Dmytro Dontsov

Dmytro Dontsov (Melitopol, 1883 – Montreal, 1973) was a Ukrainian writer, publisher and political thinker, regarded as the founder of the theory of integral nationalism. His radical ideas shaped the more uncompromising wing of the Ukrainian nationalist movement and had a strong influence on the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. He matters because he gave a doctrinal form to a nationalism that rejected the socialism of his youth and called for Ukraine to separate from Russia.

Born into a family of former Cossack officers, he was orphaned young and raised largely by his grandfather. After studying law in Saint Petersburg he drifted toward socialism, joined the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1905 and was arrested more than once. Around 1913 he broke with the party and publicly argued for Ukrainian independence from Russia. During the First World War he ran propaganda offices in Berlin, Vienna and Bern, and in 1918 he worked with Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi's government. In the interwar years he settled in Lviv and published journals and essays calling for a deep nationalism, a united national will and the use of violence to overthrow the old order.

After the Second World War he settled in Canada and taught Ukrainian literature. His thought drew closer to fascism in the 1930s and was rejected by much of the postwar Ukrainian intelligentsia, although it remains highly regarded on the Ukrainian far right.