«THE COSSACK PERIOD» AS A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CONCEPT IN THE WRITINGS ON THE LOCAL HISTORY OF DNIEPER REGION UKRAINE, XIX – BEGINNING OF XX CENTURY

Abstract

In the article it is posed the problem of the existence of historiography concept of «the Cossack period» in the historiography of the local history of Dnieper region Ukraine in the epoch of the formation of modern Ukrainian nation. At that time the historiography of history of Ukraine was gradually transformed into an independent direction of research. In particularly this process was connected with the appearance of its own national history periodization. In this regard, the traditional Cossack theme which was concidered as Ukrainian in the conditions of the Russian Empire, to a certain extent had lost the role of the sole representative of history of Ukraine.The Ukrainian historiography has expanded the horizons of Ukrainian history towards ancient times, for example, the times of Rus’ (according the conception of Rus’-Ukraine by V. B. Antonovych and M. S. Hrushevs’kyi) and earlier and also concedered the original development of contemporary Ukrainian society as a period of national revival. Accordingly the epoch of emerging and development of the Cossacks as a individual Ukrainian historical phenomenon was changed into the next stage of the history of Ukraine in modern model (paradigma) of its historical development. Therefor in the article it is paid attention to the emergence of the concept of «the Cossack period» in the context of general history of Ukraine.At the same time, the historical researches in Dnieper region Ukraine which were of non-whole national Ukrainian, but of territorial, local character also contained in themselves the reflection of attempts to distinguish the concept of «the Cossack period» because they considered all periods available by sources in the history of the regions – from antiquity (as to the South) to the present, or in the history of certain settlements they examined a consistent change of periods, starting from their foundation.The article also paid attention to the different approaches of the authors to using the concept of «the Cossack period» in the historiography of the local history, proposed the three types of concept: people (narodnycky) type (or demographic, ethnographic, estate); political one (or political and state) (concerning the Hetmanate or Zaporoz’ka Sich); mixed people (narodnycky) and political one (Slobids’ka Ukraine).As a result of the made research it was found that in the historiography of the history of different regions of Dnieper region Ukraine there were particular types of concept of «the Cossack period», depending on the local historical experience, the approaches of the individual authors and others. The influence of the concept of «the Cossack period», which was characteristic to V. B. Antonovich-M. S. Hrushevsky’s national paradigm of history of Ukraine, according to used sources, is the most noted in the history of the Kharkiv, by D. I. Bagalij, who was V. B. Antonovich’s disciple, although we can not exclude its effect towards the authors of the history of the city of Chernihiv.