2540. Ukraine and Russia and larger history.

The details are amazing. Here is a brief quote

“Ukrainians on both sides of the Russo-Austrian border had been busy founding their own political parties since the 1890s. It was an age when political forces all over Europe had entered the party-building stage, hitting the streets in an effort to organize the masses in support of their political agendas. In Russian-ruled Ukraine, the  first political party was created in 1900. Its mobilization stage began in the city of Kharkiv. A group of local students who refused to join all-Russian parties and sought to merge socialist and nationalist ideas established a party of their own, the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party. The activists formed a network of cells in Ukraine and began working among the peasants, calling on them to revolt. They also adopted a program elaborated in a pamphlet written by Kharkiv lawyer Mykola Mikhnovsky, titled Independent Ukraine and printed in Galicia. With it the first Ukrainian political party created in the Russian Empire proclaimed independence as its goal.”

Excerpt From The Gates of Europe by Plokhy