Yalta-45: Ukrainian science historiographic realia in globalization and universalism era (original) (raw)
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Post-Soviet Ukrainian Historiography: The New Canon of National History
Humanitarian and pedagogical Research, 2021
Abstract. Creating a new national narrative was the key element of nation-building after the collapse of the So- viet Union. The post-Soviet history research was thematized by antitotalitarian attitudes and the political need for new symbols, new heroes, victories and tragedies to build the nation. The new narrative challenging Soviet myths was created on the basis of declassified Soviet archives, witness testimonies, studies issued from the Ukrainian diaspora of North America and pre-Soviet concepts. The article is based on the historiographical and historical works published during the post-Soviet period (1991-2021). The research aim is to identify new approaches, new pertinent subjects, new argumentation that distinguish the historiography of Ukraine from the Soviet and the Russian narratives. More detailed analyses are applied to the concepts that have been instrumentalized by Ukrainian politicians and filled the canon ver- sion of Ukrainian history with ideas. They are the history of Kiev Rus as a proto-Ukrainian state, the Cossack Upspring and The Treaty of Pereyaslav as the first Ukrainian nation-building project and the famine of 1932-1933 as the biggest tragedy of Ukrainian history. It is concluded that post-Soviet Ukrainian historiography is engaged in a nation-building project, while the international context actualizes new approaches, including those eliciting and deconstructing national myths and cultural frontiers. The article can be interesting to specialists interested in Ukrainian history and memory studies. Keywords: Ukraine, historiography, national myth, national narrative, nationalism, history, memory studies, post-Soviet studies
Ar E rule, hlntorlans of historiography provide accounts of a gradual but pro-l|lrrlvo emcrgence of "objective knowledge" which separates views that have ir4 to thc foriration of "scientific history" from those that are in one way or lmlhor Chlracterieed as wrong. The former are then praised while the latter are ifn,ctroU. Thir approach hai its merits but it cannot provide us with a history oihow tho p6st was understood in the past. The Westem critical tradition, which inoiu.to, doiorminist Marxism, attempts to distinguish between truth and legend ,r rirrr, und tcnds to dismiss or overlook what was regarded as hisrorical know-iLfd fn tfro p,Bt. yct, legend and myth does influence behaviour, and, therefore, Wtfif fnC crlticul method might identify as "lies" or "tricks" is none the less iip,rrrinr und worthy of study, especially for pre-industrial societies, where ,,hirlorlcnl lrulh" w8s anything ihat conformed to the community's conception of lho pnrt,l Nsrrullvc hlstory, Georges Sorel pointed out, traditionally was important to frlCty not hccsu$c it *u* tru" or "objective," but because it provided a useful rf lttilcrlr. picture of the past. For most people the past was not reasoned *irniir,,t,rgtcul cxplunation, but a series of images of outstanding events which Inrlltkur-nnrl mcmory told them led to imponant changes in their world' The hlrt0rlnn who wunt$ to identify this particular kind of historical knowledge rhrultl crumlnc hiri texts as much for continuities as for changes, and ask il;iilnuch us: whst did the literate remember after they had forgotten facts? *'hrt f ln4 of un impression of an event or country remained in the mind after lhr hxrkr lnd urricles were put away? what did the illiterate remember after the nort'l.llor hrd lcft? llroro rcnlclual images make up the structure of historical consciousness or ilI ncrur ol' hlrtoricul-myths that bind peoples and nations together. Broadly ilillnf, thlr knowlcdge may be divided into official, unofficial, "elite"' and tfr1i;;j, Fjlrc knowlc-clge, offical and unofficial, had a pennanence because it Ji n nyA"l. lnnofar a* ofticial historiography was written by or for members t i *f f o5 .lltc, lt oqioycd the authority and prestige bestowed by statehood and i*'-,ffii*lnotlon thanks to govemment sponsorship. "Popular" historical l;"bJr;. offlclal und unofficial, existed in the consci::::"::.of lh: ftt-"i mpuiffton, Though corrcsponding to a degree with "elite" knowledge and [iftn. irorontr oI official and unofficial historiography, the "popular" imagc iii pai wlr rlmplcr and impcrmsnent because, until recently, it was trans-fO itroily, wlrhl; glven communitics clitc historical knowledge and popular xlv National Historv as Cultural Process understanding of the past interrelates on what Vico called a "public ground of truth." This relationship was almost predetermined if for no other reason than because the chronicler/historian leamed parts of each as a child. Indeed, unless the chronicler/historian at least started from his reader's half-conscious assumptions about their past, he most probably would not have been read and would have forfeited the possiblity of changing or rectifying popular belief. His final synthesis was usually a reflection of the prevailing mythology, although his image of the past was carefully pieced together in accordance with certain methodological principles, a system of formal logic, and some kind of precise cogency. The symbiotic relationship between scholarship and myth was thereby only modified not eliminated. l{ational History as Cultural Process traces the evolution of interpretations of Ukraine's past in survey histories of Poland, Russia and Ukraine. The book provides a guide to and summary of the Polish, Russian and Ukrainian elite images of Ukrainian history but also examines the broader issue of how interpretations change. As a comparative study of historiography as ideology this study does not judge interpretations according to criteria of truth and validity. While this book was in press, the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute issued the first volumes in two series that will reprint, or publish for the first time, the classics of Ukrainian historiography' By early next century these works will be much more readily available to readers.
2016
The process of formulating the concept for a new synthesis of Ukrainian history has brought to light several problems, the resolution of which depends on the success of the main plan: to ensure the emergence of a generalizing version of the history of Ukraine that would differ qualitatively, in terms of methodology and content, from previous syntheses and that would also be intellectually compatible with prevailing trends of history writing in Western scholarship. This article is based on an analytical note prepared for a working group based at the Institute of the History of Ukraine (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), which in 2010 sought to develop the concept of a multivolume history of Ukraine. Our task was quite utilitarian: to assess the possibilities of " national history " as a way of organizing knowledge about the past, as well as to outline possible ways to overcome its limitations. We were not interested in producing a fundamental historiographic outline or a profound theoretical treatise. Our mission was to initiate a discussion of the prospects for writing a synthesis of a History of Ukraine outside the canon of the master narrative. " National History " As a Way of Describing the Past " National history " as a clear-cut genre of history writing is a rather recent innovation; it has existed for less than two centuries. Earlier (European) historical literature was based on completely different methods of organizing the past. Simplified to the bare essence, they may be divided into two categories: universal histories, in which the GeorGiy Kasianov and oleKsii TolochKo National Histories and Contemporary Historiography: The Challenges and Risks of Writing a New History of Ukraine historiography-kasianov-tolochko.indd 67 8/8/16 11:24 AM
Global history is a recent trend in modern historiography. Since the term's emergence in the 1990s and to this day, there has been a debate around it. Th ere is ongoing discussion about the correlation between terms 'global history' , 'world history' , 'universal history' , 'shared history' , 'comparative history' , 'big history' , 'transnational history' , 'connected history' , 'entangled history' etc. Conventionally, global history has been studied as the history of the states, empires, civilisations, vast areas, hemispheres. Presently, global history has been entering into the refl exive stage, thus actualizing conceptual history as a relevant method for studying global history's subject fi eld and methodological tools. Conceptual history enables us to look at the global history as at the concept and as a historical ideology of the Global Age; it also can help to defi ne 'global history' term's place in a large linguistic family of related concepts, to trace semantic connections between such constructs, as 'backwardness' , 'imperial meridian' , 'revival-cultural transfer'. In this book, global history is presented by three types of historical writing: transnational history, social theology, histoire croisée. In the globalizing world the perception of global history must encompass national traditions, making it relevant both for the academic community and for the mass consciousness.
This book elucidates complex and long process of the "Ukrainian Historical Journal" transformation from the republican professional publication, founded in 1957 to a modern journal of Ukrainian historians. Esseys and materials connected with the journal's history are published in two main segments: 1) materials covering the history of Ukraine in the Soviet and post-Soviet times; 2) esseys with analytical interpretation of journal's publications and its changes with regards to the defi nite problems, topics, periods and epochs of the history of Ukraine, in particular, history of the Middle Ages and early modern history, history of the XIX — the early XX centuries, the Ukrainian revolution of 1917-1921, inter-war and post-war history of Soviet Ukraine, Ukrainian dimension of the history of World War II, and also studying the problems of the world history in the journal's publications, etc.
Ukraine's Transnational History
How do you write a history of a country that for centuries was split into several empires, lacked both an uninterrupted tradition of statehood and an established high culture with a standardized language, was inhabited by several ethnic groups, the dominant one -the "little Russians" or "Ruthenians" -being mostly illiterate peasants concentrated in rural areas who left no written records for wide swaths of time and lacked any national consciousness until World War I? How does one write about the history of these people who, even when they became literate, were forbidden to publish literature in Ukrainian (within the Russian Empire), and when Ukrainian history did not even exist as a field of study in universities? The answer, according to an international consortium of historians, is to write "transnational history," which they generally define as the study of relations between cultures and societies, focusing on "agents of cultural exchange" (pp. 3, 86). The purpose of this book, A Laboratory of Transnational History. edited by Georgiy Kasianov (Institute of Ukrainian History of Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Kiev) and Philipp Ther (European University Institute, Florence), is to contemplate alternative, more accurate, ways of interpreting Ukrainian history, eschewing "linear and longue durée causal explanations, as well as teleology,"
Methodological Reorientation of Historians as Decommunisation of the Ukrainian Historiography
2019
The 30th Anniversary is approaching since the Soviet Union has collapsed, and an independent Ukraine has been restated, which has become a turning event in the development of the Ukrainian historical science too. A complicated and contradictory process is going on aimed at cleaning that science from the ideological cliches and layers related to its communist past, from the stereotypes of the Marxist methodology, falsifications and misinterpretations, while the historical truth is being restated, and the integration of the Ukrainian Historiography into the European and world scope is expanding. In this context a special significance should be paid to the thorough understanding of the process of the methodological reorientation of the post-Soviet historians, to the generalization of the experience in the formation of a new generation of scholars as of priority performers of a decolonisation, desovietisation and decommunisatrion of the historical science, and to the irradication of rem...