Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party

The Ukrainian Radical Party (URP) (, ''Ukraiinska Radykalna Partiia''), founded in October 1890 as Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party and based on the radical movement in western Ukraine dating from the 1870s, was the first modern Ukrainian political party with a defined program, mass following, and registered membership.Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Ukrainian Radical Party
vol. 5, 1993. Article written by Jean Paul Himka and Ivan Lysiak Rudnytsky
It advocated socialism, increased rights for Ukrainian peasants, anti-clericalism and secularism.

Programme and ideology

The Radical Party ideology was based on the political thought of Mykhailo Drahomanov, an eastern Ukrainian thinker who spent part of the nineteenth century in western Ukraine. Although the Radical party advocated socialism in its ideology, it considered itself different from western socialists who were beholden to the ideas of Karl Marx because western socialism was based on the industrial proletariat while the Radical party was focused on the peasantry. Accordingly, its socialism was agrarian and peasant-based. The Ukrainian Radical party claimed kinship and affinity with the similarly peasant-based socialist Serbian Radical Party of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Encyclopedia of Ukraine, "Radicalism"
written by John-Paul Himka It actively opposed the influence of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and its priests in Ukrainian society. It was also opposed to the Austrian government, to mainstream Ukrainophiles who were loyal to Austria, and to Ukrainian attempts to cooperate with Polish authorities. At the same time, the URP cooperated with Polish workers and peasants. The URP supported Ukrainian independence at a party congress in 1895, the first time that the goal of an independent Ukrainian state had been expressed anywhere. Involved with the plight of the Ukrainian peasants, the URP also called for and organized strikes of Ukrainian agricultural workers.

History

The Radical Party was founded in Lviv on October 4, 1890, by a group of Ukrainian activists including the poet Ivan Franko, the publisher Mykhailo Pavlyk, and others. It was involved in founding reading rooms and cooperatives, organizing women's groups, and training and politicizing Ukrainian peasants. In 1895, the party passed a resolution calling for Ukrainian independence. That same year, it sent three representatives to the Galician Diet and in 1897 two representatives to the Austrian parliament.

In the mid-1890s three competing groups emerged within the URP. One maintained its allegiance to the traditional ideology of the URP. Another faction turned more to western European socialism and Marxism. A third faction which included most of the Radical Party's most prominent members such as Ivan Franko became increasingly disenchanted with socialist ideas and more focussed on national concerns. In 1899 the latter two groups left the Radical Party. The socialist-learning faction split off to form the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party. The nationalist-leading faction merged with mainstream Ukrainiphiles to create the National Democratic Party, which was the largest Ukrainian political party in Austrian-ruled Ukraine before and during the first world war. The National Democratic party, renamed the Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance