Научная статья на тему 'POST-SOVIET UKRAINIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY: THE NEW CANON OF NATIONAL HISTORY'

POST-SOVIET UKRAINIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY: THE NEW CANON OF NATIONAL HISTORY Текст научной статьи по специальности «История и археология»

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Ключевые слова
UKRAINE / HISTORIOGRAPHY / NATIONAL MYTH / NATIONAL NARRATIVE / NATIONALISM / HISTORY / MEMORY STUDIES / POST-SOVIET STUDIES

Аннотация научной статьи по истории и археологии, автор научной работы — Pashkovskaya T. G.

Creating a new national narrative was the key element of nation-building after the collapse of the Soviet 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 version 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.

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Текст научной работы на тему «POST-SOVIET UKRAINIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY: THE NEW CANON OF NATIONAL HISTORY»

УДК: 930:94(477)

DOI: 10.18503/2658-3186-2021-5-4-101-109

Т. Г. Пашковская (Магнитогорск, Россия)

ПОСТСОВЕТСКАЯ ИСТОРИОГРАФИЯ УКРАИНЫ: НОВЫЙ КАНОН НАЦИОНАЛЬНОЙ

ИСТОРИИ

Аннотация. Создание нового национального нарратива стало ключевым элементом построения нации после распада Советского Союза. Исследования постсоветской истории развивались под влиянием антитоталитарной политической повестки и потребностью молодой нации в новых символах, героях, победах и трагедиях. Новый нарратив, разрушивший советские мифы, был создан на основе рассекреченных советских архивов и данных устной истории, многие идеи заимствовались из исследований ученых украинской диаспоры в странах Северной Америки, а также из досоветских концепций, важнейшая из которых была разработана М. Грушевским. Статья основана на историографических и исторических трудах, опубликованных в постсоветский период (1991— 2021 гг.). Целью исследования - выявить новые подходы, актуальные темы, современную аргументацию, которые отличают историографию Украины от советского и российского нарративов. Более подробному анализу подвергнуты концепции, которые использовались украинскими политиками и наполняли идеями новую «каноническую» версию украинской истории. Это история Киевской Руси как протоукраинского государства, восстание запорожских казаков под руководством Богдана Хмельницкого и Переяславский договор 1654 г. как первый украинский проект создания государства и голод 1932-1933 гг. как величайшая трагедия украинского народа. Сделан вывод о том, что современная постсоветская украинская историография занимается проектом национального строительства, в то время как международный контекст актуализирует новые подходы, в том числе те, которые выявляют и разрушают национальные мифы, стирают культурные границы. Статья может быть интересна специалистам, занимающимся украинской историей и проблемами коллективной памяти.

Ключевые слова: Украина, историография, национальный миф, национальный нарратив, национализм, история, история памяти, постсоветские исследования

T. G. Pashkovskaya (Magnitogorsk, Russia)

POST-SOVIET UKRAINIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY: THE NEW CANON OF NATIONAL

HISTORY

Abstract. Creating a new national narrative was the key element of nation-building after the collapse of the Soviet 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 postSoviet 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 version 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, postSoviet studies

Introduction

Does Ukraine have a history? According to German historian Mark von Hagen, this was a question that could be asked, and, in fact, many asked it after studying the geography of history teaching. Ukrainian historiography existed, but, as a rule, it was created by Ukrainian emigrants. That is why Ukrainian studies found little recognition and were mainly seen as a search for roots and national advocacy [28, p. 658]. In a sense, Ukraine, like many other Eastern European countries, was 'denied full historiographic legitimacy' until they gained independence. In the 19th century, when great powers were creating national narratives, many other peoples of Europe were part of empires and were 'late' in the creation of modern historiography.

Thirty years later after the collapse of the Soviet Union this question was removed from the agenda. Ukrainian studies are an accomplished fact. The Ukrainian 'presence' in the Western scientific area is by and large comparable to the Russian one. Both in North America and in Europe, there are university chairs and

institutes for Ukrainian studies. The most significant scholars are still of Ukrainian origin: Serghii Plokhy, Taras Kuzio, Andrei Portnov. However, in recent years, new European and American publications have appeared: Andrew Wilson (USA), Andreas Kappeler (Austria), Alexandra Goujon (France). Among Ukrainian historians, Mikhail Kasyanov, Yaroslav Gritsak and Petr Tolochko stand out.

The post-Soviet historiography in Ukraine has been discussed by many scholars. European and American scholars give a propound and overall analyses of the Ukrainian studies while Ukrainian and Russian works tend to focus on specific questions.

Andrei Portnov, Professor of European University Viadrina in Germany [22], and Yaroslav Gritsak, Professor of Ukrainian Catholic University [2] conclude that the nation-building narrative prevails in the Ukrainian scholars' works, while international history rests weakly presented. German historian Mark von Hagen analyzes the challenges that national historiography of the young independent country can face [28, p. 659]. Taras Kuzio, Professor of Toronto University studies the historiography of post-Soviet Ukraine [15]. The scholar focuses upon seven key areas of this new historiography - the medieval state of Kiev Rus, the 1654 Russian-Ukrainian Treaty of Pereyaslav, Ukraine under the Tsarist regime, Austrian rule, the Russian Revolution, Soviet rule and Ukrainian nationalism. In the early years of independent Ukraine, Taras Kuzio was the only historian who paid attention to the existence of regional historiographical traditions in Donbass and Crimea in the post-Soviet Ukraine. Serhii Plokhy, Professor of Harvard University, published a fundamental work on the representation of the past in Russia and Ukraine [21]. The historian contraposes Russian and Ukrainian myths that their contemporary historiographies develop. Andreas Kappeler, Professor of Zurich University, provides a deep study of Ukrainian, Russian and Polish historiography on the Cossacks [7]. Georgy Kasyanov, Professor at the Institute of Ukrainian History, analyses the nation-building historiography of Ukraine in the international postmodernist context. On the one hand, there is a public demand for a national history in the style the 19th century modernity, on the other hand, the era of postmodernism leads to globalization and relativization of all kinds of ideologies, including patriotism, conclude the scholar [10]. There are numerous Russian and Ukrainian historiographical works and discussions on narrow topics. Anna Kapustyan and Stanislav Kulchitsky analyze the historiography of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933 [8]. Yuri Latysh discusses the Ukrainian historiography of perestroika [16]. Igor Ilushin studies displacements and deportations of 1944-1947 on the Ukrainian-Polish borderland [4].

Historiography, created in the post-Soviet era, first and foremost, serves the interests of the young nation-state. The new Ukrainian narrative is characterized by new priorities in research subjects and sometimes methodological inaccuracies arising from the interlacement of historical as well as political discourses and the inability to choose and apply a new approach in the postmodernity situation of methodological diversity. This paper discusses the post-Soviet vision of Ukrainian history reflected in contemporary historiography. We focus on the most controversial historical issues and the range of arguments provided during the discussions.

From 'the Ukraine' to Ukraine: the birth Ukrainian historiography of independent

Russian and Soviet historiography, except the period of Ukrainization (korenizatsia) in the 1920s, were alike in their interpretation of the history of eastern Slavs. In the 1930s history was rewritten with a Russia-centered view. Ukraine was presented as a regional variant of the common Russian identity. This historiography of 'the Ukraine' [1] as a Russian borderland could not become a base to build a new independent state.

What challenges did Ukrainian historiography face in the late 1980s? Firstly, it is the integrating of the past and tracing the continuity of national history. Secondly, it is overcoming the Russia-centered imperial narrative. Thirdly, it is the integrating of two influential intellectual groups, namely, those who are assimilated into Russian or Soviet political culture (for the reasons of forced migrations, carrier growth, military service), and those who left Ukraine and live in Ukrainian diasporas of North America, Australia and Europe. Fourthly, the institutionalization of Ukrainian studies abroad, opening university chairs and research institutions for Ukrainian studies [28].

The roots of the new national narrative go back to the late 1980s, when Orest Subtelnei, a Canadian historian of Ukrainian origin, published his work Ukraine: A History [23], which turned into a true bestseller at that time. It represented a modernized version of Hrushevsky's conception, was written on secondary sources and addressed to English speaking readers, but the book had awesome success in the newly born independent state. It became a textbook for Ukrainian students of history who had to study in the first years of independence when Soviet approaches were already outdated, and new research had not yet appeared. Subtelny's book, published also in Ukrainian, filled the vacuum in the historiography of the first years of Ukraine's independence

and became a kind of symbol of the period of transition to the new historical research recalls Natalia Talalay, who was studying in Ukraine at that time [19].

This success demonstrates the outstanding role of the Ukrainian diaspora, especially the American one, in the development of post-Soviet Ukrainian studies. It served as a 'window to the West' and a kind of guide for new studies, remarks historian Portnov [22]. Kasyanov recalls this as a total 'subtelnizatsia' of Ukraine, and even Orest Subtelny himself was surprised to see such an obsession among Ukrainians with his book. Evidently, a new vision of Ukrainian history, different from what they had read in the Soviet textbooks looked fresh and appealing for an inexperienced, in terms of ideological diversity, post-Soviet reader. This book determined the vector of development of Ukrainian historiography and popularized Hrushevsky as 'the father of Ukrainian history' [6].

In 1990, the Ukrainian Party Committee initiated a program of 'nationalization of history' (the name combines Soviet and traditional discourses), which meant the publication of declassified primary sources and new textbooks. According to Kasyanov, this turned into a kind of 'canonization' of Hrushevsky in post-Soviet Ukrainian historiography, to the point that Hrushevsky's portrait replaced Lenin's one [10, p. 511]. In the 1990s, monuments to Hrushevsky were erected in the regions of western Ukraine. In 1998 the monument to Hrushevsky was unveiled in Kiev. The name of Hrushevsky appeared in the banknotes, postages stamps, streets, libraries and museums were named in his honor. As for Orest Subtelny, after his death in 2016 he was referred to as 'the founding father of modern Ukrainian history' [14].

Historiographical landmarks of independent Ukraine

Kiev Rus

The territory of Kiev Rus covered most of modern-day western and central Ukraine, nearly all of modern Belarus and the western parts of what is now Russia. Linguistic imprecision and Russia-centered approach have too often led to the assumption that the 'Rus' were simply early medieval 'Russians'.

According to Russian and Soviet historiography, Kiev Rus was an eastern Slavic state, the forerunner of Russia. After a period of fragmentation Russian statehood was restored with its new centre in Moscow and then it pursued a successful policy of returning the lands of the Eastern Slavs to a single state. In Russia, this thesis has been always used to legitimize the territorial expansion to the west. It was within the Russian state, under the auspices of the Great Russian, that the emergence of independent peoples of the Ukrainians and Belarusians, so-called 'younger brothers', was prepared.

For the majority of Ukrainian historians, this view is unacceptable. They share Hrushevsky's point of view, which represent Kiev Rus as a proto-Ukrainian state. The arguments are as follows: the major lands of Kiev Rus were situated on Ukrainian territory in its post-Soviet borders; their capital Kiev was founded much earlier than Moscow, so that the Russian idea of being an 'older brother' of Ukraine has no sense, according to them. As for the history of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality in the period of fragmentation, it had the same relationship to Kiev as Rome to Gaul.

Modern historians support Ukrainian claims to Kiev Rus, but the ways to legitimize it are different. American historian of Ukrainian origin Frank Sysyn uses the ethnonym 'Ruthenians' to name eastern Slavs that were not under Moscow control by the 16th century. The Ruthenians included the Ukrainians and Belarusians, and they were viewed as one cultural-linguistic-religious community of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The historian argues that by the sixteenth century there were already clear distinctions between the Ruthenians and the Muscovites. Had a Ruthenian polity existed, we might have two rather than three East Slavic nations today. Instead, the Union of Lublin of 1569, which removed most Ukrainian-speaking territory from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, furthered the process of differentiating the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples, who already lived under different geographic and economic conditions. The Cossacks who in the 17th century revolted against Poles acted in the name of Rus and the Orthodox church, they represented a Ruthenian political nation [24, p. 146-150].

There are historians who criticize the Ukrainization of ancient periods of history. Yaroslav Gritsak, a Lvov historian, argues that the history of Kievan Rus needs to be rewritten. There were no Ukrainians or Russians. There was no state with clear boundaries [5]. Even the term 'Kiev Rus' is a creation of the 19th century. Petro Tolochko, one of the leading researchers of the Institute of Archaeology of Ukraine and a foreign member of Russian Academy of Sciences, affirms that mixing of Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians with Ruthenians (rusichi) is unprofessional. Yaroslav the Wise was not Ukrainian as well as Yuri Dolgoruky was not a 'MoscaF. However, he concludes that the people of ancient Rus can be viewed as a single ethnic community [26].

In mass and political discourses, Grushevsky's version of the story dominates. The Ukrainian Declaration of Independence on August 24, 1991 proclaims that the new state continues the millennial statehood of Ukraine. All national symbols created in the 1990s refer to Kiev Rus'. The national symbol (the trident or tryzub) and the national currency (hryvna) link Ukraine to Kiev Rus'. Monuments to Kiev Rus Princess Olga and Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise were erected during 1996-1997 in Kiev. The Ukrainian Law Academy in Kharkov is named after Yaroslav the Wise, who introduced the Rus law code (Russkaya Pravda), reflecting the fact that Ukraine preserved the law code of Kiev Rus during the Lithuanian and Polish rule for centuries after the destruction of the Kiev Rus state in 1240 [15, p. 29]. All Ukrainian Presidents, from Leonid Kravchuk to Vladimir Zelensky, support Ukraine's sole right to Kiev Rus.

In this dispute of the Slavs, the point of view of American historian Andrew Wilson looks the most balanced. He resumes that while Russians are still brought up on the idea of a single ancient Russian nation and still have great difficulty accepting that independent Ukraine exists, Ukrainians often swing to the opposite extreme and claim the unity of Rus as their own state, they seek to deny the Russians their traditional theory of national origin. For them, Rus was a Kievan and therefore a Ukrainian state [29, p. 2].

Bogdan Khmelnitsky and Cossacks

In Moscow Khmelnitsky was seen as the one who had brought Russia and Ukraine together by the Pereyaslav Agreement. Ukrainians claim that Khmelnitsky had been confronted with three choices - to accept the Turkish, Polish or Russian yoke - and had chosen the Russian one [20, p. 489]. In the Soviet historiography, the Cossack upspringing was officially referred as the 'Ukrainian people's war of liberation'.

In 1992 one anachronistic but symbolic event took place. It was a Cossack Council in Pereyaslav, where they denounced the oath given by the Ukrainian Cossacks to the Russian Tsar and swore to be loyal to the Ukrainian people. In the text of the declaration adopted in 1992, the tsars of Muscovy were accused of betraying the naive and God-fearing Cossacks, conspiring with their enemies, taking over their lands, destroying their language and customs. In 1995 Ukrainian government sponsored official celebrations of the 400 anniversaries of Khmelnitsky's birth. The celebrations took place in Khmelnitsky's capital Chigirin.

The Bogdan Khmelnitsky revolt and the Pereyaslav Agreement are viewed today as important factors in the formation of a new paradigm of Ukrainian national history. Since the early 1990s has become a politically sensitive topic in discussions between Russian and Ukrainian historians. Ukrainian scholars abandon the term 'reunification'. Historian Serhii Plokhii explains that the term 'reunification' was borrowed from pro-Russian Ukrainian writer Panteleimon Kulish, who wrote about the 'reunification of Rus'. The Soviet historiography transformed it into 'reunification of Ukraine and Russia' that never existed. For Ukrainians, by keeping the term 'reunification' alive the Russian academy leaves the door open for new 'reunification' in future 20, p. 493]. Besides, they stop using the term 'Khmelnichchina\ popular in the Soviet Ukrainian discourse, in order to break the continuity with the Soviet narrative. As remarks Yurii Mytsyk, the word ' Khmelnichchina' s term was associated with such terms as 'Petlurovshchina' and 'Banderovshchina' which were derived from the names of Ukrainian political leaders to discredit movement led by them. So, to rename the historical events connected with Khmelnitsky they adopted the neutral term 'the Khmelnitsky Revolt' or 'the Cossack Uprising'.

Some contemporary historians echo the Soviet historiography, which considered the adoption of the protectorate 'lesser evil' for Ukraine than the incorporation of the Cossacks to Poland or the Ottoman Empire. Most Ukrainian scholars, in the cases of Khmelnitsky revolt, borrowed the main ideas from the so-called, 'statist approach' developed by diaspora historiography. The main result of the Cossack Uprising and the Treaty of Pereyaslav is the formation of the Cossack Ukrainian state. Khmelnitsky's policy is regarded as a nation-building project and presented as a milestone in the history of Ukrainian statehood. Taras Kuzio remarks that for new historiography it is conventional to draw parallels between the Treaty of Pereyaslav and the 1707 Union of Scotland and England, where Scotland entered into the union as a free and unconquered subject with its right to be protected [15, p. 32].

Serghii Plokhy analyses the evolution of Ukrainian myth about Cossacks. He remarks that Ukrainian historians placed new emphasis on the role of Cossack detachments in the Russo-Turkish wars of the second half of the 18th century (for example, I. Storozhenko, V. Butkevich). Numerous publications pointed out that it was not so much the imperial forces as the Ukrainian Cossacks who had conquered and colonized territories of modern Ukraine during the Russo-Turkish wars. Another modification of Cossack mythology was connected with the rewriting of the history of Cossack-Tatar relations. The Cossacks were usually regarded as defenders of their homeland, Ukraine, from Ottoman and Tatar attacks, so Tatars were described as the worst

enemies. In contemporary historiography, Cossack-Tatar struggle against Russia and Turkey was thoroughly studied. It was also claimed that in the seventeenth century most of the Crimean population was not made up of Tatars but of Ukrainians captured by the Tatars during their attacks on Ukrainian territories. The historian concludes that these and other attempts to reexamine the history of Cossack-Tatar relations represented something of an effort to modify Cossack mythology so as to meet new demands for the creation of a Ukrainian-Tatar political union to oppose Russian claims to the peninsula. For this reason, they give up promoting the Cossack myth in the contest of ethnic exclusivity in order to help build a multinational civil society and preserve Ukraine's territorial integrity. Besides, in Ukraine, the Cossack legacy was also regarded as an important means of legitimizing Ukrainian claims to the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. As a result, the historiography of the Ukrainian Navy has been created. The narrative starts with the period of the Kiev Rus, when princes Askold, Dir, Oleh, and Igor attacked Constantinople by sea [21, p. 177-178]. They underline that Ukrainians sailed and controlled Crimea before the arrival of Russians in the 18th century.

Holodomor

The famine of 1932-1933 is the mainstream historiographical question of Soviet studies in contemporary Ukraine. Discussions on this subject have been politically biased since the beginning of independence. The famine has been referred to as Holodomor and focused genocide of Ukrainians since 1990. Taras Kuzio, who summarized the 1990s historiography, states that it was an artificial famine that claimed upwards of 7 million lives [15, p. 37].

Mass attention to the famine of 1932-1933 was drawn by Manyak, Ukrainian writer, and Kovalenko, Ukrainian journalist, who published a memory book in 1991. They gathered people's memories of the famine in order to prove the fact of the genocide of Ukrainians. The following year witnessed a release of the Ukrainian-language collection of documents 'The Collectivization and the Famine in Ukraine' [11]. In the introduction, the authors suggest distinguishing three periods: famishing (golodanie) in 1931, famine (golod) in 1932 and murder-famine (holodomor) in 1933. Among the arguments for qualifying this historical fact as genocide are the high demographical losses, the maximum extraction of agricultural produce from the rural population, the extinction of villages.

In 1988 the US Commission on the Ukraine Famine arrived at nineteen findings, that what happened to the Ukrainians in 1932-1933 constituted genocide. James Mace, a US scholar, had a significant impact on the representation of the famine as genocide. He claimed that Stalin's aim was not only the Ukrainian farmer but also intelligentsia. It was an undeclared war against them [17, p. 45-52]. It damaged the culture, the Ukrainian civilization. However, he does not agree with Ukrainians who speak of the Holodomor as the Ukrainian Holocaust. He states that it is a unique term that has arisen from the depths of a victimized nation itself [17, p. 5152].

Since the Orange revolution in 2005, the discourse of Holodomor has become an important factor of the domestic policy: the tragedy is used to victimize the national history and build the nation. It has been turned into one of the fundamental symbols of national historical myth. In 2001 a thematic bibliography index devoted to the famine in 1932-1933 was published. It included 6,384 scientific works issued in 1932-2000 [80, p. 77]. The year 2005 saw another publication with an impressive title Holodomors in Ukraine in 1921-1923, 19321933, 1946-1947 [3]. Kulchitsky's work Why did he exterminate us? [12] represents the canonic version of the myth.

One of the main debated questions of Holodomor is the demographical losses of Ukraine because of the famine. The figures that have been circulating since the end of the 1980s vary from 2 to 13 million people. Some historians consider not only the dead but also forcibly displaced to other regions during the period of industrialization as well as those who fled from Ukraine or were not born due to fertility crises. In 2003, the year of the 70th anniversary of Holodomor, Kulchitsky said that his estimates show the population losses were between 3 million and 4,5 million [12, p. 52-53]. President Yushchenko and his supporters insisted on 7-10 million deaths. According to the estimates by the French Institute for Demographic Studies, excess mortality in Ukraine in 1932-1933 was about 2,5 million people [27, p. 253], they also draw attention to the extremely low life expectancy, which fell to 10 years this year [18]. According to most scholars, the general number of deaths in 1931-1933 is about 3,5 million [9, p. 28].

The claim to consider the tragedy of Holodomor as unique, as incomparable to other peoples' tragedies makes turns the famine of 1932-1933 into the subject of worship and not of scientific studies. To understand and explain a historical fact a scholar needs to place it in the general context and compare it with similar facts. When historians say it was the most tragic event, an unprecedented tragedy, the worst crime in history then they can make a hit-parade of peoples' sufferings, but they cannot analyze the historical facts. A proper

historical analysis demands contextualization, relativization and comparison. When historians compare, they elicit similarities and differences. It can be used as a key to other historical facts. Historian Tzvetan Todorov writes 'Speaking of the evils of Nazism, several comparisons spring to mind, and they all allow us - although to varying degrees - to advance in understanding it. Some of their characteristics are found in the Armenian genocide, in the Soviet camps, still others in the reduction of Africans to slavery' [25, p. 36-37]. Meanwhile, Ukrainians are seeking recognition of the Holodomor as genocide.

Conclusion

The independence of Ukraine is followed by creating new national historiography. It is one of the priorities of the state, it is a nation-building project. The key factors that influenced the national narrative are the domination of the anti-Soviet agenda and the demand for the rethinking of the Soviet past as well as the necessity to create a nation-state with its symbols, heroes, victories and tragedies. The primary sources of new historiography: declassified Soviet archives and eyewitness memories; among the secondary sources, the most important are works of the diaspora and pre-Soviet concepts.

By the 30th anniversary of independence, Ukraine has formed a new national narrative and determined the milestones of its history. The new canonic narrative is composed of three dominants. 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.

The history of Kiev Rus is treated in the line with pre-Soviet Hrushevsky's concept. The princes of Kiev Rus are referred to as Ukrainians, the diplomatic relationships of ancient Kiev pass off as the beginning of Ukrainian international activity. Although many historians express their disagreements with the identification of Kiev Rus as a Ukrainian state, the official concept continue reproducing it during all commemoration events, the history textbooks also repeat the old concept.

The Cossack Uprising and the Treaty of Pereyaslav are estimated as fundamental events for the Ukrainian state-building. They reject the Soviet concept of 'lesser evil' affirming that Bogdan Khmelnitsky had no choice. Neither the Ottoman empire nor Poland was a better choice for Orthodox Ukrainians. The entry of the Cossack as an autonomous hetman state into Russia in the 17th century is explained by the hope that an independent Ukrainian state can be created under the protection of the Russian tsar. The famine of 1932-1933 is called the Holodomor. It is claimed to be genocide of the Ukrainians. Holodomor is most carefully studied. It has become a symbol of suffering from the totalitarian regime and, in a certain sense, the resistance of Ukrainians. The research of Holodomor as well as its commemoration take the central place in the cultural policy.

To sum up, post-Soviet Ukrainian historiography is occupied with a nation-building project, while the international context actualizes new approaches, including those eliciting and deconstructing national myths and cultural frontiers.

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28. von Hagen M. Does Ukraine Have a History? Slavic Review, 1995, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 658-673.

29. Wilsson A. The Ukrainians: Unexpected nation, Yale University Press, 2015, 410 p.

Пашковская Т. Г. Постсоветская историография Украины: новый канон национальной истории // Гуманитарно-педагогические исследования. 2021. Т. 5. № 4. С. 101-109.

Pashkovskaya T. G. Post-Soviet Ukrainian Historiography: The New Canon of National History, Gumanitarno-pedagogicheskie issledovaniya [Humanitarian and pedagogical Research], 2021, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 101-109. Дата поступления статьи - 01.09.2021; 1 печ. л.

Сведения об авторе

Пашковская Татьяна Григорьевна - кандидат философских наук, доцент кафедры всеобщей истории, Институт гуманитарного образования, Магнитогорский государственный технический университет им. Г. И. Носова (МГТУ), Магнитогорск, Россия; [email protected] Author:

Tatiana G. Pashkovskaya, Candidate of Philosophy, Associate Professor at the Department of World History, Institute of Humanities, Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University (NMSTU), Magnitogorsk, Russia; [email protected]._

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