Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth - Century Debate
This paper departs from the existing literature on the «History of the Rus’», at once the most mysterious and the most influential product of Ukrainian Cossack historiography, in two major respects. First, it challenges the dominant historiographic trend that treats the «History» as a manifestation...
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Інститут історії України НАН України
2008
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| Цитувати: | Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth - Century Debate / S. Plokhii // Ейдос. Альманах теорії та історії історичної науки. — К., 2008. — Вип. 3. — С. 188-206. — англ. |
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Digital Library of Periodicals of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine| id |
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irk-123456789-57272013-02-13T02:14:59Z Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth - Century Debate Plokhii, S. Метанаратив в українському історіографічному дискурсі This paper departs from the existing literature on the «History of the Rus’», at once the most mysterious and the most influential product of Ukrainian Cossack historiography, in two major respects. First, it challenges the dominant historiographic trend that treats the «History» as a manifestation of proto-national and autonomist Ukrainian aspirations. Second, it contributes to the perennial search for the author of the «History» by claiming that the manuscript was written soon after 1800, effectively locating the work in the realm of nineteenth-century historiography. More than anything else, however, this paper takes the debate out of the Procrustean bed into which it was forced by the national narratives of a later era, both Ukrainian and all -Russian. It emphasizes the simple fact that historians have little control over the use of their narratives. 2008 Article Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth - Century Debate / S. Plokhii // Ейдос. Альманах теорії та історії історичної науки. — К., 2008. — Вип. 3. — С. 188-206. — англ. http://dspace.nbuv.gov.ua/handle/123456789/5727 en Інститут історії України НАН України |
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Метанаратив в українському історіографічному дискурсі Метанаратив в українському історіографічному дискурсі |
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Метанаратив в українському історіографічному дискурсі Метанаратив в українському історіографічному дискурсі Plokhii, S. Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth - Century Debate |
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This paper departs from the existing literature on the «History of the Rus’», at once the most mysterious and the most influential product of Ukrainian Cossack historiography, in two major respects. First, it challenges the dominant historiographic trend that treats the «History» as a manifestation of proto-national and autonomist Ukrainian aspirations. Second, it contributes to the perennial search for the author of the «History» by claiming that the manuscript was written soon after 1800, effectively locating the work in the realm of nineteenth-century historiography. More than anything else, however, this paper takes the debate out of the Procrustean bed into which it was forced by the national narratives of a later era, both Ukrainian and all -Russian. It emphasizes the simple fact that historians have little control over the use of their narratives. |
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| author |
Plokhii, S. |
| author_facet |
Plokhii, S. |
| author_sort |
Plokhii, S. |
| title |
Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth - Century Debate |
| title_short |
Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth - Century Debate |
| title_full |
Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth - Century Debate |
| title_fullStr |
Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth - Century Debate |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth - Century Debate |
| title_sort |
ukraine or little russia? revisiting the early nineteenth - century debate |
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Інститут історії України НАН України |
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2008 |
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Метанаратив в українському історіографічному дискурсі |
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http://dspace.nbuv.gov.ua/handle/123456789/5727 |
| citation_txt |
Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth - Century Debate / S. Plokhii // Ейдос. Альманах теорії та історії історичної науки. — К., 2008. — Вип. 3. — С. 188-206. — англ. |
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Ейдос
3’2008
Serhii Plokhii
Cambridge
Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth -Century
Debate
Few factors are as crucial to the formation of modern national
identities as the creation and dissemination of common historical myths that
explain the origins of a given ethnic or national group and provide it with a
sense of common belonging. 1 The late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries were a period of mass production of national myths, given the high
demand for them on the burgeoning European market of ideas. Historical
writing was successfully taken over by national projects and turned into a
vehicle for the popularization of national mythologies at a time when history
was just beginning to establish itself as a scholarly disc ipline.2 A shortcut to
the production of elaborate mythologies that “proved” the ancient origins of
modern nations and provided them with respectable pasts was the forging of
ancient documents and literary and historical works allegedly lost at some
time and now “rediscovered” to the astonishment and approval of a grateful
public. More often than not, the authors of such “rediscovered” treasures
were in pursuit of literary success and/or money. They did not suspect that
they were fulfilling a social demand, serving as agents of history, or acting
as builders of as yet nonexistent modern nations. 3
James Macpherson (1736-96), a Scottish poet little known in his own
right, produced the best-known literary mystification of the era. In the 1760s
1 On the role of historical myth in the process of modern nation -building, see Anthony Smith,
The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986), pp. 174-208.
2 See Stefan Berger, Mark Donovan, and Kevin Passmore, “Apologias for the Nation-State in
Western Europe since 1800,” in idem, Writing National Histories: Western Europe since 1800
(London and New York, 1999), pp. 3-14.
3 On the connection between literary and criminal forgery in the Age of Enlighte nment, see
Paul Baines, The House of Forgery in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Burlington, 1999). On the
function of historical forgeries in East Central Europe and Ukraine, see Hryhorii Hrabovych,
“Slidamy natsional’nykh mistyfikatsii,” Krytyka 5, no. 6 (June 2001): 14-23.
Ukraine or Little Russia? 189
he published what he claimed to be English translations of poems by a third -
century bard named Ossian. These were in fact old Irish ballads of Scottish
origin that Macpherson turned into “old Scottish epics,” contributing in the
process to the formation of modern Scottis h identity. Although the
translations were shown to be forgeries soon after Macpherson’s death, his
poems appealed to the reading public far beyond Scotland and contributed
to the rise of literary romanticism and national movements all over Europe. 4
Soon after the appearance of the first Russian translation of “Ossian,” lovers
of literature in the Russian Empire discovered, to their surprise and delight,
that they had their own Ossian. His name was Boian, and he was a character
in the Igor Tale, purportedly a twelfth-century epic poem once lost and now
happily rediscovered, proving that the Russians had an ancient and glorious
literary tradition of their own. 5 The Tale described a campaign against the
Polovtsians by a twelfth-century prince of Novhorod-Siverskyi, a town that
was fully incorporated into the Russian Empire only a few decades before
the publication of the newly “rediscovered” text in 1800. Apparently the
publishers and readers of the Tale saw nothing unusual in the fact that their
national literature had its beginnings in one of the centers of the Ukrainian
Hetmanate, a Cossack state created in the mid -seventeenth century and fully
absorbed by the Russian Empire in the 1780s. But the inhabitants of
Novhorod-Siverskyi and the surrounding area wer e less than satisfied with
the kind of historical mythology produced in imperial capitals. Indeed, they
were on the hunt for their own ancient manuscripts that would help them
make sense of their less distant Cossack past. Not surprisingly, they found
one.
The manuscript, entitled “History of the Rus’,” began to circulate in
the Novhorod-Siverskyi region in the mid-1820s. It traced the history of the
local Cossacks, known as the Rus’, to the era of the Kyivan princes, and
from them, via the history of Slavi c settlement in Eastern Europe, all the
way back to biblical times. As an exercise in mystification, it was a much
less ambitious undertaking then either Ossian or the Igor Tale. The
introduction to the “History of the Rus’” claimed that the manuscript had
been produced by generations of monks working at the Orthodox monastery
4 See Hugh Trevor-Roper, “The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition in Scotland,”
in The Invention of Tradition , ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge, 1997), pp.
15-41, here 17-18. For the impact of Macpherson’s poetry o n the rise of the romantic
movement, see Howard Gaskill, ed., Reception of Ossian in Europe (Cardiff, 2004). On the
reception of Ossian in the Russian Empire, see Iurii Levin, Ossian v russkoi literature: konets
XVIII-pervaia tret’ XIX veka (Leningrad, 1980). On the invention of historical sources in
eighteenth-century Russia, see Aleksei Tolochko, “Istoriia Rossiiskaia” Vasiliia Tatishcheva:
istochniki i izvestiia (Moscow and Kyiv, 2005), especially pp. 504 -23.
5 On the Igor Tale as a late eighteenth-century text, see Edward L. Keenan, Iosef Dobrovský
and the Origins of the Igor’ Tale (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).
Serhii Plokhii190
in Mahilioŭ and completed in 1769—a mere fifty-six years before we
encounter the first clear evidence of the existence of the work. The
anonymous author covered his tracks by claiming that the work had passed
through the hands of two highly respected and, by now, safely dead
individuals, the Orthodox archbishop of Mahilio ŭ, Heorhii Konysky (1717-
1795), and the best-known Ukrainian delegate to Catherine II’s
Constitutional Assembly of 1 767-68, Hryhorii Poletyka (1723/25 -1784).
Konysky had allegedly given the manuscript to Poletyka, leading readers to
assume that it was finally “rediscovered” in Poletyka’s library and thus
became available to the public. The “History” was an unqualified s uccess,
copied and recopied again and again before it finally saw print in 1846. 6 By
that time it had shaped the views of scores of professional and amateur
historians, as well as Russian and Ukrainian authors, including Aleksandr
Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol and Taras Shevchenko, about the Ukrainian past.
Romantic authors of the era were excited by the discovery of an “ancient”
manuscript that went beyond the dry facts presented in the Rus’ chronicles.
It narrated the heroic deeds of the Cossacks in images that fired the
imagination of the literary public. While the fascination of Russian literary
figures with the “History of the Rus’” turned out to be short-lived, it had a
spectacular career in Ukrainian historiography and literature, shaping
generations of Ukrainian patriots both directly and through the medium of
Taras Shevchenko’s works. 7
Like all influential mystifications, the “History of the Rus’” has
inspired a voluminous literature. The most contested question discussed by
students of the work has been t he identity of its author. The first possible
author considered (and rejected) was Archbishop Konysky. A more serious
candidate emerged in the person of Hryhorii Poletyka, who has been
regarded as either the author or a coauthor (together with his son, Vas yl
Poletyka [1765-1845]). Another high-profile candidate was Catherine II’s
chancellor and a native of the Hetmanate, Prince Oleksander Bezborodko
(1747-1799). Other candidates have been mentioned in the literature, but
only the Poletykas and Bezborodko ha ve had a steady following among
historians. Opinions on the time of the work’s appearance often depend on a
given scholar’s favored candidate for authorship. Those supporting the
authorship of Poletyka or Bezborodko stick to the eighteenth century.
6 See Istoriia Rusov ili Maloi Rossii . Sochinenie Georgiia Konisskogo, Arkhiepiskopa
Belorusskogo (Moscow, 1846; repr. Kyiv, 1991). For a brief summary of the unknown author’s
historical argument, see Stephen Velychenko, National History as Cultural Process: A Survey
of Interpretations of Ukraine’s Past in Polish, Russian and Ukrainian Historical Writing from
the Earliest Times to 1914 (Edmonton, 1992), pp. 156-58.
7 Although Shevchenko was an admirer of the “History of the Rus’” and popularized its heroic
version of the Cossack past, he did not share the anonymous author’s anti -Polish attitudes or
his nobiliary bias against the popular masses.
Ukraine or Little Russia? 191
Others, who favor the authorship of Vasyl Poletyka or believe that the
manuscript was created in the circle of Nikolai Repnin, the military
governor of Little Russia in the years 1816 -34, prefer the first two decades
of the nineteenth century. The only point rela ting to the origins of the
manuscript on which historians tend to agree is the unknown author’s close
association with the Novhorod -Siverskyi region of northeastern Ukraine—a
hypothesis advanced by one of the most devoted students of the “History,”
Oleksander Ohloblyn.8
The name of the author and the time and place of the creation of the
“History of the Rus’” are not the only questions debated by scholars. The
political and cultural identity of the unknown author, whose work has
contributed immensely to the process of Ukrainian nation-building, remains
as obscure today as it was a century and a half ago. The ability of every new
generation of students to find in the text ideas consonant with its own seems
to explain both the lasting success of the work and t he lack of a
comprehensive study on the identity of its author. The first generation of
Ukrainian national awakeners influenced by the “History” included such
luminaries of the national movement as Mykola Kostomarov and
Panteleimon Kulish, who had a love -hate relationship with the work. On the
one hand, they were inspired by the heroic and colorful images of the
Ukrainian past presented by the unknown author; on the other, they
regarded the “History” as the product of separatist thinking and nobiliary
conservatism, which their populism led them to reject. Mykhailo
Drahomanov, by far the most influential Ukrainian political thinker of the
nineteenth century, took it upon himself to defend the unknown author
against populist attacks. He saw in the author an early promoter of all that
the Ukrainian movement was striving for in the last decades of the
nineteenth century: Ukrainian autonomy, constitutionalism, and the federal
restructuring of the Russian Empire. Instead of treating him as separatist,
Drahomanov saw in the author of the “History” a person who shared the
liberal and democratic views of the Russian and Ukrainian Decembrists.
Oleksander Hrushevsky, whose brother Mykhailo wrote the first history of
Ukraine as a nation, regarded the “History of the Rus’” as an account of a
8 See Oleksander Ohloblyn, “Where was Istoriya Rusov Written?” Annals of the Ukrainian
Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S. 3, no. 2 (1953): 670-95. Hryhorii Poletyka has been
regarded as the author of the “History” by Vladimir Ikonnikov, Oleksander Lazare vsky,
Mykola Vasylenko, Dmytro Doroshenko, Iaroslav Dzyra, and Hanna Shvydko. Mykhailo
Hrushevsky advanced the hypothesis of the coauthorship of Hryhorii and Vasyl Poletyka. The
latter was considered the sole author by Vasyl Horlenko, Anatolii Iershov and Illia Borshchak.
The hypothesis about Bezborodko’s authorship was first suggested by Mykhailo Slabchenko
and further developed by Pavlo Klepatsky, Andrii Iakovliv and Mykhailo Vozniak. See
Oleksander Ohloblyn, “Istoriia Rusov,” Encyclopedia of Ukraine , 6 vols. (Toronto, 1984-
2001), 2: 360.
Serhii Plokhii192
people as opposed to the chronicle of a province —an approach consonant
with the one later adopted by Mykhailo Hrushevsky. Two adherents of the
statist school in twentieth -century Ukrainian historiography, Dmytro
Doroshenko and Oleksander Ohloblyn, considered the unknown author a
forerunner who allegedly paid special attention to the history of the
Ukrainian state.9
Not surprisingly, the revival of the Ukrainian national movement in
the USSR in the late 1980s and the emergence of indepen dent Ukraine in
1991 cast the political and cultural views of the author of the “History of the
Rus’” in a new light. As the advance of Russification in the Soviet Union
threatened the very existence of the Ukrainian nation, some students of the
“History” came to see its author as a defender of Ukrainian identity. “The
individual who wrote it,” asserted the Ukrainian author and historian Valerii
Shevchuk in 1991, “truly burned with great love for his unfortunate and
enslaved land. Thus, at a time when everything Ukrainian was being
barbarously destroyed, he managed the feat of casting this passionate
pamphlet—a historical remembrance—before the eyes of his foolish and
indifferent countrymen, who were scrambling, as Taras Shevchenko wrote,
for “tin buttons,” who “knew all the ins and outs”; who were grasping for
estates and jumping out of their skin to obtain Russian noble rank by any
and all means; who had even forgotten their mother tongue.” 10 It would
appear that quite a few studies dealing with the “History of the Rus’”
published in Ukraine in the 1990s and early 2000s adopted Shevchuk’s
patriotic interpretation of the work and the goals that its author set himself. 11
Clearly, the “History of the Rus’” played a major role in the formation
of Ukrainian national identity, but the questions that remain unanswered are
whether and to what degree that role corresponded to the aspirations of the
unknown author of the “History” and what his political and ethnocultural
identity actually was. The present article intend s to contribute to the
9 Ohloblyn, who was by far the most productive and influential student of the monument,
also pushed the “nationalization” of the “History” to the limit, claiming that it was “a
declaration of the rights of the Ukrainian n ation” inspired by the “idea of Ukrainian
political sovereignty,” as well as “an act of indictment against Muscovy.” See his
introduction to a Ukrainian translation of the work, Istoriia Rusiv (New York, 1956), pp. v-
xxix. For a survey of the nineteenth - and early twentieth-century reception of the “History
of the Rus’” and research on the monument, see Mykhailo Vozniak, Psevdo-Konys’kyi i
psevdo-Poletyka (“Istoriia Rusov” u literaturi i nautsi) (Lviv and Kyiv, 1938), pp. 5 -96.
Cf. Volodymyr Kravchenko, Narysy z ukraïns’koï istoriohrafiï epokhy natsional’noho
Vidrodzhennia (druha polovyna XVIII – seredyna XIX st.) (Kharkiv, 1996), pp. 101-16.
10 Valerii Shevchuk, “Nerozhadani taiemnytsi “Istoriï Rusiv”” in Istoriia Rusiv, trans. into
modern Ukrainian by Ivan Drach (Kyiv, 1991), p. 28.
11 For a critical assessment of the latest Ukrainian publications on the topic, see Volodymyr
Kravchenko, “Istoriia Rusiv u suchasnykh interpretatsiiakh,” in Synopsis: Essays in Honor of
Zenon E. Kohut, ed. Serhii Plokhy and Frank E. Sysyn (Edmonton, 2005), pp. 275-94.
Ukraine or Little Russia? 193
discussion of these questions by taking a closer look at the polemic, largely
neglected in historiography, between the author of the “History” and an
unnamed opponent concerning the use of the terms “Ukraine” and “Little
Russia.” In modern political discourse, the first term is closely associated
with the idea of Ukrainian distinctiveness and independence, while the
second indicates a belief in the existence of one indivisible Russian culture
and nation, of which the Ukrainian people and culture are considered mere
branches.12 Did these terms have the same meaning when the “History”
made its appearance, and, if so, what does that tell us about its author’s
political and ethnocultural program?
The passage of the “History of the Rus’” t hat seems most important to
our discussion appears in the introduction to the work. It reads as follows:
“[I]t must be said with regret that certain absurdities and calumnies have
unfortunately been introduced into Little Russian chronicles themselves by
their creators, native-born Rus’ians, who have carelessly followed the
shameless and malicious Polish and Lithuanian fabulists. Thus, for example,
in one textbook vignette, some new land by the Dnieper, here called
Ukraine, is brought onto the stage from An cient Rus’ or present-day Little
Russia, and in it Polish kings establish new settlements and organize
Ukrainian Cossacks; and until then the land was allegedly empty and
uninhabited, and there were no Cossacks in Rus’. But it is apparent that the
gentleman writer of such a timid little story has never been anywhere except
his school, and in the land that he calls Ukraine he has not seen Rus’ towns,
the oldest ones—or at least much older than his Polish kings, namely:
Cherkassy, Krylov, Mishurin and old Kod ak on the Dnieper River, Chigirin
on the Tiasmin, Uman on the Ros, Ladyzhin and Chagarlyk on the Bug,
Mogilev, Rashkov and Dubossary on the Dniester, Kamennyi Zaton and
Belozersk at the head of the [Dnieper] Estuary. Of these towns, some have
been provincial and regional Rus’ towns for many centuries. But for him all
this is a desert, and he consigns to nothingness and oblivion the Rus’ princes
who sailed their great flotillas onto the Black Sea from the Dnieper River,
that is, from those very lands, and ma de war on Greece, Sinope, Trabzon
and Constantinople itself with armies from those regions, just as someone
hands back Little Russia itself from Polish possession without resistance
and voluntarily, and the thirty-four bloody battles that it required, with Rus’
armies opposing the Poles and their kings and the levy en masse, are of
insufficient merit that this nation and its chieftains be rendered due justice
for their exploits and heroism.” 13
12 See the entry “Little Russian Mentality” by Bohdan Kravtsiv in Encyclopedia of Ukraine , 3:
166.
13 Istoriia Rusov ili Maloi Rossii , pp. iii-iv.
Serhii Plokhii194
What should we make of this statement? Andrei Storozhenko, who
was the first to focus attention on this particular passage of the “History” in
1918, treats it as a manifestation of the anonymous author’s discontent with
the efforts of the Polish authors Jan Potocki and Tadeusz Czacki to treat the
Ukrainians as a people separate from the Russians—theories that in
Storozhenko’s opinion laid the historical foundations for the modern
Ukrainian movement.14 While such a possibility cannot be excluded, in the
above extract the author of the “History of the Rus’” does not argue e ither
against Potocki’s theory linking Ukrainian origins with those of the
Polianians, Derevlianians, Tivertsians and Siverianians or against Czacki’s
theory that the Ukrainians were descended from a tribe called “Ukr.”
Instead, he rejects the notion that credits Polish kings with the establishment
of Cossackdom and the settlement of the Dnipro region even as it neglects
the Rus’ origins of the Cossacks, ignores their long and determined struggle
for union with Russia, and undermines the claim of the Rus’ n ation to its
glorious history. It should also be noted that the anonymous author’s protest
was provoked not by Polish (and Lithuanian) writings per se but by the
adoption of the views set forth in those writings by the authors of “Little
Russian chronicles.” Identifying the writer whose work provoked this
polemical outburst on the part of the author of the “History of the Rus’” is
an important step toward understanding the nature of the debate and, among
other things, can help establish the time frame withi n which the famous
“History” was written. I shall therefore begin my discussion with an attempt
to identify the author and title of the work that provoked the polemic —an
approach overlooked or deemed impossible of realization by all students of
the “History” known to me.
The author of the “History of the Rus’” left some useful clues on
where to seek the object of his attack. The mysterious author must have
been a professor or teacher in some kind of school, and his allegedly pro -
Polish views were apparently set forth in a textbook or other pedagogical
work. The teacher-historian Tadeusz Czacki (1765 -1813), mentioned by
Storozhenko, might well be considered a candidate for the role. In 1804-5 he
was the founder (and subsequently a professor) of the Volhynian
gymnasium, which later became the Kremianets Lyceum, a springboard of
the Polish national revival in the early nineteenth century. He was also a
historian and a rather prolific author. But Czacki, a prominent Polish
educator, is not known for having writte n textbooks dealing with “Little
Russian” history. His views on Ukrainian origins were most fully expressed
in his article “On the Name of Ukraine and the Origin of the Cossacks,” first
14 See A. V. Storozhenko, “Malaia Rossiia ili Ukraina?” First published in 1918 in the journal
Malaia Rus’; repr. in Ukrainskii separatism v Rossii. Ideologiia natsional’nogo raskola , comp.
M. B. Smolin (Moscow, 1998), pp. 280-90, here 287-88.
Ukraine or Little Russia? 195
published in a Warsaw periodical in the autumn of 1801, before the
founding of the Volhynian gymnasium. Besides, the “History of the Rus’” is
silent about the tribe of “Ukr,” the hallmark of Czacki’s theory. More
importantly, Czacki can by no means be considered a “native Rus’ian,” as
was the mysterious author of the textboo k, according to the “History.” 15
Tadeusz Czacki should therefore be eliminated as a possible addressee of
the polemical statement quoted above.
In searching for the author of the textbook among professors/teachers
of East Slavic origin, it makes sense to b egin with schools in northeastern
Ukraine, where most scholars believe the “History of the Rus’” to have been
written. The town of Novohorod -Siverskyi, on which the author of the
“History” focuses attention, had its own school from 1789, but none of the
teachers at the secular school or (from 1805) the gymnasium is known for
having published anything on the history of Ukraine. 16 Still, we know of a
published historian who was then employed in neighboring Chernihiv,
which had emerged in the late eighteenth ce ntury as not only the
administrative but also the intellectual center of the region. One of the
leading historians there was Mikhail Markov (1760 -1819), a Great Russian
by origin who served as a prosecutor in Novhorod -Siverskyi. In 1799
Markov moved to Chernihiv, where he was appointed director of schools in
the Little Russian gubernia, and from 1805 he served as director of the
Chernihiv gymnasium. He published a number of works on the history of
Chernihiv and vicinity, and in 1816 -17 he contributed to the periodical
Ukrainskii vestnik (Ukrainian Herald), discussing the origins of Rus’
history.17 The problem with Markov’s possible authorship of the textbook
that so upset the author of the “History of the Rus’” is that although he
contributed to publications dealing with education, he never wrote anything
approaching a history textbook, and his eight -page essay ambitiously titled
“An Introduction to Little Russian History” (1817) advanced no further than
the period of Kyivan Rus’. On top of that, while Markov contributed to
Ukrainskii vestnik (so titled because it appeared in Kharkiv, the capital of
the Sloboda Ukraine gubernia), he avoided Ukrainian terminology in his
writings and can hardly be suspected of Polonophilism or Ukrainophilism in
the senses implied by Storozhenko.
15 See Tadeusz Czacki, “O nazwisku Ukrainy i początku Kozaków,” Nowy Pamiętnik
Warszawski (October-December 1801), bk. 4, pp. 32-40. On Czacki and his activities, see
Julian Dybiec, Nie tylko szablą. Nauka i kultura polska w walce o utrzymanie tożsamości
narodowej, 1795-1918 (Cracow, 2004), pp. 75-80, 112-13.
16 On the secular school and gymnasium in Novhorod-Siverskyi, see Oleksander Ohloblyn’s
essay on the founding director of both schools, Ivan Khalansky, in Ohloblyn, Liudy staroï
Ukraïny (Munich, 1959), pp. 262-69.
17 On Markov, see Oleh Zhurba, Stanovlennia ukraïns’koï arkheohrafïï: li udy, ideï, instytutsiï
(Dnipropetrovsk, 2003), pp. 94-119.
Serhii Plokhii196
The school and gymnasium next closest to Novhorod -Siverskyi with a
published historian on its staff was in Kyiv. The historian in question was
Maksym Berlynsky (1764-1848), who lived long enough to chair the
organizing committee for the es tablishment of Kyiv University. Having
been born in the vicinity of Putyvl into the family of an Orthodox priest,
Berlynsky could certainly be considered a “native Rus’ian,” a term that the
anonymous author of the "History of the Rus'" could have applied t o Great
Russians and Ukrainians alike. He was appointed a teacher at the recently
opened secular school (later gymnasium) in Kyiv in 1788, after graduating
from the Kyiv Mohyla Academy and training for two years at the teachers’
college in St. Petersburg. Berlynsky taught at the Kyiv gymnasium until his
retirement in 1834, thereby meeting another qualification —that of a lifelong
teacher who had never been anywhere except his school, as specified by the
author of the “History.” But probably the most importan t of his formal
qualifications is that his many works on Ukrainian history included a
textbook, Kratkaia rossiiskaia istoriia dlia upotrebleniia iunoshestvu (Short
History of Russia for the Use of Young People, 1800).
Even more interesting in this connect ion is that the textbook included
an essay on Ukrainian history entitled “Primechanie o Malorossii” (Note on
Little Russia). It was inserted into a basically Great Russian historical
narrative, in the section dealing with the rule of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailov ich,
and covered the history of Ukraine from the Mongol invasion to the Truce
of Andrusovo (1667). Subsequent Ukrainian history was treated within the
context of imperial Russia. 18 Thus Berlynsky perfectly matches the image of
the mysterious opponent invoke d by the author of the “History of the Rus’”
in the introduction to that work. But does Berlynsky’s textbook indeed use
“Ukrainian” terminology and include pro -Polish passages, as suggested by
the anonymous author? The very first sentence of Berlynsky’s “ Note on
Little Russia” gives a positive answer to this question, since it implies that
the original name of that land was indeed Ukraine. It reads: “Ukraine
received its name of Little Russia after its union with Russia.” According to
Berlynsky, King Sigismund I of Poland, “seeing that the Ukrainians
engaged in military pursuits, who were known as Cossacks, were
accomplishing very brave and valiant exploits…gave them permission to
occupy places above and below the town of Kiev and, in 1506, gave them
their first leader with the title of hetman, a certain Liaskoronsky
18 See Kratkaia rossiiskaia istoriia dlia upotrebleniia iunoshestvu, nachinaiushchemu
obuchat’sia istorii, prodolzhennaia do iskhoda XVIII stoletiia, sochinennaia v Kieve uchitelem
Maksimom Berlinskim (Moscow, 1800), pp. 93-106. On Berlynsky and his writings, see David
Saunders, The Ukrainian Impact on Russian Culture, 1750 -1850 (Edmonton, 1985), pp. 209-
12; Mykhailo Braichevs’kyi, “Maksym Berlyns’kyi ta ioho ‘Istoriia mista Kyieva,’” in
Maksym Berlyns’kyi, Istoriia mista Kyieva (Kyiv, 1991), pp. 5-20; Kravchenko, Narysy z
ukraïns’koï istoriohrafiï, pp. 80-84.
Ukraine or Little Russia? 197
[Lanckoroński], to whom he granted the towns of Chigirin and Cherkassy as
possessions.” King Stefan Batory, for his part, “confirmed the Ukrainians’
previous privileges in 1576 and gave them new ones; hence the empty lands
between the Dnieper, Bar and Kiev were soon settled by them.” 19 Thus the
author of the “Note on Little Russia” was indeed “guilty as charged” by the
author of “History of the Rus’” when it comes to the origins of the name
Ukraine, the Polish kings’ organization of the Cossack Host, and the
settlement of the steppe borderlands.
What might this finding mean for our discussion? First, it appears that
Berlynsky was indeed the target of the author of the “History of the Rus’.” It
also indicates that the “History” could not have been written prior to 1800,
the year in which Berlynsky’s textbook was published. Nor could it have
been written later than the first decade of the nineteenth century, otherwise
the critique of the textbook woul d have lost its significance to the
anonymous author and appeal to the reader. This finding is supported by
Oleksander Ohloblyn’s research, which places the creation of the original
manuscript of the “History of the Rus’” between 1802 and 1805, and Iurii
Shevelov’s hypothesis that final changes to the text may have been made in
1808-9.20 It gives us much better grounds than any previously available to
place the monument into a particular time frame and political context. Last
but not least, an analysis of Be rlynsky’s textbook and his other writings can
offer a better understanding of the historical and ideological message of the
“History” and the nature of the “Ukraine vs. Little Russia” debate initiated
by its anonymous author.
A reading of Berlynsky’s Short History of Russia indicates that he
hardly deserved the harsh treatment meted out to him by the author of the
“History.” Berlynsky was by no means systematic in his use of the terms
“Ukraine” and “Ukrainians,” which he considered interchangeable with
“Little Russia” and “Little Russians.” The textbook also shows that he was
far from being a Polonophile: for example, he noted with regret that the
Time of Troubles did not allow Little Russia to unite with Russia (“our
fatherland”) in the early seventeenth ce ntury. Berlynsky condemned the
Poles for their persecution of Ukrainians on the eve of the Khmelnytsky
Uprising (1648), allegedly against the wishes of King Władysław IV. He
even wrote in that regard: “That was the main reason for the civil war! What
the crown affirmed, the Polish nation rejected. And that discord united all
the Little Russians against the republic.” 21 Although Berlynsky did not
19 Berlinskii, Kratkaia rossiiskaia istoriia, pp. 93, 96-97, 98-99.
20 See Ohloblyn’s introduction to Istoriia Rusiv, p. viii; Iurii Shevelov, “Istoriia Rusov ochyma
movoznavtsia,” in Zbirnyk na poshanu prof. d-ra Oleksandra Ohloblyna , ed. Vasyl
Omelchenko (New York, 1977), pp. 465-82.
21 Berlinskii, Kratkaia rossiiskaia istoriia, p. 100.
Serhii Plokhii198
produce colorful descriptions of the Cossack wars with the Polish -
Lithuanian Commonwealth prior to the Khmelnytsky Uprising, as did the
author of the “History of the Rus’,” he noted that Khmelnytsky “was not the
first to take up arms against the Poles, for at various times in the course of
fifty years his predecessors had done so, but always in vain.” 22 In general,
Berlynsky produced a brief but quite accurate description of the period,
especially as compared with the one offered by the author of the “History of
the Rus’.” The latter clearly resorted to simplifying and vilifying the
arguments of his opponent. But were h is suspicions regarding Berlynsky’s
Polish leanings completely groundless?
Berlynsky did not identify his sources, leaving us no direct evidence of
possible influences on his work. He certainly could not have taken his lead
from the above-mentioned article by Tadeusz Czacki on the origins of
Ukraine and the Cossacks, for it was published a year later than his own
textbook. But this does not mean that he lacked access to other works by
Polish authors or had no direct contact with Polish historians. We have n o
indication that Berlynsky was close to Polish intellectuals or alleged
“Polonophiles” in the Russian Empire around 1800, but there is plenty of
such evidence pertaining to the later period. The secular school in Kyiv
where Berlynsky taught, which later b ecame a gymnasium, belonged to the
Vilnius educational district; from 1803 it was headed by the close confidant
of Emperor Alexander I and ardent Polish patriot Adam Czartoryski. Not
surprisingly, it was to him that Berlynsky sent the manuscript of his new
work, entitled “A History of Little Russia” (1803), requesting permission
and financial assistance to publish the book. Czartoryski was quite
supportive of Berlynsky’s initiative. In a memorandum on the issue he
pointed out that there was no published his tory of Little Russia, endorsed
the publication of Berlynsky’s manuscript, and noted that it would have “a
great bearing on general Russian history as well.” Also supportive of the
project was Czartoryski’s superior at the time, the minister of education,
Petro Zavadovsky, to whom the memorandum was addressed. A native of
the Hetmanate and a former lover of Catherine II, Zavadovsky began his
education at a Jesuit seminary in Orsha and was known for his good
relations with Tadeusz Czacki and general sympathy toward the Poles.
Acting on Czartoryski’s endorsement, he allocated 500 rubles for
Berlynsky’s “History,” but that was insufficient to cover the costs of
publication, and it never appeared in print. 23
22 Ibid., p. 101.
23 On Berlynsky’s attempts to publish the man uscript, see Saunders, The Ukrainian Impact, p.
211. In citing this work, Volodymyr Kravchenko ( Narysy z istoriï ukraïns’koï istoriohrafiï , p.
81) gives a somewhat different title: “Istoricheskoe obozrenie Malorossii.”
Ukraine or Little Russia? 199
Excerpts from the book were eventually published by an other reputed
Ukrainian “Polonophile,” Vasyl Anastasevych, who was a secretary to
Czartoryski during his years as head of the Vilnius educational district
(1803-17) and a close acquaintance of Czacki and the Polish ethnographer
Zorian Dołęga Chodakowski (A dam Czarnocki). In 1811, Anastasevych
published the first excerpt in his journal Ulei, where it appeared several
issues after the Russian translation of Tadeusz Czacki’s famous article on the
origins of Ukraine and Cossackdom. It seems that Anastasevych th en took
possession of the manuscript, for he published the last known excerpt of the
book as late as 1844. 24 Berlynsky’s close contacts with “Polonophiles”
among the Ukrainian bureaucrats and intellectuals may well have been
known to broader circles in the former Hetmanate. An episode that may have
revealed such contacts was the controversy of 1805 over the language of
education in the Kyiv gymnasium, whose director insisted on Russian, while
Minister Zavadovsky, who, given his background and education, cons idered
Russian and Polish mutually intelligible, favored the latter. 25 We do not
know whether Berlynsky took a position on the issue, but if he did so, he
may well have supported Zavadovsky, who (as noted above) sought to
promote the publication of his hist ory. There were certainly other occasions
for former Cossack officeholders of northeastern Ukraine to learn of
Berlynsky’s contacts and possible sympathies, which must have been at odds
with the traditional anti -Polish sentiments of the region’s elites. Th e author
of the “History of the Rus’” may well have read back into Berlynsky’s
textbook what he knew about the author otherwise.
The irony of the situation is that Ukrainian terminology may have entered
Berlynsky’s textbook and his “History of the City o f Kyiv,” a work written in
the late eighteenth century, not from Polish but from Ukrainian writings. One
of the last eighteenth-century Cossack chroniclers, Petro Symonovsky, the
author of “Kratkoe opisanie o kazatskom malorossiiskom narode” (Brief
Description of the Cossack Little Russian Nation), was Berlynsky’s supervisor
and mentor during his first years at the Kyiv school. 26 The major Cossack
chronicles of the early eighteenth century, including that of Hryhorii
Hrabianka—an important source for Cossack historiography of the later
period—were full of references to “Ukraine,” used interchangeably with “Little
24 On Anastasevych, see Saunders, The Ukrainian Impact, pp. 140-44. The translation of
Czacki’s article appeared in pt. 1, no. 1 of Ulei for 1811. Two of Berlynsky’s contributions,
“Razdelenie Malorossii na polki” and “O gorode Kieve,” appeared in the same year, in pt. 1,
no. 3, and pt. 2, no. 8 of the journal respectively.
25 On the debate over the language of education at the Kyiv gymnasium, see Saunders, The
Ukrainian Impact, pp. 31-32.
26 Ibid., p. 211. On Symonovsky and his writings, see Ohloblyn, Liudy staroï Ukraïny, pp. 219-
36.
Serhii Plokhii200
Russia,” as in Berlynsky’s textbook. 27 At the turn of the nineteenth century,
Berlynsky was by no means the only Ukrainian author prepared to make a
connection between Stefan Batory, the Cossacks, and the name of Ukraine.
Similar views were expressed by his contemporary Yakiv Markovych, who
published his “Notes on Little Russia” (1798), a historical, geographical, and
ethnographic description of his homeland. But Markovych never wrote
anything remotely resembling a textbook or taught in any “school” in Russia or
Ukraine, which excludes him as a possible object of attack by the author of the
“History of the Rus’.”28
Even the unknown author of the “History of the Rus’,” who objected
to Ukrainian terminology as a sign of Polish intrigue, was unable to keep the
term “Ukraine” out of his own work. It penetrated the narrative despite the
author’s intentions, proclaimed in the programmatic statement included in
his introduction. He was overcome by his sources —apocryphal eighteenth-
century letters, foreign histories, and Russian official documents of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which were full of Ukrainian
terminology. For example, in an ap ocryphal letter of May 1648 from
Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the term “Little Russian Ukraine” appears four times
in a variety of combinations, and there is a reference to “all Ukraine.” 29 The
anonymous author also writes of Ukraine when referring to Voltaire’s
comment on the Ukrainian expedition of Charles XII of Sweden in 1708 -
9.30 There are at least two references in the text of the “History” to the
“Ukrainian line,” the group of Russian forts built by the imperial
government to protect Ukrainian and Russian terri tories from Tatar
incursions.31 Under the influence of his sources, the anonymous author often
uses “Ukraine” with reference to the Right Bank of the Dnipro —the
territory that he defines as Rus’, not Ukraine, in his introduction. 32 In the
main text of his work, the anonymous author also writes about “Ukrainian
peoples” and “Christians of Ukrainian faith ( veroispovedaniia).”33 Whatever
his ideological postulates, the author of the “History of the Rus’” was
27 On the use of these terms in Cossack historiography of the early eighteenth century, see
Frank E. Sysyn, “The Image of Russia and Russian -Ukrainian Relations in Ukrainian
Historiography of the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” in Culture, Nation,
and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter, 1600-1945 (Edmonton and Toronto, 2003),
pp. 108-43.
28 On Markovych’s attitude to the issue of the Cossacks and Ukraine, see Oleksii Tolochko,
“Kyievo-rus’ka spadshchyna v istorychnii dumtsi Ukraïny pochatku XIX st.” in V. F. Verstiuk,
V. M. Horobets’, and O. P. Tolochko, Ukraïna i Rosiia v istorychnii retrospektyvi, vol. 1:
Ukraïns’ki proekty v Rosiis’kii imperiï (Kyiv, 2004), pp. 250-350, here 303.
29 See Istoriia Rusov, pp. 68-74.
30 Ibid., p. 208.
31 Ibid., pp. 236, 253.
32 Ibid., pp. 161, 167, 172, 179.
33 Ibid., pp. 242, 253.
Ukraine or Little Russia? 201
unable to divest himself entirely of the tradition esta blished by earlier
Ukrainian authors, for whom the term “Ukraine” had no negative
connotations and entailed no suggestion of Polish intrigue.
The hostility shown by the author of the “History of the Rus’” to the
term “Ukraine” marked a clear break with Ukr ainian historiographic
tradition. Since it occurred in a work that generations of scholars have
considered the pinnacle of early modern Cossack historiography, it deserves
further discussion. What made such a break possible, and what motives lay
behind it? With regard to the first part of the question, one should take
account of the new meaning acquired by the term “Ukraine” in official
discourse and public consciousness of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. In that period, the term began t o be associated first and
foremost with lands outside the Cossack Hetmanate. Thus the “Ukrainian
line” of fortifications was built in the 1730s to the east and south of the
Hetmanate. The Sloboda Ukraine gubernia was established in 1765, with its
administrative center in Kharkiv. It kept that name until 1780 and was then
restored with different boundaries in 1796; it was renamed the Kharkiv
gubernia in 1835. By contrast, the restoration of the Hetmanate’s territorial
integrity after its liquidation by Cathe rine II was associated with the brief
existence of the Little Russian gubernia, administered from Chernihiv,
between 1796 and 1802. 34 The close association of “Little Russia” with the
lands of the former Hetmanate and of “Ukraine” with the territories of
Sloboda Ukraine is well attested in a private letter from a prominent
Ukrainian intellectual of the period, Hryhorii Skovoroda. In September
1790, he wrote of “my mother, Little Russia,” and “my aunt, Ukraine,” 35
apparently meaning that while he had been born and raised in the
Hetmanate, most of his adult life had been spent in neighboring Sloboda
Ukraine. Thus, by the time the “History of the Rus’” was written, local
elites had largely ceased to associate the name “Ukraine” with the territory
of the Hetmanate, and some authors may well have regarded it as a foreign
invention.
Let us now turn to the author’s motives for breaking with
historiographic tradition. The most obvious of them appears to be his anti -
Polish attitude, which he does not attempt to conceal . In Polish
historiography the term “Ukraine” preserved its original meaning as first
and foremost the land of the Cossacks, giving the author a good opportunity
to strike at the Poles. His attack seems to have been well timed. If the author
was indeed responding to Berlynsky’s textbook, as argued above, then the
zeitgeist of his “History” was that of the first decade of the nineteenth
34 On the “Ukrainian line” and the names of the gubernias in question, see the Encyclopedia of
Ukraine, 2: 451; 3: 165; 5: 398.
35 See Hryhorii Skovoroda, Tvory u dvokh tomakh (Kyiv 1994), 2: 316.
Serhii Plokhii202
century, which was highly conducive to a renewed confrontation with the
Poles. The feverish activity of Adam Czartoryski, w ho was not only
presiding over the increasing cultural Polonization of the Vilnius
educational district but also, as de facto foreign minister of Russia,
preparing to restore the Kingdom of Poland under the auspices of the
Russian tsar, provoked a strong n egative response from Russian society.
Distrust of Poles grew in the second half of the decade, when Polish exiles
in the West sided with Napoleon, and the French emperor, perceived by that
time as Russia’s worst enemy, carved a Polish polity known as the Duchy of
Warsaw out of the Prussian part of the former Commonwealth. In 1806 -7
the Poles were submitting proposals to Napoleon to make Podilia, Volhynia
and Right-Bank Ukraine part of a future Polish state. 36 The elites of the
former Hetmanate could by no m eans have endorsed the inclusion of the
Right Bank (lands that the author of the “History of the Rus’” claimed as
ancient Rus’ territories) into a future Polish polity under Alexander I or
Napoleon. Rising anti -Polish sentiment in the Russian Empire gave t he
Cossack elites of the former Hetmanate a good opportunity not only to settle
historical scores with their traditional enemy but also to take credit for their
age-old struggle with Poland. 37 At the turn of the nineteenth century, the
Cossack elites needed recognition of their former services to the all -Russian
cause more than ever before, as the imperial authorities continued to
question the nobiliary credentials of most of the lower -ranking Cossack
officers.38 Not surprisingly, in the above -cited extract from the “History,” its
author asked rhetorically whether the Cossack wars with the Poles were “of
insufficient merit that this nation and its chieftains be rendered due justice
for their exploits and heroism.” 39
36 On Czartoryski’s activities and efforts to restore Polish statehood in the first decade of the
nineteenth century, see Piotr S. Wandycz, The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918
(Seattle and London, 1974), pp. 33-42. On Polish plans for Right-Bank Ukraine in connection
with Napoleon’s policies in Eastern Europe, see Il’ko Borshchak, Napoleon i Ukraïna (Lviv,
1937). Cf. Vadym Adadurov, “Narodzhennia odnoho istorychnoho mitu: problema ‘Napoleon
i Ukraïna’ u vysvitlenni Il’ka Borshchaka,” Ukraina moderna (Kyiv and Lviv) 9 (2005): 212-
36, here 227, 233. I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers of this article for bringing
to my attention the impact that Polish plans to reclaim Right -Bank Ukraine may have had on
the political agenda of the author of the “History of the Rus’.”
37 On the growth of anti-Polish sentiment in Russian society during that period, see Andrei
Zorin, Kormia dvuglavogo orla… Literatura i gosudarstvennaia ideologiia v Rossii v poslednei
treti XVIII – pervoi treti XIX veka (Moscow, 2001), pp. 157-86.
38 On the struggle for the recognition of Cossack ranks and historical writings produced in
order to establish the nobiliary status of the Hetmanate’s elite, see Zenon E. Kohut, Russian
Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: Imperia l Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s -1830s
(Cambridge, Mass., 1988), pp. 248-84.
39 Istoriia Rusov, p. iv.
Ukraine or Little Russia? 203
Maksym Berlynsky, a priest’s son and a scho olteacher, is unlikely to
have been ready or willing to perform that function for the Cossack officer
elites of the former Hetmanate. His general assessment of the Ukrainian past
was damning of those who extolled the heroic deeds of the Cossack nation.
“In a word,” he wrote in his article “On the City of Kyiv,” “this people
groaned beneath the Polish yoke, made war under Lithuanian banners,
occupied itself with the Union under Polish rule and contended for privilege
under Russian rule, producing nothing for us except descendants.” 40 As
Volodymyr Kravchenko has recently noted, Berlynsky was also quite
negative in his assessment of the role of Cossackdom, especially the
Cossack officer elite—an attitude that caused him difficulty when an excerpt
from his “History of Little Russia” was considered for publication in 1844.
On the recommendation of the prominent imperial Russian historian Nikolai
Ustrialov, a negative characterization of the Cossacks was removed from the
journal publication.41 It is entirely possible that the anti-Cossack attitudes of
Berlynsky, whose writings clearly favored Ukrainian city dwellers,
prevented the publication of his “History” year after year. Ironically,
Berlynsky lived long enough to see the publication of the “History of the
Rus’,” which contained an attack on his views and was potentially
dangerous to the imperial regime, but not long enough to witness the
appearance of his own works, such as the “History of Little Russia” and the
“History of the City of Kyiv,” which were perfectly loyal to the authorities.
It would appear that Andrei Storozhenko was wrong when he
presented (first in 1918 and then in 1924) the unknown opponent of the
author of the “History of the Rus’” in the “Ukraine vs. Little Russia” debate
as a promoter of Polish-led attempts to establish the Ukrainians’ distinct
origins and separate them from their Rus’ roots. 42 In the early nineteenth
century, the Ukrainian terminology against which the author of the
“History” protested was indeed associated with the Polish visi on of Ukraine
as separate from Russia, and from the 1840s on it served to promote the
Ukrainian national idea in the Russian Empire. But it would be wrong to
assume that the author of the “History” was combating the Ukrainian or
proto-Ukrainian trend represented by Berlynsky’s textbook. While the
40 Quoted in Kravchenko, Narysy z ukraïns’koï istoriohrafiï , p. 83. The article “O gorode
Kieve,” published in Ulei in 1811, was an excerpt from Berlyn sky’s larger study on the
“History of the City of Kyiv.” This particular assessment, which would probably have
infuriated the author of the “History of the Rus’,” was also apparently less than pleasing to the
publishers of Berlynsky’s work. According to Kr avchenko, it was not included in the 1991
edition of Istoriia mista Kyieva.
41 See Kravchenko, Narysy z ukraïns’koï istoriohrafiï , pp. 83-84.
42 See A. Tsarinnyi [A. Storozhenko], “Ukrainskoe dvizhenie. Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk,
preimushchestvenno po lichnym vospominaniiam,” in Ukrainskii separatizm v Rossii, pp. 133-
252, here 142-43.
Serhii Plokhii204
Ukrainian terminology used by Berlynsky implicitly compromised his
project of integrating the Cossack elites into the imperial Russian narrative,
Berlynsky himself did not threaten the pan -Russian vision of the anonymous
author, nor did the historical paradigm employed in his textbook. If
anything, Berlynsky’s scheme integrated the Cossack past into the imperial
Russian narrative more effectively than did the “History of the Rus’.”
Berlynsky, who traced all that was good in Kyiv and Ukraine back to the
reign of Catherine II, achieved his integration without claiming any special
historical rights for the Cossack elites —an attitude directly opposed to that
of the anonymous author of the “History.” 43
This explains how the “History of the Rus’” became a major
ideological threat to the empire. Given its long -term impact on the historical
imagination of generations of Ukrainian activists, that threat can hardly be
denied. Despite the “anti -Ukrainian” remarks made in the int roduction to the
book, the author of the “History of the Rus’” filled his narrative with
numerous anti-Muscovite statements, which, like the term “Ukraine,” he
may have taken over from the earlier Cossack chronicles and historical
tradition. He also claimed the Kyivan Rus’ past, which had been considered
part of Russian history alone, and extended the courte durée of previous
Cossack historiography, whose narrative was mainly limited to the post -
1648 history of Ukraine. 44 By celebrating the glorious past of the Cossack
Host, the “History”—either directly or through the works of Taras
Shevchenko—inspired Ukrainians to espouse a historical and national
identity distinct from that of Russia.
What conclusions may be drawn from the origins of the “Ukraine vs.
Little Russia” debate and its role in the formation of national mythologies in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? First, it appears that there
are grounds to challenge the dominant historiographic trend, which treats
the “History of the Rus’” as a manifestation of growing Ukrainian self -
awareness. The delimitation of Russian and Ukrainian identity was not
among the goals of the anonymous author of the “History of the Rus’.” In
all likelihood, as noted above, his immediate goal was to ease the
integration of the Cossack elites into the Russian nobility and society at
large, as well as to enlist St. Petersburg’s support in fighting Polish
“intrigues” in Right-Bank Ukraine, by narrating the heroic deeds of his
people. His polemic with Berlynsky a nd his choice of terminology show
43 On Berlynsky’s interpretation of the Ukrainian past in his unpublished “History of Little
Russia,” see Kravchenko, Narysy z ukraïns’koï istoriohrafiï , p. 84.
44 On Russian interpretations of Ukrainian history in the first decades of the nineteenth century,
including the tendency to claim the history of Kyivan Rus’ for Russia alone, see Tolochko,
“Kyievo-rus’ka spadshchyna,” pp. 266-309.
Ukraine or Little Russia? 205
that the anonymous author wanted to achieve his goal by playing the Rus’
card (the title of his work is most eloquent in that regard). He presented his
compatriots as more Russian than the Russian themselves, giving former
Cossack officeholders a basis to claim equal status with the Great Russian
nobility.
If that was indeed the case, how does the “History of the Rus’” fit into
the “national mythology” and “national mystification” paradigm? While
such mystifications as the Igor Tale helped build up pride in the all -Russian
nation, tracing the roots of its literary tradition back to the twelfth -century
court of the prince of Novhorod -Siverskyi, what was the function of the
“History of Rus’,” a work actually produced in the vi cinity of that ancient
town? It may be argued that originally the “History’s” main function was
the creation of a subordinate myth, a historical narrative intended to help
Little Russians partake in the larger historical myth of the all -Russian
nation. That function, however, changed with the passage of time. As
Anthony D. Smith has noted, “myths, memories, symbols and values,” if
viewed as constituent parts of cultures and identities, “can often be adapted
to new circumstances by being accorded new meaning s and new
functions.”45 This is what seems to have happened to the collection of heroic
stories and images created by the author of the “History.” Produced for one
purpose, they were successfully adapted to serve another: instead of helping
to integrate the Cossack past into the all -Russian narrative, they served as a
basis for the creation of a new national narrative of Ukrainian history.
The role that the “History of the Rus’” has played in the formation of
Ukrainian historical identity highlights the simple fact that historians have
little control over the use of their narratives. As Eric Hobsbawm warned his
fellow historians, “The crops we cultivate in our fields may end up as some
version of the opium of the people.” 46 If this metaphor, supplied by one o f
the last Mohicans of Marxist historiography in the West, can be applied to
national ideology, then the reception of the “History of the Rus’” is indeed a
case in point. Like the poetry of Adam Mickiewicz, which inspired
proponents of the nineteenth -century Polish, Lithuanian and Belarusian
national movements, the image of the heroic Cossack past produced by the
anonymous author of the “History of the Rus’” clearly captured the
imagination of his readers, whatever their national ideologies. 47 It inspired
both a proponent of all -Russian identity, Nikolai Gogol, and the father of
45 Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations , p. 3.
46 Eric Hobsbawm, “Identity History Is Not Enough,” in idem, On History (New York, 1997),
p. 276.
47 For a discussion of the impact of Mickiewicz’s poetry on the Polish, Lithuanian and
Belarusian national revivals, see Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland,
Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (New Haven and London, 2003), pp. 29-43, 281-83.
Serhii Plokhii206
the modern Ukrainian nation, Taras Shevchenko. In the end it was the
latter’s interpretation that prevailed, turning the anonymous author of the
“History,” a self-proclaimed enemy of Ukrainian terminology, into the
forefather of Ukrainian national historiography.
Addition to notes 24 and 25:
Anastasevych visited Berlynsky in Kyiv in 1811, and afterwards they
stayed in touch by correspondence. See excerpts from Berlynsky’s private
diary in the Volodymyr Vernadsky Library, National Academy of Sciences
of Ukraine (Kyiv), Manuscript Institute, fond 175, no. 1057, section 2, pp.
1-55.
At some pint prior to the spring of 1817, Berlynsky came into conflict
with the then director of the Kyi v gymnasium and petitioned the St.
Petersburg authorities in that regard. See a letter to Berlynsky from his
brother Matvii from St. Petersburg, dated 2 March 1817, in the Volodymyr
Vernadsky Library, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv),
Manuscript Institute, fond 175, no. 1057, section 1, fols. 7-8.
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