National Historioghraphy on the ‘Ruthenian’s’ Particularism History: 1991-2023

Abstract

On the basis of a systematized historiography, there have been scrutinized national historians’ and other humanitarian research fields representatives’ scientific works, which had been devoted to ‘Ruthenian’s’ movement in the Western Ukraine during the independent period. Monographs, encyclopedias, scientific papers have helped to realize which definition ‘Ruthenian’ had been used by the authors and understand the level of ‘neoruthenians’ movement’s threatening for the Ukrainian statehood; the level of the topic’s research in the discourse of socio-humanistic field.

There have been stressed the importance and relevancy of the historiographic division on the chronological, problem and methodological approach within a cross-disciplinary research. The last one helps to scrutinize the research of the political practice, aimed to spreading the regionalism in the Western part of Ukraine.

Reconceptualization of national historians’ historiography has been made in the context of combining a methodological way of ‘global history’ and ‘regional history’ approaches, so as ‘regionalism’ is a notion, which is used both in a global and a regional criteria. There has been underlined, that in the Western part of Ukraine particularism was caused both Hungarian’s and russia’s effects as well as the local political movements. For this research the following methods were used: a scientific, retrospective and historical. Systematicity, objectivity methods as well as critical analysis ones were also used.

The article gives coverage of the most important historians’ historiographic works of the period under study. Among them there have been emphasized the works by S. Vidnyanskyi, V. Holovko, M. Zan, Ya. Isaievych, O. Maiboroda, I. Pop, who had contributed to the research of neoruthenians movement and its impact on the Ukrainian state. Other representatives of social and humanitarian sciences such as S. Adamovych, L. Beley, O. Mychanych, N. Mushynka, M.Panchuk had researched both historical and methodological part of the problem, accentuating on politicization of Ruthenian identity and anti-Ukrainian nature of the project. Common in the studies of the aforementioned authors were linguistic, ethnic and political features.

Not less relevant in the historiographical study of the Ruthenians particularism were the philological scientists’ works. The authors have payed attention to the technologies of neoruthenians in independent Ukraine, referring to the influence of business and church mechanisms on the phenomenon, manipulation of linguistic issues etc. Generally, all the scientists have underlined that neoruthenians movement is a counter-discourse and animosity towards Ukrainians.