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I have been in touch with Serbyn who commented on my "Bitter Harvest" review. This is from an interview with him:
Q: In the academic world your work on Podolynsky is well known. Podolynsky is a remarkable thinker and personality. He finished medical school in Paris, he had Ukrainian aristocratic family roots, and, in defiance of his father’s pro-Empire positions, he became a socialist and nationalist. I believe your biobibliographic and biographic work on Podolynsky is the most complete to date.
RS: Podolynsky is one of the bright lights of 19th-century Ukrainian intellectual history. Unfortunately, he became mentally ill at the age of 32 and died in 1891 at age 41. Currently, in the West he is linked with the ecological movement because of his discussions on conservation and the use of solar energy. Ukrainians have always treated him primarily as an economist. In fact, by education, he was a medical doctor. For the Soviets he was an enigmatic figure because of his connections with Marx and the socialist movements in Europe and the Russian empire. We have Podolynsky’s letters to Marx; unfortunately, we do not have Marx’s replies to Podolynsky. Podolynsky liked Marxist socialist economic theories but did not like Marx as a politician because Podolynsky was a democrat, and he was most disappointed by Marx’s dictatorial behavior at the 1872 conference of the International at the Hague, where Podolynsky went to meet the leaders of European socialist movements. It was as a socialist that Podolynsky became a “nationalist” of sorts. Like Antonovych before him, who left the Polish camp to join the Ukrainian people among whom he was living, Podolynsky left the Russian revolutionaries to join Drahomanov and the Ukrainian hromada. As a young socialist, while studying medicine in Paris and then Zurich, he helped the Russian socialist P. Lavrov publish the ОmigrО journal Vpered. He was personally acquainted with Bakunin and the less familiar, but more important, Tkachev. Podolynsky’s position was that socialism in Ukraine would have to be built on Ukrainian roots and culture; this is why he found the use of Russian traditions and Russian slogans irrelevant in Ukraine. That is why he gradually moved away from the Russian socialists and joined Drahomanov, Pavlyk, Shulhyn — the Ukrainian radicals of the day. Podolynsky was an authentic democrat, and in the Russian dispute between Lavrov and Tkachev (a Blanquist who believed in coming to power by putchist methods) he took the side of Lavrov against this “Leninist before Lenin” — Tkachev. It was the latter that most influenced Lenin. Speaking of Lenin, do you know what Lenin’s training was in?
full: https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/close/conversation-professor-roman-serbyn
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