Ukrainians whose equal humanity is not recognized but for Russian writers themselves and Russian literature. During the First World War, which brought fighting and occupation onto Ukrainian lands, Vynnychenko rhetorically wondered why our “brother” Russians show little concern with the suffering of Ukrainians? Why does “the love among Ukrainians for their own nation [narod] and sorrow for its fate elicit…wrath, indignation, and feelings of spite, or, at best, sarcasm or indifference?” The answer, he argued (writing in Russian, so again addressing Russians as much as Ukrainians), is that Ukrainians are becoming strong and aware as a nation, and “they fear us.” But nothing can stop the development of Ukrainian “consciousness,” he declared, which is already manifest in its intelligentsia. “Just as you cannot stop the formation of clouds, arising from the earth and returning to it, so it is impossible to stop the formation of a nationally conscious stratum in a people. We emerge from the raw earth, from the soil, from the depths of our nation, and we again return to it, and we again arise.” Vynnychenko believed that it was not enough to change structures of power in freeing the Ukrainian nation. Liberation demanded changes in people’s mentalities and values, in their moral and spiritual lives, in their selves. A true revolution needed to be, Vynnychenko insisted, all-sided, all-embracing, universal liberation (vsebichne vyzvolennia). To explore and promote this vision, he examined in his fiction questions of sexuality, emotion, will, and character. Ultimately, the point was to ask the most important question: how to realize a fully human and fully free personality, especially in the face of the crushing conditions and legacies of unfreedom? Head of first Ukrainian government After the February Revolution in Russia in 1917, Vynnychenko served as the head of the General Secretariat, a representative executive body of the Russian Provisional Government in Ukraine. He was authorized by the Central Rada of Ukraine (a de facto parliament) to conduct negotiations with the Russian Provisional Government, 1917. Vynnychenko resigned his post in the General Secretariat on August 13 in protest against the Russian government's rejection of the Universal of Central Rada. For a brief period he was replaced by Dmytro Doroshenko who composed a new government the next day, yet unexpectedly he requested his resignation as well on August 18. Vynnychenko was offered to return, form a cabinet and redesign the Second Universal to petition a federal