery through nationalism to humanity.

Olgerd-Ipolyt Bochkivskyi (1885–1939) was a sociologist of Polish origin, born in the Kherson region, and one of the founders of Ukrainian nationology. He lived in Czechoslovakia from 1905, worked at the Ukrainian Diplomatic Mission in Prague between 1917 and 1920, and taught at the Ukrainian Free University and the Ukrainian Agricultural Academy in Poděbrady, where he headed the Department of Sociology and Nationology. In 1933, he headed the committee assisting victims of the Holodomor. He died in Prague in November 1939.

The Lviv brochures were published just a few months before the Soviet occupation of the city. New York’s Hoveria combined them into a single book under a common title; in the publisher’s preface, Dr. Mykola Sydor-Chartoryi explains that he is reprinting the work for studio use, regardless of whether he agrees with the author in all respects. The text was reproduced from the Lviv typesetting, so it retains the original spelling—“nationology,” “ethnogenetics.”