Change of Approaches to Scientific Study of the Ukrainian People’s Genesis in the Second Half of the 20th — Early 21st Century

Abstract

The article analyzes the patterns of changing the approaches to scientific research of the genesis of the Ukrainian people and modern ethnocultural processes in the conditions of the crisis of communism and the restoration of Ukrainian statehood. It is discovered that in the totalitarian era, historical science in general and archaeology in particular were strictly subordinated to the requirements of the communist ideology. It is revealed that the crisis of communism and administrative-command system in the second half of the 1980s – early 1990s allowed scientists to move away from rigid ideological schemes and initiate a more or less objective research of ethnogenetic and ethnocultural processes in Central and Eastern Europe in general and Ukraine in particular. It is discovered that the final disintegration of the USSR and the restoration of the Ukrainian state freed humanitarian scientists from total party control over fundamental and applied research elaborations. This allowed their joining European and global scientific experiments for the continuation of the impartial and objective study of ethnogenetic and ethnocultural issues. It is shown that in Ukraine, there is no single universally accepted theory of Ukrainian ethnogenesis at the highest academic level, while its pseudoscientific hypotheses have become commonly widespread. It has been established that, in spite of the postimperial and post-Soviet complexes, Ukrainian humanitarian scholars, namely M. Braychevskyi, V. Baran, and L. Zalizniak, have made considerable efforts to theoretically establish a well-balanced and substantiated early-medieval theory of the Ukrainian people’s origin both in the scientific and educational discourse and among the general public.