Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841-1895) is a major figure in Ukrainian intellectual history and a key contributor to late nineteenth-century debates on the creation of a Ukrainian nation-state. Forced into exile in 1876, Drahomanov found refuge in Geneva (until 1889) where he developed an intense publication activity, becoming the foremost advocate for Ukrainian independence in Western Europe. Although scholars usually acknowledge his Swiss exile as an important stage in his intellectual development and refer to his interest in the social and constitutional arrangements of the Swiss Confederation, comparatively little is known of his Genevan years, his engagement with European debates, and his understanding of Swiss politics. This project aims to fill this gap. Drahomanov wrote several texts on Swiss history, its constitution, cantonal autonomy, Swiss political culture, and the relation between local communities and the Swiss federal state. Recent research has shown that discussions of Switzerland also constitute an important and constant theme in his rich correspondence, suggesting that the discussion about Swiss federalism as a possible model for future Ukrainian statehood was more widespread in Ukrainian reform circles than hitherto assumed. By focusing on Drahomanov’s dealing with Swiss and European history and politics, the project aims not only to contribute to the rich scholarship on Drahomanov, it also wants to open up new perspectives for the study of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ukrainian political and social debates by locating Drahomanov and his work in a wider European setting. Furthermore, it aims to situate modern Switzerland and Swiss federalism within the wider European debates on the ‘national question’ and underscore its appeal to Ukrainian thinkers who insisted on the multi-national character of Ukraine and who saw federal structures as a remedy to the centralization of the Russian empire. And, finally, it wants to establish a platform for the comparative study of both Swiss and Ukrainian visions of a wider European federation that were being discussed at the time.

Another important part of the project is the development of the Mykhailo Drahomanov Digital Archive. At the moment, there is no special Internet resource devoted to Mykhailo Drahomanov. The lack of such a resource significantly limits the study of both M. Drahomanov’s life and activities, his ideas, and his Ukrainian and European environment and contacts.

In 2011 an encompassing Drahomanov bibliography was published. It includes 6060 items from 1861 to 2011 presented in chronological order, 953 of which are  Drahomanov’s texts. The bibliography also showed that many of modern publishers edit  Drahomanov’s texts too “freely”, giving titles to their parts or fragments.

An Open Access  Mykhailo Drahomanov Digital Archive will promote further research, including future translations of some of the Drahomanov’s texts into other European languages.

There is no need to start from the very beginning, because the web-model of such a website was successfully improved by the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Digital Archives since 2016. This web-model allows creating different databases, combine different types of records, including bibliographic records and records of archival materials, perform search requests, create reference records, in particular, lists of correspondents, lists of persons mentioned in letters, build timelines, etc. Naturally, this model also offers  M. Drahomanov’s digitised texts, annotations, and possible translations.

The project is funded by the Ukrainian-Swiss Joint Research Programme SNSF and NRFU.