Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History by Serhii s> Plokhy (review)

Abstract

346 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 More than this, however, Schiemann can be viewed as a perfect example of how to combine local sensibilitywith a profound sense of what it means to be a European in both the political and moral sense. This quality is exactly what the BalticStatesand the New Europenow need more than ever. Hiden's book, incisive in social and political analysis, rich in its scope, well documented , precise and elegant in its formulations,comes to a readershipas a timely and importantreminderof this truth. Political Science andDiplomacy School LEONIDASDONSKIS Vytautas MagnusUniversiy, Kaunas, Lithuania Plokhy, Serhii. Unmaking Imperial Russia:Mykhailo Hrushevsky andthe Writing of Ukrainian Histogy. Universityof Toronto Press,Toronto, Buffalo,NY and London, 2005. xii + 6I4 PP.Maps. Notes. Appendix.Bibliography.Index. $95.00: /6o.oo. SERHII PLOKHY is to be congratulatedon producing a magisterialsurvey of Ukraine's 'national historian', to stand alongside Thomas Prymak's book Mykhailo Hrushevsky: 7The Politicsof NationalCulture (Toronto, i987), as well as smaller English language works like Frank Sysyn's short study, Mykhailo Hrushevsky: Historianand NationalAwakener (Saskatoon, 200I), and Stepan Horak'sMykhailo Hrushevsk: Portrait ofa Historian (I968). Plokhy's is mainly an intellectual life, and is largely chronological, but is interwovenwith regularexaminationsof Hrushevsky'sfavouritethemes, such as the Ukrainian claim to Rus', Cossack statehood, and Ukraine's position between East and West, and between Russia and Poland. Plokhy explains eloquently why the young Hrushevskymade such a radical impact, even in comparison to Ukrainian mentors like Volodymyr Antonovych. First, after Hrushevsky'the old Cossack mythology fell victim to the new paradigm of Ukrainiannational history'(p. 206). Nineteenth-centuryUkrainianhistorians dissociated themselves only slowly from the old paradigm of lost Cossack 'rights', but Hrushevskywas dedicated to the idea of establishing a 'long' historyof Ukraine, which he wrote was 'a matter of honour not only for me but for my whole generation' (p. 157). He felt that it was impossible merely to correct 'Cossack' historiographywithout first placing it in a longer-term context, which in his case went as far back as the Antes tribes of the fourth to seventh centuriesAD (pp. 120-27). It was no accident that this was one step furtherback than Kliuchevsky'sversion of Russian history. The Rus' era was central to this idea of continuity and antiquity, but Hrushevsky'sother great departurewas that his 'claim to the Kyivan Rus' period was an exclusive one. Unlike his [Ukrainian]predecessors,he was not satisfiedwith part of the Kyivan heritage but wanted it all' (p. I49). Plokhy is good on the reasons why Hrushevskyfelt compelled to call his magnum opus A Histogy of Ukraine-Rus' (pp. I67-7i). The neologism still sounds strange. Ukraine-Rus' never existed, in that the Rus' never called themselvessuch at the time. Even in the late nineteenthcentury,however,the termsUkraineand Ukrainian 'were as little established in their country's intellectual tradition REVIEWS 347 as they were among the common people' (p. I67). The national movement's preferred terminology emphasized distinction from Russia and Russians, but 'introducedeven more discontinuityinto the historyof Ukraine' (p. I67). It was also difficult to popularize in Habsburg west Ukraine, where the ethnonym Rus' still efficientlyserved the primarypurpose of indicating that the locals were not Poles. Hrushevsky'sintroductionof the composite expression Ukraine-Rus' therefore 'resulted from a conscious effort to overcome the terminological differences between the Russian and Austrian branches of the Ukrainian national movement' (p. I68). But, argues Plokhy, having served its purpose, 'the compound term "Ukraine-Rus"'proved transitional in Hrushevsky'susage, employed at a certain point in his career and all but abandoned later'(p. I69). By I914 Hrushevsky normallyreferred tojust 'Ukraine';although, as he continued to work on his multi-volumne history, it retained its originaltitle. Plokhyalso usefullydeconstructsthe simplifieddichotomy between 'statist' and 'populist' historiography, and the characterization of Hrushevsky as a simple propagandist of the latter school (see, for example, pp. 33in). Hrushevskywas no romanticanarchist.Likemany nineteenth-centuryhistorians , his instinctivesympathieswere with the 'people'(narod,who were also the key conceptualdevice in threadingtogetherUkraine'sotherwisediscontinuous political history; but Hrushevskyalso used dynastic, elite and international relations arguments to make his case. Plokhy details Hrushevsky's early 'socially oriented, egalitarian, anti-elitist and often anti-statistpopulist discourse ',but arguesthat 'it was poorly suited to the constructionof a coherent...