«Military history has no task at all to condemn». Volodymyr Salskyi: from understanding the methodology of history to trials in the scientific field

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to reproduce on the main journalistic and memoir heritage of Volodymyr Salsky the transformation of his views on the understanding of the methodology of history and the evolution of his trials in the scientific field.

It is claimed that in the first half of the twentieth century, during the fateful historical changes, saturated with turbulent events: wars, political confrontations, regime changes, interest in historical narratives grew among the Ukrainian elite. Many public, political and military figures, realizing what an important time they had to live in, sought to join history. As a result, they became the authors of various memoirs, which reflected the events they witnessed. Some public and especially military officials have tried their hand in the field of historical science. Among them was Volodymyr Salsky, a Ukrainian military figure, colonel of the General Staff, employee of General Yunakiv’s department (1918), commander of the Zaporizhzhia group in the Kamyanets-Podilsky operation of the UPR (1919), and later cornet general of the UPR Army.

It is noted that V. Salskyi, in addition to a brilliant political and military career, distinguished himself as an excellent scientist and publicist, critical researcher, specialist in the methodology of history and a good analyst of both past processes and events in which he was directly involved. And this despite the fact that, given his active work in the field of Ukrainian state-building, in particular as Minister of War, he had very little time for full-fledged scientific work.

V.Salskyi insisted that the historian should write history objectively, without succumbing to the political situation and personal attitudes. He considered the application of such an approach especially important in the field of military history, where the scholar should confine himself to stating the facts and refrain from any evaluative judgments. In general, the researcher of history, according to V.Salskyi, should be impartial, devoid of sympathy or antipathy to a person or event, avoid subjective experience in assessing events, politicians, military figures, etc., instead relying in intelligence on the most diverse and more extensive source base, which reproduces the problem in many ways and as comprehensively as possible. In the absence of materials, V. Salskyi gave valuable advice, the scientist should limit himself to presenting the established facts.

An excellent examples of the implementation of such advice were the researcher's own research works: «From the history of operations of the Zaporozhzhia group of the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in the summer of 1919», «On the defense of our northern borders», «Old dreams and new songs», «Ukrainian-Moscow war of 1920 in documents». Although V. Salskyi himself was actively involved in the processes he wrote about, he conducted his research objectively and impartially, demonstrating his critical mind and high-level scientific professionalism.