the university's governing council. But Drahomanov's ascent was blocked by the conservative administration, as part of a generalised reaction to the January Uprising in Poland. Following the death of his father, Drahomanov took a job as a geography teacher at a Kyiv high school, in order to financially support his family. His financial situation worsened following his marriage and the subsequent death of his mother-in-law, forcing him to take a second job as a journalist for the Petersburg News, for which he wrote about the situation of life in Ukraine. On 25 May 1864, after defending his thesis about Tiberius, he was admitted as a lecturer at Kyiv University. From his studies of ancient history, Drahomanov's interests shifted towards Slavic history, particularly concentrating on folklore. In 1867, he published a collection of Ukrainian folklore, which was the only type of Ukrainian-language publication that wasn't forbidden by the authorities. In 1869, he collaborated with Volodymyr Antonovych on the publication of a collection of Ukrainian folk music. It was at this time that he became involved with the Hromada, a secret society that advocated for education in the Ukrainian language. This drew the attention of the Russian authorities, which suspected the society had links with the Polish insurrection and began to repress the nascent movement for Ukrainian nationalism, with Pyotr Valuyev prohibiting the printing of works in Ukrainian. When Drahomanov published a review of a book by , criticising it for Great Russian chauvinism, Drahomanov was publicly accused by the Russian press of advocating separatism and subsequently fell under surveillance by the secret police. Nevertheless, he remained active in radical politics, even criticising revolutionary students from Saint Petersburg that advocated for centralized government in Russia. In 1870, when Drahomanov defended his master's thesis about Tacitus and was nominated by the university council to become an assistant professor, his appointment was initially blocked by Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, which prevented him from receiving funds during his scholarly trip abroad. His travels took him first to Germany, where he witnessed the Franco-Prussian War, attended lectures by Theodor Mommsen and studied the Slavic cultural movement in Lusatia. He then went on to Switzerland, where he met a number of Russian emigres and debated with them the establishment of socialism, himself declaring that political freedom was a necessary prerequisite, while others considered Russian peasants to already be ready for a socialist society. He finally went to Austria-Hungary, where he