Historiography

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Historiography [історіографія; istoriohrafiia]. The study of

the principles, theory, and history of historical writing.
Historical writing in Ukraine dates back to the earliest
chronicles of the first half of the 11th century. In time the
compiling of chronicles gave way to new forms of historical
writing. Since the 19th century the history of Ukraine has
been studied not only by Ukrainian but also by foreign—
mostly Polish and Russian—scholars, research institutions,
and learned societies. At the turn of the 20th century,
Mykhailo Hrushevsky proposed the first modern scheme of Ukrainian history that traced the
national historical continuity of the Ukrainian people throughout their ethnic territories and a
new period in Ukrainian historiography arose, defined by the predominance of the study of
Ukraine as a nation-state. Contemporary Ukrainian historical scholarship consists of various
currents of this approach.

The Princely era (11th–13th centuries). Chronicles were compiled in Ukraine beginning in the
first half of the 11th century, mostly in Kyiv—first at the Saint Sophia Cathedral and then at
the Kyivan Cave Monastery and the Vydubychi Monastery—but also in Chernihiv,
Pereiaslav, Volhynia, and Galicia. The earliest chronicles were chronological records of
current events. Soon, however, compilations of chronicles appeared. Their authors’ aims were
closely connected with contemporary religious and political developments. The oldest
chronicle collections are the Primary Chronicle or Povist’ vremennykh lit (up to 1111), the
Kyiv Chronicle (up to 1200), and the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle (1201–92).

The Primary Chronicle is the outstanding work of Ukrainian medieval historiography.

According to traditional belief and scholarly research, particularly that of Aleksei
Shakhmatov, its author was Nestor the Chronicler, a monk of the Kyivan Cave Monastery.
It has been preserved in numerous codices and redactions. The most important are the
Laurentian Chronicle (1377) and the Hypatian Chronicle (1425). In the latter the Kyiv
Chronicle and the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle appear as continuations of the Primary
Chronicle. The first attempt at a Ukrainian translation of the Primary Chronicle with

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annotations for the general reader was made by V. Blyznets and published in 1982. The next
attempt was the translation by Leonid Makhnovets of the Hypatian Chronicle in Litopys
rus’kyi (Kyiv 1989).

The Lithuanian-Polish and early Cossack periods (14th–17th centuries). Chronicle writing
continued in the 14th and 15th centuries, but very few examples have survived. In the 15th
century the so-called Lithuanian or western Ruthenian chronicles appeared. The oldest of
these, such as the Suprasl Chronicle, are direct continuations of the compilations of the
Kyivan Rus’ period and reflect the old Ukrainian historical tradition. The later ones, such as
the Bykhovets Chronicle of the late 16th century, reveal the influence of new sociopolitical
conditions in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Ukrainian historical tradition is represented
by new Ukrainian chronicles of the 16th–17th centuries, particularly by the Hustynia
Chronicle and the Lviv Chronicle.

Cultural and national developments in the 16th and 17th centuries produced a large number
of polemical religious and political treatises (see Polemical literature) whose authors
frequently referred to historical sources to support their claims and to defend the national
and religious rights of the Ukrainian people. A national-historical orientation is evident in the
works of Ivan Vyshensky, Yurii Rohatynets, Stepan Zyzanii, Khrystofor Filalet, Ipatii Potii,
Zakhariia Kopystensky, Meletii Smotrytsky, Yov Boretsky, Kasiian Sakovych, and scholars
at the Kyivan Mohyla Academy, who tried to demonstrate a direct line of continuity in the
historical process of the Ukrainian people.

In the 16th and 17th centuries foreign annalists and diplomats wrote memoirs and historico-
geographic descriptions of Ukraine. Among them are Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan’s
Description d’Ukranie (1650), Erich Lassota von Steblau’s diary of 1573–94, and Pierre
Chevalier’s Histoire de la guerre des Cosaques contre la Pologne (1663).

The Cossack-Hetman state (17th–18th centuries). The Khmelnytsky Uprising and the
formation of the Ukrainian Cossack state had a great influence on the development of
Ukrainian historiography. Historical writing transcended earlier parameters of the chronicle
and acquired the traits of pragmatic, synthetic history. In the second half of the 17th century
such works as Teodosii Safonovych’s Kroinika (Chronicle, 1672), Sinopsis (1674), whose author
is thought to be Innokentii Gizel, and Leontii Bobolynsky’s Litopisets sii iest’ kronika ... (This
Chronicle Is a Chronology ..., 1699) appeared. A new category of chronicle—the so-called
Cossack chronicles—was compiled in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. These surveyed
the events from 1648 to ca 1700 and include the Samovydets Chronicle (Eyewitness
Chronicle), written probably by Roman Rakushka, and the chronicles of Hryhorii Hrabianka
and Samiilo Velychko.

Historical works viewing the Princely era as the ancestor of the Hetman state were written in
the 18th century: the anonymous Kratkoe opisanie Malorossii (A Brief Description of Little
Russia) in the 1730s; Petro Symonovsky’s Kratkoe opisanie o kozatskom malorossiiskom narode i o
voennykh ego delakh (Brief Description of the Cossack Little Russian People and Their Military
Exploits, 1765); Stepan Lukomsky’s Sobranie istoricheskoe (Historical Compilation, 1770);
Aleksandr Rigelman’s Letopisnoe povestvovanie o Maloi Rossii i ee narode i kazakakh voobshche

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(Chronicle Narrative about Little Russia and Its People and the Cossacks in General, 1785–6);
Opanas Shafonsky’s Chernigovskogo namestnichestva topograficheskoe opisanie (Topographical
Description of Chernihiv Vicegerency, 1788); Mykhailo Antonovsky’s Istoriia o Maloi Rossii
(History of Little Russia, 1799); and Yakiv M. Markovych’s survey of Rus’ up to the 11th
century, Zapiski o Malorossii, ee zhiteliakh i proizvedeniiakh (Notes on Little Russia, Its
Inhabitants, and Events, vol 1, 1798).

In the second half of the 18th century and the early 19th century Archbishop Heorhii
Konysky, Hryhorii A. Poletyka, Fedir Tumansky, Andriian Chepa, Vasyl Lomykovsky,
Mykola Bantysh-Kamensky, Vasyl Poletyka, Mykhailo Markov, Maksym Berlynsky, Ivan
Kvitka, Metropolitan Evgenii Bolkhovitinov, and others worked on the history of Ukraine
as a whole or on specific aspects of it. In the late 18th century foreign historical works on
Ukraine appeared: Jean-Benoît Scherer’s Annales de la Petite Russie ou histoire des cosaques-
zaporogues et des cosaques de l'Ukraine ou de la Petite Russie, depuis leur origine jusqu'à nos jours (2
vols, 1788), Karl Hammerdorfer’s Geschichte der ukrainischen und saporogischen Kosaken nebst
einigen Nachrichten von der Verfassung und Sitten derselben (1789), and Johann-Christian von
Engel’s Geschichte der Ukraine und der ukrainischen Kosaken (1796). Towards the end of the 18th
century Istoriia Rusov (History of the Rus’ People) was written by an anonymous author.
This work exerted a considerable influence on the subsequent development of Ukrainian
historiography.

The 19th century. Upholding the autonomist traditions of the Hetman state period, Ukrainian
historians in the first half of the 19th century continued producing synthetic, general works.
Dmytro Bantysh-Kamensky’s Istoriia Maloi Rossii ... (History of Little Russia ..., 4 vols, 1822)
and Mykola Markevych’s Istoriia Malorossii (History of Little Russia, 5 vols, 1842–3) were
systematic surveys of the history of Ukraine from ancient times to the end of the 18th
century that concentrated on the Cossack-Hetman period. Under the influence of
Romanticism, Ukrainian historians focused their attention on the history and life of the
common people. This infatuation with the folk (narodnist) eventually developed into an
identification with the socially and economically downtrodden masses. Studied at first as an
object of history, the ‘people’ was eventually viewed as the principal agent of historical
development. With some exceptions, Ukrainian historiography of the middle and second half
of the 19th century is dominated by the populist school, whose influence extended into the
early decades of the 20th century. It found its most vivid expression in the works of
Mykhailo Maksymovych, Mykola Kostomarov, Panteleimon Kulish, Oleksander
Lazarevsky, and Volodymyr Antonovych.

Mykhailo Maksymovych wrote numerous studies in the history of Kyivan Rus’, the Cossack-
Hetman period, and Cossack historiography; he also studied extensively Ukraine’s many
historical monuments and sites. He represented the transition from the traditions of Cossack
starshyna historiography to historical writings of Ukrainian Romantics and populists.
Mykola Kostomarov devoted himself mostly to research on the political history of the
Hetman state. His monographs on the Bohdan Khmelnytsky period, the period of Ruin
(1657–87), and the Ivan Mazepa period, as well as his studies of hetmans Ivan Vyhovsky,
Yurii Khmelnytsky, and Pavlo Polubotok, and of Petro Mohyla, were based on a wealth of

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source materials. In his distinctive, masterly style, he presented a colorful but one-sided
picture of Ukraine’s history in the second half of the 17th and the first quarter of the 18th
century. While he vividly described various spontaneous popular movements, Kostomarov
underestimated the role of the hetmans, including Bohdan Khmelnytsky, as state-builders.
His historicophilosophical studies, particularly ‘Mysli o federativnom nachale v drevnei Rusi’
(Thoughts on the Federative Principle in Ancient Rus’) and ‘Dve russkie narodnosti’ (Two
Rus’ Peoples), had an enormous impact on the subsequent development of Ukrainian
historical thought and had wider repercussions for Ukrainian and Russian political debates.

Panteleimon Kulish wrote mostly on the Cossack period. In his early work, Povest’ ob
ukrainskom narode (The Tale about the Ukrainian People, 1846), he traced the origins of
Cossack democracy in Ukraine, crediting Bohdan Khmelnytsky with establishing the
Ukrainian political nation. His most distinctive works are Istoriia vossoedineniia Rusi (The
History of the Reunification of Rus’, 3 vols, 1873–7) and Otpadenie Malorossii ot Pol’shi, 1340–
1654 (The Secession of Little Russia from Poland, 3 vols, 1888–9). Oleksander Lazarevsky
studied the socioeconomic history of Left-Bank Ukraine in the 17th and 18th centuries. He
focused on the peasantry, the Cossack starshyna, the nobility, land tenure and colonization,
and the administrative and judicial system of the Hetman state in numerous articles and in
Opisanie Staroi Malorossii (A Description of Old Little Russia, 3 vols, 1888, 1893, 1902).

Volodymyr Antonovych devoted most of his research to the socioeconomic history of Right-
Bank Ukraine in the 16th–18th centuries and to the political history of the Lithuanian-
Ruthenian state. He wrote a number of monographs on the history of the Cossacks and the
Haidamakas, the peasantry, the nobility, cities and burghers, and the church. In his Besidy
pro chasy kozats’ki na Ukraïni (Discourses about Cossack Times in Ukraine, 1897), which was
republished as Korotka istoriia Kozachchyny (A Short History of the Cossack Period, 1912), he
presented a general survey of the history of the Cossacks. His outstanding achievement was
to found the Kyiv school of history, which consisted of his former students at Kyiv
University: Dmytro Bahalii, Ivan Lynnychenko, Mytrofan Dovnar-Zapolsky, Mykola
Dashkevych, Petr Golubovsky, Vasyl Liaskoronsky, Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Oleksander
Hrushevsky, Vasyl Danylevych, Oleksander Andriiashev, Pavlo Ivanov, Nykandr
Molchanovsky, and others.

The Kyiv school laid the foundations of modern Ukrainian historiography. Antonovych was
closely linked with three centers of Ukrainian historical research: the Kyiv Archeographic
Commission, the Historical Society of Nestor the Chronicler, and the learned circle that
published the journal Kievskaia starina. Historical research was also conducted at Kyiv
University and at the Kyiv Theological Academy, where Mykola Petrov, Stepan Golubev,
Teodor Titov, and other professors specialized in the history of the Ukrainian church,
education, and culture and published their studies in Trudy Kievskoi dukhovnoi akademii (1860–
1917).

In the second half of the 19th century historical research on Ukraine was conducted not only
in Kyiv, but also at Kharkiv University and by the Kharkiv Historical-Philological Society,
at Odesa University and by the Odesa Society of History and Antiquities, and in Galicia at

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the Stauropegion Institute in Lviv. In Odesa Apolon Skalkovsky studied the history of the
Zaporozhian Sich, the haidamakas, and Southern Ukraine. In Galicia the prominent
historians were Denys Zubrytsky, Rev Antonii Petrushevych, Izydor Sharanevych, Yulian
Tselevych, Kornylo Zaklynsky, Antin Dobriansky, Bishop Yuliian Pelesh, and Rev Stepan
Kachala. The Halytsko-Ruska Matytsia society published several volumes of historical
studies. From 1886 Oleksander Barvinsky published a series, entitled Rus’ka istorychna
biblioteka, of historical studies by various authors. Outside Ukraine Mykhailo Drahomanov
did some historical research. His historicophilosophical works such as Propashchyi chas—
Ukraïntsi pid Moskovs’kym tsarstvom, 1654–1876 (The Lost Epoch: Ukrainians under the
Muscovite Tsardom, 1654–1876, 1909) had a great influence on the development of Ukrainian
historical thought.

Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the early 20th century. By the end of the 19th century Ukrainian
historians could boast of having produced a substantial number of monographs. The general
growth of Ukrainian culture and the rise in national consciousness created a demand for a
scholarly synthesis of Ukrainian history and for popular historical works. Mykhailo
Hrushevsky introduced the first scholarly scheme of the history of the Ukrainian people on
all its territories. The theoretical arguments for it were formulated in his article ‘Zvychaina
skhema “rus'koï” istoriï i sprava ratsional’noho ukladu istoriï skhidn’oho slov'ianstva’ (The
Traditional Scheme of ‘Russian’ History and the Problem of a Rational Ordering of the
History of the Eastern Slavs) in Sbornik stattei po slavianovedeniu, vol 1 (1904). He applied it in
his monumental work Istoriia Ukraïny-Rusy (The History of Ukraine-Rus’, 10 vols, 1898–1937).
His approach won acceptance not only among Ukrainian, but also among some Russian and
Polish historians. Hrushevsky presented general surveys of the history of Ukraine in his
popular works, which were published in various editions and languages, beginning with
Ocherk istorii ukrainskogo naroda (An Outline of the History of the Ukrainian People) in 1904.
He wrote several hundred scholarly works on Ukrainian history, historiography, and the
study of sources.

Hrushevsky’s conception of history, which was based on the premise that social interests
override state or political interests, was closely related to that of the populist school.
However, the more he delved into history, and particularly into the Cossack period and the
Bohdan Khmelnytsky era, and the more he became involved in Ukrainian political life, the
more weight he attributed to state and political factors.

One of Hrushevsky’s important achievements was to found a school of history in Lviv

consisting of such former students of his as Stepan Tomashivsky, Myron Korduba, Ivan
Krypiakevych, Ivan Dzhydzhora, Ivan Krevetsky, Vasyl Herasymchuk, Bohdan Barvinsky,
and Omelian Terletsky. Most of their studies, which were primarily of the Lithuanian-Polish
and Cossack-Hetman periods, were published by the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh).
The research promoted in Lviv was all-Ukrainian in scope and dealt with all regions of
Ukraine. Consequently historians not only of Western Ukraine, but also from Russian-
dominated Ukraine—Oleksander Hrushevsky, Viacheslav Lypynsky, Vasyl Domanytsky,
Mykola Vasylenko, Vadym Modzalevsky, Oleksandr Lototsky, Mykhailo Slabchenko,
Viktor Barvinsky, and others—contributed to the publications of the society. After the

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Revolution of 1905, Hrushevsky established in Kyiv a new important center of historical

research—the Ukrainian Scientific Society (UNT), which published the periodicals Zapysky
Ukraïns’koho naukovoho tovarystva v Kyievi, Ukraïna (1907) (which replaced the journal
Kievskaia starina as Ukraine’s prime history periodical), and Naukovyi zbirnyk. Other scholars
associated with this center were Orest Levytsky, Ivan Kamanin, Volodymyr Shcherbyna,
Leonid Dobrovolsky, Vasyl Danylevych, Andrii Yakovliv, Dmytro Doroshenko, Mykola
Stadnyk, Hanna Berlo, Yevhen Kivlitsky, and Oleksandr Shramchenko.

Historical research, mostly on Left-Bank Ukraine and Slobidska Ukraine, was continued at
Kharkiv University and by the Kharkiv Historical-Philological Society by Dmytro Bahalii,
Mykhailo Plokhynsky, Dmytro Miller, Viktor Barvinsky, Mykola Maksymeiko, and others. In
Odesa the Odesa University and the Odesa Society of History and Antiquities remained the
main research centers. Their best-known scholars were Ivan Lynnychenko, Mykhailo
Slabchenko, and Pavlo Klepatsky. In Katerynoslav the Archival Commission focused on the
history of the Zaporozhian Sich and Southern Ukraine and published the works of such
researchers as Dmytro Yavornytsky, Dmytro Doroshenko, and Vasyl Bidnov. In Chernihiv
the Archival Commission had such associates as Vadym Modzalevsky, Petro Ya. Doroshenko,
and Arkadii Verzylov. Ivan Pavlovsky, Lev Padalka, Volodymyr Parkhomenko, and others
were associated with the Poltava Gubernia Learned Archival Commission. Orest Fotynsky
was active in Zhytomyr, and Rev Yukhym Sitsynsky and Pylyp Klymenko in Kamianets-
Podilskyi. In Nizhyn the local Historical Philological Society published studies by such
scholars as Mykhailo Berezhkov and Yurii Maksymovych. Prokopii Korolenko and Fedir
Shcherbyna worked in the Kuban. The Tavriia Learned Archival Commission in the Crimea
published studies by Arsenii Markevych and others.

The history of Ukraine in Russian and Polish historiography. In the 19th and 20th centuries
a number of non-Ukrainian scholars contributed significantly to Ukrainian historiography.
Most Russian and Polish historians, however, subsumed and fragmented the history of
Ukraine within a scheme of history based on various concepts of the Russian or Polish states
and nations. In spite of their biases, however, Russian and Polish researchers brought forth a
great deal of new documentary material, and some of them made a substantial contribution
to Ukrainian historiography. Among Russian historians the most prominent investigators of
Ukraine’s past were Sergei Solovev, Gennadii Karpov, Aleksandr Lappo-Danilevsky, Aleksei
Shakhmatov, Evgenii Golubinsky, Matvei Liubavsky, Aleksandr Presniakov, Mikhail
Priselkov, Vitalii Eingorn, Platon Zhukovich, Evgenii Shmurlo, Boris Grekov, Vladimir
Picheta, and George Vernadsky. The best Polish specialists were Michał Grabowski, Edward
Rulikowski, Julian Bartoszewicz, Tadeusz Stecki, Karol Szajnocha, Aleksander Jabłonowski,
Antoni Józef Rolle (Dr Antoni J.), Marian Dubiecki, Tadeusz Korzon, Kazimierz Pułaski, Józef
Tretiak, Ludwik Kubala, Marceli Handelsman, Kazimierz Chodynicki, Władysław
Tomkiewicz, Stefan Kuczyński, Oskar Halecki, and Henryk Paszkiewicz.

Modern Ukrainian historiography. Building on the research of earlier periods, some modern
Ukrainian historians, focusing on political institutions and traditions, pointed to a historical
continuity from the Princely Kyivan Rus’ state of the 10th–14th centuries through the
Hetman state of the 17th–18th centuries to the national Ukrainian state revived in 1917–20.

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This tradition of national statehood remained the determining idea in modern Ukrainian
historiography, especially in Galicia and among Ukrainian émigré historians throughout
much of the 20th century. The founders of this statist school of Ukrainian historiography
were Viacheslav Lypynsky, Stepan Tomashivsky, and Dmytro Doroshenko.

Viacheslav Lypynsky, who was born into a Polish-speaking Catholic family as Wacław
Lipiński, studied the history of the Ukrainian nobility and devoted much attention to
Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s rule. His most important works are Szlachta ukraińska i jej
udział w życiu narodu ukraińskiego (The Ukrainian Nobility and Its Participation in the Life of
the Ukrainian People, 1909), Z dziejów Ukrainy (On the History of Ukraine, 1912), and Ukraïna
na perelomi, 1657–9 (Ukraine at the Turning Point, 1657–9, 1920). Lypynsky believed that the
task of modern Ukrainian historiography was to revive the historical tradition of the Hetman
state. (See Statist school of Ukrainian historiography.)

Stepan Tomashivsky wrote a number of important source studies of the Hetman state period
before turning his attention to medieval Ukraine. His Ukraïns’ka istoriia, I: Starynni i seredni
viky (Ukrainian History, I: The Ancient and Medieval Periods, 1919) is a synthetic
interpretation of the period.

The interwar years

Soviet Ukraine. After the brief spell of Ukrainian independence from 1917 to 1920, Ukrainain
historians in Galicia, Soviet Ukraine, and abroad continued their research in spite of various
unfavorable circumstances. They refined and elaborated Hrushevsky’s scheme of Ukrainian
history by supplementing it with the modern principle of statehood. In the 1920s historical
research flourished in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic owing mostly to the efforts of
Mykhailo Hrushevsky, who in 1924 became a central figure at the All-Ukrainian Academy
of Sciences (VUAN) in Kyiv. He edited a number of periodicals that played a key role in
Ukrainian historiography—Ukraïna (1914–30), Za sto lit (1927–30), Zapysky Istorychno-
filolohichnoho viddilu VUAN (1925–30), and Naukovyi zbirnyk Istorychnoï sektsiï VUAN (1924–9)—
as well as the publications of the Archeographic Commission. Besides his own works the
academy published the works of his associates, such as Oleksander Hrushevsky, Yosyp
Hermaize, Pylyp Klymenko, Vasyl Danylevych, Volodymyr Shcherbyna, Leonid Dobrovolsky,
and Kateryna Lazarevska, and the works of his students Serhii Shamrai, Oleksii Baranovych,
Mykola Tkachenko, Viktor Yurkevych.

The second major centers of historical research in the 1920s were the institutions in Kyiv and
Kharkiv directed by Dmytro Bahalii. Associates and fellows of these centers contributed
important studies on 17th- and 18th-century Ukraine: the works of Bahalii himself and of
Oleksander Ohloblyn (economic and political history), Natalia Polonska-Vasylenko (the
Zaporozhian Cossacks and Southern Ukraine), Viktor Romanovsky, Viktor Barvinsky,
Natalia Mirza-Avakiants, Vasyl Dubrovsky, Olha Bahalii-Tatarynova, Vasyl Bazylevych,
Mykola Horban, Dmytro Solovei, Anton Kozachenko, and others. Mykola Vasylenko and his
associates—Lev Okinshevych, Irynarkh Cherkasky, Viktor Novytsky, Mykola Tyshchenko,
Vasyl Hryshko—made significant contributions to the history of Ukrainian law and the state
system, while such scholars as Kostiantyn Vobly, Andrii Yaroshevych, and Yevhen

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Stashevsky developed the field of economic history.

The Odesa historical center under the direction of Mykhailo Slabchenko also accomplished
important work. Besides Slabchenko himself, a specialist in socioeconomic and legal history,
scholars such as Yevhen Zahorovsky and Oleksandr Riabinin-Skliarevsky were active there.
Other, less important, centers of Ukrainian historiography were Dnipropetrovsk, with such
scholars as Dmytro Yavornytsky and Volodymyr Parkhomenko; Poltava, with Pavlo
Klepatsky and others; Nizhyn, with Mykola Petrovsky and Anatolii Yershov; and Chernihiv,
with Pavlo Fedorenko and others. The Marxist historical school was centered mainly in
Kharkiv and was led by Matvii Yavorsky and his associates and students Mykhailo Rubach,
Zynovii Hurevych, and Mykhailo Svidzinsky. It was rather isolated from the mainstream of
Ukrainian historiography in the 1920s and 1930s.

In the 1930s the Soviet authorities dissolved almost all the historical research centers. Many
historians were arrested or dismissed from work and the normal development of historical
studies in Soviet Ukraine was disrupted.

Galicia and the emigration. In the interwar years many historians worked in Galicia in spite of
difficult material circumstances and political restrictions. Most of them, including Stepan
Tomashivsky, Ivan Krypiakevych, Myron Korduba, Omelian Terletsky, Vasyl
Herasymchuk, Ivan Krevetsky, Bohdan Barvinsky, Mykola Chubaty, Mykola Andrusiak, Rev
Yosafat Skruten, and Rev Teofil Kostruba, were associated with the Shevchenko Scientific
Society. Their works were published in Zapysky Naukovoho tovarystva im. Shevchenka,
Stara Ukraïna, Analecta Ordinis S. Basilii Magni, and Bohosloviia. In Transcarpathia Rev Vasyl
Hadzhega and Antonii Hodinka conducted research, and in Bukovyna, Yevhen Kozak and
Mykola Haras.

Outside Ukraine the main émigré institutions were the Ukrainian Free University, the
Ukrainian Historical-Philological Society, and the Museum of Ukraine's Struggle for
Independence in Prague; the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Berlin; and the Ukrainian
Military History Society and the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw. Many prominent
Ukrainian historians became émigrés: Mykhailo Hrushevsky (until 1924), Viacheslav
Lypynsky, Stepan Tomashivsky (for a time), Dmytro Doroshenko, Andrii Yakovliv,
Rostyslav Lashchenko, Vasyl Bidnov, Viacheslav Prokopovych, Elie Borschak, Oleksandr
Shulhyn, Borys Krupnytsky, Symon Narizhny, Domet Olianchyn, Mykhailo Antonovych,
and Ihor Losky. Some of them studied archival materials in Western Europe, which hitherto
had been scarcely known in Ukrainian historiography. This research resulted in the
publication of valuable studies including Dmytro Doroshenko’s synthetic works in Ukrainian
history and historiography, Andrii Yakovliv’s historiographic studies, Borys Krupnytsky’s
works on Ivan Mazepa and Pylyp Orlyk, Elie Borschak’s studies of Hryhor Orlyk and Pylyp
Orlyk and Franco-Ukrainian relations, and Domet Olianchyn’s investigations of Ukrainian-
German relations in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The postwar period

Soviet Ukraine. After the Second World War independent historical research in Ukraine was

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again restricted. Institutions such as the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of
the Ukrainian SSR were staffed by such historians of the older and Soviet generations, as
Ivan Krypiakevych, Mykola Petrovsky, Mykhailo Rubach, Oleksii Baranovych, Kost
Huslysty, Fedir Yastrebov, Mykola Suprunenko, Pavlo Lavrov, Vadym Diadychenko, Fedir
Los, Kateryna Stetsiuk, Volodymyr Holobutsky, Ivan Hurzhii, and Ivan Boiko. Quite a
number of works on Ukrainian history were published each year, and Ukraïns’kyi istorychnyi
zhurnal began appearing in 1957. Yet, Soviet Ukrainian historiography has been mostly
subservient to the political goals and policies of the Soviet government. The interests of the
Soviet state determined the ideology, methodology, subject-matter, and even the phraseology
of the historians. The state dictated what the results of research had to be and what
conclusions had to be drawn. Consequently the scholarly value of general historical surveys,
such as Istoriia Ukraïns’koï RSR (History of the Ukrainian SSR, 2 vols, 1953, 1958, and in 8 vols
[1977–9]), of monographs, such as Ivan Krypiakevych’s Bohdan Kmel’nyts’kyi (1954), and even
of collections of documents, such as Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiei (The Reunification of
Ukraine with Russia, 3 vols, 1954), was diminished considerably. The latter publication has
remained, however, a remarkable achievement of Ukrainian historiography.

In 1954 Hrushevsky’s castigated scheme was formally replaced by the CC CPSU-approved

‘Theses on the 300th Anniversary of Ukraine’s Reunification with Russia’ as the normative
framework of historical interpretation. This new scheme was based on the officially
recognized concept of one Rus’ people, out of which the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian
nations developed. The theses on reunification thus posited a unitary Russian state and
thereby ruled out the existence of the Hetman state and imputed a common path of national
development for Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians culminating in tsarist Russia and
later in the USSR. The few Soviet historians—Mykhailo Braichevsky, for example—who
openly rejected this theory were severely criticized and even repressed. Between the mid-
1950s and 1967 Oleksander Kasymenko’s Istoriia Ukraïns’koï RSR (A History of Soviet Ukraine)
was the only popular survey of Ukrainian history. The author mildly criticized Joseph Stalin
and his politics, particularly during the Second World War; also, for the first time in Soviet
Ukrainian historiography, Istoriia Ukraïns’koï RSR contained a material about Ukrainian labor
migrants outside the Soviet Union. In 1967 historians from the Institute of History of the
Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR published another official Istoriia Ukraïns’koï RSR
(A History of Soviet Ukraine, 2 vols.) that continued de-Russification and de-Stalinization of
Ukrainian history. The authors specifically mentioned the repressions against Ukrainian
writers in the 1930s and explicitly blamed Stalin for ‘foodstuffs difficulties’ in 1932–3 (see
Famine-Genocide of 1932–3). Yet the survey contained a number of Soviet clichés and
approaches such as Russo-centrism, class struggle as the essence of history, a concept of the
‘old-Rus' nationality,’ and the ‘will for re-unification’ of Ukraine with Russia, among others.
The late 1970s witnessed the realization of the most ambitious project of Soviet Ukrainian
historians: the publication of a multivolume survey of Ukrainian history. Istoriia Ukraïns’koï
RSR (A History of Soviet Ukraine, in 8 vols., 10 books, 1977–9) became opus magnum of
Ukrainian Soviet historiography. This work, however, largely followed the ‘Stalinist’
historical scheme of the 1950s, with half of the volumes focusing on the 20th century. Istoriia
Ukraïns’koï RSR reinforced Russification of Ukrainian history by emphasizing historical

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connections with ‘brotherly Russian people’; by reintroducing the idea about historical
superiority of Russia and its people; and by diminishing Ukrainian historical distinctiveness.
The publication of the Russian-language multivolume survey Istoriia Ukrainskoi SSR (History
of the Ukrainian SSR in 10 vols, 1981–5) largely followed the scheme of the previous
Ukrainian-language edition.

Prior to the mid-1980s the only Soviet surveys of Ukrainian historiography that appeared
were Mykhailo Marchenko’s Ukraïns’ka istoriohrafiia (z davnikh chasiv do seredyny XIX st.)
(Ukrainian Historiography [from Ancient Times to the Mid-19th Century], 1959) and, a
quarter of a century later, Leonid Kovalenko’s Istoriohrafiia istoriï URSR (Historiography of the
History of the Ukrainian SSR, 1983), Anatolii Santsevych’s Ukraïns’ka radians’ka istoriohrafiia
(1945–1982) (Soviet Ukrainian Historiography [1945–82], 1984), and a collective work
Istoriografiia istorii Ukrainskoi SSR (Historiography of History of the Ukrainian SSR, 1986). The
major source of general historical information that appeared was Radians’ka entsyklopediia
istoriï Ukraïny (The Soviet Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, 4 vols, 1969–72). Several
valuable annuals were published: Istorychni dzherela ta ïkh vykorystannia (1966–72), Kyïvs’ka
starovyna (1973), Istoriohrafichni doslidzhennia v Ukraïns’kii RSR (1968–72), and Istorychni
doslidzhennia: Vitchyzniana istoriia (1975–).

Aside from official surveys, during the 1960s and early 1970s, historiography in Soviet
Ukraine could boast the works of four scholars associated with the ‘history of feudalism’
department of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR:
Mykhailo Braichevsky, Olena Apanovych, Olena Kompan, and Yaroslav Dzyra. Braichevsky
was primarily known as an archeologist and historian of early Slavs; Apanovych was a noted
historian of Zaporozhian Cossacks and Ukrainian early modern manuscripts; Kompan
studied early modern Ukrainian cities and historiosophy; Dzyra worked on the language of
Ukrainian Cossack chronicles. The crowning achievement of this non-ideological
historiography was the collection Seredni viky na Ukraïni (The Middle Ages in Ukraine, no. 1,
1971, no. 2, 1973) that united best historians from all over Soviet Ukraine.

However, the new wave of Communist repressions in 1972–3 brought to the end this rebirth
of Ukrainian historiography: some scholars (like Braichevsky, Kompan, Apanovych, and
Dzyra) lost their academic posts, others (like Fedir Shevchenko, the head of the Institute’s of
History or Yaroslav Dashkevych from Central State Historical Archive in Lviv) were
continually harassed or demoted.

One of the major achievements of Ukrainian historiography in the 1980s was a research group
studying narrative sources to early modern Ukrainian history based in Dnipropetrovsk
University and headed by Mykola Kovalsky. Among Kovalsky’s most prominent
collaborators and students were Yurii Mytsyk, Viktor Brekhunenko, Petro Kulakovsky, Serhii
Plokhy, and Oleh Zhurba, to name but a few.

Among other noted historians in postwar Soviet Ukraine were Ivan Butych, Yurii Hamretsky,
Hryhorii Herbilsky, Volodymyr Hrabovetsky, Yaroslav Isaievych, Pavlo Kalenychenko,
Oleksandr Karpenko, Stepan Korolivsky, Mykola Kotliar, Mykola Kravets, Mykola Krykun,
Mykola Leshchenko, Andrii Lykholat, Hryhorii Marakhov, Pavlo Mykhailyna, Ivan Rybalka,

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Vitalii Sarbei, Valerii Smolii, Arnold Shlepakov, Hryhorii Serhiienko, Petro Tolochko, Borys
Tymoshchuk, Serhii Vysotsky, and Yakym Zapasko.

Scholarship in the West. Among the older Ukrainian historians who found themselves in
Western Europe or North America after the war were Mykola Andrusiak, Elie Borschak, Rev
Atanasii Velyky, Illia Vytanovych, Mykhailo Zhdan, Pavlo Hrytsak, Vasyl Hryshko, Dmytro
Doroshenko, Vasyl Dubrovsky, Borys Krupnytsky, Rev Irynei Nazarko, Oleksander
Ohloblyn, Lev Okinshevych, Domet Olianchyn, Natalia Polonska-Vasylenko, Rev Yosafat
Skruten, Mykola Chubaty, Oleksandr Shulhyn, Andrii Yakovliv, Kost Pankivsky, and
Matvii Stakhiv. The chief publishers of works in history have been the Shevchenko Scientific
Society, the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Ukrainian Free University, and
the Basilian scholarly center in Rome. Some of the outstanding publications of the immediate
postwar period were Elie Borschak’s La Légende historique de l'Ukraine. Istorija Rusov (1949),
Borys Krupnytsky’s Het’man Danylo Apostol i ioho doba (Hetman Danylo Apostol and His
Period, 1948), Lev Okinshevych’s ‘Znachne Viis'kove tovarystvo v Ukraïni-Het'manshchyni
XVII–XVIII st.’ (Notable Military Fellows in Hetman Ukraine of the 17th–18th Century,
ZNTSh, vol 157 [1948]), Andrii Yakovliv’s ‘Ukraïns'kyi kodeks 1743 roku’ (The Ukrainian
Code of 1743, ZNTSh, vol 159 [1949]), and Natalia Polonska-Vasylenko’s Settlement of the
Southern Ukraine, 1750–1775 (AUA, vols 4–5 [1955]). Ukrainian historians have collaborated on
various compendiums and journals, as well as the encyclopedias published in the West.

Many postwar Ukrainian historians outside Ukraine have worked at various universities and
other institutions, where they have specialized in different areas of Ukrainian and East-
European history. Historians in the United States have included John Basarab, Martha
Bohachevsky-Chomiak, Yaroslav Bilinsky, Nicholas Chirovsky, Basil Dmytryshyn, Oleksandr
Dombrovsky, Oleh Fedyshyn, George Gajecky, Stepan Horak, Taras Hunczak, Ihor
Kamenetsky, Roman Klymkevych, Theodore Mackiw, Michael Palij, Jaroslaw Pelenski,
Omeljan Pritsak, John Reshetar, Roman Solchanyk, Leonid Sonevytsky, Peter Stercho, Roman
Szporluk, and Liubomyr Wynar. Of particular importance was the founding of the Harvard
Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) by Omeljan Pritsak in 1973 within the framework of
Harvard University. Pritsak subsequently served as HURI’s first director and held the
Hrushevsky Chair of Ukrainian History there. Since March 1977 HURI has been publishing
Harvard Ukrainian Studies, a major journal in Ukrainian history and culture, with numerous
inroads into East European and Eurasian studies. In 1965 the Ukrainian Historical Society
was founded in the United States; it published the journal Ukraïns’kyi istoryk.

In Canada the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (established in 1976 within the
University of Alberta), has made a major contribution to Ukrainian historiography by offering
courses and publishing works on various aspects of Ukrainian history. Henceforth Edmonton
and Toronto have been the leading centers of Ukrainian historiography in Canada. Among
historians of Ukrainian descent active in Canada after the Second World War were Marko
Antonovych, Alexander Baran, Oleh Gerus, John-Paul Himka, Zenon Kohut, Bohdan
Krawchenko, Frank Sysyn, Oleh Pidhainy, Thomas Prymak, Ivan Lysiak Rudnytsky, Roman
Serbyn, Orest Subtelny, and Stephen Velychenko. In 1980 Paul Robert Magocsi became the
first Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto, which specializes in the history

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of Ukraine. The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies has published historical monographs
and conference proceedings, as well as articles in its Journal of Ukrainian Studies. In Europe the
best-known Ukrainian historians included Bohdan Kentrzhynsky, Volodymyr Kosyk, Arkadii
Zhukovsky, Dmytro Zlepko, and Oleksa Vintoniak. Non-Ukrainian historians who have
published significant works on Ukrainian history include Arthur E. Adams, John Alexander
Armstrong, Robert Conquest, Linda Gordon, James Mace, Clarence Manning, and Robert S.
Sullivant in the United States; W.E.D. Allen in England; and Roger Portal and Georges
Luciani in France. Among Polish historians who have devoted their attention to Ukrainian
history are Władysław Serczyk, Leszek Podhorodecki, Antoni Podraza, Janusz Radziejowski,
Jan Kozik, Andrzej Poppe, Ryszard Torzecki, and Zbigniew Wójcik. Russian historians have
also written on Ukrainian history; among them are Elena Druzhinina, Vladimir Mavrodin,
Vladimir Pashuto, Boris Rybakov, and Mikhail Tikhomirov.

 Oleksander Ohloblyn, Arkadii Zhukovsky

After 1991

Independent Ukraine. In the late 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika influenced Soviet
Ukraine’s scholarly institutions, a number of scholars who had been persecuted during
earlier decades returned to the positions of prominence in Ukrainian historiography. Among
them were Olena Apanovych, Mykhailo Braichevsky, Olena Kompan, Yaroslav Dashkevych,
Yaroslav Isaievych, and others. This time period also witnessed a rapid development of the
study of several areas and subjects of Ukrainian history that had been suppressed or
discouraged in the USSR, such as the history of the Cosssack elites (Cossack starshyna) and,
particularly, in the Hetman state; the history of Ukrainian political thought; the history of
Ukraine’s struggle for independence (1917–20); and the history of Ukrainian nationalist
insurgency during the Second World War. Radical changes occurred not only in the scope of
subjects studies by Ukrainian historians, but also in their methodology and approaches to
research. As Ukrainian historians abandoned the dogmatic Soviet Marxism, they introduced
various new and older non-Marxist approaches into their works. The so-called statist school
of Ukrainian historiography experienced a revival and has since been dominant in the studies
of the Cossack Hetman State and the political regimes in revolutionary Ukraine between 1917
and 1921. A good example of this approach is the historical series published by the Institute
of the History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine under the title
Ukraïns’ka kozac’ka derzhava: vytoky ta shliakhy istorychnoho rozvytku (The Ukrainian Cossack
State: Its Origins and Ways of Historical Development, issues 1–8, 1991–2001) and Valerii
Smolii et al ed., Narysy istoriï ukraïns’koï revoliutsiï 1917–1921 rokiv: u 2-kh knyhakh (The Outline
of the History of the Ukrainian Revolution, 1917–1921, in 2 vols, 2011). At the same time,
many historians, especially those of the older generation, have exhibited in their writings a
mixture of various approaches—from the statist to the nineteenth-century Romantic populist
to the Soviet Marxist one. A good example of such an eclectic text is the monograph by
Valerii Smolii and Valerii Stepankov, Ukraïns’ka natsional’na revoliutsiia (Ukrainian National
Revolution, 1999), devoted to the anti-Polish Cossack uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky
(see Cossack-Polish War).

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One of the most important institutions for historical research in independent Ukraine has been
the Society of Researchers of East Central Europe founded in Kyiv in 1997. Among its
founding members were historian of early modern Ukraine Natalia Yakovenko, expert on
Ukrainian religious philosophy Lesia Dovha, medievalists Oleksii Tolochko and Volodymyr
Rychka, and specialist on the history of Ukraine’s struggle for independence (1917–20)
Vladyslav Verstiuk. An interdisciplinary seminar that has been organized by the Society since
1998 has become a research forum for a younger generation of Ukrainian historians,
particularly those specializing in medieval and early modern periods, such as Natalia
Starchenko, Tetiana Vilkul, Valerii Zema, Maksym Yaremenko, and Oleksii Sokyrko. Later the
seminar relocated to the Kyiv Mohyla Academy National University where Natalia
Yakovenko headed the chair of history in 2002–12. Publications by the organizers and
participants of the seminar have greatly enriched Ukrainian historiography in terms of
methodology, research issues, and source base. Some of the most notable works of these
Kyiv-based historians are Natalia Yakovenko’s Ukraïns’ka shliakhta z kintsia XIV do seredyny
XVII stolit’. Volyn’ i Tsentral’na Ukraïna (Ukrainian Gentry from the End of the 14th to the
Mid-17th century: Volhynia and Central Ukraine, 1993, 2nd ed. 2008), idem, Paralel’nyi svit:
Doslidzhennia z istoriï uiavlen’ ta idei v Ukraïni XVI–XVII st. (A Parallel World: Studies in the
History of Imaginings and Ideas in Ukraine of the 16th to 17th Centuries, 2002); idem, Vstup
do istoriï Ukraïny (Introduction to the History of Ukraine, 2007); and idem, Dzerkala
identychnosti: Doslidzhennia z istoriï uiavlen’ ta idei v Ukraïni XVII–pochatku XVIII stolittia (The
Mirrors of Identity: Studies in the History of Imaginings and Ideas in Ukraine in the 17th and
early 18th Centuries, 2012); Oleksii Tolochko’s Narysy pochatkovoï Rusi (Sketches of the Early
Rus’, 2015), idem, Kievskaia Rus’ i Malorossiia v XIX veke (Kyivan Rus’ and Little Russia in the
19th Century, 2012); Natalia Starchenko, Chest’, krov i rytoryka: konflikt u shliakhets’komu
seredovyshchi Volyni, druha polovyna XVI–pochatok XVII stolittia (Honor, Blood, and Rhetoric:
Conflict in the Gentry Community of Volhynia in the Second Half of the 16th to the Early
17th Centuries, 2014); Tetiana Vilkul, Litopys i khronohraf: studiï z domonhol’s’koho kyïvs’koho
litopysannia (Chronicle and the Chronograph: Studies of the Pre-Mongol Kyiv Chronicle-
Writing, 2015); and Oleksii Sokyrko, Lytsari druhoho sortu. Naimane viis’ko Livoberezhnoï
Het’manshchyny 1669–1726 (The Second-Rate Knights: the Mercenary Host of the Left-Bank
Hetman State in 1669–1726, 2006).

Lviv continues to be another notable centre of historical research in Ukraine, with major focus
on the studies of regional history (that of Western Ukraine). Lviv University, the Ukrainian
Catholic University, and Lviv’s branch of the Institute of Ukrainian Archeography and
Source Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine have functioned as leading
institutions in Ukrainian historiography since 1991. Lviv has been home to many prominent
historians of various generations, including Yaroslav Dashkevych, Mykola Krykun, Yaroslav
Isaievych, Ostap Sereda, Yaroslav Hrytsak, Ihor Chornovol, Ihor Skochylias, and others.
Among the most notable publications of the Lviv-based historians are Yaroslav Dashkevych’s
“…Uchy nelozhnymy ustamy skazaty pravdu.” Istorychna eseïstyka (“…Learn With the Truthful
Mouth to Say the Truth.” Historical Essays, 2011); Yaroslav Isaievych,’s Ukraïna davnia i nova,
Narod, relihiia, kul’tura (Ukraine Old and New: People, Religion, and Culture, 1996); Yaroslav
Hrytsak, Narysy istoriï Ukraïny: Formuvannia modernoï ukraïns’koï natsiï XIX–XX st. (An Outline

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of the History of Ukraine: The Formation of a Modern Ukrainian Nation, 19th and 20th
Centuries, 1996); idem, Prorok u svoïi vitchyzni: Ivan Franko i ioho spil’nota (1856–1886) (A
Prophet in His Native Land: Ivan Franko and his Community [1856–1886], 2006); Mykola
Krykun, Administratyvno-terytorial’nyi ustrii Pravoberezhnoï Ukraïny v XV–XVIII st.: kordony
voevodstv u svitli dzherel (Administrative and Territorial Order of the Right-Bank Ukraine in
the 15th to 18th Centuries: the Borders of Palatinates in the Light of Sources, 1993); Ihor
Skochylias, Halyts’ka (Lvivs’ka) eparkhiia XII–XVIII stolit’: orhanizatsiina struktura ta pravovyi
status (Galician [Lviv] Eparchy in the 12th to 18th Centuries: Organizational Structure and
Legal Status, 2010).

Independent Ukraine’s other major centers of historical studies include Kharkiv University
where a leading expert on Ukrainian historiography and regional history, Volodymyr
Kravchenko, taught between 1984 and 2012. He was also a cofounder (in 2002) and the first
director of the Kowalsky Eastern Ukrainian Institute that has advanced the studies of the
history, ethnography, and literature of eastern Ukraine. In particular, Kravchenko studied
Ukrainian historical writings of the 18th and 19th centuries in his monograph Narysy z
ukraïns’koï istoriohrafiï epokhy natsional’noho Vidrodzhennia (druha polovyna XVIII–seredyna XIX
st.) (The Survey of Ukrainian Historiography in the Age of National Revival in the 18th and
the First Half of the 19th Centuries, 1996). His writings on Kharkiv regional history and
historiography were published in his Ukraïna, Imperiia, Rosiia (vybrani statti z modernoï istoriï ta
istoriohrafiï) (Ukraine, Empire, and Russia: Selected Essays in Modern History and
Historiography, 2011).

The Institute of the History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
includes the department of Ukrainian historiography which employs such scholars as Iryna
Kolesnyk, Andrii Bovhyria, and Oleksii Ias. Another Institute’s associate, Heorhii Kasianov,
has published extensively on various controversial issues of modern Ukrainian history and
historiography, particularly on the Holodomor (his polemical monograph Danse macabre:
holod 1932–1933 rokiv u politytsi, masovii svidomosti ta istoriohrafiï (1980-ti – pochatok 2000-kh
(Danse Macabre: Famine of 1932–1933 in Politics, Mass Consciousness, and Historiography,
the 1980s to early 2000s, 2010).

The Institute continues to publish Ukraïns’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, an official organ of Ukrainian
historical community. The journal contains materials from all periods and aspects of
Ukrainian history and historiography by authors from Ukraine and occasionally from other
countries. Non-periodical series published by the Institute include the almanac of social
history Socium (2002–present, 12 vols.), almanac of archeology and medieval history Ruthenica
(2002–present, 13 vols.), almanac of theory and history of historical science Eidos (2005–
present, 8 vols.), a special journal of historiography of Ukraine Istoriohrafichni doslidzhennia v
Ukraïni (1967–present, 26 vols.), and others. Other academic periodicals that have published
historical and historiographical materials include Kyiïvs’ka starovyna (1992–present) and more
specialized Mediaevalia ucrainica: mental’nist’ ta istorii a idei (1991–8, 5 vols.), and Proseminarii:
Medievistyka. istoriia tserkvy, nauky i kul’tury published by the Chair of Ancient and Modern
History of Ukraine at Kyiv University (1996–2009, 7 vols.). Ukraina Moderna (1996–present)
has been a leading journal dedicated to the modern history and historiography of Ukraine,

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while Ukrainskyi humanitarnyi ohliad (1999–2013, 18 vols.) was an influential journal of

historical criticism. One of the most important periodicals for historians and other scholars
working in the humanities and social sciences in Ukraine has been the journal Krytyka,
founded by George Grabowicz in Kyiv in 1997, which, among other things, reviews the most
important books in the field of Ukrainian history written in Ukraine and abroad.

The Institute of the History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine has
spearheaded the publication of a major historical encyclopedia: Entsyklopediia Istoriï Ukraïny
(The Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, 2003–13, vols. 1–10). The Institute of
Encyclopedic Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine publishes
Entsyklopediia suchasnoï Ukraïny (The Encyclopedia of Contemporary Ukraine, 2001–present,
vols. 1–13). Both these encyclopedias contain extensive information on historical events and
personalities, including historians.

After 1991 archeography, or the study and publication of historical sources, has become a
major special scholarly discipline in Ukraine, centered around Kyiv’s Institute of Ukrainian
Archeography and Source Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
(established in 1990) with its branches in Lviv (since 1992) and Zaporizhia (since 1999).
Among the most notable publications of historical sources under the aegis of this institute is
the series Arkhiv Kosha Novoï Zaporoz’koï Sichi: Korpus dokumentiv, 1734–1755 (1998–2008, 5
vols.); Dzherela z istoriï Natsional’no-vyzvol’noï viiny ukraïns’koho narodu 1648–1658 (2012–5, 5
vols.); Povne zibrannia tvoriv M.S. Hrushevs’koho (2002–present, 14 vols., ongoing); and Litopys
UPA. Nova Seriia (1995–2014, 24 vols.).

Recent years saw publication of several general works on Ukrainian historiography. Among
the best studies of the 18th and 19th century Ukrainian historiography are the works of
Volodymyr Kravchenko and Iryna Kolesnyk. Vitalii Yaremchuk published an important book
on post-Stalinist Ukrainian Soviet historiography and Polish scholar Tomasz Stryjek
published a comprehensive analysis of post-1991 historical debates in independent Ukraine
and of the institutional setting of Ukrainian historiography.

Scholarship in the West. In 1991, an American historian Mark von Hagen published an article
‘Does Ukraine Have a History?’ which began an ongoing debate about the nature of
Ukrainian history and the perspectives of Ukrainian historiography in the West, particularly
in North America. The author’s main thesis was that if Ukrainian history was to become a
mainstay in Western academia, its practitioners should be recruited not from the Ukrainian
diaspora community, but from among non-Ukrainian academics. Von Hagen also emphasized
that the perceived ‘weaknesses’ of Ukrainian history should be reinterpreted as its ‘strengths’:
the fluidity of frontiers, the permeability of cultures, and the historic multi-ethnic society, all
of which made Ukrainian history a very ‘modern’ field of inquiry and could appeal to a
wider academic audience. As if in response to Von Hagen’s appeal, in the 2000s a new
generation of scholars, predominantly non-Ukrainian by origin, came to dominate the field of
Ukrainian history studies in the West, albeit not all of these scholars regard themselves as
historians of Ukraine. These scholars include Timothy Snyder, Larry Wolff, Hiroaki
Kuromiya, Matthew Pauley, Steven Seegel, Mayhill Fowler, Faith Hillis, William Risch,

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Heather Coleman, Tarik Amar, and others. Several historians of Ukrainian descent have
continued to play a major role in Ukrainian historiography in Canada and the United States,
among them Frank Sysyn, Zenon Kohut, Thomas Prymak, Stephen Velychenko, Stella
Hryniuk, Marta Dyczok, John-Paul Himka, and Olga Andriewsky. There has also been a
growing number of historians originally from Ukraine who now work in American and
Canadian universities, among them Serhii Plokhy, Volodymyr Kravchenko, Yohanan
Petrovsky-Shtern, Serhy Yekelchyk, Sergei Zhuk, Iryna Vushko, Andriy Zayarnyuk, and
Serhiy Bilenky. The research interests of the historians of Ukraine working in North America
have included Ukraine’s Cossack period, Romantic nationalism, Ukraine’s religious
minorities, Russian and Austrian imperial legacies, Stalinism, the Famine-Genocide of 1932–
3, Holocaust, the nationalist resistance to post-Soviet Ukraine, and other subjects.

The most prominent research institutions founded by the Ukrainian diaspora in the 1970s,
such as Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian
Studies, continue to function and attract scholars of various generations and ethnic
backgrounds from across the globe. Both institutions are currently headed by historians from
Ukraine: Serhii Plokhy and Volodymyr Kravchenko respectively. To track changes in the field
of Ukrainian history studies in North America, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
organized, in 2013, a conference on Ukrainian historiography ‘Quo Vadis Ukrainian History?’
and published its proceedings in a book, edited by Serhii Plokhy, The Future of the Past: New
Perspectives on Ukrainian History (2016).

In Europe the best-known historians of Ukraine include Giovanna Brogi, Andrea Graziosi,
Ettore Cinnella, and Simone Bellezza in Italy, David Saunders and Andrew Wilson in the
United Kingdom, Andreas Kappeler and Philipp Ther in Austria, Guido Hausmann, Anna
Veronika Wendland, Ricarda Vulpius, Karl Schlögel, Bernd Bonwetsch, Tanja Penter, Kai
Struve, and Frank Golczewski in Germany, Karel C. Berkhoff in the Netherlands, Daniel
Beauvois, Yaroslav Lebedynsky, Antoine Arjakovsky, and Nicolas Werth in France, Teresa
Chynczewska-Hennel, Mirosława Papierzyńska-Turek, Hieronim Grala, Andrzej Gil,
Grzegorz Motyka, Włodzimierz Mędrzecki, Tomasz Stryjek, Tomasz Hodana, and Tadeusz
Epsztein in Poland.

(See also Archeography and Church, historiography of the Ukrainian.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Antonovich, V. Istochniki dlia istorii Iuzhnoi i Zapadnoi Rossii (Kyiv 1881)
Klepats’kyi, P. Ohliad dzherel do istoriï Ukraïny, vol 1 (Kamianets-Podilskyi 1920)
Bahalii, D. Narys ukraïns’koï istoriohrafiï, 2 vols (Kyiv 1923, 1925)
Doroshenko, D. Ohliad ukraïns’koï istoriohrafiï (Prague 1923)
Kryp'iakevych, I. Ukraïns’ka istoriohrafiia (Lviv 1923)
Kalynovych, I. ‘Ukraïns’ka istorychna bibliohrafiia za 1914–1923 rr.,’ ZNTSh, 134–5 (1924)
Krevets’kyi, I. ‘Ukraïns’ka istoriohrafiia na perelomi,’ ZNTSh, 134–5 (1924)
Andrusiak, M. ‘Ukraïns’ka istoriohrafiia 1921–1930 rr.,’ Litopys Chervonoï kalyny, 9–10 (1932)
Narizhnyi, S. ‘Ukraïns’ka istoriohrafiia,’ in Ukraïns’ka zahal’na entsyklopediia, vol 3 (Lviv,
Stanyslaviv and Kolomyia 1935)

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Historiography

Korduba, M. La Littérature historique soviétique ukrainienne. Compte-rendu 1917–1931 (Warsaw

1938; 2nd edn, Munich 1972)
Doroshenko, D. ‘A Survey of Ukrainian Historiography’ and Ohloblyn, O. ‘Ukrainian
Historiography 1917–1956,’ AUA, 5–6 (1957)
Krupnyts’kyi, B. Ukraïns’ka istorychna nauka pid Sovietamy (1920–1950) (Munich 1957)
Marchenko, M. Ukraïns’ka istoriohrafiia (z davnikh chasiv do seredyny XIX st.) (Kyiv 1959)
Kryp'iakevych, I. Dzherala z istoriï Halychyny periodu feodalizmu (do 1772 r.) (Kyiv 1962)
Ohloblyn, O. Dumky pro suchasnu ukraïns’ku soviets’ku istoriohrafiiu (New York 1963)
Vynar, L. ‘Ohliad istorychnoï literatury pro pochatky ukraïns’koï kozachchyny,’ UI, 1965, nos
1–4
Santsevych, A. Problemy istoriï Ukraïny pisliavoiennoho periodu v radians’kii istoriohrafiï (Kyiv
1967)
Kryp'iakevych, I. ‘Narys metodyky istorychnykh doslidzhen’,’ UIZh, 1967, nos 2–4, 7–10
Pidhainy, O. Ukrainian Historiography and the Great East-European Revolution (Toronto and New
York 1968)
Lytvynenko, M. Dzherela istoriï Ukraïny XVIII st. (Kharkiv 1970)
Chubatyi, M. Ukraïns’ka istorychna nauka: ïï rozvytok ta dosiahnennia (Philadelphia 1971)
Diadychenko, V.; Los’, F.; Sarbei, V. Rozvytok istorychnoï nauky v Ukraïns’kii RSR (1945–1970)
(Kyiv 1972)
Hurzhii, I.; Kalenychenko, P. (eds). Rozvytok istorychnoï nauky na Ukraïni za roky radians’koï
vlady (Kyiv 1973)
Mel’nyk, L. Rozvytok naukovoho piznannia istoriï (Kyiv 1983)
Kovalenko, L. Istoriohrafiia istoriï Ukraïns’koï RSR vid naidavnishykh chasiv do Velykoï Zhovtnevoï
Sotsialistychnoï Revoliutsiï (Kyiv 1983)
Santsevych, A. Ukraïns’ka radians’ka istoriohrafiia (1945–1982) (Kyiv 1984)
Pritsak, O. Istoriosofiia ta istoriohrafiia Mykhaila Hrushevs’koho (Kyiv and Cambridge, Mass. 1991)
Zhurba, O. Kyïvs’ka arkheohrafichna komisiia, 1843-1921: Narys istoriï i diial’nosti (Kyiv 1993)
Kravchenko, V. Narysy z ukraïns’koï istoriohrafiï epokhy natsional’noho Vidrodzhennia (druha
polovyna XVIII–seredyna XIX st.) (Kharkiv 1996)
Kolesnyk, I. Ukraïns’ka istoriohrafiia (XVIII – pochatok XX st.) (Kyiv 2000)
Zhurba, O. Stanovlennia ukraïns’koï arkheohrafiï: liudy, ideï instytutsiï (Dnipro 2003)
Stryjek, T. Jakiej przeszłości potrzebuje przyszłość?: Interpretacje dziejow narodowych w historiografi i
debacie publicznej na Ukrainie (Warsaw 2007)
Iaremchuk, V. Mynule Ukraïny v istorychnii nautsi URSR pisliastalins’koï doby (Ostrih 2009)
Plokhy, S., ed. The Future of the Past: New Perspectives on Ukrainian History (Cambridge, Mass.
2016)

 Serhiy Bilenky

[This article was updated in 2017.]

List of related links from Encyclopedia of Ukraine pointing to Historiography entry:

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Historiography

1 Antonovych, Volodymyr
2 Bodiansky, Osyp
3 Chernyshevsky, Nikolai
4 Chronicles

5 Conservatism
6 Doroshenko, Dmytro
7 Estates
8 Feudalism
9 Golubinsky, Evgenii

10 History of Ukraine
11 Hrushevsky, Mykhailo
12 Hrushevsky, Oleksander
13 Hustynia Chronicle

14 Institute of the History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

15 Istoriia Rusov

16 Korduba, Myron
17 Kostomarov, Mykola
18 Krypiakevych, Ivan
19 Kyiv
20 Kyiv Chronicle

+ 20 Records >>

A referral to this page is found in 46 entries.

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