Fedkov O. The Ukrainian Social-Democratic Union in the social life of the Dnieper Ukraine at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The thesis deals with the social and cultural conditions of the emergence and activity of the social-democratic parties and unions in the Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The empiric facts from the history of the Social-Democracy of the Russian Empire were analyzed and interpreted in terms that allowed us to substantiate the concept of international and national Marxist parties and unions. The main criteria which have become the basis for comparison of the mentioned organizations are singled out: 1) priorities in solving social and national problems and 2) principles of party development. It was found out here that the international Social Democrats advocated the preservation of the centralized state and the development of the socialist system, which would result in the socialization of means of production, and the elimination of classes and, consequently, social and national oppression. As for the issues of the party organization, the internationalists supported the idea of creation of a united, centralized Social-Democratic Party, in which the national groups would operate on the basis of autonomy. Instead, the national Social Democratic parties also had class principles and, in their program requirements, advocated a revolutionary transformation of the existing society.