Tolochko, Aleksei Kievskaia Rus′ i Malorossiia v XIX veke (review)

Abstract

SEER, 94, 1, JANUARY 2016 176 light. In his conclusion Eddie stresses that the definition of ‘feudal’ remains contested.Manyofthereformsbetween1806and1821werenotpurely‘capitalist’ but retained variations of dependency, which underlines that ‘feudalism’ and ‘capitalism’ were not mutually exclusive. The reforms did not directly lead to a modern and industrialized Prussia, but remained ‘stubbornly interventionist and mercantilist’. The stability of the post-reform peasant economy prevented a faster pace of urbanization. Demography eventually changed this. This insight is not as new as claimed, but it is presented with a wealth of useful evidence. School of Divinity, History and Philosophy K. Friedrich University of Aberdeen Tolochko, Aleksei. Kievskaia Rus´ i Malorossiia v XIX veke. Laurus, Kyiv, 2012. 253 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Price unknown. In this book the leading Ukrainian medievalist Oleksii (Aleksei) Tolochko turns his attention to the nineteenth century as the period when both Russian and Ukrainian intellectuals rediscovered the legacy of Rus´ in what they knew as ‘Little Russia’ (Malorossiia) and what we now know as central Ukraine. Tolochko had good reasons to publish his study in Russian because it analyses the formation of the Russian imperial myth of Little Russia, as well as the making of a modern Ukrainian national identity — two topics that are as controversial today as they were back then. This is not a traditional academic monograph, however. The six essays comprising the book are based on the author’s previously-published articles. Tolochko’s style is engaging and somewhat conversational, closer to transcribed public lectures than to academic writing. There is neither an introduction nor a conclusion. The book does not have a single unifyng theoretical argument, but two major themes emerge from Tolochko’s narrative. One is that, for most of the nineteenth century, the medieval state of Kyivan Rus´ was not part of the developing modern Ukrainian historical imagination. Whether they were Little Russian elites claiming noble status in the Russian Empire or Ukrainian patriots seeking to subvert Russian rule, patriotic writers emphasized the Cossack past as a legacy that determined their separate identity. It was only at the turn of the century that the historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky created for modern Ukraine what Tolochko calls a ‘long history’, by claiming Kyivan Rus´ as part of the national past. The second theme is that of Russian travellers trying to reconcile their image of the glorious Rus´ past with the reality of contemporary Little Russia. Until the mid nineteenth century, Russian travel accounts stressed Little Russia’s cultural difference from Russia proper, while claiming the region’s past as part of their own Russian identity. It was only later that the centrality of the ‘people’ for modern concepts of nationhood resulted REVIEWS 177 in the official position: that the Little Russians were part of the greater Russian nation. The essays do not follow each other in either chronological or thematic succession. Chapter four picks up the discussion of Russian travel accounts from chapter two, while chapter three deals with Ukrainian historical concepts in the eighteenth century. The latter is thus separated from the discussion of later Ukrainian historiography in chapters one, five and six. Unfortunately, there is no analysis of travel accounts by self-identified Ukrainian patriots of the 1840s, even though the book cover features Taras Shevchenko’s 1846 drawing of Askold’s Tomb in Kyiv. Nevertheless, Tolochko’s essays fit together in many ways, first of all in the author’s questioning of historiographical certainties and his search for fresh methodological lenses. Some of these new approaches stem from his familiarity with Western theories. The author begins his discussion of Russian travel accounts by talking about English visitors to Greece, who admired the ancient ruins but refused to believe that the population on the ground descended from that of classical Greece. The parallel with Russian views of Ukraine is only too clear here. Russian writers soon began constructing the image of ‘the Little Russian tribe’ as naive and childish ‘children of nature’ (p. 103), a recognizable trope much analysed in post-colonial studies. Tolochko also connects the beginnings of modern archeology in Kyiv with the first attempts to define the imperial identity in relation to national identities. In discussing Ukrainian history writing, the author...