Between Ethnic Particularism and International Universalism: Experience of the Ukrainian Diaspora in ХХ century (based on the Y.Mulyk-Lutsyk's works)
Authors: Fylypovych Georgii 
Published: January 2020

Abstract. The article is based on the analysis of the works of the famous Ukrainian thinker from Canada, Yuriy Mulyk-Lutsyk, who in the mid-twentieth century. deeply considered the state of the Ukrainian diaspora, its search for a strategy of its development abroad within the limits of ethnic particularism and international universalism. His thoughts have not lost their relevance today, as new waves of migration pose the same questions to Ukrainians: whether to remain or dissolve as a national community among a multiethnic and multicultural world. The migrants, diasporans, whose grandchildren have lost their connection with their historical homeland and are part of other multinational states, are particularly disturbed by those outside Ukraine.

The main problem of the migrants and diasporas of that time, according to Mulyk-Lutsyk, was that they did not distinguish between ethnic particularism and interethnic universalism, identifying or substituting one another. This led to radical one-sidedness: the Ukrainians cared for one or the other in themselves. The main reason for this imbalance according to the thinker was that Ukrainians intellectually were not ready to migrate. They did not have time to realize their ethnic identity, their uniqueness, as they got into millstone universalism, which led them to "spiritual turmoil, gypsyism". Instead of meeting with other worlds, Ukrainians experienced a cultural trauma. It is possible to overcome the latter by realizing the equality of the universal and the specific, the universal and the ethnic, which are two "natural signs of one and the same". The Ukrainians should understand that they/he are/is human (this is universal), because he has such physical and spiritual attributes that are common to all people; at the same time he is a member of this ethnic community (it is specific, particular) because it contains such features that are not present and cannot be found in other ethnic communities (language, history, culture, ideology). Although universal and specific are opposite to one another, however, in the person they exist in combination both as a physical indivisible unity and as a spiritual one.

Yu.Mulyk-Lutsyk realized that integration into a multidimensional space, sometimes so alien, but to be friendly (home) for himself, is very difficult. He insisted on fostering within himself both national and universal, where the particular was affirmed through the universal and the universal manifested in the particular.

Eventually the thinker urged: if the ethnic community understands what the essence of its ethnicism is, that is, it realizes the secret connection between ethnic content and ethnic form and learns the absolute, natural boundaries of ethnicism, which are not free to artificially, illegally, unnaturally, contraband; and if the ethnic community at the same time understands the essence of its universalism (humanity), that is, it realizes the secret connection between human content and human form, and learns the absolute, natural limits of humanity, in which it is not free to artificially, illegally, unnaturally, contraband if and only then the ethnic community in general and each of its constituent units in particular will form a unity on a natural basis - national unity.

Knowledge of the experience gained by the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada may be of use to those who wish to migrate to other countries and other cultural worlds.