Dmytro Dontsov

Dmytro Ivanovych Dontsov (Ukrainian: Дмитро Іванович Донцов; 29 August [O.S. 17 August] 1883 – 30 March 1973) was a Ukrainian nationalist writer, publisher, journalist and ideologist. Dontsov fundamentally influenced the emergence of a radical wing of the Ukrainian nationalist movement in the 1920s and developed his own brand of radical Ukrainian nationalism. His ideas and writings strongly influenced the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, particularly the Banderite generation.

Dontsov preached a separation of Ukraine from Russia and a reorientation towards the West. He termed his ideological programme "active nationalism" and extolled an "initiative minority" modelled on the examples of Italian fascism and Bolshevism. In the 1930s, Dontsov became heavily influenced by fascism and Nazism and republished works by fascist politicians and ideologues.

Dontsov's ethnic nationalism was rejected by the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the postwar years, though he remains highly regarded among the Ukrainian far-right.

Dontsov was born in Melitopol, in the Taurida Governorate of the Russian Empire — territory referred to by the authorities as part of Novorossiya and now within Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine. His mother, Efrosinia Iosifovna Dontsova, was Ukrainian and his father, Ivan Dmitrievich Dontsov, was a Russian entrepreneur who was elected to the city duma in 1873 and appointed mayor in 1894. His father died of an apparent heart attack on the eve of his inauguration when Dontsov was eleven.

His mother, who had Italian and German ancestry, died the following year from an illness. As a result, Dontsov was largely raised by his German step-grandfather. Dmytro and his two younger sisters adopted a Ukrainian identity, while his two brothers, Vladimir and Sergei, chose Russian identities.

In 1900, Dontsov moved to Saint Petersburg where he completed gymnasium and enrolled at Saint Petersburg University to study law. In 1905, he joined the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party (USDRP) where he met Symon Petliura, editor of the magazine Slovo which published Dontsov's first articles.

He was arrested for participating in a pro-Ukrainian demonstration during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and briefly imprisoned in Kyiv. After his release, he settled in the city and continued to contribute news and editorials for both Slovo and the Russian-language liberal Ukrainskaia zhizn (Ukrainian Life; also edited by Petliura). Following the Stolypin Coup in 1907, which intensified Russification and repression of dissent, Dontsov was arrested again and imprisoned in Kyiv. After eight months' imprisonment he escaped abroad to Lviv in April 1908, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Recovering from a chronic illness contracted during his imprisonment, Dontsov moved to a resort town in the Tatra Mountains where he became acquainted with Vyacheslav Lypynsky, a leading theorist of Ukrainian conservativism and a pro-independence monarchist. At this time, Dontsov opposed the notion of Ukrainian independence and supported a federalist vision of Ukraine as an autonomous part of a social-democratic Russia, believing in the possibility of coordination between the USDRP and its Russian counterpart. He advocated a platform closer to the Russian Bolshevik faction on everything but the national question in relation to Ukraine.