Michael Hrushevsky as the ukrainian culture researcher

Abstract

The article investigates M.Hrushevsky’s philosophical penetration into the essence of ethnographic problems, his search for the origins of folk customs, the scolar’s persieving of the processes of the social spiritual culture of Ukrainians. Hrushevsky as the Ukrainian culture researcher could make a tremendous contribution to the deve-lopment of Ukrainian ethnology based on enormous amount of empirical (ethnographic) material and based on contemporary theoretical developments of his times. The evolutionary theory used by the author in his scientific writings nowadays is part of ethnological understanding of social development. Despite some attempts of subjective approach to the interpretation of the questions of genesis of the elements of folk culture, the concept of their study used by the ukrainian academician will not lose its relevance for a long time. Hrushevsky’s scientific approach to the history of Ukrainian culture provided both deep analysis of the immense material accumulated by Ukrainian ethnographers and serious theoretical justification of the problem based on the heritage of the Ukrainian and world professional opinion. M.Grushevskiy for a long time worked on the question of origins and development of spiritual culture of the Ukrainian people. The monumental work by M.Hrushevsky History of Ukraine-Rus is one of the greatest works of Ukrainian scientific historiography that historically substantiated the matter of Ukrainian statehood and had a decisive influence on the the national statehood-making thought and education of generations. His five-volume History of Ukrainian Literature played the same role in the field of investigation of the origins of Ukrainian culture. Both works make it possible to investigate the origins of Ukrainian culture, analyze ethno-graphic factual material that was available to M.Hrushevsky, and consider the scientific concept on which he based his scientific research.