CHRISTIAN CLERGY IN THE UKRAINIAN NATIONAL REVIVAL OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE XIXth – THE FIRST THIRD OF THE XXth CENTURY: MODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY

Abstract

The purpose of the research – to represent and analyze the latest studies on the history of cultural, educational, social and national organizing activities of the clergy during the period of the Ukrainian national and cultural revival of the second half of the XIXth – the first third of the XXth century. First of all, attention is paid to the coverage of the content of scientific works dedicated to the elucidation of the Orthodox, Greek-Catholic and Protestant clergy's contribution to the rise of the Ukrainian national movement and spiritual, religious revival. The study is based on a civilizational and socio-cultural methodology, a systematic scientific and conceptual approach to a historiographical analysis, the tools of which made it possible to achieve the priorities of scientificity and objectivity in the coverage of the historiographical facts, historicism and continuity in the formation of a historiographical narrative, interdisciplinarity and integration of historiographical conclusions. The scientific provisions are based on the principles of a confessional neutrality and worldview pluralism. The research methodology is inspired by the interpretation objectives of the historians' scientific achievements in analyzing the interactions of religious, ecclesiastical and cultural educational activities of the clergy of different denominations, clarification of their contribution to the spiritual revival of the Ukrainians. The scientific novelty of the presented study consists in the actualization, systematization and analysis of the latest historical researches, which deal with the cultural, educational activities of the clergy during the period of the Ukrainian national revival. To systematize the relevant historiographical narrative the thematic metaphorical concept of “Department of Historiography” has been introduced; the heuristic potential of modern historical studies for confessionally neutral and scientific interpretation of the place and role of the clerical factor in the Ukrainian national history has been considered. The Conclusions. In modern historiography the idea is traced that the religious, ecclesiastical and cultural educational activities of the clergy played an important role in the development and rise of the Ukrainian national movement during the second half of the ХІХth – the first third of the ХХth century. The process analysis of knowledge accumulation on the history of the clergy illustrates the following: historians focus on the study of cultural, educational, social work of the Orthodox, the Greek-Catholic and the Protestant clergy. It is on the basis of this principle that the historians are united into three so-called “Departments of Historiography”. The historians consider the social mission of the Orthodox priests in a dualistic way, noting both their commitment to the Russian hierarchy as well as the national aspirations of some Orthodox priests to fight for the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodoxy. The historians analyze the activities of the Greek-Catholic priests in the context of their orientation to an active socio-political activity, emphasizing the Ukrainian priorities of their ecclesiastical and national identity. Instead, the historians elucidate the initiatives of the Protestants in the context of the new socio-economic realities of the imperial era (ethics of capitalism), emphasizing the significant contribution of the Protestant pastors to the development of interreligious relations in Ukraine during the period under analysis. A positive feature of a modern historiography is the erosion of the Soviet atheistic historiographical paradigm and historians' refusal from the one-sided reception of the historical process. The fact is also important that the vast majority of historians, who specialized in religion and church, did not mechanically change their atheistic approach to a confessional one, but they still adhere to a rationalist research paradigm, forming scientific postulates on the priorities of scientificity, objectivity and a confessional neutrality