The Khmelnytsky Uprising, the Image of Jews, and the Shaping of Ukrainian Historical Memory

Abstract

This article traces how a stock image of the Jew developed in the early modern Ukrainian historical narrative. According to this image, the Jew was a rapacious, deliberate, and, at times, even independent exploiter of the Ukrainian people who lorded over them controlling and openly mocking the one true Orthodox faith. Elements of this image were present in the seventeenth century, but it solidified only in the late eighteenth, in the wake of a renewal of the Uniate problem, the continuing relevance of the Polish question, and, following the partitions of Poland, the emergence of a Jewish question. Since the same stock image was also present in Ukrainian folk culture, the article examines briefly this genre and its relationship to the written tradition. Finally, the article gives a few indications on how this early modern image entered into modern Ukrainian historical memory. Although, by the beginning of the twentieth century, leading Ukrainian intellectuals had rejected such a stereotype, its embodiment in Ukrainian historical memory would prove difficult to modify.