My Encounter with Early Modern Ukraine

Abstract

DOI: 10.47632/2786-717X-2022-1-77-88 УДК 94(=161.2)(71)“19/20”(092) Як цитувати: Zenon Kohut, My Encounter with Early Modern Ukraine, Ukrainian Historical Review / Український історичний огляд, I | 2022, 77-88. Zenon Kohut My Encounter with Early Modern Ukraine In this article Canadian historian reflects on his intellectual biography and on the changes in the field of early modern Ukrainian history during the last fifty years. He emphasizes the role of academic communities of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University in his formation as a historian of early modern Ukraine. His affiliation with the Ukrainian chairs at Harvard and intellectual guidance of Oleksander Ohloblyn and Omeljan Pritsak played an especially important role in this regard. Having completed a thesis on the abolition of the Hetmanate’s autonomy in the late eighteenth-century Russia Empire, in the early 1990s he became a director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies where in cooperation with Frank Sysyn and Serhii Plokhy he founded an informal laboratory of early modern Ukrainian history. Zenon Kohut’s research in the 1990s and 2000s has been focused on the Russo-Ukrainian unity myth on the one hand and on the preconditions of the Ukrainian distinctiveness in the early modern period – on the other. It led him to the examination of the early modern Ukrainian history writing and identity-building. He was one of the first who demonstrated Ukrainian contribution to the emergence of the “traditional scheme of Russian history” – an imperial narrative in which Ukrainians and Russians are treated as offshoots of the same people sharing a common historical legacy, a common Orthodox faith, and, therefore, a common national destiny. Kohut’s studies of the early modern Ukrainian historiography and political thought focused on the evolution of such concepts as fatherland and nation. His pioneering works on the emergence and evolution of the Little-Russian identity in the Hetmanate conceptualized these developments as an important stage in the early modern Ukrainian nation-building. The article concludes with the presentation of Kohut’s ongoing project – a monograph on the political culture of Cossack Ukraine from 1569 to 1714 – which aims to synthesize his semicentennial research into the early modern Ukrainian history. References Chynczewska-Hennel Teresa. Świadomość narodowa szlachty ukraińskiej i kozaczyzny od schyłku XVI do połowy XVII w. Warsaw 1985. [In Polish.] Gat Azar. Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism. Cambridge 2012. Hen-Konarski Tomasz. No Longer Just Peasants and Priests: The Most Recent Studies on Nation Building in Nineteenth-Century Ukraine // European History Quarterly 45/4 (2015) 727–728. Kappeler Andreas. The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History. Abingdon 2013. Kas’ianov Heorhiy. Teorii natsii ta natsionalizmu. Kyiv 1999. [In Ukrainian.] Kohut E. Zenon. Korinnia identychnosti: studii z rann'omodernoi ta modernoi istorii Ukrainy. Kyiv 2004. [In Ukrainian.] Kohut E. Zenon. Making Ukraine: Studies on Political Culture, Historical Narrative, and Identity. Toronto 2010. [In Ukrainian.] Kohut E. Zenon. Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s – 1830s. Cambridge 1988. [In Ukrainian.] Кohut E. Zenon. The Question of Russo-Ukrainian Unity and Ukrainian Distinctiveness in Early Modern Ukrainian Thought and Culture // Culture, Nation, and Identity. The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600–1945) / ed. A. Kappeler et al. Edmonton – Toronto 2003, p. 57–86. Portnov Andrii et al. Whose Language Do We Speak? Some Reflections on the Master Narrative of Ukrainian History Writing // Ab Imperio 4 (2020) 88–129. Yakovenko Natalia. Dzerkala identychnosti: doslidzhennia z istorii uiavlen’ ta idei v Ukraini XVI – pochatku XVIII stolittia. Kyiv 2012. [In Ukrainian.] Yakovenko Natalia. Paralel’nyi svit: doslidzhennia z istorii uiavlen’ ta idei v Ukraini XVI–XVII st. Kyiv 2002. [In Ukrainian.] Yakovenko Natalia. Ukrains’ka shliakhta z kintsia XIV do seredyny XVII st. Volyn’ i Tsentral’na Ukraina. Kyiv 2008. [In Ukrainian.]