The culture of
The Ukrainian culture is one of the best branches on the world culture
tree, but its integrity and originality has been exposed to a ruinous effect.
The Ukrainian society is losing its culture at an alarming rate. Consequently,
the young generation turns out aloof from centuries-old cultural heritage of
the nation containing a powerful value vector which helped people withstand the
most difficult periods of their history. Cynicism as a style of behavior and
narrow-mindedness are imposed instead. We are worried about the attempts of
cutting off the cultural space of Ukraine of its deep sources and totally
annihilating it. The change of values and notions leads to demoralization of
the society and finally to the loss of spiritual and moral reference points.
The aggressive and cynical attitude to outstanding figures of the national and
world history and culture such as Yaroslav Mudryi, Taras Shevchenko, Ivan
Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Olga Kobulyanska and others increases. Their lives and
activity are presented in a deliberately distorted way to create a negative
image, with some material monuments and relics connected with the above names
being vandalized. Mykola Kostyantynovych and Olena Ivanivna Roerich together
with their sons Yuriy and Svyatoslav Mykolayovych, world-renowned scientists,
creative and public figures who dedicated all their lives to studying cultures
of different nations and protecting the world cultural heritage could not avoid
it. M.K. Roerich was an outstanding world humanist and the initiator of the
international treaty on the protection of cultural values, known as the Roerich
Pact, which laid the foundations of the Hague Convention of 1954. Ukraine was among those countries which signed it as a subject
of the UNO.
Roerich was connected with Ukraine by deep creative and intimate links. M.K.
Roerich took an active part in Shevchenko movement in Petersburg; he was a co-founder of the first T.G.
Shevchenko Society. The energy of the melodious language, the severe simplicity
of Shevchenko's poetry, public bravery and morality made a great impact on
young Mykola Roerich rousing his love to the Ukrainian culture that he carried
through all his life. The importance of the cultural space of Ukraine and Kyivan Rus in the creative fate of Mykola Roerich
has not been completely realized yet. Fruitful cooperation of the Roerichs with
the Ukrainian artists, scientists and funds was on during all their lives.
The Roerichs' ideas are much akin to the Ukrainian mentality, our
historic experience and the system of values used herein. The above ideas which
are in line with the philosophic Doctrine of Living Ethics are now extremely
topical for the world on the whole and Ukraine in particular. They show possible ways out
of the deadlock of man-caused civilization, help solve such vital problems as
harmonization of heart and mind, counterpoising culture and civilization,
reconciling global and local models of the development of mankind and increase
in ethical responsibility in scientific, public and civil life. The value of
the Roerich's heritage is of a particular importance to Ukraine and the whole
world due to its insights into the nature of such phenomena as unity of
religion, art and science in the process of knowledge and creativity, which is
of paramount importance at the time of a threat of religious fundamentalism and
confrontation of religions and return to the old forcible methods of
management.
Ardent attacks on the Roerichs and the movement of the public culture
they initiated, which is highly humanistic in its nature, are anti-cultural,
disgraceful, and inadmissible for our time. Unfortunately, we live in the world
where predatory, primitive and aggressive appeals are able to influence a great
amount of people. These social dangerous phenomena refer to the Roerichs
movement as well as other public movements and the society on the whole. They
represent a challenge to the whole humanity: the threat Culture and the danger
of personal violence, not to mention narrowing the sphere of people's free
coexistence.
One by one there are anti-sect conferences in Ukraine arranged
by foreign missioners, among whom are A. Kurayev and O. Dvorkin. The
representatives of the Ukrainian public clerical organizations participate in
them actively, with a growing representation of state structures. At these
conference the followers of the Roerichs' ideas and worshippers of their
creative work enter into list totalitarian sects and destructive cults rather
persistently. Under the cover of the remedial and religious activities some
forces strive for getting people's trust to impose on them dictatorship
ideology having the exclusivity to condemn people and even movements.
The Roerichs were always Orthodox and never changed their creed. Like
all other great men, they approached religious matters from broad outlook
positions. Having a deep respect to the Orthodox spiritual tradition as an
integral part of the national culture, the Roerichs' organizations in Ukraine insist on their right to act within the framework of
cultural and secular spirituality as cultural public organizations.
The Representatives of the Society called "The World through
Culture - Europe"
headed by Willy Ogustat have become rather active lately. They found their
branches in the cities of Ukraine, held meetings and conferences where
profiteering in the Roerichs' ideas they develop pseudo humanist ideas of the
cosmopolitan nature discarding the national culture that is the core of M.K.
Roerich's concept of culture and announce Roerich a citizen of the world and
cosmopolitan, which is essentially wrong.
The heritage of the Roerichs is not only a part of the cultural property
of the world and Russia, but Ukraine as well. Therefore realizing all the personal responsibility
and public duty for keeping the heritage, the Roerichs organizations of Ukraine
have made a proposal to convene a conference which would allow them to
coordinate their efforts with other public associations and figures for the
protection of the name and heritage of the Roerichs in the cultural space of
Ukraine for the sake of the protection the space of the Ukrainian culture
itself from the foreign expansion of phenomena and ruinous tendencies which
flourished on belittling national pride.
We are sure that the Ukrainian society has the only opportunity to
protect itself from ruining and this chance is our integral, colorful and
lyrical and romantic Culture, which is both rich and profound, since it is
closely connected with numerous world cultures. It is synthetic in its
character and developed as a result of influence of the best epochs of the
spiritual experience. Therefore we ought to protect it.
In 1897, archaeologist Vikentiy Khvoika discovered the Trypillian
civilization, and hypothesised that they might be the original ancestors of all
Slavs. While this theory is in dispute, the Trypiltsi, located in central and
south-western Ukraine, certainly
influenced Ukrainian religious and artistic culture. The Trypillian
civilization came to it's final stages in 2400BC, by which time, it began
merging with other, newer communities, such as the Cimmerians and the
Scythians. I propose the Trypillian Civilization as the spiritual birthplace of
today's Ukraine, because
of the profound impact it had on developing the psyche and identity of the
country in relation to its spirituality, respect of nature, and admiration for
the arts being able to express this highest communion between people, their
natural and supernatural worlds.
In this research paper dedicated to the ancient archaeology of Ukraine,
I will attempt to illustrate the spiritual life of the Trypillian civilization
at its height, to identify the religious motifs contained within the
artistic records left behind for us, connecting their time with ours. I hope to
also show how the form of Trypillian symbolic art has been retained and
repeated to this current day in contemporary religious and secular material
culture and rituals, creating a long uninterrupted cultural connection between
today’s Ukraine and her spiritual birthplace, the world of
our ancestors – the Trypiltsi.
This ancient civilization, also known as Cucuteni in Moldova and Rumania,
was named eponymously after the town where finds were first excavated. In
1896-1899 Czech born Vicentiy Khvoika conducted a series of excavations near
the town of Trypillia, in
Obukhivskiy district, Kyiv region. These excavations unearthed an incredible
array of monuments, statuettes, ceramics, day-to-day implements and tools,
graves, housing, even complete proto-city settlements, indicating an ongoing,
settled, traditional agrarian culture. V. Khvoika documented "this
discovery to the 11th Congress of Archaeologists in 1897, which is now
considered the official date of the discovery of the Trypillian culture"
(E-Museum, 2004). Dr. M. Videiko, a leading archaeologist-academic at the
Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences wrote that "carbon dating of these
settlements placed them at 4200-2750 BC" (Trypillian Civilization in the
Prehistory of Europe, 2004).
There is agreement amongst archaeologists that this land has been tilled
continuously. Umansky believes this suggests "that the local population
sustained the achievements of the material and spiritual culture of the
Trypillians" (2004). Importantly, this indicates that while the material
evidence of the Trypiltsi had been preserved under the earth that they so
revered, their attitudes, symbols, and art have been preserved in the living
successive cultures with whom the Trypiltsi merged. Since Vikentiy's discoveries
more than a hundred years ago, the Ukrainian earth has revealed many of its
well-kept secrets. Dr Videiko has documented some 1,200 settlements that have
been explored over the course of the 19th-20th centuries: these are summarized
in Appendix 2. From these treasures hidden and preserved by earth for so many
years, we are able to interpret the important aspects of the Trypillians' inner
spiritual life, and how they codified these within their art.
Thinking about the information revealed by excavations, perhaps I am
close in my offbeat interpretation of the word. ‘Artefacts’ comes from the
Latin arte factum, from ars skill + facere to make. In a modern sense,
artifacts are ‘something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or work of
art, especially an object of archaeological interest’ (Collins, p.61, 1998).
However, it is the meanings (the facts, or the text) embedded in the forms that
give context to that society and its belief system. Ornamentation of everyday use items seemed
to be an obligatory component of their creation. Earthenware, ceramics,
pottery, tools, vessels, dishes, pottery moulds, internal walls of houses (as
shown by clay models) all exhibit a compulsory ornamentation: painted in
varying earth-colours, such as white, red, ochre and black, and sometimes
carved with incisions or encrusted. The decoration of items or spaces are
geometrical incorporating symbols of nature (sun, moon, stars, rain, birds,
trees, branches, seeds, flowers, water) and with magical symbols of the
supernatural world (the eternal circle, teeth, rhombus, crosses, endless
meanders, snake-patterns, lines) are so universal and repeated, that it is
unlikely that the decorations were random or coincidental. Umansky believes
that these ornament-symbols are of two types: “those aiding to find food and to
grow crops, and those protecting people and the results of their labour”. He
notes that “some items carried both the symbols of fertility and of protection,
intertwined in an integral picture of the cosmos”. Videiko also supports the
idea of using ornamentation as a form of protection: “the floor and the walls
were painted with red and white colours and decorated with geometrical
ornamental patterns to protect the inhabitants from evil spirits” (The
Trypillian Culture: Introduction).
It is not
surprising that cosmic protection was so integral to Trypillian beliefs. The
triangular interrelationship of man/woman, the life-bringing earth, and the
cosmic forces all affected and depended on each other. Lockyer comments that
the people who would first observe the heavenly bodies, and apply this
knowledge, “would succeed best in knowing when to plough and sow, and when to
reap and mow” (p. 2, 1964). It would be natural, considering the awe, fear and
wonder with which these ancient peoples lived, to infer a supernatural quality
on these all-controlling elements: the sun, the dawn, the moon, fire, thunder,
and storm all were deified in the religion of this old form of nature worship.
The Trypillian
period coincided with the transition from the boreal to the milder Atlantic
climate: “the level of groundwater fell, the coniferous forests were replaced
by leafy woods, cold-loving animals disappeared, humus began to form, the Black
Sea - once a lake - became connected to the Mediterranean Sea through the
Bosphorus strait, and water covered a significant part of the land on
north-western Prychornomoria” (Chmykov, 2004). Not surprisingly, in an age
where environmental change was linked to astronomical phenomena, the sun, dawn
and everything connected to it was revered as much as life; whilst the night,
evening and obscuring of the sun or moon (i.e. an eclipse) was feared with
dread. Related to nature worship was the concept of ancestor worship. No doubt
in times of fear and unease, people would turn to the spirits of their departed
ancestors, seeking their care from the supernatural realm. One particular
relevant ritual referring to ancestor worship, pre-dating but common to the
Trypillian period, included the sacrificial burning of a home or even a
complete settlement. “They contained beautiful vessels, tools, meat or animals,
which became a rich offering to the spirits of their ancestors. It was
necessary to burn out such houses, as well as leaving the old fields to the
ancestors, as these houses of the dead would become shelters for the souls of
their ancestors” (Videiko, The Trypillian Culture: Introduction). Much of the reverence to the spiritual
world can be read from the text of the ornamented items. For example, the fear
of a solar eclipse is symbolized graphically on a vessel: “drawn on a piece of
pottery was the sun that collided with the horns of the moon” (Chmykov, 2004).
This is one example, but there are literally hundreds of signs used
artistically with specific meanings, and Taras Tkachuk estimates that some “12%
of these are related to Sumerian words (for example, star, plant, house)”
(Videiko, Trypillian Civilisation in the Prehistory of Europe). Below I have
constructed a list of some examples of ornament-symbols and their meanings. By
no means exhaustive, these are those which occur frequently in relevant
literature:
Snake – wisdom;
dragon snakes twined around the throne (where female figurine is seated)
represent the motifs of holy marriage (Chmykov); a strip of carpet on the floor
imitates a striped snake – the protector (Umansky); personification of river of
life – eternal movement (Umansky); a moon deity (Burdo).
Rhombus – the magic crossed rhombus symbolizes a fertile field
(Umansky).
Helix – represents heaven (Umansky).
Marriage – is signified by the two signs (helix and rhombus)
together: the marriage of heaven-father and earth-mother (Umansky).
Wolves – a symbol of the eclipse. It was believed that the world
would come to an end when the sun or moon fell into the maw of a beast (wolf,
dog). In another legend, at the end of the world, one wolf will swallow the sun
and another will clutch at the moon with its teeth (Chmykov).
Spiral - depict the mystical journey to the centre, where
illumination, wisdom and insight will be found (Goodman, p.122); protective
against evil (Umansky),
Tree-flower - symbolizes
the fertility Goddess ‘the tree of life’ (Umansky). The flower Goddess
sanctifies the most important thing in the house – the fire or the stove
(Umansky). Often a luxuriant flower is painted in her honor, against the
white-washed wall just above the family hearth, to invoke the goddess’s
protection.
Circle -
Symbolizes spirit. Describes the whole cosmos – everything which is spiritual,
everything that is embraced by the vast realm of the heavens (Goodman, p.17). A
ditch is dug around a village or field to protect his crops and ward off evil
(Umansky).
Concentric circles – magic concentration symbol of sacral space
(Burdo).
Cross/Square - We should observe that the cross, or the square
(both of which consist essentially of 4 elements) symbolize the heavy realm of
matter, the four directions of space, the four elements and so on” (Goodman,
p.38); representative of the four elements (Fire, Air, Earth and Water) which
were once believed to form the basic material of the physical world (Goodman,
p.17)
Fish - The two fishes represent the soul and the spirit swimming
in the sea which symbolize the body (Goodman, p.120)
River – Souls of dead grandparents flow in the river towards the
Goddess of Fertility, who sends them to the wombs of mothers to be reborn as
the bodies of their grandchildren (Umansky).
Vertical Lines: - Symbolizes spirit. Describes movement from above
(Heaven) to below (Earth) or Heaven to Hell (Goodman, p,17).
Horizontal Lines - Symbolizes
matter. Describes movement from west to east. It describes movement in time, as
well as the direction from past to future (Goodman, p.17). As well as using
ornamentation for protective reasons, it was also used to invoke good wishes
for fertility, a characteristic (whether linked with bringing forth life either
with people or with the land) which was much revered: thus women as keepers of
the secrets of fertility (the archetypal earth mother) were highly regarded. Amongst
the excavations, many goddess statuettes were recovered, often sitting on
thrones. This essentially points to an egalitarian type of society, that
honored both male and female deities, in the context of their religious
worship. It also correlates to the proposal that Shlain makes about the role of
women in Neolithic communities: “during a long period of prehistory and early
history both men and women worshipped goddesses, women functioned as priests,
and property commonly passed through the mother’s lineage” (Introduction,
1998).
From the 1980’s onward, Kyiv based archaeologist Nataliya Burdo assisted
in the identification of Goddess statuettes that reflected the three stages of
life (Madonna – Goddess with Child, Goddess-Cortex, Goddess-Matron), as well as
anthropomorphic statuettes that the Great Goddess is associated with: the Moon
Goddess, the Cow Goddess and the Bird Goddess. The fertility-Goddess cult is
further expanded by the location of cave temples, where silhouettes of the
naked Goddess were impregnated into the stone-wall (Bilche Zolote, see Appendix
2, under related entry).
Mokosh is universally accepted as the goddess of fertility in all
the regions now defined by Slavic populations. The origins of the name stem
from the words: mother + earth. This links in with “an old poetic concept of
fertility of our soil – the mother syra (soggy) soil, and as it happens, the
seed can only grow in the soggy soil” (Umansky). Shlain describes that
Trypillian attitudes were similar to contemporary communities: “in the emerging
civilizations, a mother Goddess was the principal deity: in Sumer she was
Inanna, in Egypt she was Isis, in Canaan her name was Asherah, in Syria she was
Astarte, in Greece, Demeter, in Cyprus, Aphrodite. They all recognized her as the
Creatrix of life, nurturer of young, protector of children, and the source of
milk, herds, vegetables, and grain. Since she presided over the great mystery
of birth, people of this period presumed She must also hold sway over the great
bedeviler of human thought – death. ( p.6, 1998).
The personification of Mokosh in ancient Trypillia – via these goddess
statuettes – were used in a variety of rituals. Kochkin (2004) says that there
are several known processes in which goddess statues were used. Firstly they
were associated with magical rites including initiation ceremonies. There is
evidence that others were used in seasonal land farming rituals, which seemed
to correlate with fertility festivities. Others were deigned to assist and
protect women who were pregnant and giving birth. The last category were in the
role of protector of
children. These goddess statues were found in the graves of children – they
were part of the family’s property and it was considered that the goddess will
look after the child during the passage into the next world.
Speculations on the fate of the Trypilska Kultura At the peak of
its civilization, it is estimated that the Trypiltsi numbered close to
1,000,000 people in an area of 190,000 km2 (see Appendix 3). This population of
agriculturalists, potters, blacksmiths, weavers had continued a fairly peaceful
existence for close to 3000 years, and suddenly they disappeared. What happened
to this civilization, and what was its legacy? The first question is difficult
to answer, and there are several alternative hypotheses.
Vikentiy Khvoika’s original hypothesis was that the Trypillian
settlements of the Middle Naddnipryanschyna had been the ancient motherland of
all Slavs. This has provoked a lot of debate, and people have tried to classify
the Trypillians variously as Proto-Slavs (V. Khvoika), Trako-Frigians (R.
Schtern and others), Celts (K. Schugardt), and Tocharians (O.Mengin and
others). T. Passek, M. Biliashevkiyi, O. Spytssyn and V. Horodtsov are
convinced that the highly developed culture of the Trypillians “came from the
south across the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara from the Asian coast, or
across the Mediterranean Sea from Finikia of Egypt, as the ornamented
ceramics suggest some oriental influence” (Susloparov, 2004). M. Marr (1921)
conforms to this theory: “relatives of the South Caucasus Etruscans, the Lasgs
and the Pelasgs, moved by the Northern
Way, across the Black Sea, or
along its Northern coast, and arrived at the Balkan Peninsular” (Susloparov,
2004). Marija Gimbutas is in agreement, as “recent research shows that proto Indo-Europeans
embarked on an enormous expansion into Europe and the Near East from
the Steppes of Eurasia. The first movement from South Russia to Ukraine and the lower Danube basin occurred some time before 4000 BC”
(Gimbutas, p.17, 1972). This correlates with the theory of movement from the
Causcasus region across the Black Sea, and then northward into the territory
that is now Ukraine.
O. Sobolevskyi defined their probable identity: “If we see the ancient
Pelasgs as ancestors of Kimers and Scythians-Hellenes, and if we recognize
Scythian-Hellenes as descendants of the early Greek colonists who got mixed
with Kimers at their Dnipro and Dnistro-adjacent territories, we may see the
representatives of the Trypilska Culture as Herodotus’ Kimers[6]” (Susloparov,
2004). In Book 4 of the Histories, Herodotus describes a peaceful nation of
Kimers-Cimmerians, but who were hostile to the imposition of foreign customs,
and who were eventually pushed back to the coast of the Black Sea and Crimea. It is possible these people were
the distant relatives of our Trypiltsi.
Anthropologist Marija Gimbutas talks about the conflict of two types of
cultures in the period around 3,000 BC. She notes (p.19, 1971) that with the
coming of the Kurgan Proto-Indo-Europeans, who were semi-nomadic pastoralists
with patrilineal and patriarchal social systems, the great Neolithic
civilizations of the 4-5th millennia disintegrated. They included:
– Cucuteni-Tripolye civilizations in Western Ukraine and Moldova;
– Gumelnitsa in Southern Rumania, Bulgaria and Eastern
Macedonia;
– Vinca in the Central Balkans;
– Butmir in Bosnia;
– Bodrogkeresztur in the Tisza Region;
– Lengyel
in the middle Danube Basin.
She states that “typical kurgan elements that derived from the steppes
include: pastoralism with some agriculture, hills/forts, small villages with
small rectangular houses, specific burial rites in house-like structures, and
simple unpainted pottery decorated with cord impressions, stabbing or
incisions. Their economy, habitation patterns, social structure, architecture,
and the lack of interest in art were in sharp contrast to the local
Cucuteni-Tripoye and Funnel-Necked Beaker cultural elements” (p.20,
1971). Shlain describes
the social change that coincided with the disappearance of Trypillian and other Neolithic
communities: “the Great Goddess began to lose power. Systematic political and
economic subjugation of women followed; coincidentally, slavery became
commonplace. Around 1500 BC there were hundreds of goddess-based sects. By the
5th century AD they had been almost completely eradicated, by which time women
were also prohibited from conducting a single major Western sacrament” (p.10,
1998). Shlain hypothesizes that it was with the advent of literacy, social
change leant to a hierarchical, patriarchal outlook, embracing a male,
monotheistic god in all major world religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam).
He proposes that image-based Neolithic communities which were more egalitarian,
were in direct conflict with the patriarchy of literate communities. He quotes
anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss in support of his argument, who challenged
literacy’s worth: “the only phenomenon which, always and in all parts of the
world, seems to be linked with the appearance of writing… is the establishment
of hierarchical societies, consisting of masters and slaves, and where one part
of the population is made to work for the other part” (Shlain, p.12, 1998). Was the Trypillian civilization a
matriarchal state? There is no evidence to say that it was or it wasn’t. It is
typical of many Neolithic cultures that were characterized by their settled,
agricultural economy, egalitarian attitudes, respect of nature, love of art. It
did not feature a hierarchical structure, and therefore in this sort of
society, slave-owning was unheard of. Unfortunately the embracing of a
patriarchal administration lead to many superficial and structural social
changes. The religious iconography completely censored women: the Goddess of
Fertility was supplanted by a flower, and then later by a more masculine
‘tree-of-life’ symbol, the concept of God and his helpers were all male,
religious ornamentation favored male oriented symbols (such as the cross
indicating the four elements of earth, sky, water, fire) as opposed to the
feminine symbols (eternal circle, river of life). Anthropologists talk about
the Fertility Goddess figure being rehabilitated into the iconography of the
Madonna, Mother of Christ, but unlike her original role, she plays a secondary
and passive role.
Trypillian Motifs in Contemporary Ukrainian Culture:
A long time ago, the Trypiltsi had joined their ancestors in the
next world, however many of their ideas, attitudes and symbols have been
preserved to the times of contemporary Ukraine, even though the worlds we
inhabit, are so vastly different from each other. Art has been preserved in
many forms and is a common thread linking the past to the present. Many features
of the Trypilska Kultura can be easily found in the practice of today’s contemporary folklore both in
Ukraine and in the diaspora; through this we can trace a definitive and
identifying line right back to the cultural influence the Trypiltsi exerted on
us – as our ancestors. Reminiscent
of ancient nature worship, many traditional Ukrainian folk-songs contain
specific references and opening sequences illustrating the natural world. In
these sort of songs, the opening lines draw a picture of a natural setting with
all the features of mountains or roads, trees, running water, little animals or
birds twittering nearby. It is
as if to pay respect to nature, and then to move on and tell the story of the
romance, or the parting, or the philosophical thoughts one is having. Examples
of such songs are Oy u Hayu Pry Dunayu, Viye Viter, Teche Voda Kalamutna, Po
Toy Bik Hora. Sometimes
an element of nature is used as the central allegory in the whole song. In
Chotyry Rozhy, a woman indicates how the four colors of the roses reflect the
fortunes of love in her life (pink-romance, red-love, yellow-disagreement,
white-parting). In Zorya Moya Vechirnaya (taken from a poem by Taras
Shevchenko), a princess finds herself in a foreign land, and she sees in her
conversation with the evening star, memories of her far away home, and her only
moments of release from her melancholy. Lastly, they can be
classified with respect to the seasonal cycle. Zhenchychok is a song
originating in springtime, indicating the lively playfulness of a prancing
grasshopper. Hahilky are songs inspired by nature and the rebirth of spring
that are sung and danced after the traditional Easter Sunday service. Oy Na
Hori, Tam Zhentzi Zhnut’ is really a song that introduces an army of Cossacks
who will be passing through the village. But is starts off by saying, ‘hey look
up there, the zhentsi are cutting the wheat (in the old days with scythes)’.
This was a job normally done as part of the harvesting season, so it is clearly
a song originating in the summer part of the cycle. U Karpatakh Hodyt’ Osyn,
relates to autumn, and interestingly personifies non-human elements – it is as
if autumn is walking around himself. Metelytsya is an instrumental dance that
is played at a very fast tempo to imitate the fury of the snowstorm that it is
named after. Shchedrivky are New Year season songs, celebrating the Ukrainian
New Year on the 14th January. Shchedryk is the most well-known of these
songs. Folk dancing,
khorovod and hahilky are all forms of Ukrainian dance (the latter two
accompanied by the participants’ singing). “Ritual dance symbols reproduce the
magic signs of the circle, parallel bee-lines, meandering labyrinth, and wavy
line snake. These figures, which are among Trypillian ornamental magic
symbolism are elements of ritual dances” (Burdo, 2004). In the religious festivals which seemingly
have supplanted the old traditions, there seems to be echoes of Trypillia. The
internal chamber of the church is dressed in the ancient embroideries
painstakingly made for them by members of the sisterhood. The men might produce
beautiful woodcuts, or as in the case at Homebush-Flemington, a beautiful
wooden model of the Church exterior architecture. At Easter time, women
furiously bake pasky, and prepare a beautiful basket of food, which symbolizes
all the gifts on the new Spring season, and those from which they would be
fasting, or which would be in low supply. People design multi-colored pysanky,
invoking ancient symbols, only to give them away as gifts as a sign of friendship
and love. Before midnight on Easter Saturday everybody leaves the church and
make a circular procession around the church. Having left the church largely
draped in black, when it is re-entered precisely after midnight, it is a
display of light lit candles, bright embroideries, beautiful flowers and joyful
singing. It seems reminiscent of the symbolism of the magic circle, and its
rebirth and life-affirming rituals. Just as the church is adorned with traditional
ornamentation, contemporary houses in Ukraine evidently have followed the unique habit
of colorfully adorning the exterior borders of the house walls. In many
villages as you drive by, wavy patterns meander along the borders of the house
walls. And inside the house, the luxuriant flower Goddess is painted on the
serving spoons, and perhaps also on some dishes and ceramic vases as well.
Perhaps in that house you will also find some books; perhaps there is at least
one by Mykola Hohol. In his short stories, where he illustrates the fantasy and
rich folklore of Ukrainians, he draws on the source of ancient Trypillian
symbolism – In Viy, a story
about a confrontation with a terrible beast, the young seminarist Khota defends
himself, by drawing the magic circle around himself, which protects him from
the onslaughts of the evil witch. Drawing on the mythology behind the end of
the world, Hohol describes, how the devil disguised as a wolf, one night comes
to steal the moon in Nich Proty Rizdva. 6. Closing Comments
For most people,
the Trypilska Kultura is something that is familiar, but yet at the same time
they will conclude that they do not know much about it. However, its artistic
expression, its mysterious symbols, its vibrant colors render it simultaneously
attractive and full of mystique. Much of the symbolism of the ancient Trypillia
is alive and well in the ornamentation of our embroidered shirts, implements,
ceramics and souvenirs, tablecloths, rugs and blankets, our houses, schools and
churches. Umansky recognized the comfortable yet paradoxical relationship
between the paganism of Ancient Trypillia and the modern Christian Church:
“both home and church icons are decorated with embroidered rushnyks. The
relation between orthodoxy and paganism is quite noticeable here: the Christian
Church respects the remains of ancient naïve faith. It understands the
deep feelings for nature, native land, old customs and national culture beneath
the surface. Christianity had once defeated the faith of early ploughmen. Now
however, the Church consecrates the ancient original Ukrainian art that depicts
the nation’s own face and civilization – distinctive from those of other
Indo-European nations” (2004). There leaves no doubt, that the starting point
of Ancient Trypillia is indeed the spiritual and cultural birthplace of Ukraine, and all that is Ukrainian.
When President Leonid Kravchuk was elected by the Ukrainian parliament
in 1990, he vowed to seek Ukrainian sovereignty. Ukraine declared
its independence on Aug. 24,1991. In Dec.
1991, Ukrainian, Russian, and Belorussian leaders cofounded a new Commonwealth
of Independent States with the capital to be situated in Minsk, Belarus. The new country's government was slow to
reform the Soviet-era state-run economy, which was plagued by declining
production, rising inflation, and widespread unemployment in the years
following independence. The U.S. announced in Jan. 1994 that an agreement
had been reached with Russia and Ukraine for the
destruction of Ukraine's entire
nuclear arsenal. In Oct. 1994, Ukraine began a program of economic liberalization
and moved to reestablish central authority over Crimea. In 1995, Crimea's separatist leader was removed and the Crimean
constitution revoked.
In June 1996, the last strategic nuclear warhead was removed to Russia. Also that month parliament
approved a new constitution that allowed for private ownership of land. An
agreement was signed in May 1997 on the future of the Black Sea fleet, by which
Ukrainian and Russian ships will share the port of Sevastopol for 20 years.
Ukraine developed in the
eighteenth century from the Poltava and Kyiv dialects. Distinctive dialects
are the Polissya, Volyn, and Podillya dialects of northern and centralUkraine and the western Boyko, Hutsul, and Lemko
dialects. Their characteristics derive from normatively discarded old elements
that reappear in dialectic usage. The surzhyk, an unstable and variable mixture
of Ukrainian and Russian languages, is a by-product of Soviet Russification. A
similar phenomenon based on Ukrainian and Polish languages existed in western Ukraine but disappeared almost completely after World War II.
In 1989 statistics showed Ukrainian spoken as a native language by 87
percent of the population, with 12 percent of Ukrainians claiming Russian as
their native language. The use of native languages among ethnic groups showed
Russians, Hungarians, and Crimean Tatars at 94 to 98 percent and Germans,
Greeks, and Poles at 25 percent, 19 percent and 13 percent, respectively.
Assimilation through Ukrainian language is 67 percent for Poles, 45 percent for
Czechs, and 33 percent for Slovaks. As a second language Ukrainian is used by
85 percent of Czechs, 54 percent of Poles, 47 percent of Jews, 43 percent of
Slovaks, and 33 percent of Russians.
Formerly repressed, Ukrainian and other ethnic languages in Ukraine flourished at the end of the twentieth century.
Ukrainian language use grew between 1991 and 1994, as evidenced by the increase
of Ukrainian schools in multiethnic oblasts. However, local pro-communist
officials still resist Ukrainian and other ethnic languages except Russian in
public life.
Symbolism. The traditional Ukrainian symbols—trident and blue-and-yellow
flag—were officially adopted during Ukrainian independence in 1917–1920 and
again after the declaration of independence in 1991. The trident dates back to
the Kyivan Rus as a pre-heraldic symbol of Volodymyr the Great. The national
flag colors are commonly believed to represent blue skies above yellow wheat
fields. Heraldically, they derive from the Azure, the lion rampant or coat of
arms of the Galician Volynian Prince Lev I. The 1863 patriotic song
"Ukraine Has Not Perished," composed by Myxaylo Verbyts'kyi from a
poem of Pavlo Chubyns'kyi, became the Ukrainian national anthem in 1917 and was
reaffirmed in 1991. These symbols were prohibited as subversive under the
Soviets, but secretly were cherished by all Ukrainian patriots.
The popular symbol of Mother Ukraine appeared first in Ukrainian baroque
poetry of the seventeenth century as a typical allegory representing homelands
as women. WhenUkraine was
divided between the Russian and Austrian empires, the image of Mother Ukraine
was transformed into the image of an abused woman abandoned by her children.
Mother Ukraine became a byword, not unlike Uncle Sam, but much more emotionally
charged. After 1991 a new generation of Ukrainian writers began
to free this image from its victimization aspects.
National identity arises from personal self-determination shared with
others on the basis of a common language, cultural and family traditions,
religion, and historical and mythical heritages. There is a lively reassessment
of these elements in contemporary Ukraine in a new stage of identity development.
Language issues focus on the return of phonetics, purged from Soviet Ukrainian
orthography by Russification, and on the macaronic Russo/Ukrainian surzhyk. A
revival of cultural traditions includes Christian holidays, days of
remembrance, and church weddings, baptisms, and funerals. The Ukrainian
Catholic Church emerged from the underground and the exiled Ukrainian OrthodoxAutocephalous Church united
formally with the Kyivan patriarchy. Ukrainian Protestants of various
denominations practice their religion unhampered.
The 988 baptism of the Rus melded Christian beliefs with existing customs,
leading to a Rus identity connected to both homeland and religion. In the
seventeenth century Ukrainian identity held its own against Polish identity and
the Roman Catholic Church. In the Russian empire Ukrainians preserved their
identity through culture and language because religion by itself integrated
them with Russians.
Historical facts and myths as bases of national identity were first
reflected in the literature of the Ukrainian baroque. In later times, the
proto-Slavic origins of the Ukrainian people were ascribed to the settled
branch of Scythians (500 B.C.E. –100 B.C.E. ) mentioned by ancient Greek and
Roman historians. Recent theories connecting origins of Ukrainian culture with
the first Indo-European tribes of the Northern
Black Sea region and with
the Trypillya culture (4,000 B.C.E. ) are supported by plausible research.
Ethnic Relations. Ukraine,
surrounded by diverse nations and cultures, is home to Belorussians in northern
Polissia; Poles, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Romanians in westernUkraine;
Moldovians and
Boats and barges line the Dnieper River in Kiev.
Gagauz in southern Ukraine;
and Russians in eastern and northern Ukraine.
The Russian Empire settled Germans, Swedes, Bulgarians, Greeks, Christian
Albanians, and Serbs in southern steppes. Russian landlords brought ethnic
Russian serfs to the steppes, and Russian Old Believers also settled there
fleeing persecution. In 1830 and 1863 the Russian government exiled Polish
insurgents to southern Ukraine.
Serbs and Poles assimilated with Ukrainians, but the other groups retained
their identities. Tatars, Karaims, and Greeks were native to Crimea. Since the Middle Ages Jews and
Armenians settled in major and minor urban centers. Roma (Gypsies) were nomadic
until Soviets forced them into collective farms. The last major immigration to Ukraine took place under the Soviets. Ethnic Russians were
sent to repopulate the villages emptied by the 1933 genocide and again after
1945 to provide a occupying administration in western Ukraine.
Historically, ethnic conflicts emerged in Ukraine on
social and religious grounds. The seventeenth century Ukrainian-Polish wars
were caused by oppressive serfdom, exorbitant taxes, and discrimination or even
elimination of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by Polish magnates. Their
appointment of Jewish settlers as tax collectors in Ukrainian villages also led
to strife between these ethnic groups. The settled Ukrainians and the nomadic
steppe tribes conflicted since medieval times. From the fifteenth century on,
Crimean Tatars raided Ukraine for slaves, and Zaporozhian kozaks were
the only defense against them. Even so, Zaporozhians made trade and military
agreements with the Crimean khanate: Tatar cavalry often assisted Ukrainian
hetmans in diverse wars. Likewise, Ukrainian cultural and educational
connections with Poles existed despite their conflicts: Bohdan Khmelnytsky and
many other kozak leaders were educated in Polish Jesuit colleges, and initially
Khmelnytsky considered the Polish king as his liege. Ukrainian Jewish relations
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also cannot be wholly described in
terms of ethnic strife. Jewish merchants regularly traded with kozaks and
several high officers of the hetmanate—such as members of the renowned
Markevych/Markovych aristocratic families—were of Jewish origin.
In contemporary Ukraine ethnic communities enjoy governmental
support for their cultural development. Ethnic language instruction increased
considerably in multicultural regions. The first center for preservation and
development of Roma culture opened in Izmail near Odessa. Two prominent issues in ethnic relations
concern the return to Crimea of the Crimean Tatars exiled in Soviet
times and the problem of the Russian-speaking population. The Crimean Tatar
Medjlis (parliament) demands citizenship for Tatars returning from Stalinist
exile while the Russian-dominated parliament of the Crimean autonomous republic
opposes that demand.
Pro-Russian elements identify Russophones with Russian ethnicity.
However, statistics show a large number of Russophones who do not consider
themselves Russian. In 1989, 90.7 percent of Jews, 79.1 percent of Greeks, and
48.9 percent of Armenians and other ethnic groups in Ukraine recognized
Russian as a language of primary communication but not an indicator of
ethnicity or nationality. Forcing a Russian ethnic identity onto non-Russian
Russophones infringes on their human rights. Russians inUkraine are either economic migrants from Soviet
times, mostly blue-collar workers, or the former Russian nomenklatura
(bureaucratic, military, and secret police elite). The latter were the upper
class of Soviet society. Since losing this status after the Soviet Union collapsed, they have rallied around a neo-Communist,
pro-Russian political ideology, xenophobic in the case of the Crimean Tatars.
URBANISM , ARCHITECTURE, AND THE USE OF SPACE
A prototypical architectural tradition was found by archeologists
studying ancient civilizations in Ukraine.
Excavations of the Tripillya culture (4,000–3,000 B.C.E. ) show one- and
two-room houses with outbuildings within concentric walled and moated
settlements. The sophisticated architecture of Greek and Roman colonies in the Black Sea region in 500 B.C.E. –100 C.E. influenced Scythian
house building. The architecture of later Slavic tribes was mostly wooden: log
houses in forested highlands and frame houses in the forest-steppe. The Kyivan
Rus urban centers resembled those of medieval Europe: a prince's fortified palace surrounded by the
houses of the townsfolk. Tradesmen and merchants lived in suburbs called posad
. Stone as a building material became widespread in public buildings from the
tenth century, and traditions of Byzantine church architecture—cross plan and
domes—combined with local features. Prime examples of this period are the Saint
Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv (about 1030s) and the Holy TrinityChurch over the Gate of the Pechersk Monastery
(1106–1108). Elements of Romanesque style, half-columns and arches, appear in
Kyivan Rus church architecture from the twelfth century, principally in the
Saint. Cyril Church in Kyiv (middle-twelfth century), the Cathedral of the
Dormition in Kaniv, and the Saint Elias Church in Chernihiv.
Ukrainian architecture readily adopted the Renaissance style exemplified
by the Khotyn and Kamyanets'-Podil'skyi castles, built in the fourteenth
century, Oles'ko and Ostroh castles of the fifteenth century, and most
buildings in Lviv's Market Square.
Many Ukrainian cities were ruled by the Magdeburg Law of municipal self-rule.
This is reflected in their layout: Lviv and Kamyanets' Podil'skyi center on a
city hall/market square ensemble.
Ukrainian baroque architecture was representative of the lifestyle of
the kozak aristocracy. At that time most medieval churches were redesigned to
include a richer exterior and interior ornamentation and multilevel domes. The
most impressive exponents of this period are the bell tower of the Pechersk
Monastery and the Mariinsky Palace in Kyiv,Saint George's Cathedral in Lviv, and the Pochaiv Monastery. A unique
example of baroque wooden architecture is the eighteenth century Trinity
Cathedral in former Samara, built for Zaporozhian kozaks. The neoclassical park
and palace ensemble became popular with the landed gentry in the late
eighteenth century. Representative samples are the SofiivkaPalace in Kamianka, the Kachanivka Palace near Chernihiv, and the palace in
Korsun'-Shevchenkivskyi.
Ukrainian folk architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
shows a considerable influence of baroque ornamentation and neoclassic orders
while preserving traditional materials like wood and wattled clay. Village
planning remained traditional, centered around a church, community buildings,
and marketplace. The streets followed property lines and land contours. Village
neighborhoods were named for extended families, clans, or diverse trades and
crafts. This toponymy, dating from medieval times, reappeared spontaneously in
southern and eastern Ukrainian towns and cities, such as Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Simferopol that were built in the eighteenth century.
Throughout the nineteenth century and into the beginning of the
twentieth century, the empire architectural style came to Ukraine from the West. Modern urban planning—a grid with
squares and promenades—was applied to new cities. At the beginning of twentieth
century, there was a revival of national styles in architecture. A national
modernism combined elements of folk architecture with new European styles. A
prime exponent of this style is Vasyl' Krychevs'kyi's design of the 1909 Poltava Zemstvo Building.
Soviet architecture initially favored constructivism as shown in the
administrative center of Kharkiv and then adopted a heavy neoclassicism
pejoratively called totalitarian style for major urban centers. Post-World War II
architecture focused on monobloc projects reflecting a collectivist ideology.
However, contemporary Ukrainians prefer single houses to apartment blocs. The
traditional Ukrainian house has a private space between the street and the
house, usually with a garden. Striving for more private space people in
apartment buildings partition original long hallways into smaller spaces.
Dachas (summer cottages) are a vital part of contemporary Ukrainian life. Laid
out on a grid, dacha cooperatives provide summer rural communities for city
dwellers.
Support for the Arts. The former Soviet Union provided
governmental support for the arts through professional organizations such as
unions of writers, artists, or composers. These organizations still exist and
try to function despite a general lack of funds. Young and unconventional
artists usually organize informal groups funded by individual sponsors and
grants from international foundations.
Literature. Ukrainian literature begins with the chronicles of Kyivan
Rus and the twelfth century epic The Tale of Ihor's Campaign. Principal authors
in
A Western Orthodox church in the Carpathian Mountains. Crosses and domes are common on
Ukrainian churches.
the baroque period were Lazar Baranovych (1620–1693), Ioannykii
Galyatovs'kyi (d. 1688), Ivan Velychkovs'kyi (d. 1707), and Dymitrii Tuptalo
(1651–1709), who wrote didactic poetry and drama. Kozak chronicles of the early
eighteenth century include The Chronicle of the Eyewitness, The Chronicle of
Hryhorii Hrabyanka , and The Chronicle of Samijlo Velychko .
Ivan Kotlyarevskyi (1769–1838) first used the proto-modern Ukrainian
literary language in his 1798 poem Eneida (Aeneid). He travestied Virgil,
remaking the original Trojans into Ukrainian kozaks and the destruction of Troy into the abolition of the hetmanate. Hryhorij Kvitka
Osnov'yanenko (1778–1843) developed a new narrative style in prose.
In 1837 three Galician writers known as the Rus'ka Trijtsia (Ruthenian
Trinity)—Markiian Shashkevych (1811–1843), Ivan Vahylevych (1811–1866) and
Yakiv Holovats'kyi (1814–1888)—published a literary collection under the title
Rusalka Dnistrovaya (The Nymph of Dnister). This endeavor focused on folklore
and history and began to unify the Ukrainian literary language. The literary
genius of Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861) completed the development of romantic
literature and its national spirit. His 1840 collection of poems Kobzar and
other poetic works became symbols of Ukrainian national identity for all
Ukrainians from gentry to peasants. In his poetry he appears as the son of the
downtrodden Mother-Ukraine. Later, his own image was identified with an
archetypal Great Father, embodying the nation's spirit. This process completed
the creation of a system of symbolic representations in Ukrainian national
identity.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Ukrainian writers under
the Russian Empire—Panteleimon Kulish (1819–1897), Marko Vovchok (1834–1907),
Ivan Nechuj-Levyts'kyj (1838–1918), Panas Myrnyj (1849–1920), and Borys
Hrinchenko (1863–1910)—developed a realistic style in their novels and short
stories. Osyp-Yurij Fed'kovych (1834–1888) pioneered Ukrainian literature in
the westernmost Bukovyna under Austrian rule. Ivan Franko (1856–1916) is a
landmark figure in Ukrainian literature comparable to Shevchenko. His poetry
ranged from the most intimate introspection to epic grandeur. His prose was
attuned to contemporary European styles, especially naturalism, and his poetry
ranged from introspective to philosophical.
Mykhailo Kotsubynskyi (1864–1913); Vasyl Stefanyk (1871–1936), a master
of short psychological stories in dialect; and Olha Kobylianska (1865–1942) all
wrote in a psychologically true style. Lesya Ukrainka (1871–1913) saw Ukrainian
history and society within a universal and emotionally heightened context in
her neo-romantic poems like Davnya Kazka ( The Ancient Tale, 1894) or
Vila-Posestra ( Sister Vila, 1911) and such dramas as U Pushchi ( In the
Wilderness, 1910), Boiarynia ( The Noblewoman, 1910) and Lisova Pisnya ( Song
of the Forest, 1910). Popularly, Shevchenko, Franko, and Lesia Ukrainka are
known in Ukrainian culture as the Prophet or Bard, the Stonecutter, and the
Daughter of Prometheus, images based on their respective works.
After the Soviet takeover of Ukraine,
many Ukrainian writers chose exile. This allowed them to write with a freedom
that would have been impossible under the Soviets. Most prominent among them
were Yurii Lypa (1900–1944), Olena Teliha (1907–1942), Evhen Malaniuk
(1897–1968) and Oksana Liaturyns'ka (1902–1970). Their works are distinguished
by an elegant command of form and depth of expression along with a commitment
to their enslaved nation.
Ukrainian literature showed achievements within a wide stylistic
spectrum in the brief period of Ukrainization under the Soviets. Modernism,
avant-garde, and neoclassicism, flourished in opposition to the so-called
proletarian literature. Futurism was represented by Mykhailo Semenko
(1892–1939). Mykola Zerov (1890–1941), Maksym Rylskyj (1895–1964), and Mykhailo
Draj-Khmara (1889–1938) were neoclassicists. The group VAPLITE (Vil'na Academia
Proletars'koi Literatury [Free Academy of Proletarian Literature], 1925–1928)
included the poets Pavlo Tychyna (1891–1967) and Mike Johansen (1895–1937), the
novelists Yurij Yanovs'kyi (1902–1954) and Valerian Pidmohyl'nyi (1901–1937?),
and the dramatist Mykola Kulish (1892–1937). The VAPLITE leader Mykola
Khvyliovyi (1893–1933) advocated a cultural and political orientation towards
Europe and away fromMoscow. VAPLITE championed national interests within a
Communist ideology and therefore came under political attack and harsh
persecution by the pro-Russian Communists. Khvyliovyi committed suicide after
witnessing the 1933 famine. Most VAPLITE members were arrested and killed in
Stalin's prisons.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, the so-called social realistic style was
officially mandated in Ukrainian Soviet literature. In 1960 to 1970 a new generation of writers rebelled against social
realism and the official policy of Russification. Novels by Oles' Honchar
(1918–1995), poetry by Lina Kostenko (1930–) and the dissident poets Vasyl'
Stus (1938–1985) and Ihor Kalynets' (1938–) opened new horizons. Unfortunately,
some of them paid for this with their freedom and Stus with his life.
Writers of 1980s and the 1990s sought new directions either in a
philosophical rethinking of past and present Ukraine like
Valerii Shevchuk (1939–) or in burlesque and irony like Yurii Andrukhovych
(1960–). Contemporary culture, politics, and social issues are discussed in the
periodicals Krytyka and Suchasnist' .
Graphic Arts. Ancient Greek and Roman paintings and Byzantine art
modified by local taste were preserved in colonies in the Northern Black Sea region. The art of the Kyivan Rus began with icons on
wooden panels in Byzantine style. Soon after the conversion to Christianity,
monumental mosaics embellished churches, exemplified by the Oranta in Kyiv's
Saint Sophia Cathedral. Frescoes on the interior walls and staircases
complemented the mosaics. Frescoes of the period also were created for the
Saint Cyril Church and Saint Michael Monastery in Kyiv.
Medieval manuscript illumination reached a high level of artistry and
the first printed books retained these illuminations. Printing presses were
established in Lviv and Ostrih in 1573, where the
Kiev University. Every
large or medium-sized urban center has at least one university.
Ostrih Bible was published in 1581.
In the seventeenth
century Kyiv became a center of engraving. The baroque era secularized
Ukrainian painting, popularizing portraiture even in religious painting: The
icon Mary the Protectress, for example included a likeness of Bohdan
Khmelnytsky. Kozak portraits of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries progressed
from a post-Byzantine rigidity to a high baroque expressiveness.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, several Ukrainian artists
worked in Saint Petersburg:
Antin Losenko (1737–1773), Dmytro Levyts'kyi (1735–1825), Volodymyr
Borovykovs'kyi (1757–1825), and Illia Repin (1844–1928). In 1844 Taras Shevchenko,
a graduate of the Russian Academy of Arts, issued his lithography album Picturesque
Ukraine . An ethnographic tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries is represented by Lev Zhemchuzhnikov (1928–1912) and Opanas Slastion
(1855–1933).
Mykola Pymonenko (1862–1912) organized a painting school in Kyiv
favoring a post-romantic style. National elements pervaded paintings of Serhii
Vasylkyvs'kyi (1854–1917). Impressionism characterized the works of Vasyl
(1872–1935) and Fedir Krychevs'ky (1879–1947). The highly individualistic and
expressive post-romantics Ivan Trush (1869–1941) and Oleksa Novakivs'kyi
(1872–1935) ushered western Ukrainian art into the twentieth century.
Yurii Narbut's graphics (1886–1920) combined Ukrainian baroque traditions
with principles of modernism. Mykhailo Boichuk (1882–1939) and his disciples
Ivan Padalka (1897–1938) and Vasyk Sedlyar (1889–1938) combined elements of
Byzantine art with modern monumentalism. Anatol' Petryts'kyi (1895–1964), an
individualistic expressionist, survived Stalinist persecution to remain a
champion of creative freedom to the end of his life.
In Lviv of the 1930s Ukrainian artists worked in different modernist
styles: Pavlo Kovzhun (1896–1939) was a symbolist and a constructivist. Several
western Ukrainian artists between the two world wars—Sviatoslav Hordynsky,
Volodymyr Lasovsky, Mykhailo Moroz, and Olena Kulchytska—studied in Paris, Vienna, Warsaw,
and Cracow. Many
artists, such as the neo-Byzantinist Petro Kholodnyi, Sr. (1876–1930) and the
expressionist Mykola Butovych (1895–1962), left Soviet Ukraine for western Ukraine in the 1920s to avoid persecution. Old icons
influenced Vasyl Diadyniuk (1900–1944) and Yaroslava Muzyka (1896–1973).
Alexander Archipenko (1887–1966), the most prominent Ukrainian artist to
emigrate to the West, attained international stature with paintings and
sculptures that combined abstraction with expressionism. Akin to Grandma Moses
are the folk painters Maria Pryimachenko (1908–) and Nykyfor Drevniak
(1900–1968).
After World War II many Ukrainian artists immigrated into the United States and other Western countries. Jacques Hnizdovsky
(1915–1985) achieved wide recognition in engraving and woodcuts. The highly
stylized sculpture of Mykhailo Chereshniovsky showed a unique lyrical beauty.
Edvard Kozak (1902–1998), a caricaturist in pre-World War II Lviv, became a
cultural icon in the diaspora.
After Stalin's genocide of the 1930s, social realism (a didactic kind of
cliched naturalism applied to all literary and artistic media) became the only
style allowed in the Soviet Union. In
the 1960s some young Ukrainian artists and poets, who also defended civil
rights, rejected social realism. For some of them this proved tragic: the
muralist Alla Hors'ka was assassinated, and the painter Opanas Zalyvakha was
imprisoned in the Gulag for long years. During the 1980s, modernism and
postmodernism appeared in Ukraine in spontaneous art movements and
exhibitions. Post-modern rethinking infused the works of Valerii Skrypka and
Bohdan Soroka. An identity search in the Ukrainian diaspora showed in the
surrealistic works of Natalka Husar.
Performance Arts. Ukrainian folk music is highly idiosyncratic despite
sharing significant formal elements with the music of neighboring cultures.
Epic dumas —ancient melodies, especially those of seasonal rituals—are tonally
related to medieval modes, Greek tetrachords, and Turkic embellishments. The
major/minor tonal system appeared in the baroque period. Typical genres in
Ukrainian folk music are solo singing; part singing groups; epic dumas sung by
(frequently blind) bards who accompanied themselves on the bandura (a lute
shaped psaltery); and dance music by troisty muzyky, an ensemble of fiddle,
wind, and percussion including a hammered dulcimer. Traditional dances—
kozachok, hopak, metelytsia, kolomyika, hutsulka, and arkan —differ by rhythmic
figures, choreography, region, and sometimes by gender, but share a duple
meter. Traditional folk instruments include the bandura, a variety of flutes,
various fiddles and basses, drums and rattles, the bagpipe, the hurdy-gurdy,
the Jew's harp, and the hammered dulcimer.
The medieval beginnings of professional music are both secular and
sacred. The former was created by court bards and by skomorokhy (jongleurs). The
latter was created by Greek and Bulgarian church musicians. Ukrainian medieval
and Renaissance sacred a capella music was codified and notated in several
Irmologions. The baroque composer and theoretician Mykola Dylets'kyi developed
a polyphonic style that composers Maksym Berezovs'kyi (1745–1777), Dmytro
Bortnians'kyi (1751–1825), and Artem Vedel (1767–1808) combined with
eighteenth-century classicism. The first Ukrainian opera Zaporozhets za Dunayem
(Zaporozhian beyond the Danube)
was composed in 1863 by Semen Hulak-Artemovs'kyi (1813–1873). The Peremyshl School of
western Ukraine was represented by Mykhailo Verbyts'kyi
(1815–1870), Ivan Lavrivs'kyi (1822–1873), and Victor Matiuk (1852–1912). All
three composed sacred music, choral and solo vocal works, and music for the
theater.
A scion of ancient kozak aristocracy, Mykola Lysenko (1842–1912) is
known as the Father of Ukrainian Music. A graduate of the Leipzig Conservatory,
a pianist, and a musical ethnographer, Lysenko created a national school of composition
that seamlessly integrated elements of Ukrainian folk music into a mainstream
Western style. His works include a cyclic setting of Shevchenko's poetry;
operas, including Taras Bulba; art songs and choral works; cantatas; piano
pieces; and chamber music. His immediate disciples were Kyrylo Stetsenko
(1883–1922) and Mykola Leontovych (1877–1919). Twentieth-century Ukrainian
music is represented by the post-Romantics Borys Liatoshyns'kyi (1895–1968),
Lev Revuts'kyi (1899–1977), Vasyl Barvins'kyi (1888–1963), Stanyslav Liudkevych
(1879–1980), and Mykola Kolessa (1904–). Contemporary composers include
Myroslav Skoryk, Lesia Dychko, and Volodymyr Huba.
Many Ukrainian performers have attained international stature: the
soprano Solomia Krushelnyts'ka (1973–1952), the tenor Anatoliy Solovianenko
(1931–1999), and the Ukrainian-American bass Paul Plishka (1941–).
The theater in Ukraine began with the folk show vertep and
baroque intermedia performed at academies. The baroque style with its florid
language and stock allegories lasted longer in Ukraine than in Western Europe. The eighteenth-century
classicism featured sentimentalist plays presented by public, private, and serf
theaters. Kotliarevs'ky's ballad opera Natalka-Poltavka ( Natalka from Poltava ) and the comedy Moskal'-Charivnyk ( The Sorcerer
Soldier ) premiered in 1819 and began an ethnographically oriented Ukrainian
theater. In 1864 the Rus'ka Besida (Ruthenian Club) in Lviv under Austria established a permanent Ukrainian theater, while in
the Russian Empire Ukrainian plays were staged by amateurs until banned by the
Ems Ukase . Despite this prohibition, Marko Kropyvnyts'kyi (1840–1910) staged
Ukrainian plays in 1881 along with Mykhailo Staryts'kyi (1840–1904) and the
Tobilevych brothers. The latter became known under their pen and stage names as
the playwright Ivan Karpenko-Karyi (1845–1907) and the actors and directors
Panas Saksahans'kyi (1859–1940) and Mykola Sadovs'kyi (1856–1933). They created
an entire repertoire of historical and social plays. Sadovs'kyi's productions
marked the beginning of Ukrainian cinema: Sakhnenko's studio in Katerynoslav
filmed his theater productions in 1910.
From 1917 to 1922 numerous new theaters appeared in both Eastern and
western Ukraine. The most
prominent new figure in theater was Les' Kurbas, director of The Young Theatre
in Kyiv and later of Berezil theater in Kharkiv. His innovative approach
combined expressionism with traditions of ancient Greek and Ukrainian folk
theaters and included an acting method based on theatrical synthesis, a
psychologically reinterpreted gesture, and a rhythmically unified performance.
The expressionist style was adopted in the cinema by the internationally
recognized director Oleksandr Dovzhenko (1894–1956).
Berezil's leading dramatist Mykola Kulish (1892–1937) reflected in his
plays the social and national conflicts in Soviet Ukraine and the appearance of
a class that used revolution for personal purposes. In 1933–1934 Kurbas,
Kulish, and many of their actors were arrested and later killed in Stalin's
prisons. As in every other art, social realism became the only drama style,
exemplified by the plays of the party hack Oleksander Korniichuk. In 1956
former members of The Young Theatre and Berezil formed The Ivan Franko Theatre
in Kyiv, but without the innovative character of the former ensembles.
Some Berezil members who escaped from the Soviet Union during World War
II brought Kurbas's style to western Ukraine.
After World War II these and other Ukrainian actors found themselves in refugee
camps in Western Europe and made theater an influential force for preservation
of national culture and reconstitution of the refugees' identity after cultural
shocks of war and displacement. Theaters led by Volodymyr Blavats'kyi
(1900–1953) and former Berezil actor Josyp Hirniak continued their performances
as professional companies in New
York in the 1950s and
1960s.
New ideas appeared in Ukrainian cinema of the 1960s. Director Kira
Muratova's work showed existentialist concepts. The impressionistic and
ethnographically authentic Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964) by Sergij
Paradzhanov and Jurii Ilienko was a prize-winner at Cannes. Ilienko is now a leading Ukrainian film
director and cinematographer of post-modern style.
THE STATE OF THE PHYSICAL AND SOCIALS CIENCES
The present National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine succeeds
its Soviet eponym. It is an umbrella for research institutes, specializing in
all fields of sciences and humanities. Most institutes are funded by the state,
and unfortunately their budgets were cut by 38 percent in the year 2000. The
scientific institutes usually sign independent contracts to provide research
for industry. At present they have developed their own small enterprises in
order to finance otherwise unfunded projects. Institutes in humanities and
social sciences survive through publication grants from independent
foundations. The National Academy of Medical Sciences and the National Academy
of Pedagogy are similar to the Academy of Sciences and are
financed by the state. Other research institutes are sponsored by diverse
industries combining general research with product-oriented work.
University-based research groups obtain funds from the Ministry of Education on
the basis of open competition. The Ministry of Science has a yearly competition
for project awards for research institutes. The competition concept is
indicative of the transition from a centralized budget to funding through merit
grants.
2. The
culture of Ukraine in the beginning of ÕÕI c.
FEAST OF ST. NICHOLAS 
In Ukraine, St.
Nicholas is a special saint, for it was Prince Vladimir who brought back tales
of the saint after he went to Constantinople to be baptized. The Ukrainian prince
Vsevolod Yaroslavych introduced the feast of St. Nicholas during the time of
Pope Urban II (1088-99 AD).
St. Nicholas' Day was a time of great fun in Ukraine. On this day, people would invite guests in
and sleighs would be ridden around the village to see if the snow was slippery
[icy]. This was the holiday for young children, for they would receive gifts
from St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children. "St. Nicholas" was
often accompanied by "angels" and might have quizzed the children on
their catechism. St. Nicholas Day, not Christmas, is the usual gift-giving day
in much of Europe including Ukraine,
although for Christmas it was the custom of all members in the family to get a
new article of clothing.
UKRAINIAN CHRISTMAS
For the Ukrainian people Christmas is the most important family holiday
of the whole year. It is celebrated solemnly, as well as merrily, according to
ancient customs that have come down through the ages and are still observed
today.
Ukrainian Christmas customs are based not only on Christian traditions,
but to a great degree on those of the pre-Christian, pagan culture and
religion. The Ukrainian society was basically agrarian at that time and had
developed an appropriate pagan culture, elements of which have survived to this
day.
Christianity was introduced into Ukraine in 988 A.D. The flourishing pagan religion
and traditions associated with it were too deeply rooted in the people to allow
the Church to eradicate them completely. Therefore, the Church adopted a policy
of tolerance toward most of the ancient customs and accepted many as part of
the Christian holidays. In this way, the ancient pagan Feasts of Winter
Solstice, Feasts of Fertility became part of Christian Christmas customs. This
is perhaps why Ukrainian Christmas customs are quite unique and deeply symbolic.
Ukrainian Christmas festivities begin on Christmas Eve ([G]Dec.24;
[J]Jan.6.) and end on the Feast of the Epiphany. The Christmas Eve Supper or
Sviata Vecheria (Holy Supper) brings the family together to partake in special
foods and begin the holiday with many customs and traditions, which reach back
to antiquity. The rituals of the Christmas Eve are dedicated to God, to the
welfare of the family, and to the remembrance of the ancestors.
With the appearance of the first star which is believed to be the Star
of Bethlehem, the family gathers to begin supper.
The table is covered with two tablecloths, one for the ancestors of the
family, the second for the living members. In pagan times ancestors were
considered to be benevolent spirits, who, when properly respected, brought good
fortune to the living family members. Under the table, as well as under the
tablecloths some hay is spread to remember that Christ was born in a manger.
The table always has one extra place-setting for the deceased family members, whose
souls, according to belief, come on Christmas Eve and partake of the food.
A kolach (Christmas bread) is placed in the center of the table. This
bread is braided into a ring, and three such rings are placed one on top of the
other, with a candle in the center of the top one. The three rings symbolize
the Trinity and the circular form represents Eternity.
A didukh (meaning grandfather) is a sheaf of wheat stalks or made of
mixed grain stalks. It is placed under the icons in the house. In Ukraine, this is a very important
Christmas tradition, because the stalks of grain symbolize all the ancestors of
the family, and it is believed that their spirits reside in it during the
holidays.
After the didukh is positioned in the place of honor, the father or head
of the household places a bowl of kutia (boiled wheat mixed with poppy seeds
and honey) next to it. Kutia is the most important food of the entire Christmas
Eve Supper, and is also called God’s Food. A jug of uzvar (stewed fruits, which
should contain twelve different fruits) and is called God’s Drink, is also
served.
After all the preparations have been completed, the father offers each
member of the family a piece of bread dipped in honey, which had been
previously blessed in church. He then leads the family in prayer. After the
prayer the father extends his best wishes to everyone with the greeting
Khrystos Razhdaietsia (Christ is born), and the family sits down to a
twelve-course meatless Christmas Eve Supper.
There are twelve courses in the Supper, because according to the
Christian tradition each course is dedicated to one of Christ's Apostles.
According to the ancient pagan belief, each course stood was for every full
moon during the course of the year. The courses are meatless because there is a
period of fasting required by the Church until Christmas Day. However, for the
pagans the meatless dishes were a form of bloodless sacrifice to the gods.
The first course is always kutia. It is the main dish of the whole
supper. Then comes borshch (beet soup) with vushka (boiled dumplings filled
with chopped mushrooms and onions). This is followed by a variety of fish -
baked, broiled, fried, cold in aspic, fish balls, marinated herring and so on.
Then come varenyky (boiled dumplings filled with cabbage, potatoes, buckwheat
grains, or prunes. There are also holubtsi (stuffed cabbage), and the supper
ends with uzvar.
CAROLING
While many of the Ukrainian Christmas Eve customs are of a solemn
nature, the custom of caroling is joyful and merry. Ukrainian Christmas songs
or carols have their origins in antiquity, as do many other traditions
practiced at Christmas time. There are two main groups of Christmas songs in Ukraine: the koliadky, whose name is
probably derived from the Latin "calendae" meaning the first day of
the month and which are sung on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day; the second
group of Christmas songs is called shchedrivky, which is a derivation from the
word meaning generous. The latter are sung during the Feast of the Epiphany.
Both koliadky and shchedrivky have pagan elements in them, but many have
been Christianized. For example, one pagan carol tells of a landowner who is
awakened by a swallow and told to make preparations, because three guests are
coming to his house: the sun, the moon and the rain. In the Christianized
version the three guests become Jesus Christ, St. Nicholas and St. George. The
very popular Ukrainian carol in the United states, "Carol of the
Bells", in its originality is a shchedrivka and tells of a swallow (herald
of Spring) that has come to a landowner’s house and asks him to come out and
see how rich he is, how many calves he has, and so on.
The themes of Ukrainian Christmas songs vary. Many, of course, deal with
the birth of Christ and that occasion's joyful celebrations, and many of them
have apocryphal elements. Another group of carols contain purely pagan
mythological elements. Still another group deals with Ukrainian history of the
9-12 centuries, mostly with the heroic episodes in the lives of some of the
princes that were favorite among the people. One of the largest groups of
carols are glorification songs - glorifying the landowner, the farmer, his
wife, his sons, his daughters, every member of the family. These songs glorify
their work as well as their personal traits.
Caroling required extensive preparation. Each group had a leader. One
member dressed as a goat. Another as a bag carrier, the collector of all the
gifts people would give them. Yet another carried a six-pointed star attached to
a long stick with a light in its center, which symbolized the Star of
Bethlehem. In some places the people even had musical instruments, such as the
violin, tsymbaly (dulcimer), or the trembita (a wooden pipe about 8-10 feet long, used in the Carpathian mountains by the Hutsuls).
Caroling was not a simple singing of Christmas songs; it was more of a
folk opera. The carolers first had to ask for permission to sing. If the answer
was yes, they entered the house and sang carols for each member of the family,
even for the smallest child. Sometimes they even performed slow ritualistic
dances. They also had to present a short humorous skit involving the goat. The
custom of the goat accompanying the carolers has its origin in the pagan times
when the goat represented the god of fertility. The skit showed the goat dying
and then being brought back to life. This also symbolized the death of Winter
and the birth of Spring. The caroling always ended with short well-wishing
poems, appropriately selected for each home.
Koliadky and shchedrivky are the oldest groups of Ukrainian folk songs.
They are sung by Ukrainians at Christmas time throughout the world.
Ukrainian Christmas Puppet Theater, VERTEP
Vertep, the Ukrainian Christmas puppet theater had its beginnings in the
XVII century. According to scholars, the theater was probably founded by
students of the KyivanAcademy, who
also wrote the plays performed there. This theater became very popular and with
time its special plays were performed by wandering mistrals, teachers, deacons
and traveling theater groups.
The puppet theater consisted of a miniature two-storied structure, which
served as a stage for the action. The actors were puppets made of wood. Each
puppet had a wire attached to one leg and in this way the puppeteer was able to
control the doll's movement, moving it back and forth via the vertical and
horizontal grooves cut out in the two floors of the structure.
The play itself had two separate acts that were thematically
unconnected. The first, which took place in the upper floor of the miniature
theater, had a religious theme and was didactic in character. The play
presented a shepherd and the Three Kings who came to visit the newborn Jesus.
The shepherds sang songs and rejoiced in His birth. there was also a scene with
the weeping Rachel, whose children were killed by the order of King Herod. In
this scene Rachel cursed the King and as he died, the devil came to take his
body and soul down to hell.
The entire second act of the play took place on the lower floor of the
theater. It consisted of short, humorous scenes, designed to amuse the viewer.
Although the various short scenes of the second act did not constitute a
tightly knit story, the action in them did revolve around one personage who was
not given a specific name, but was just called "Kozak Zaporozhets".
In Ukrainian folklore, there are many legends about Kozak Mamai, who was
a great warrior, defender of freedom and honor. He always appeared at a very
critical moment in a battle to save the day. Probably the role of Kozak in the
puppet theater was based on Kozak Mamai, this semi-legendary folk hero. In the
puppet theater play the Kozak doll was always made larger than the others. He
wore the traditional dress of the Kozaky, had a bandura (Ukrainian folk string
instrument), and smoked a pipe. In a very long monologue, the Kozak puppet
spoke of the glorious historical past of Ukraine.
The short scenes of the second act also dealt with a variety of negative
characteristics of man, i.e., cowardice, greed, etc. The scenes changed rapidly
and in them people lied, cheated, tricked one another, argued, fought - all for
the purpose of bringing out the comic elements in such behavior. The Kozak,
however, was beyond all that. although he may have pretended to be fooled, he
did so only to get a hearty laugh from the audience. He conquered all who
wished him ill, even the devil. The viewers saw the heroic past ofUkraine in the person of Kozak. For them he was
the eternal defender of Ukraine's
freedom.
Both acts of the play were accompanied by music - a choir, duets, solos
and instrumental ensembles made up of violins, cymbals, a flute and a drum. The
Kozak played the bandura and sang old epic songs. He and the other characters
in the play also danced.
During the Christmas holidays, students went from, from town to town,
village to village, house to house with the Vertep and gave performances.
Malanka is a Ukrainian folk holiday celebrated on
January 13th, which is New Year's Eve in accordance with the Julian calendar.
Malanka commemorates the feast day of St. Melania. On
this night in Ukraine,
carolers traditionally went from house to house playing pranks or acting out a
small play (similar to "Vertep" -- see above), with a bachelor
dressed in women's clothing leading the troop.
Malanka caps off the festivities of the Christmas
holidays, and is often the last opportunity for partying before the solemn
period of Lent which precedes Easter.
On the eve of Iordan (Epiphany Eve, [G]Jan.5;
[J]Jan.18), the family sits down to another vechera similar to the "sviata
vechera" prepared on Christmas Eve. This night is called "Schedrij
Vechir" which, loosely translated, means "bountiful night."
Iordan day commemorates the baptism of Christ in the
river Jordan.
In observance of this holiday, churches offer blessed water to their
congregations which is kept in a vessel in the home throughout the year.
3. The culture of Ukraine.
CHRISTMAS, WHICH TAKES ITS NAME from Christ's Mass, was first celebrated
on various dates from about 200
A.D. but was finally set on December 25 by Bishop Liberus of Rome in 354
A.D. The December date, which almost coincides with the winter solstice, became
a popular festival of West
Europe during the Middle
Ages. But as late as the nineteenth century, Christmas celebration was
suppressed in Scotland and New England because
of some religious differences.
All Christian nations have traditions which have become a part of the
Christmas season. For example, England has contributed the decorations of holly
and mistletoe, carolling and gift giving.The Christmas tree is a medieval
German tradition and the immortal carol "Silent Night" also comes
from Germany. The United States first made Santa Claus popular in New York, popularized the Christmas card
about 1846 and made the major contribution to commercializing Christmas.
When Ukraine under King Volodymyr (St. Vladimir)
accepted Christianity from Byzantium in 988 A.D. many pagan traditions were in existence which
were adapted by the Church to the new religion. Some of those traditions have
survived a thousand years and now form a part of today s Christmas
celebrations.
SVIATA VECHERA OR "HOLY SUPPER" is the central tradition of
the beautiful Christmas Eve celebrations in Ukrainian homes. The dinner table
sometimes has a few wisps of hay on the embroidered table cloth as a reminder
of the manger in Bethlehem. Many
Canadian and American families wear their Ukrainian embroidered shirts on this
occasion.
When the children see the first Star in the eastern evening sky, which
symbolizes the trek of the Three Wise Men, the Sviata Vechera may begin. In
farming communities the head of the household now brings in a sheaf of wheat
called the didukh which represents the importance of the ancient and rich wheat
crops of Ukraine, the staff
of life through the centuries. Didukh means literally "grandfather
spirit" so it symbolizes the family's ancestors. In city homes a few
stalks of golden wheat in a vase are often used to decorate the table.
A prayer is said and the father says the traditional Christmas greeting,
"Khristos rodyvsya!" (Christ is born!) which is answered by the
family with "Slavite Yoho!" (Let Us Glorify Him!) In some families
the Old Slavic form Khristos razhdayetsya is used.
AT THE END OF THE SVIATA VECHERA the family often sings Kolyadky,
Ukrainian Christmas Carols. In many communities the old Ukrainian tradition of
carolling is carried on by groups of young people and members of organizations
and churches calling at homes and collecting donations.
The favorite Ukrainian carol is Boh predvichny (God Eternal) which has a
very beautiful melody and Iyrics. Some Ukrainian carols are unusual because
they mention Ukrainewhile
others are ancient pagan songs of a thousand years ago which have been
converted into Christian carols.
CHRISTMAS IS A JOYOUS DAY which opens for Ukrainian
families with attendance at Church. Ukrainian Churches offer services
starting before midnight on Christmas Eve and on Christmas morning. Christmas
supper, without Lenten restrictions, does not have as many traditions connected
with it as Sviata Vechera. The old tradition in Ukraine of
giving gifts to children on St. Nicholas Day, December 19th, has generally been
replaced by the Christmas date.
MALANKA OR SHCHEDRY VECHIR on January 13th according to the Julian calendar
is celebrated as Ukrainian New Year's Eve in many cities. On this, the last
night of the year, New Year's carols called Shchedrivky are sung. One of the
most famous of these is the popular"Shchedryk" by Leontovich which is
known in English as "The Carol of the Bells."
While Christmas is a religious event, Malanka is a secular, merry-making
celebration. In some communities Ukrainian professional and businessmens' clubs
or youth organizations sponsor a dress up Malanka Banquet and Ball.
he traditional Christmas customs of Ukraine add
color and significance to the winter festival of Christmas, and Ukrainian
Christmas on January 7th is usually a peaceful and quiet event. This
celebration reminds us of the baby in a Bethlehem manger
whose 1,975th birthday we celebrate. But whether Christmas is celebrated on
December 25th or on January 7th the message is the same:
"Peace on Earth! Good will towards men!
SAINT NICHOLAS, one of the most popular saints honored by the Greek and
the Latin churches was actually a real person who lived in the 4th century in Myra, Asia Minor, which is presently Demre
in Turkey.
Traditionally, he has been honored on December 6 by the Latin Church and on
December 19 according to the churches, such as the Ukrainian, which follow the
Julian Calendar.
In his youth Nicholas entered a monastery and later became an abbot and
then a bishop. After suffering persecution and imprisonment, he was freed by a
new emperor, Constantine. He died in 352 and his relics were preserved in Myra for seven centuries until some Italian merchants sent
an expedition of three ships and 62 men to Myra and,
through a ruse, carried off his remains. They were deposited in the church in Bari, Italy on the Adriatic Sea on May 9, 1087 where they have remained to this day.
Many traditions relating to Saint Nicholas as the special guardian of
maidens, children, scholars, merchants and sailors, have come down to our day.
THERE IS A LEGEND that connects St. Nicholas with the tradition of
giving presents secretly. There was a nobleman in Patana with three daughters
but he was too poor to provide them with a dowry for marriage. He was almost on
the point of abandoning them to a sinful life when Nicholas heard of his
problem. That night he took a purse of gold and threw it in an open window. The
nobleman used it for a dowry the next day as he did a second purse he found the
next night. Curious about his benefactor, the third night he watched and caught
Nicholas in the act but he was told not to reveal the Saint's identity or generosity.
Ever since, St. Nicholas has been identified with the tradition of gift giving.
His three purses of gold eventually became the three golden balls symbol of
pawnbrokers.
St. Nicholas is the most popular saint in the Ukrainian church after St.
Vladimir, as is shown by the fact that there have been more churches named
after St. Nicholas than after any other saint. Some scholars believe that it
was through the great popularity that the Saint enjoyed in Kievan Rus-Ukraine
in medieval times that his popularity spread to western Europe, and
particularly to Belgium and Holland.
OVER THE PAST 200 YEARS, as the traditions around Christmas have grown
and the importance of this winter festival brightens the season, Saint Nicholas
has been absorbed into the tradition. It was the Dutch settlers who brought the
St. Nicholas customs across the ocean to New York. The whitebearded Saint Nicholas in a red
bishop's costume was transformed into Santa Claus in the United States and Canada and eventually the tradition re-crossed
the ocean to England.
WHY DO UKRAINIANS CELEBRATE Christmas on January 7th rather than
December 25th? Many people wonder why the Ukrainian date is thirteen days later
and only a few people are aware that it is related to a change from the
calendar which was in use two thousand years ago.
Tradition plays a great part in the lives of people of Ukrainian origin
and it is for this reason that they have continued to celebrate Christmas on
the old date that would have been observed by all Christians.
The Roman calendar that had been in use since the eighth century B.C.
originally started the year on March 1 and had 10 months as the names of the
months themselves indicate, September (7), October (8), November (9) and
December (10). Eventually two months were added, Januarius and Februarius, and
the year was started on January. However, it was only 355 days long so it had
over ten days error and the seasons and the calendar over the years continued
to lose their correct relationship.
JULIAN CALENDAR
JULIUS CAESAR FINALLY in 46 B.C. had the Greek astronomer Sosigenes
establish the length of the solar calendar at 365 and one quarter days
(365.25). Every fourth year was to add one day to keep the quarter days
accurate and this has now become our leap year with February 29. The Julian
Calendar was introduced on January 1, 45 B.C. and the next year Caesar was
honored by having the seventh month renamed in his honor as July. A later Roman
Emperor, Augustus Caesar, corrected the leap year system in A.D. 8 and in his honor
a month was renamed August.
But the Julian year of 365 days and 6 hours exceeds the true solar year
of 365.2422 days or 365 days 5 hours 49 minutes and 46 seconds by the amount of
11 minutes 14 seconds. The difference is about 0.0078 of a day per year or
about one day in 128 years. Over a period of 1,500 years the calendar was again
getting out of step with the natural seasons by about ten days.
Christmas, which had been celebrated on many different dates was finally
fixed on December 25th by Bishop Liberius of Rome.
In 354 A.D. he chose
the date to replace a Roman pagan festival of sun-god worship with Christ's
Mass, a Christian event.
GREGORIAN CALENDAR
FINALLY POPE GREGORY XIII in 1528 introduced changes to correct the
error in the Julian Calendar. To restore the vernal or spring equinox to March
21st he eliminated the 10 days from March 11 to 21 in 1582 so
the dates March 12 to 20 never existed in 1582, at least not in Roman Catholic
countries. Some Protestant countries likeEngland and Sweden adopted the new calendar only in 1752 so
there was 11 days difference by then.
The Orthodox and Eastern rite churches such as the Ukrainian have
maintained the Julian Calendar for ecclesiastical purposes into this century.
The Ukrainians, numbering some 50 million in the world are the second largest
nation following the Julian Calendar in their churches. The difference between
the two Calendars placed Christmas on January 7th and, because of the size of
the Ukrainian church the date has become widely known as "Ukrainian
Christmas." However, there are other smaller Eastern-rite Orthodox
national churches such as the Greek, Syrian, Serbian, Bulgarian and
Byelorussian that follow the same calendar.
Historically the Julian Calendar is sometimes called Old Style (O.S.)
and the Gregorian is called New Style (N.S.). All the Orthodox countries which
preserved the Julian Calendar into this century had a 13 day lag. Thus a date
would be written January 4/17, 1918, meaning the 4th in new style and 17th in
the old style calendar.
Many Ukrainian families and many Ukrainian churches continue to observe
the old traditional date of Ukrainian Christmas on January 7 despite the
pressures of modern society to change. The later date appeals to many people
since, after the commercialism of December 25th, it is possible to enjoy a
quieter and more religious occasion. For those who leave their shopping for the
last minute the big advantage in celebrating Ukrainian Christmas is that the
big sales start - just in time for Christmas shopping. - A.G.
In Ukraine the first mention of St. Nicholas is
related to the year 882 at the time of King Ihor of Rus when there was mention
of a St. Nicholas Church on one of the hills ofKiev. When St. Vladimir, King of
Rus-Ukraine in 988 proclaimed Christianity the religion of his realm it is said
he had a special veneration for an ikon of St. Nicholas. When he had visited Constantinople he had seen and was impressed by an ikon of the mighty
Byzantine Emperor bowing to the Saint. To this day St. Nicholas ikons may be
found, usually on the left of the ikonostas wall of Ukrainian churches.
Among the talismans the Zaporozhian Cossacks would often take in their
boats on the treacherous Black
Sea was an ikon of St.
Nicholas, or Sviaty Mykolai, as Ukrainians usually call him. The Hutsuls,
mountaineers of western Ukraine named the four seasons of the year after
saints. Winter honored St. Nicholas, Spring was St. George, Summer was St.
Peter and Fall was St. Demetrius. Gift giving has been related to St. Nicholas
in Ukraine for less than a century and a half. The
Christmas Tree, originally a German tradition, first came into Ukraine about 1840 via Austrian influence.
Saint Nicholas is now a permanent part of Christmas, the season of peace
and generosity among all peoples. So it's appropriate that the elements of our
Christmas celebrations should have come from so many nations. Although the
Ukrainian Saint Nicholas wears the dress of a bishop while the American Santa
Claus is a jolly fellow in a white fur-trimmed suit of red, however, under both
there is a heart that first beat some sixteen centuries ago in Myra. The generous spirit of Nicholas,
Bishop of Myra, lives on today.
When we speak of culture as a distinguishing mark of a specific nation,
we mean, of course, not culture in the widest sense of the word, but those
well-known cultural peculiarities which characterise every European nation.
The Ukraine lies wholly within the confines of the
greater European cultural community. But its distance from the great culture-centers
of Western and Central Europe has, of course, not been without profound
effect. The Ukraine is at a low stage of culture, and must be
measured by Eastern European standards.
The Ukraine, which in
the 11th Century caused great astonishment among travelers from Western Europe,
because of its comparatively high culture, can now be counted only as one of
the semi-cultural countries of Europe.
The very low stage of material culture, to which the economic conditions of the
country bear the best witness, is characteristic of the Ukraine in its
entire extent. The intellectual culture of the people appears frightfully low.
The number who know how to read are 172 out of a thousand in Volhynia, 155 inPodolia, 181 in Kiev, 259 in Kherson, 184 in Chernihiv, 169 in Poltava, 168 in Kharkiv, 215 in Katerinoslav, 279 in Tauria,
and 168 in Kuban. These hopeless figures, to be sure,
are only a result of the exclusive use of the Russian language, which is
unintelli- gible to the Ukrainians, in all the schools. Even in the first
school-year, it is not permitted to explain the most unintelligible words of
the foreign language in Ukrainian. This frightfully low grade of education of
the people permits of no progress in the economic life of the country. Even the
most well-meaning efforts of the government or the Zemstvo, break on the brazen
wall of illiteracy and ignorance of the Russian language. And Ukrainian books
of instruction and information are forbidden as dangerous to the state. No
wonder, then, that the Ukrainian farmer tills his field, raises his cattle,
carries on his home industries, cures his ills, etc., just as his forefathers
used to do. There is a small number of the educated who are still cultivating
literature and art, feebly enough for the size of the nation — but how could
one speak of a distinct, independent culture here?
And yet it exists. For the low stage of culture which every foreign
tourist, who only knows the railroads and cities, immediately notices, applies
only to the culture created in the Ukraine by the ruling foreign peoples, to- gether
with the small mass of Ukrainian intelligenzia. (The intellectual culture of
the Ukrainian educated classes will be discussed later). In the same way, every
hasty observer would consider the Ukrainian peasant as a semi-European,
standing on a very low level of culture. And yet this illiterate peasant
possesses an individual popular culture, far exceeding the popular cultures of
the Poles, Russians and White Russians. The settlements, buildings, costumes,
the nourishment and mode of life of the Ukrainian peasant stand much higher
than those of the Russian, White Russian and Polish peasant. Hence, the
Ukrainian peasant easily and completely assimilates all peasant settlers in his
own land. The rich ethnological life, the unwritten popular literature and
popular music which, perhaps, have no counterpart in Europe, the highly developed popular art and standard
of living, preserve the Ukrainian peasant from denationalization, even in his
most distant colonies. The power of opposition to Russification is particularly
great. The Ukrainian peasant never enters into mixed marriages with the Russian
muzhik, and hardly ever lives in the same village with him. The ethnological
culture of the Ukrainian people is, by all means, original and peculiar;
entirely different from the popular cultures of all the neigh- boring peoples.
Even in prehistoric times, Ukrainian territory was the seat of a very
high culture, the remains of which, now brought to light, astonish the
investigator thru their loftiness and beauty. In ancient times the early Greek
cultural influences flourished in the Southern
Ukraine, then the Roman, and in the Middle Ages the Byzantine. Byzantine
culture had a great influence upon ancient Ukrainian culture, and its traces
may still be seen in the popular costume and in ornamentation.
The most important element in Ukrainian culture, however, is entirely
peculiar, and independent of these influences. The entire view of life of the
common man, to this day, has its roots in the pre-Christian culture of the
ancient Ukraine. The
entire creative faculty of the spirit of the nation has its source there ; all
the customs and manners and very many of the songs and sayings. Christi- anity
did not destroy the old view of life in the Ukraine, but was adapted to it. This accommodation was
all the easier, because the character of the ancient faith and philos- ophy of
life of the Ukrainian people were not so gloomy and cruel as was the case with
many of the other peoples of Europe.
Outside of the prehistoric, Byzantine and Christian body of culture, we
observe extremely few foreign influences in the popular culture of the Ukraine. It is highly inde- pendent and
individualized. The Polish and Muscovite influences are very insignificant, and
appear only here and there in the borderlands of the Ukraine.
It would require the giving of a detailed ethnological description of
the Ukrainian people if we wished to draw a complete picture of its peculiar
culture. Such a description has no place in geography, and certainly none in a
book of such general nature as this. Therefore, I shall discuss but briefly the
various phases of the popular culture of theUkraine, so that in this respect,
too, the independent posi- tion of the Ukrainians among the peoples of Eastern Europe may appear in the proper light.
The Ukrainian villages (with the exception of the mountain villages,
which consist of a long irregular line of farms) are always built
picturesquely, in pretty places. The huts of a typical Ukrainian village are
always surround- ed by orchards, which is hardly ever the case among the
Russians and White Russians, and very rarely so among the Poles. These
neighbors of the Ukrainians plant orchards only in the few regions where
professional fruit- growing has developed. In a Ukrainian village, the green of
the orchards is considered absolutely necessary. The Russian will not endure
trees in the neighborhood of his hut; they obstruct his view. In the Ukraine an orchard is an indispensable constituent part of
even the poorest peasant homestead. And the separate farms, in which very much
of the spirit of the glorious national past still lives, are hidden in the
fresh green of fruit orchards and apiaries.
The Ukrainian house is built of wood only in the moun- tains and other
wooded areas. In all other regions it is made of clay and covered with straw.
The front windows are always built facing the south. In this way, different
sides of the houses face the street, and in general, too, street life does not
play so important a part in a Ukrainian village as it does in Polish, White
Russian or Russian villages. The Ukrainian houses are always well fenced in,
altho not so strongly and so high as the Russian houses in the forest zone, or
as the White Russian houses. They usually stand (except in Western Podolia) rather far apart. Thus,
the danger of fire is less than in the Russian villages of the Chornozyom
region, where the huts lie very close together. As a result, the insurance
companies, for instance, charge smaller premiums in the Governments of Kursk
and Voroniz for insuring Ukrainian village proper- ties than for Russian.
The general external appearance of the Ukrainian huts, which are always
well whitewashed and have flower gardens before the windows, is very picturesque,
and contrasts to advantage with the dwellings of the neighboring races,
especially the miserable and dirty Russian "izbas." All the houses of
the Ukrainians, excepting, of course, the poorest huts, are divided by a
vestibule into two parts. The division into two we do not find in the typical
huts of the Poles and White Russians. A further characteristic in which the
Ukrainian house differs from the houses of the neighboring peoples, is its
comparative cleanliness. Particularly does it differ in this respect from the
Russian izbas, which are regularly full of various insects and para- sites,
where sheep and pigs, and, in winter, even the large cattle, live comfortably
together with the human inhabi- tants. The well-known authority on the Russian
village, Novikov, relates a very characteristic little story in this
connection. Several Russian families settled in a Ukrainian village. Naturally,
cattle were kept in the living room. And when the Ukrainian village elders
expressly forbade the keeping of cattle in the huts, the Russians moved out,
because they could not become accustomed to the Ukrainian orderliness. It
happens very seldom that the Russians live together with the Ukrainians in one
and the same village. In such a case, the Russian part of the village lies
separate, on the other side of a ravine, a creek, or a rivulet. In the regions
of mixed nationality we see, adjoining one another, purely Ukrainian and purely
Russian villages.
The interior arrangement of the houses and the arrange- ment of the
barnyard differentiate the Ukrainian very sharply from his neighbor. Still more
decidedly does he show his individuality in his dress. The mode of dress is
quite varied thruout the great area of the Ukraine, and yet we observe everywhere a distinctness
of type and individu- ality as opposed to the dress of neighboring peoples.
Only the dress of the Polissye people bears some trace of White Russian
influence, on the western border of Polish influence, in Kuban of Caucasian
influence (Russian influence appears nowhere). But all these influences are
slight. Ukrainian dress is always original and esthetic. No one can wonder,
therefore, that the Ukrainian costume is surviving longer than the Polish,
White Russian and Russian, and is giving way very slowly to the costume of the
cities.
The description of even the main types of Ukrainian costume would take
us too far afield ; similarly, we cannot discuss the diet of the people in
detail, altho in this respect, too, the Ukrainian race retains its definite
individuality, those cases excepted, of course, in which economic strain forces
the people to be satisfied with "international" potatoes and bread.
We now come to the intellectual culture of the Ukrainian people. If the
material culture of the Ukrainians, despite its originality and independence is
not at a strikingly higher level than that of the neighboring peoples, the
intellectual culture of the Ukrainian people certainly far outstrips all the
others.
The Ukrainian peasant is distinguished, above all, by his earnest and
sedate appearance. Beside the lively Pole and the active Russian, the Ukrainian
seems slow, even lazy. This characteristic, which is in part only superficial,
comes from the general view of life of the Ukrainians. According to the view of
the Ukrainian, life is not merely a terrible struggle for existence, opposing
man to hard necessity at every turn; life, in itself, is the object of
contemplation, life affords possibilities for pleasure and feeling, life is
beautiful, and its esthetic aspect must, at all times and in all places, be
highly respected. We find a similar view among the peoples of antiquity. In the
present time, this view is very unpractical for nations with wide spheres of
activity. At all events this characteristic of the Ukrainian people is the sign
of an old, lofty, individual culture, and here, too, is the origin of the noted
"aristo- cratic democracy" of the Ukrainians. Other foundations of
the individuality of the Ukrainian are the results of the gloomy historical
past of the nation. It is the origin, first of all, of the generally melancholy
individuality, taciturnity, suspicion, scepticism, and even a certain in-
difference to daily life. The ultimate foundations of the individualism of the
Ukrainian are derived from his his- torico-political traditions; preference for
extreme individu- alism, liberty, equality and popular government. Pro- -
ceeding from these fundamentals, all the typical char- acteristics of the
Ukrainians may be logically explained with ease.
The family relations reflect the peculiarity of the Ukrainian people
very clearly. The comparatively high ancient culture, coupled with
individualism and a love of liberty, does not permit the development of
absolute power in the head of the family (as is the case among the Poles and
Russians). Likewise the position of woman is much higher in the Ukrainian
people than in the Polish or Russian. In innumerable cases the woman is the
real head of the household. Far less often does this state of affairs occur
among the Poles, and only by exception among the Russians. A daughter is never
married off against her will among the Ukrainians; she has human rights in the
matter. Among the Russians, this business is in the hands of the father, who
takes the so-called kladka for his daughter, that is, he sells her to whomever
he pleases. Grown sons among the Ukrainians, as soon as they are married, are
presented by their fathers with a house and an independent farm. The dwelling
under one roof of a composite family (a family clan), as is usual among the
Russians, is almost impossible among the Ukrainians, and is of exceedingly rare
occurrence. The father has no absolute power in this case (as among the
Russians) to preventjiiscord in the family.
It is part of the peculiarity of the Ukrainians that they seldom form
friendships, but these are all the more lasting, altho reserved and rarely
intimate. The Russians make friends among one another very easily, but they
separate very easily, too, and become violent enemies. The Poles form close
friendships easily and are true friends, too. Enmity is terrible among the
Russians; among the Poles and Ukrainians it is less bitter, and is, moreover,
less lasting. The capacity for association is very considerable in the
Ukrainians. All such association is based on complete equality in the division
of labor and profit. A foreman is elected and his orders are obeyed, but he
receives an equal share of the profits and works .together with the rest. Among
the Russians, the bolshak selects his workmen himself, does not work, and is
simply an overseer. Still he receives the greatest part of the profits. Among
the Poles the capacity for association is but slightly developed.
At this juncture we may also discuss the relation of the Ukrainians to
their communities. The Ukrainian community (hromada) is a voluntary union of
freemen for the sake of common safety and the general good. Beyond this purpose
the Ukrainian hromada possesses no power, for it might limit the individual
desires of some one of the hromada members. For this reason, for example,
common ownership of land which has been introduced, following the Russian
model, chiefly in the left half of the Ukraine,
is an abomination in the eyes of the Ukrainian people, and is ruining them,
economically, to a much greater extent than the division of the land in the
case of individual ownership. The Russian "mir" is something entirely
different. It is a miniature absolute state, altho it appears in the garb of a
communistic republic. The mir is complete- ly a part of the Russian national
spirit, and the Russian muzhik obeys the will of the mir unquestioningly, altho
its will enslaves his own.
The general relation to other people has become a matter of fixed form
to the Ukrainians; a form developed in the course of centuries. The ancient
culture and the individual- istic cult have produced social forms among the
Ukrainian peasantry which sometimes remind one of ancient court- forms. The
proximity and influence of cities and other centers of "culture" have,
to a great extent, spoiled this peasant ceremonial. But in certain large areas
of the Ukraine it may still be observed in its full
development. Great delicacy, courtesy and attention to others, coupled with
unselfish hospitality, these are the general substance of the social forms of
our peasants. These social forms are entirely different from the rough manners
of the Polish or Muscovite peasants, which, in addition, have been spoiled by
the demoralizing influence of the cities.
The relation of the Ukrainian people to religion is also original and
entirely different from that of all the adjacent nations. To the Ukrainian, the
essence of his faith, its ethical substance, is the important factor. This he
feels deeply and respects in himself and others. Dogmas and rites are less
significant in the Ukrainian's conception of religion. Hence, despite
differences in faith, not the slight- est disharmony exists between the great
mass of the ortho- dox Ukrainians of Russia and the Bukowina, and the 4,000,000
Greek-Catholic Ukrainians of Galicia and Hungary. From the ancient culture and consideration of
the individual comes, also, the great tolerance of the Ukrain- ians toward
other religions, a tolerance which we do not find among the Poles and Russians.
The spirit of the Ukrainians has, likewise, been very indifferent toward all
sects and roskols. Among the Poles, sects flourished very luxuriantly in the
16th Century; among the Russians, there are to this day any number of sects,
often very curious ones, and more are constantly arising. Among the Ukrainians,
a single sect has been formed, the so-called stunda (a sort of Baptist creed).
This sect is not the result of rite formalism, however, but merely an effect of
the Russification of the Ukrainian national church. In order to be able to pray
to God in their mother-tongue, more than a million of the Ukrainian peasantry
is persevering in this faith, which came over from adjacent German colonies,
despite harsh persecution on the part of the Russian clergy and government.
The worth of Ukrainian culture appears, in its most beautiful and its
highest form, in the unwritten literature of the people. The philosophical
feeling of the Ukrainian people finds expression in thousands and thousands of
pregnant proverbs and parables, the like of which we do not find even in the
most advanced nations of Europe.
They reflect the great soul of the Ukrainian people and its worldly wisdom. But
the national genius of the Ukrainians has risen to the greatest height in their
popular poetry. Neither the Russian nor the Polish popular poetry can bear
comparison with the Ukrainian. Beginning with the historical epics (dumy) and
the extremely ancient and yet living songs of worship, as for example,
Christmas songs (kolady), New Years' songs (shchedrivki) , spring songs
(vessilni), harvest songs (obzinkovi), down to the little songs for particular
occasions (e. g. shumki, kozachki, kolomiyki) , we find in all the productions
of Ukrainian popular epic and lyric poetry, a rich content and a great
perfection of form. In all of it the sympathy for nature, spiritualization of
nature, and a lively comprehension of her moods, is superb; in all of it we
find a fantastic but warm dreaminess; in all of it we find the glorification of
the loftiest and purest feelings of the human soul. A glowing love of country
reveals itself to us everywhere, but particularly in innumerable Cossack songs,
a heartrending longing for a glorious past, a glori- fication, altho not
without criticism, of their heroes. In their love-songs we find not a trace of
sexuality; not the physical, but the spiritual beauty of woman is glorified
above all. Even in jesting songs, and further, even in ribald songs, there is a
great deal of anacreontic grace. And, at the same time, what beauty of diction,
what wonderful agreement of content and form! No one would believe that this
neglected, and for so many centuries, suppressed and tormented people could
scatter so many pearls of true poetic inspiration thru its unhappy land.
This peculiarity of the poetical creative spirit enables us, just as do
the other elements of culture, to recognize the vast difference between the
Ukrainian and the Russian people. The Russian folk songs are smaller in number
and variety, form and content. Sympathetic appreciation of nature is scant. The
imagination either rises to super- natural heights or sinks to mere trifling.
Criminal mon- strosities and the spirit of destruction are glorified as objects
of national worship. The conception of love is sensual, the jesting and ribald
songs disgusting.
Like their popular poetry, the popular music of the Ukrainians far
surpasses the popular music of the neigh- boring peoples, and differs from them
very noticeably. Polish popular music is just as poor as Polish popular poetry,
and almost thruout possesses a cheerful major character. Russian popular music
has many minor ele- ments in addition to the major elements. But the Russian
popular melodies are quite different from the Ukrainian. They are either
boisterously joyous or hopelessly sad. The differences in the character of the
melodies are so great that one need not be a specialist to be able to tell at
once whether a melody is Ukrainian or Russian.
Popular art, in our people, is entirely original and much more highly
advanced than in the neighboring peoples. The remains of the ancient popular
painting are still in existence in the left half of the Ukraine. Wood carving has developed to a highly
artistic form among the Hutzuls (there are the well-known peasant-artists
Shkriblak, Mehedinyuk, and others). The chief field of Ukrainian popular art,
however, is decoration. Two fundamental types are used; a geometric pattern
with the crossing of straight and broken lines, and a natural pattern, which is
modelled after parts of plants (as leaves, flowers, etc.). In the embroideries,
cloths and glass bead -work, we find such an esthetic play of colors, that even
tho each individual color is glaring, the whole has a very picturesque and
harmonious effect. The decorative art of the Russians is much lower. It is
based on animal motifs or entire objects, e. g., whole plants, houses, etc.,
and evinces an outspoken preference for glaring colors," which are so
combined, however, as to shock the eye. Among the Poles, the art of
ornamentation is very slightly developed. As for colors, they prefer the gaudy,
not many at a time; usually, blue is combined with bright red.
For the sake of completeness, we
must still say some- thing about Ukrainian manners and customs. In this aspect,
too, the Ukrainian peasantry is richer than its neighbors. Only the White
Russians are not far behind them. The entire life of a Ukrainian peasant, in
itself full of need and poverty, is, nevertheless, full of poetic and deeply
significant usages and customs, from the cradle to the grave. Birth,
christening, marriage, death, all are combined with various symbolic usages,
particularly the wedding, so rich in ceremonies and songs, so different in its
entire substance from the Russian or Polish. The entire year of the Ukrainian constitutes
one great cycle of holidays, with which a host of ceremonies are connected,
most of which have come down from pre-Christian times. We find similar
ceremonies among the White Russians, some also among the Poles, e .g.,
Christmas songs, songs of the seasons, but among the Russians, on the other
hand, we find no parallel to the Ukrainian conditions. Among the Russians,
neither the Christmas songs (kolady) are customary, nor the ceremonies of
Christmas eve ibohata kutya), neither the midwinter festival (shchedri vechir),
with its songs (shche- drivki), nor the spring holidays (yur russalchin
velikden) and spring songs (vesnianki), nor the feast of the solstice (kupalo),
nor the autumn ceremonies on the feast-days of St. Andrew or St. Katherine, etc.
The entire essence of the popular metaphysics of the Ukrainians is quite
foreign to the Russians, and almost entirely so to the Poles. Only the White
Russians form a certain analogy, but, among them, pure superstition outweighs
customs and ceremonies in importance.
Sufficient facts have been given to make clear to the reader the
complete originality and independence of Ukrainian popular culture. We now come
to a brief survey of the cultural efforts of the educated Ukrainians.
The number of educated Ukrainians is comparatively small. Hardly a
century has passed since the intelligence of the nation awoke to new life, yet,
in its hands lies the development of the national culture in the widest sense
of the word. The disproportion between the magnitude of the task and the small
number of the workers for culture, is at once apparent. And yet the results of
the work, in spite of obstacles on every side, have grown in volume.
The Ukraine lies within the sphere of influence of
European culture. This culture has spread from Central and Western Europe over
the territory of the Ukraine and its neighboring peoples, the Poles,
Russians, White Russians, Magyars and Roumanians. Each one of these nations has
accepted the material culture of Western
Europe to a greater or
less degree, and adjusted the spiritual culture to its national peculiarities.
The Ukrainians, for a long time after the loss of their first state and the
decline of their ancient culture, found no line along which they could develop
their national culture independently. For centuries they vacillated between the
cultures of Poland and Russia. To this day, now that the conditions are much
better, one may still find among the Ukrainians individuals who, culturally,
are Poles or Russians, and only speak and feel as Ukrainians. Such a condition
is very sad, and causes the Ukraine untold injury — most of all in the field
of material culture, which, in both these neighboring nations, is very
incomplete. Agriculture, mining, trade and commerce, are on a much lower plane
among the Poles than in Western
Europe. And what is to be said of the Russians, who are a mere parody of a
cultured nation in almost every field, altho they possess so great a political
organization? No one need be surprised that material culture is of so low a
grade in the Ukraine. On the
other hand, it has become clear to every intelligent Ukrainian, that the
development of material culture is possible only thru Western European
influence, by sending Ukrainian engineers, manufacturing specialists, merchants
and farmers, to Western and Central
Europe to learn their
business.
In the field of Ukrainian mental culture, the chief influences to be
considered are Polish and Russian. In this field, Polish culture is
comparatively very high. It possesses a very rich literature, considerable
science and art, and very definite principles of life. The influence of Polish
culture is limited almost exclusively to Galicia at the
pre- sent time. But it was very strong until very recent years, when it began to
decrease. At one time, however, the entire Ukraine, particularly the right half, was emphati-
cally under the influence of Polish culture for centuries (16th to the 18th
Century).
There is one element in the spiritual culture of the Poles which
certainly deserves to be, and is, imitated by the Ukrainians. It is the tone of
national patriotism, the love for the nation, its present and its past, which
is everywhere evident. Hence, modern Polish literature must be a model for
Ukrainian literature in its tendencies and its sentiments. But, beyond its
patriotic tone, Polish culture is not appropriate for the Ukrainian people. It
is aristo- cratic, by reason of its descent and its philosophy of the universe.
It is far removed from the mass of the people it should represent. In spite of
all efforts, the Polish culture of the educated classes has been unable to
establish an organic connection with the common people of Poland. It has been built up above the
masses and has not grown out of them. To build up Ukrainian culture entirely
after the model of Polish culture, would mean to tear it from its life-giving
roots in the soul of the people. That it would be deadly to Ukrainian culture,
the Ukrainians have perceived for a long time.
Russian culture is much more dangerous to the Ukrainian people than
Polish. In its material aspect it is of a very low grade. In the spiritual
field it possesses a very rich literature and a noteworthy science and art. The
spiritual culture of Russia now dominates all of the Russian Ukraine,
and has, to a great extent, become prevalent even among those educated
Ukrainians in Russia who possess real national consciousness.
This very circumstance constitutes a great danger for the development of
Ukrainian culture. For, let the Mus- covite conquest extend over the
Ukrainians, even in the cultural field, and there is an end of all the
independence of the Ukrainian element, and its beautiful language will be, in
fact, degraded to a peasant dialect. But a still greater danger lies in the
quality of the Russian cultural influence. The first evil characteristic of
Russian culture is the complete lack of national and patriotic sentiment, which
is absolutely necessary for an aspiring culture like the Ukrainian. Russian
culture is infecting the Ukrainians with an ominous national indifference.
Another unfavor- able characteristic of all Russian culture, is the fact that
it is undemocratic thru and thru, and very far removed from the Russian people.
The Russian people did not create this culture; the educated, in producing it,
took nothing from the people. An intelligent man, brought up in the atmosphere
of Russian culture, is unspeakably distant from the Russian people, so that it
is impossible for him to work at the task of enlightening them. The views of
the Russian "lovers of the people" (narodniki) , or of a Tolstoy,
con- cerning the common people and its soul, simply offend us thru their
unexampled ignorance of the peculiarities and customs of the common people,
A culture so far removed from the people as the Russian can bring no
benefit to the Ukrainians. We observe this, best of all, in the condition of
the muzhik, to whom the educated Russian has never been able to find an
approach, and now the latter looks on indifferently, while the masses sink deeper
and deeper down into the abyss of intellectual and spiritual darkness. To guide
the common people along the path of organic social-political and economic
progress, is a task which an intellect permeated with Russian culture can never
perform. The last Russian revolution, and the beginning of the era of
constitutional government for Russia,
have furnished the best proof for the truth of this assertion.
The other chief characteristic of
Russian culture is its manifest superficiality. Hidden beneath a thin veneer of
Western European amenities lies coarse barbarism. The external manners of the
educated Russian very often strike one by the coarseness, lack of restraint and
brutal reckless- ness accompanying them. We see, then, that even the external
forms of European culture have only been out- wardly assumed by the Russians.
Still poorer is their condition with respect to the things of the spirit. We
have observed to what a slight degree the Russians have been able to assimilate
the material culture of Europe.
The same holds for spiritual culture. Russian literature, particularly the
latest, has brought ethical elements of the most questionable worth into the
world's literature. (Artzibashev and others). Russian science, altho it can
point to some great names and has unlimited means at its disposal, stands far
behind German, English or French science. In Russian science, everything is
done for the sake of effect, without thoroness, without method, hence fatal
gaps appear. Let us consider, for example, our science of geography. Hardly a
year passes in which the Russian government does not send one or more great
scientific expeditions to Asia or to the North Pole. Each expedition
hands in volumes of scientific results, and, at the same time, the surface
configuration of the most populous and cultur- ally most advanced regions of
European Russia, for example, is barely known in its main aspects. The best
geography of Russia was written by the Frenchman Reclus. A
modern, really scientific geography of Russia does not exist.
Even more emphatically does the superficiality of Russian culture appear
in social and political questions. These two directions of human thought have,
in most recent times, become very popular in all Russian society. But what an
abyss separates a European from a Russian in this field! In Europe the theses of the social sciences or of politics are
the result of life. They are adjusted to life conditions and treated
critically. In Russia they are life- less dogmas, about which Russian scholars
of the 20th Century dispute with the same heat and in the same manner as their
ancestors, a few hundred years ago, disputed as to whether the Hallelujah
should be sung twice or three times, whether the confession of faith should
read "born, not created" or "born and not created," whether
one should say, "God have mercy upon us" or "Oh God, have mercy
upon us," whether one should use two fingers in crossing oneself or three,
and so on. Naturally, at that time religious questions were the fashion. Today
it is social questions. And what does it amount to? Rampant doctrinism, the
eternal use of banal commonplaces, an immature setting up of principles. And
the result is — extreme unwieldiness of Russian society in internal politics
and in parliamentarism, in social and national work, together with a deep scorn
of the depraved West (gnili zapad) .
With this superficiality of Russian culture, its most evil
characteristic is connected; the decline of family life and a certain moral
perverseness. This phenomenon is commonly met with in all peoples who have but
recently come in contact with Western European culture. The bad quali- ties of
a high civilization are always assumed first, the good qualities slowly. In
this field the Russians have far outstripped their European models.
The above facts suffice to prove
that Russian cultural influences are dangerous for the Ukrainian people. The
severe, rigid materialistic character of the Russian people will, without any
doubt, enable it to outlast the storm and stress period of the present Russian
culture, and guide it to a splendid future. But for the Ukrainian people, with
its sentimental, gentle character, the assuming of Russian culture would be a
deadly poison. Even supposing that the Ukrainian people might survive such an
experiment, a thing which is not likely, it would forever remain a miser- able
appendage of the Russian nation.
And besides, such an experiment is entirely unnecessary. Either we say,
"We are Ukrainians, an independent race and different from the
Russians," and build up our culture quite independently, or we say,
"We are 'Little Russians,' one of the three tribes of Great Russia and of
its high culture," and, in that case, we may calmly lie down on the world
renowned Ukrainian stove. For then it does not pay even to work at the
development of our language. A third alternative does not exist.
At present, however, the former view is generally predominant among the
intelligenzia of the land, and the fact that many intelligent Ukrainians are permeated
with Russian culture is due, not to an ideal conviction, but only to the
powerful influence of the Russian schools and the Russian cities. How do these
educated people stand beneath the Ukrainian peasant who, even on the shores of
the Pacific Ocean, does not exchange his individual Ukrain- ian popular culture
for the Russian, and deserves the scornful, but in our eyes very commendable
saying of the Russians, "Khakhol vyesdie kharkhol!"
If, then, we are to remain a really independent nation, there is only
one avenue open to Ukrainian culture, and that is to follow the culture of
Western Europe step by step, to seek its models among the Germans,
Scandinavians, English and French. And this entire development we must base
upon the broad foundation of our high popular culture. Let us consider with
what piety the really cultural nations of Europe preserve
the little remains of their popular culture. Their few usages or superstitions,
their little body of folk-songs ! How much richer than they are we in all our
misery! The Ukrainian people spoke a mighty first word thru Kotlarevsky a
century ago; it then found the first diamond upon its path, the pure language
of the people. Unfortunately, no Ukrainian has yet arisen who could speak just
as mighty a second word by finding ways and means of lifting the treasures of
the home culture of the land, and enabling the entire nation to work at the
task of using them to advantage. This "apostle of truth and science,"
as he is called by Shevchenko, has not ap- peared, altho he has had several
ancestors, like Draho- maniv. But there are already very many Ukrainians who
would place their seal upon the declaration: "that the Ukraine possesses
so rich a popular culture, that by develop- ing all its hidden possibilities
and supplementing them by elements drawn from the untainted sources of Western
European culture, the Ukrainian nation could attain a complete culture just as
peculiar to itself, and just as exalted among the great European cultures, as
Ukrainian popular culture is among the popular cultures of other peoples."
Hence, the way lay clearly
indicated for the Ukrainians of the 19th and 20th Century. Ethnological
investigations and the scientific study of folk-lore have been taken up very
eagerly by Ukrainian scholars, so that in this parti- cular field, recent
Ukrainian science, perhaps, ranks highest in all Slavic science. In no other
cultured nation ofEurope is the
life of the educated elements so permeated with the influences of the nation's
own popular culture. The Ukrainian cultural movement is hardly a century old,
and yet it has results to show which, even today, guarantee the cultural
independence of the Ukrainian nation. Active relations with Central and Western
European cultures have been established, which may become of incalculable
effect in the further development of Ukrainian culture.
In 1897, archaeologist Vikentiy Khvoika discovered the
Trypillian civilization, and hypothesised that they might be the original
ancestors of all Slavs. While this theory is in dispute, the Trypiltsi, located
in central and south-western Ukraine, certainly influenced Ukrainian religious and artistic culture.
The Trypillian civilization came to it's final stages in 2400BC, by which time,
it began merging with other, newer communities, such as the Cimmerians and the
Scythians. I propose the Trypillian Civilization as the spiritual birthplace of
today's Ukraine,
because of the profound impact it had on developing the psyche and identity of
the country in relation to its spirituality, respect of nature, and admiration
for the arts being able to express this highest communion between people, their
natural and supernatural worlds.
In this research paper dedicated to the ancient archaeology of Ukraine,
I will attempt to illustrate the spiritual life of the Trypillian civilization
at its height, to identify the
religious motifs contained within the artistic records left behind for us,
connecting their time with ours. I hope to also show how the form of Trypillian
symbolic art has been retained and repeated to this current day in contemporary
religious and secular material culture and rituals, creating a long
uninterrupted cultural connection between today’sUkraine and her spiritual birthplace, the world of
our ancestors – the Trypiltsi.
This ancient civilization, also known as Cucuteni in Moldova and Rumania,
was named eponymously after the town where finds were first excavated. In
1896-1899 Czech born Vicentiy Khvoika conducted a series of excavations near
the town of Trypillia, in
Obukhivskiy district, Kyiv region. These excavations unearthed an incredible
array of monuments, statuettes, ceramics, day-to-day implements and tools,
graves, housing, even complete proto-city settlements, indicating an ongoing,
settled, traditional agrarian culture. V. Khvoika documented "this
discovery to the 11th Congress of Archaeologists in 1897, which is now
considered the official date of the discovery of the Trypillian culture"
(E-Museum, 2004). Dr. M. Videiko, a leading archaeologist-academic at the
Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences wrote that "carbon dating of these
settlements placed them at 4200-2750 BC" (Trypillian Civilization in the
Prehistory of Europe, 2004).
There is agreement amongst archaeologists that this land has been tilled
continuously. Umansky believes this suggests "that the local population
sustained the achievements of the material and spiritual culture of the
Trypillians" (2004). Importantly, this indicates that while the material
evidence of the Trypiltsi had been preserved under the earth that they so
revered, their attitudes, symbols, and art have been preserved in the living
successive cultures with whom the Trypiltsi merged. Since Vikentiy's
discoveries more than a hundred years ago, the Ukrainian earth has revealed
many of its well-kept secrets. Dr Videiko has documented some 1,200 settlements
that have been explored over the course of the 19th-20th centuries: these are
summarized in Appendix 2. From these treasures hidden and preserved by earth
for so many years, we are able to interpret the important aspects of the
Trypillians' inner spiritual life, and how they codified these within their
art.
Thinking about the information revealed by excavations, perhaps I am
close in my offbeat interpretation of the word. ‘Artefacts’ comes from the
Latin arte factum, from ars skill + facere to make. In a modern sense,
artifacts are ‘something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or work of
art, especially an object of archaeological interest’ (Collins, p.61, 1998). However,
it is the meanings (the facts, or the text) embedded in the forms that give
context to that society and its belief system. Ornamentation of everyday use items seemed to be an
obligatory component of their creation. Earthenware, ceramics, pottery, tools,
vessels, dishes, pottery moulds, internal walls of houses (as shown by clay
models) all exhibit a compulsory ornamentation: painted in varying
earth-colours, such as white, red, ochre and black, and sometimes carved with
incisions or encrusted. The decoration of items or spaces are geometrical
incorporating symbols of nature (sun, moon, stars, rain, birds, trees,
branches, seeds, flowers, water) and with magical symbols of the supernatural
world (the eternal circle, teeth, rhombus, crosses, endless meanders,
snake-patterns, lines) are so universal and repeated, that it is unlikely that
the decorations were random or coincidental. Umansky believes that these
ornament-symbols are of two types: “those aiding to find food and to grow
crops, and those protecting people and the results of their labour”. He notes
that “some items carried both the symbols of fertility and of protection,
intertwined in an integral picture of the cosmos”. Videiko also supports the
idea of using ornamentation as a form of protection: “the floor and the walls
were painted with red and white colours and decorated with geometrical
ornamental patterns to protect the inhabitants from evil spirits” (The
Trypillian Culture: Introduction).
It is not
surprising that cosmic protection was so integral to Trypillian beliefs. The
triangular interrelationship of man/woman, the life-bringing earth, and the
cosmic forces all affected and depended on each other. Lockyer comments that
the people who would first observe the heavenly bodies, and apply this
knowledge, “would succeed best in knowing when to plough and sow, and when to
reap and mow” (p. 2, 1964). It would be natural, considering the awe, fear and
wonder with which these ancient peoples lived, to infer a supernatural quality
on these all-controlling elements: the sun, the dawn, the moon, fire, thunder,
and storm all were deified in the religion of this old form of nature worship.
The
Trypillian period coincided with the transition from the boreal to the milder
Atlantic climate: “the level of
groundwater fell, the coniferous forests were replaced by leafy woods,
cold-loving animals disappeared, humus began to form, the Black Sea - once a
lake - became connected to the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosphorus strait,
and water covered a significant part of the land on north-western
Prychornomoria” (Chmykov, 2004). Not surprisingly, in an age where
environmental change was linked to astronomical phenomena, the sun, dawn and
everything connected to it was revered as much as life; whilst the night,
evening and obscuring of the sun or moon (i.e. an eclipse) was feared with
dread. Related to nature worship was the concept of ancestor worship. No doubt
in times of fear and unease, people would turn to the spirits of their departed
ancestors, seeking their care from the supernatural realm. One particular
relevant ritual referring to ancestor worship, pre-dating but common to the
Trypillian period, included the sacrificial burning of a home or even a
complete settlement. “They contained beautiful vessels, tools, meat or animals,
which became a rich offering to the spirits of their ancestors. It was
necessary to burn out such houses, as well as leaving the old fields to the
ancestors, as these houses of the dead would become shelters for the souls of their
ancestors” (Videiko, The Trypillian Culture: Introduction). Much of the reverence to the spiritual
world can be read from the text of the ornamented items. For example, the fear
of a solar eclipse is symbolized graphically on a vessel: “drawn on a piece of
pottery was the sun that collided with the horns of the moon” (Chmykov, 2004).
This is one example, but there are literally hundreds of signs used
artistically with specific meanings, and Taras Tkachuk estimates that some “12%
of these are related to Sumerian words (for example, star, plant, house)”
(Videiko, Trypillian Civilisation in the Prehistory of Europe). Below I have
constructed a list of some examples of ornament-symbols and their meanings. By
no means exhaustive, these are those which occur frequently in relevant
literature:
Snake – wisdom;
dragon snakes twined around the throne (where female figurine is seated)
represent the motifs of holy marriage (Chmykov); a strip of carpet on the floor
imitates a striped snake – the protector (Umansky); personification of river of
life – eternal movement (Umansky); a moon deity (Burdo).
Rhombus – the magic crossed rhombus symbolizes a fertile field
(Umansky).
Helix – represents heaven (Umansky).
Marriage – is signified by the two signs (helix and rhombus)
together: the marriage of heaven-father and earth-mother (Umansky).
Wolves – a symbol of the eclipse. It was believed that the world
would come to an end when the sun or moon fell into the maw of a beast (wolf,
dog). In another legend, at the end of the world, one wolf will swallow the sun
and another will clutch at the moon with its teeth (Chmykov).
Spiral - depict the mystical journey to the centre, where
illumination, wisdom and insight will be found (Goodman, p.122); protective
against evil (Umansky),
Tree-flower - symbolizes
the fertility Goddess ‘the tree of life’ (Umansky). The flower Goddess
sanctifies the most important thing in the house – the fire or the stove
(Umansky). Often a luxuriant flower is painted in her honor, against the white-washed
wall just above the family hearth, to invoke the goddess’s protection.
Circle -
Symbolizes spirit. Describes the whole cosmos – everything which is spiritual,
everything that is embraced by the vast realm of the heavens (Goodman, p.17). A
ditch is dug around a village or field to protect his crops and ward off evil
(Umansky).
Concentric circles – magic concentration symbol of sacral space
(Burdo).
Cross/Square - We should observe that the cross, or the square
(both of which consist essentially of 4 elements) symbolize the heavy realm of
matter, the four directions of space, the four elements and so on” (Goodman,
p.38); representative of the four elements (Fire, Air, Earth and Water) which
were once believed to form the basic material of the physical world (Goodman,
p.17)
Fish - The two fishes represent the soul and the spirit swimming
in the sea which symbolize the body (Goodman, p.120)
River – Souls of dead grandparents flow in the river towards the
Goddess of Fertility, who sends them to the wombs of mothers to be reborn as
the bodies of their grandchildren (Umansky).
Vertical Lines: - Symbolizes spirit. Describes movement from above
(Heaven) to below (Earth) or Heaven to Hell (Goodman, p,17).
Horizontal Lines - Symbolizes
matter. Describes movement from west to east. It describes movement in time, as
well as the direction from past to future (Goodman, p.17). As well as using
ornamentation for protective reasons, it was also used to invoke good wishes
for fertility, a characteristic (whether linked with bringing forth life either
with people or with the land) which was much revered: thus women as keepers of
the secrets of fertility (the archetypal earth mother) were highly regarded.
Amongst the excavations, many goddess[5] statuettes were recovered, often
sitting on thrones. This essentially points to an egalitarian type of society,
that honored both male and female deities, in the context of their religious
worship. It also correlates to the proposal that Shlain makes about the role of
women in Neolithic communities: “during a long period of prehistory and early
history both men and women worshipped goddesses, women functioned as priests,
and property commonly passed through the mother’s lineage” (Introduction,
1998).
From the 1980’s onward, Kyiv based archaeologist Nataliya Burdo assisted
in the identification of Goddess statuettes that reflected the three stages of
life (Madonna – Goddess with Child, Goddess-Cortex, Goddess-Matron), as well as
anthropomorphic statuettes that the Great Goddess is associated with: the Moon
Goddess, the Cow Goddess and the Bird Goddess. The fertility-Goddess cult is
further expanded by the location of cave temples, where silhouettes of the
naked Goddess were impregnated into the stone-wall (Bilche Zolote, see Appendix
2, under related entry).
Mokosh is universally accepted as the goddess of fertility in all
the regions now defined by Slavic populations. The origins of the name stem
from the words: mother + earth. This links in with “an old poetic concept of
fertility of our soil – the mother syra (soggy) soil, and as it happens, the
seed can only grow in the soggy soil” (Umansky). Shlain describes that
Trypillian attitudes were similar to contemporary communities: “in the emerging
civilizations, a mother Goddess was the principal deity: in Sumer she was
Inanna, in Egypt she was Isis, in Canaan her name was Asherah, in Syria she was
Astarte, in Greece, Demeter, in Cyprus, Aphrodite. They all recognized her as
the Creatrix of life, nurturer of young, protector of children, and the source
of milk, herds, vegetables, and grain. Since she presided over the great
mystery of birth, people of this period presumed She must also hold sway over
the great bedeviler of human thought – death. ( p.6, 1998).
The personification of Mokosh in ancient Trypillia – via these goddess
statuettes – were used in a variety of rituals. Kochkin (2004) says that there
are several known processes in which goddess statues were used. Firstly they
were associated with magical rites including initiation ceremonies. There is
evidence that others were used in seasonal land farming rituals, which seemed
to correlate with fertility festivities. Others were deigned to assist and
protect women who were pregnant and giving birth. The last category were in the
role of protector of
children. These goddess statues were found in the graves of children – they
were part of the family’s property and it was considered that the goddess will
look after the child during the passage into the next world.
Speculations on the fate of the Trypilska Kultura At the peak of
its civilization, it is estimated that the Trypiltsi numbered close to
1,000,000 people in an area of 190,000 km2 (see Appendix 3). This population of
agriculturalists, potters, blacksmiths, weavers had continued a fairly peaceful
existence for close to 3000 years, and suddenly they disappeared. What happened
to this civilization, and what was its legacy? The first question is difficult
to answer, and there are several alternative hypotheses.
Vikentiy Khvoika’s original hypothesis was that the Trypillian
settlements of the Middle Naddnipryanschyna had been the ancient motherland of
all Slavs. This has provoked a lot of debate, and people have tried to classify
the Trypillians variously as Proto-Slavs (V. Khvoika), Trako-Frigians (R.
Schtern and others), Celts (K. Schugardt), and Tocharians (O.Mengin and
others). T. Passek, M. Biliashevkiyi, O. Spytssyn and V. Horodtsov are
convinced that the highly developed culture of the Trypillians “came from the
south across the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara from the Asian coast, or
across the Mediterranean Sea from Finikia of Egypt, as the ornamented
ceramics suggest some oriental influence” (Susloparov, 2004). M. Marr (1921)
conforms to this theory: “relatives of the South Caucasus Etruscans, the Lasgs
and the Pelasgs, moved by the Northern
Way, across the Black Sea, or
along its Northern coast, and arrived at the Balkan Peninsular” (Susloparov,
2004). Marija Gimbutas is in agreement, as “recent research shows that proto Indo-Europeans
embarked on an enormous expansion into Europe and the Near East from
the Steppes of Eurasia. The first movement from South Russia to Ukraine and the lower Danube basin occurred some time before 4000 BC”
(Gimbutas, p.17, 1972). This correlates with the theory of movement from the
Causcasus region across the Black Sea, and then northward into the territory
that is now Ukraine.
O. Sobolevskyi defined their probable identity: “If we see the ancient
Pelasgs as ancestors of Kimers and Scythians-Hellenes, and if we recognize
Scythian-Hellenes as descendants of the early Greek colonists who got mixed
with Kimers at their Dnipro and Dnistro-adjacent territories, we may see the
representatives of the Trypilska Culture as Herodotus’ Kimers[6]” (Susloparov,
2004). In Book 4 of the Histories, Herodotus describes a peaceful nation of
Kimers-Cimmerians, but who were hostile to the imposition of foreign customs,
and who were eventually pushed back to the coast of the Black Sea and Crimea. It is possible these people were
the distant relatives of our Trypiltsi.
Anthropologist Marija Gimbutas talks about the conflict of two types of
cultures in the period around 3,000 BC. She notes (p.19, 1971) that with the
coming of the Kurgan Proto-Indo-Europeans, who were semi-nomadic pastoralists
with patrilineal and patriarchal social systems, the great Neolithic
civilizations of the 4-5th millennia disintegrated. They included:
– Cucuteni-Tripolye civilizations in Western Ukraine and Moldova;
– Gumelnitsa
in Southern Rumania, Bulgaria and Eastern Macedonia;
– Vinca in the Central Balkans;
– Butmir in Bosnia;
– Bodrogkeresztur in the Tisza Region;
– Lengyel
in the middle Danube Basin.
She states that “typical kurgan elements that derived from the steppes
include: pastoralism with some agriculture, hills/forts, small villages with
small rectangular houses, specific burial rites in house-like structures, and
simple unpainted pottery decorated with cord impressions, stabbing or incisions.
Their economy, habitation patterns, social structure, architecture, and the
lack of interest in art were in sharp contrast to the local Cucuteni-Tripoye
and Funnel-Necked Beaker cultural elements” (p.20, 1971). Shlain describes the social change that coincided
with the disappearance of Trypillian
and other Neolithic communities: “the Great Goddess began to lose power.
Systematic political and economic subjugation of women followed;
coincidentally, slavery became commonplace. Around 1500 BC there were hundreds
of goddess-based sects. By the 5th century AD they had been almost completely
eradicated, by which time women were also prohibited from conducting a single
major Western sacrament” (p.10, 1998). Shlain hypothesizes that it was with the
advent of literacy, social change leant to a hierarchical, patriarchal outlook,
embracing a male, monotheistic god in all major world religions (Christianity,
Judaism, Islam). He proposes that image-based Neolithic communities which were
more egalitarian, were in direct conflict with the patriarchy of literate
communities. He quotes anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss in support of his
argument, who challenged literacy’s worth: “the only phenomenon which, always
and in all parts of the world, seems to be linked with the appearance of
writing… is the establishment of hierarchical societies, consisting of masters
and slaves, and where one part of the population is made to work for the other
part” (Shlain, p.12, 1998). Was the Trypillian civilization a matriarchal state? There
is no evidence to say that it was or it wasn’t. It is typical of many Neolithic
cultures that were characterized by their settled, agricultural economy,
egalitarian attitudes, respect of nature, love of art. It did not feature a
hierarchical structure, and therefore in this sort of society, slave-owning was
unheard of. Unfortunately the embracing of a patriarchal administration lead to
many superficial and structural social changes. The religious iconography
completely censored women: the Goddess of Fertility was supplanted by a flower,
and then later by a more masculine ‘tree-of-life’ symbol, the concept of God
and his helpers were all male, religious ornamentation favored male oriented
symbols (such as the cross indicating the four elements of earth, sky, water,
fire) as opposed to the feminine symbols (eternal circle, river of life).
Anthropologists talk about the Fertility Goddess figure being rehabilitated
into the iconography of the Madonna, Mother of Christ, but unlike her original
role, she plays a secondary and passive role.
Trypillian Motifs in Contemporary Ukrainian Culture:
A long time ago, the Trypiltsi had joined their
ancestors in the next world, however many of their ideas, attitudes and symbols
have been preserved to the times of contemporary Ukraine, even though the
worlds we inhabit, are so vastly different from each other. Art has been
preserved in many forms and is a common thread linking the past to the present. Many features of the Trypilska Kultura can
be easily found in the practice of today’s contemporary folklore both in Ukraine and in
the diaspora; through this we can trace a definitive and identifying line right
back to the cultural influence the Trypiltsi exerted on us – as our
ancestors. Reminiscent
of ancient nature worship, many traditional Ukrainian folk-songs contain
specific references and opening sequences illustrating the natural world. In
these sort of songs, the opening lines draw a picture of a natural setting with
all the features of mountains or roads, trees, running water, little animals or
birds twittering nearby. It is
as if to pay respect to nature, and then to move on and tell the story of the
romance, or the parting, or the philosophical thoughts one is having. Examples
of such songs are Oy u Hayu Pry Dunayu, Viye Viter, Teche Voda Kalamutna, Po
Toy Bik Hora. Sometimes
an element of nature is used as the central allegory in the whole song. In
Chotyry Rozhy, a woman indicates how the four colors of the roses reflect the
fortunes of love in her life (pink-romance, red-love, yellow-disagreement,
white-parting). In Zorya Moya Vechirnaya (taken from a poem by Taras
Shevchenko), a princess finds herself in a foreign land, and she sees in her
conversation with the evening star, memories of her far away home, and her only
moments of release from her melancholy. Lastly, they can be classified with respect to the
seasonal cycle. Zhenchychok is a song originating in springtime, indicating the
lively playfulness of a prancing grasshopper. Hahilky are songs inspired by
nature and the rebirth of spring that are sung and danced after the traditional
Easter Sunday service. Oy Na Hori, Tam Zhentzi Zhnut’ is really a song that
introduces an army of Cossacks who will be passing through the village. But is
starts off by saying, ‘hey look up there, the zhentsi are cutting the wheat (in
the old days with scythes)’. This was a job normally done as part of the
harvesting season, so it is clearly a song originating in the summer part of
the cycle. U Karpatakh Hodyt’ Osyn, relates to autumn, and interestingly
personifies non-human elements – it is as if autumn is walking around himself.
Metelytsya is an instrumental dance that is played at a very fast tempo to
imitate the fury of the snowstorm that it is named after. Shchedrivky are New
Year season songs, celebrating the Ukrainian New Year on the 14th January.
Shchedryk is the most well-known of these songs. Folk dancing, khorovod and hahilky are all
forms of Ukrainian dance (the latter two accompanied by the participants’
singing). “Ritual dance symbols reproduce the magic signs of the circle,
parallel bee-lines, meandering labyrinth, and wavy line snake. These figures,
which are among Trypillian ornamental magic symbolism are elements of ritual
dances” (Burdo, 2004). In the
religious festivals which seemingly have supplanted the old traditions, there
seems to be echoes of Trypillia. The internal chamber of the church is dressed
in the ancient embroideries painstakingly made for them by members of the
sisterhood. The men might produce beautiful woodcuts, or as in the case at
Homebush-Flemington, a beautiful wooden model of the Church exterior
architecture. At Easter time, women furiously bake pasky, and prepare a
beautiful basket of food, which symbolizes all the gifts on the new Spring
season, and those from which they would be fasting, or which would be in low
supply. People design multi-colored pysanky, invoking ancient symbols, only to
give them away as gifts as a sign of friendship and love. Before midnight on
Easter Saturday everybody leaves the church and make a circular procession
around the church. Having left the church largely draped in black, when it is
re-entered precisely after midnight, it is a display of light lit candles,
bright embroideries, beautiful flowers and joyful singing. It seems reminiscent
of the symbolism of the magic circle, and its rebirth and life-affirming
rituals. Just as the church
is adorned with traditional ornamentation, contemporary houses in Ukraine evidently have followed the unique habit of colorfully
adorning the exterior borders of the house walls. In many villages as you drive
by, wavy patterns meander along the borders of the house walls. And inside the
house, the luxuriant flower Goddess is painted on the serving spoons, and
perhaps also on some dishes and ceramic vases as well. Perhaps in that house
you will also find some books; perhaps there is at least one by Mykola Hohol.
In his short stories, where he illustrates the fantasy and rich folklore of
Ukrainians, he draws on the source of ancient Trypillian symbolism – In Viy, a story about a confrontation
with a terrible beast, the young seminarist Khota defends himself, by drawing
the magic circle around himself, which protects him from the onslaughts of the
evil witch. Drawing on the mythology behind the end of the world, Hohol
describes, how the devil disguised as a wolf, one night comes to steal the moon
in Nich Proty Rizdva. 6.
Closing Comments
For
most people, the Trypilska Kultura is something that is familiar, but yet at
the same time they will conclude that they do not know much about it. However,
its artistic expression, its mysterious symbols, its vibrant colors render it
simultaneously attractive and full of mystique. Much of the symbolism of the
ancient Trypillia is alive and well in the ornamentation of our embroidered
shirts, implements, ceramics and souvenirs, tablecloths, rugs and blankets, our
houses, schools and churches. Umansky recognized the comfortable yet
paradoxical relationship between the paganism of Ancient Trypillia and the
modern Christian Church: “both home and church icons are decorated with
embroidered rushnyks. The
relation between orthodoxy and paganism is quite noticeable here: the Christian
Church respects the remains of ancient naïve faith. It understands the
deep feelings for nature, native land, old customs and national culture beneath
the surface. Christianity had once defeated the faith of early ploughmen. Now
however, the Church consecrates the ancient original Ukrainian art that depicts
the nation’s own face and civilization – distinctive from those of other
Indo-European nations” (2004). There leaves no doubt, that the starting point
of Ancient Trypillia is indeed the spiritual and cultural birthplace of Ukraine, and all that is Ukrainian.
2. The Oldest
population in the territory of Ukraine and its culture.
Study of the subject Ukrainian and foreign culture is of great
importance as far as it deals with the question of genesis and development of
the human civilization and analysis of the national cultures and their
contribution to the world one. So, the course is directed at enriching of
knowledge and expansion of outlook of students in the field of the cultural
heritage of the mankind, establishing of their aesthetic and cultural
background, acquaintance with the cultural achievements of different historical
epochs and nations, so that it will enable students to develop sense of beauty
and harmony in their life and career. Speaking about the notion of culture we
should emphasize that this concept is of a complex character. The term culture is originated from a Latin word cultura – education, development. An attempt to
define this notion was made at the world conference on the cultural policy,
which was held under UNESCO in 1982, so that it was declared: “
Culture is a complex of special material, spiritual, intellectual and emotional
lineaments of the human society ”. In other words we can determine culture as
the social
heritage: the total body of material artifacts (tools, weapons,
houses, places of work, worship, government, recreation, works of art, etc.),
of collective mental and spiritual artifacts (system of symbols, ideas,
beliefs, aesthetic perceptions, values, etc.), and of distinctive forms of
behavior (institutions, groupings, rituals, modes of organization, etc.)
created by people in their ongoing activities within their particular life –
conditions, and transmitted from generation to generation. Speaking about the
structure of culture we can say that it can be represented either by the
material means or spiritually. The material aspect
of culture includes productive means and results of the human activity on each
stage of the development of the mankind. The spiritual aspect is realized through religious,
intellectual, moral, legal, artistic and pedagogic cultural constituents. In
terms of geographic regions we distinguish the world and the national culture. The
world culture is determined as the system of human values, which constitute the
best lines of the cultures of different nations. The national culture is an
aggregate of ecological, political, domestic, ritual, moral factors typical for
a separate nation. Depending on the level of development of the human society
the elite, folk and mass cultures
can be distinguished. The elite culture is a
result of the activity of the higher social strata, however it should not be
considered separately from other cultural constituents. The folk culture is a part of the social heritage –
customs, institutions, conventions, skills, arts that is typical of a group of
people feeling themselves members of a closely bound community and sharing a
deep – rooted attachment to it. It is predominantly non – literate, and so closely
knit as to be transmitted from generation to generation by oral means and by
ritual and behavioral habituation. The notion of themass culture is
often linked to the concept of the mass society and connected with development
of the market relations and the process of globalization. Its use became common
in cultural criticism in 1930 – 1950 – s to describe the typical products of
the commercially – driven mass communication industries – films, radio,
records, advertising, the popular press and television.
Historically, depending on certain geographic and ethnic factors, such
cultural regions as European, Far
– East, Indian, Arab – Muslim, African and Latino –American were formed, each of them having its own
peculiar features. To study the system of culture of separate regions and of
the world in general we should apply a historical – comparative method (the
synchronic approach – analysis of the same problem in different periods of time
and the diachronic approach – comparison of the stated problem in different
regions at the same period of time) and a method of the structural – functional
analysis, so that it will enable us to better understand and comprehend the
notion of culture, its complex character and interconnection of its constituent
elements.
The concept of culture is closely connected with the notion of civilization,
although they should not be mixed, as far as the first reflects the level of
each stage of either material or spiritual development of the human society.
The primeval culture of primitive societies is one of
the most important periods in development of the mankind as far as it
established its material and spiritual background that in further epochs was
only improved by the human civilization. The first people started their
existence two million years ago. The term primitive is usually
associated with something plain and simple. However, it can be hardly stated
about the primitive society art. Depending on tools used by the ancient people,
the history of the primeval world is divided into the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods), the Copper Age, the Bronze
Age and
the Iron
Age.
The first pieces of art appeared during the late Paleolithic period
(40000 – 8000 BC). People of this period were, first of all hunters. Their
creative activity was inspired by a surrounding nature, a rich animal world and
dedicated mostly to hunting. The Lascaux Caves in the South of France and some other
regions are considered among the most exquisite and well – preserved examples
of prehistoric culture still available to modern eyes (remember that the term prehistoric simply means before historical
documentation, and carries with it no intrinsic value judgment). Inside the
impressive tunnel complex there remains a vast array of drawings, which date
back 20000 – 25000 years. It appears that these images served some function
relating to the hunt. The Paleolithic peoples were essentially migratory; their
very existence relied on the success of the hunt. Two consequences follow on
from such a basic level of survival: the first is a reverence for the food supply
(together with a respect for the natural order of things and a giving of thanks
for the coming of the herds) and the second is the necessity of moving to find
food. It is within this context that Paleolithic communities first produced
visual expressions. The hunt was most likely a central focus in these
early communities, since agriculture had not been developed yet. Given these
severe conditions, it seems quite appropriate that beasts of prey, like other
natural objects and events, should become the focus of enormous attention and
admiration in the human communities – particularly since their very lives
depended on them. It is from these conditions that religion and art evolve.
Religion explains and orders the universe around a set of collectively adopted
and assumed principles of reality, and if the reality of 20000 BC was
survival through the hunting of wildebeest or some such delight, then one can
assume that the animal in question had a vital role in the continuation of the
universe. Part of the anticipation of the hunt would, then, be the necessary
contemplation and appeasement of the animal’s spirit through some form of
ritual or ceremonial activity. The probable result was the production of visual
expressions to serve as surrogates and objects of contemplation for the most
basic experiences of life. The first pieces of the prehistoric art were
schematic and static. Gradually, images of animals became more dynamic and
vivid. In 15000 – 8000 the first three – dimension images of bulls and mammoths
appeared (Alta Mira Caves in Spain, Nio Caves in France).
The ancient people initiated the
development of all the trends of Fine Arts: graphics (images and silhouettes), painting (images made by
means of color mineral paints), sculpture (figures either cut of stone or made of clay). The so – called Venus of
Willendorf, perhaps the oldest surviving three
– dimensional depiction of a human body, is approximately 25000 years old and
it exhibits notably different characteristics. The Venus figure is portrayed in the round, possessing
volume and interacting with real space – the same features the modern culture
has come to recognize as essential characteristics of the art of sculpture. Of
over 200 surviving Paleolithic figurines, there has yet to emerge a single male
statuette, thus the mystery of childbirth elevated the status of the woman.
This statuette is most likely a fertile symbol. The massive breasts and stomach
suggest the life-giving qualities of the woman as a child – bearer, so that
emphasis was placed on creating images that appeared as embodiments of power
and mystery. The scale seems to appear as such: as the depicted forms move from
animal life, through humans, to cult figures and godheads, their visual
identities become increasingly abstract, with certain features accentuated and
other diminished.
During The Mesolithic and Neolithic periods people,
alongside with hunting and fishing started breeding cattle and cultivating soil, what made them
improve their stone tools and invent new devices like bows, arrows, pottery,
etc. Besides, development of agriculture required establishment of some kind of
a calendar and improvement of a system of the astronomic knowledge. The first
calendars were based on the phases of the Moon. Later on, the Sun calendar was
invented. Cattle breeding made the ancient people deal with counting and
exchange, so that it later resulted into establishment of a system of figures
and counting. The Bronze and Iron Age were marked by spread of the first metal tools (primitive axes and knives).
Gradually, people mastered different building materials, so that to
solve the questions of the house – planning. This put the beginning of
architecture. The painting of that time is characterized by intention to
express some scenes from hunting or war actions. Ornament as a
technique of decorating became wide – spread, especially, in the territory ofUkraine and was
typical for the culture of Trypillia (3000 – 2000 BC the Western Ukraine and
the region of the Dnieper River). A Trypillia settlement consisted
of houses placed on a circle. The red and black paints were mostly in use.
Trypillian people had the cults of bull, goat, snake and heathen
ceremonies. The ceramic production is one of the best manifestations of the
material and cultural development of Trypillian people. The plastic art was developed as well. The labor
implements were made from stone, bones and horns. Taking into consideration the
content, role and significance of Trypillia culture in the history of Ukraine and the world one, we can state that Ukrainian nation
is a heir of the cultural legacy of Trypillia people as far as they are direct
ancestors of Ukrainians. It should be emphasized that all the elements of
Trypillia culture – the system of economy, topography of settlements,
decorative house painting, a mode of life, cooking, clothes and character of
ornamental ceramics constitute the organic part of the Ukrainian culture. New
architectural constructions – primitive fortresses and burials - appeared in
the late Neolithic period and founded the monumental stone architecture. To
some extent, war actions contributed to development of surgery and primitive
medicine that empirically came to the practice of injections against catching
diseases. Besides, megalithic (made of huge stones) buildings were wide
– spread as well. Among them we can point out dolmens (round
– formed graves covered with a placid stone) and cromlechs (cult structures in the form of a round fence made of
huge stones). Out of the most famous surviving Neolithic building structures is Stonehenge in southern England. Most likely constructed as a shrine, the
outer of its two concentric rings has the interesting distinction of being laid
out in exact accordance with the directional path of the sun at the summer
solstice. This celestial consideration is indicative of the Neolithic
community’s growing awareness of natural phenomena and the cycle of seasons.
But perhaps its most important attribute is its very survival; Stonehenge
remains one of the earliest examples of public architecture in Northern Europe to survive to this day. Manufacturing of silver and
gold decorations, bone carvings, application of bronze and iron tools in every
– day life (invention of a plough)
marked the late period of the ancient society. The analysis of the social
aspect of the culture of the ancient society enables us to point out its
peculiar features. The
culture of the prehistoric times was homogeneous.
Initially, the first people appeared only in one region of the Earth (North
Africa and Middle East) and, gradually, they moved to other continents, so that
in the prehistoric period these people were representatives of one race, their
mode of life was the same including their outlook, beliefs and other elements
of the culture of that time. The primeval culture was a complex system of taboos (prohibitions). As far as ancient people could not
find explanation for many things that are considered obvious nowadays, they
were simply prohibited even to think about. The outlook of the primeval culture
was of a mythological –
sacred character. Its main constituent was a ritual. The ritual activity of ancient
people was grounded on the principle of taking after natural phenomena that
greatly influenced all the spheres of life in the prehistoric times and
resulted into establishment of the system of beliefs among which we can point
outAnimism, Fetishism, and Totems.
Animism (from Latin - anima – spirit, soul) is a term first used by E. B. Tylor for belief based on the universal human experiences of
dreams and visions, in “ spiritual beings ”, comprising the souls of individual
creatures and other spirits. It terms of sheer quantity, ancient people thought
natural phenomena to possess the human features. This belief grew into the idea
of spirit and soul embodied in every animal and plant, so that it resulted into
creation of myths (Greek – a word). Their main function was
to accumulate knowledge about the surrounding world. Fetishism was a belief
into supernatural abilities of things to help people. An object to worship
could
be either a stone, a tree, means of labor or a talisman. People thought that these things
or their depiction could satisfy all their needs. A totem belief is a kind of
belief into a tight connection of people with its totem – a kind of animals or,
sometimes, plants. A tribe was called after the name of its totem and its
members believed into their origin from it. A totem was not worshiped. Mostly,
it was considered to be “ Father ” or a “ senior brother ” that helped a tribe.
This belief was a kind of the ideological reflection of connection of a tribe
with the surrounding nature.
The culture of the prehistoric times formed a
background for establishment of the world culture and development of new
civilizations (Mesopotamia, Babylon, Egypt,Assyria, Iran, etc.). The process of study of the primeval
epoch is not finished yet as far as archeologist all the time discover new
amazing and beautiful artifacts of the culture of ancient people.
During the Miocene Period in Tertiary Age of Cenozoic Era, some 12
million years ago, most of Ukraine was covered by sea. At the end of this
period the seas receded to the approximately present day coasts of Black, Azov
and Caspian seas to form one big sea. The climate was very hot and humid, lush
vegetation covered the ground and there were all kinds of large animals and
birds.
Then, during the Pliocene period, some 6 million years ago, the climate
began to cool. Many plants and animals disappeared and only those, which could
adapt to lower temperatures, such as fury mammoths and rhinoceroses, remained.
Later the ground froze up and soon ice sheets covered most of the northern part
of Ukraine. That was
the Pleistocene Period in Quaternary Age of Cenozoic Era, about 1 million years
ago,
Commonly known as the Ice Age.
When the ice retreated, life started to reappear. Traces of human
habitation in Ukraine, dating
back at least 30 thousand years, became evident during geological excavations.
Primitive stone tools, carvings from mammoth tusks, arrow heads made from flint
stone, earthenware, bronze tools and weapons and gold jewelry found in
different layers of earth enabled geologists to
reconstruct the way of life of early man.
At first, during Old Stone Age (Paleolithic Age), humans did not have
domestic animals, could not make utensils and relied exclusively on hunting and
fishing. Then, gradually, during Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic Age) they began
to make stone tools and weapons.
Later, during Late Stone Age (Neolithic Age), they began to make
utensils from earth, kept domestic animals for milk and meat, constructed
dwellings and cultivated the soil.
During the Bronze Age, about 3000 BC, and Iron Age, about 1000 BC, metal
agricultural implements and weapons came into use; crafts and commerce began to
develop.
From 7th century BC Greeks started to colonize the coast of the Black Sea. They traded wine, oil, and
textiles, silver and gold wares and utensils with local tribes for grain and
hides but they also engaged in slave trade. They introduced Greek Culture and
many tribes adopted Greek customs and religion. The Greek historian Herodotus
documented information about Ukraine of this period.
There were numerous tribes in Ukraine,
some nomadic, some agricultural; most of the time at war with each other. The
oldest known main inhabitants of Ukraine were Cimmerians. They were replaced in 5th
century BC by Scythians, who ruled till 2nd century BC; Sarmatian tribes then
replaced them. Later in 1st century AD the tribesmen of the dominant horde were
called Alanis.
These tribes, mainly of Iranian origin, were conquered in 2nd century AD
by German tribe called Goths from Baltic region. About 370 AD, the first Asian
horde of Huns, on their way to western Europe, defeated and expelled Goths from Ukraine. They were followed in 5th-6th
centuries by the Bulgars and Avars.
The exact origin of Slav people is unknown, but it can be assumed that
they existed for a long time before they were mentioned in historical records
by Romans in 1st century AD. A very strong Slav tribe called Wends developed in
4th century; their settlements extended from central Ukraine up to Baltic Sea. When in the 6th century they
moved to Southwest Germany, Antes became the dominant tribe in Ukraine.
At different times they were fighting with and against Goths, Huns,
Avars, Greeks and Slovyans. Although ruled by princes, they also had people's
councils and tribal elders.
According to legends, Kyiv was founded in the 5th century by three
brothers Kiy, Shchek and Khoriv and their sister Lebid; later Kyiv was reigned
by princes (or chieftains) Askold and Dyr.
At end of 7th century AD, Khazars established themselves on Caspian
steppes, which somewhat shielded Ukraine from other Asian hordes. Also in the 7th
century Greeks left Black Sea shores, thus causing a considerable gap in the
documented history of Ukraine.
Khazar control of the steppe was breached in the late 9th century by the
Magyars, who later were replaced by Pechenegs and then by Polovetsians as
dominant tribes.
Prince Olekh established the Kyivan State proper in 879. He conducted military expeditions to
the shores of Caspian Sea and raided Byzantine cities. Prince Ehor
followed him, in 912, who not only continued external raids but also had to
fight insubordinate tribes of Ulitchs and Derevlans. He died during a battle
with Derevlans in 945. His wife Olha revenged his death by brutal suppression
of Derevlans. In 964 she became a Christian and established her son Svyatoslav
on the throne.
Svyatoslav was an able and courageous prince; he fought Asian hordes in
the East and conducted raids on Bulgaria.
He divided his state between his sons, then continued with his expeditions and
battles. When he died in 972 during battle with Pechenegs, his sons fought
between themselves, often with help from their enemies.
In 980, Prince Volodymyr defeated all his brothers and unified the
country into one powerful state with Kyiv as the capital. He adopted
Christianity in 988 and started to convert the population, which had up to
then, worshiped Pagan gods. Force was often used against those who resisted. He
produced silver and gold coins with his portrait on one side and the trident on
the reverse side (The trident is Coat of Arms of present day Ukraine).
In History he is known as Volodymyr the Great or Saint Volodymyr. During
his reign, pillaging Pecheneg hordes defeated the Khazars, pushed out the
Hungarian hordes from the southern steppes and became a menace to the state.
Volodymyr started to fortify Kyiv against them. After his death in 1015,
fighting and assassinations between his sons ensued, resulting in victory for
prince Yaroslav in 1019.
Yaroslav the Great consolidated nearly whole of his father's territory,
defeated the Pechenegs and became one of the most powerful rulers in Europe. A church hierarchy was
established, headed (at least since 1037) by the metropolitan of Kyiv, who was
usually appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople.
Yaroslav promoted family ties with other kingdoms, built many churches,
improved Kyiv's fortifications, introduced laws and established courts.
However, in the same way as his forefathers, he divided the country
between his sons, who after his death in 1054, started to fight among
themselves and divide their land between their sons. This resulted in a number
of small principalities which not only fought each other, but also had to
defend
themselves from marauding Turkish and Polovetsian hordes, who plundered
the countryside.
In 1097 all princes agreed to stop fighting between themselves. In 1103
they united their forces under leadership of prince Monomakh (one of the
grandsons of Yaroslav the Great) and defeated the Polovetsian hordes.
However, the constant warfare weakened the country's economic strength
and caused a near collapse of cultural and political system of Ukraine.
After death of Monomakh in 1125 Ukraine remained fragmented into the numerous
principalities, each having their own customs and rules, with only
nominal allegiance to the Prince of Kyiv ( this position was occupied by
sons of Monomakh on rotational basis). Gradually Kyiv lost it's power and
influence; many principalities separated. An outstanding chronicle of events
was compiled in Old Church Slavonic language by Venerable Nestor in 1136.
In 1169 prince Andrey Bogolyubski conquered and destroyed Kyiv and
established his capital in Vladimir near present site of Moscow, thus originating present Russian
state.
The Ukrainian princes continued to struggle on against the Polovtsi.
One particular battle led by Prince Ehor in 1185 was enshrined in a poem
"Slovo o Polku Ehorevim" (The Tale of Ehor's Regiment).
Western parts of Ukraine - Halych (Galicia) and Volynj
(Volhynia)—free from Polovetsian raids, gradually emerged as leading
principalities. Prince Roman ruled there in 1199. His sons succeeded in uniting
both principalities into one rich and powerful state.
About year 1220, when a new horde of Mongols and Tatars invaded
Ukraine, the princes have reached some sort of accommodation with
Polovtsi and fought together to expel this new horde. They succeeded at first
but, toward the end of year 1240, Tatars returned and besieged Kyiv. On 16th
December 1240 they conquered, plundered and ruined the city. Afterward they
moved westward, plundering Halych,Poland and Hungary then in
1245 they returned and occupied eastern Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Prince Danylo (son of Prince Roman) established himself in
Halych and his brother Vasylko in Volynj. Together they managed to keep the
Tatars away from their principalities. Danylo founded city Lviv in 1250 as a defense
site against Tatars. In 1253 he accepted the royal crown from the pope and
effected a short-lived church union with Rome.
After Danylo died in 1264, his sons continued to rule in peaceful
coexistence with the Tatars. In 1303 they created a separate archbishopric
office in Halych, responsible to Byzantine. Earlier, in 1299 Kyivan
archbishopric seat was moved to Moscow.
The dominant prince was Danylo's son Lev. He died about year 1300. His
son Yuriy would again unite the Halych and Volynj principalities with Lviv as
the capital. He was seen as a mighty and just ruler and the country was rich
and peaceful under his rule.
After Yuriy, his two sons ruled until 1320. They both died without
leaving male successors. This created an unstable situation and an internal
power struggle ensued, which was exploited by neighboring countries—Poland, Hungary and Lithuania—in
their efforts to occupy this part of Ukraine.
Local boyars and People's Councils tried to resist by accepting princes from
other dynasties and countries and by forming alliances with the Lithuanians and
even the Tatars, but to no avail. In 1349, Polish king Kazimyezh managed to
occupy Halych and part of Volynj. About same time, Lithuanian princes
intensified their takeover of eastern principalities of Ukraine. Finally about year 1360, the Prince of Kyiv
was overthrown.
Ukraine was partitioned
between Poland and Lithuania with
Tatar Golden Horde remaining in some parts of southern steppes and the Crimea.
The Lithuanian princes were reasonable rulers. In some cases they were
assimilated where they adopted the local customs, language and religion. People
did not resist them and appreciated their protection from Poland, Moscow and the
Tatars. However, under Polish rule, western Ukraine was
subjected to exploitation and colonization by an influx of people from Poland and Germany,
who were taking over the property and offices from local boyars.
During the period of 1393-1430 the Grand Dutch of Lithuania was ruled by
the Grand Duke Vytautas, who also is named Vytautas the Great for all the
political and military achievements he brought to Lithuania. During his reign, the push eastward by the
German Order was broken. In 1410 Vytautas, along with his cousin Yahaylo the
King of Poland, won the Battle of Grunwald (Germany), against the might of the
Order that way finishing almost 200 years of war. He also brought the
Christianity to the pagan Lithuania.
At the end of his era, Lithuania became one of the strongest states in
Europe, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
In 1400 Lithuania,
together with its Ukrainian principalities, separated under king Vytautas-
Yahaylo's cousin. Yahaylo’s younger brother, Svytryhaylo, opposed this
arrangement. Ukrainian principalities under Vytautas were loosing their national
character and independence to Polish influences.
In 1413 a decision was made to allow only Catholics
to occupy important government positions ("Horodlo Privilege").
Wide-spread discrimination against the Orthodox population followed. Nearly all
Ukrainians in those days were Orthodox, therefore Ukrainian princes and boyars
ended up helping Svytryhaylo in his fight with Vytautas. After Vytautas died in
1430, Svytryhaylo defended himself from Poles, but by the year 1440 his sphere
of influence was reduced to the Volynj principality.
There was a period of hostilities between Lithuania and Moscow, when about 1480 Moscow annexed several principalities in eastern Ukraine. Also several popular uprisings
took place. In 1490, a rebellion under Mukha, occurred in western Ukraine. Mukha sought help from
neighboring Moldova. In 1500 in eastern Ukraine,
there was an uprising under Prince Mykhaylo Hlynskiy, who expected help from Moscow and the Tatars. However Poland and Lithuania, at that time, were very strong
and all uprisings were squashed.
Meanwhile, in the South, marauding Tatar hordes converted a large area
of the country into wilderness, without any law or order. It was a very rich
part of Ukraine with productive soil, wild animals and
rivers full of fish. It attracted many adventurous people, who although they
had to fight the Tatars there, would be free from suppression by the Polish and
Lithuanian overlords. They began to organize under Hetmans, thus originating
Cossack society.
To defend themselves from the Tatars, they constructed forts called
"Sitch" and amalgamated them into a sort of union, with Zaporizhia as
a centre. It was downstream of the Dnipro river cascades.
In 1552, one of Ukrainian princes, Dmytro Wyshnevetskyi, being among the
Cossacks, built a castle on the island Khortytsya. From there, the Cossacks
conducted raids on Crimean towns sometimes with help from Moscow. Dmytro wanted to develop
Zaporizhia, with help from Lithuania and Moscow, into a powerful fortress against Tatars and
Turks. Being unable to achieve this goal, he left Zaporizhia in 1561, became
involved in a war in Moldova and was captured and executed by the Turks
in 1563.
In 1569, with the Union of Lublin, the dynastic link between Poland and Lithuania was transformed into a constitutional
union of the two States as the Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth.
Most of Ukraine became part of Poland. The settlement of Polish nationals followed
and Polish laws and customs became dominant.
Polish nobles replaced most of Ukrainian princes and boyars, except for
a few—notably Ostrozkyis and Wyshnevetskyis. Peasants lost their land ownership
and civil rights and gradually became serfs, exploited as manpower in
agriculture and forestry, by the new landowners. Suppression of the Orthodox
Church retarded the development of Ukrainian literature, arts and education.
Preferential treatment of Catholics inhibited the economic and political
advancement of Ukrainians.
In spite of that there was a modest revival of Ukrainian culture later
in 16th century. Church schools and seminaries were set up, based at first on
the properties of Ukrainian magnate Hryhoriy Khodkovych and later on the
holdings of Ostrozkyi princes. A printing industry began, culminating in the
publication of the Bible in a print shop ran by Ivan Fedorovych. Trade and
church brotherhoods sprang up. Schools were established and hospitals became
centers of defense of the Orthodox Church and the fight for justice and
equality.
Such a situation was the main cause, which multiplied the influx of
people to Cossack territory, increasing the Cossack’s strength. The Tatars were
pushed out into Crimeaand the
Cossacks became more daring in their raids on Turkish cities.
While Ukrainian Cossacks defended not only Ukraine, but also the whole of eastern Europe from the
Turks and Tatar hordes, they were causing diplomatic problems forPoland because Turkey used
Cossack situation as an excuse for wars against Poland. When Cossack leader, Ivan Pidkova, conquered Moldova in 1577, the Poles captured and executed him in order
to appease the Turks. They tried to control the Cossacks by recruiting some of
them into the Polish military system as, so called, Registered Cossacks, but
they could never really tame them.
With decreasing danger from the Tatars, Polish nobles and Ukrainian
princes loyal to the king, were granted possessions in territory controlled by
the Cossacks and began to introduce their freedom limiting, unpopular laws.
Dissatisfied with such treatment Cossacks, under Kryshtof Kosynskyi, rebelled
about 1590, and by year 1593 controlled most of eastern Ukraine. After Kosynskyi, Hryhoriy Loboda became
Cossack Hetman in 1593.
Another section of Cossacks, numbering about 12000, under Semeryn
Nalyvayko, were recruited by the Pope and the German Kaiser for war against
theTurks. They conquered Moldova and in 1595 returned to Ukraine to fight against Polish rulers and to defend the
Orthodox population from the Jesuits, who were instigating amalgamation with
the Catholic Church. In 1596 at a synod of Brest, the Kyivan metropolitan and the majority of
bishops signed an act of union with Rome.
The Uniate church thus formed recognized supremacy of the pope but retained the
Eastern rites and the Slavonic liturgical language.
Also in year 1596 Polish king, Sigismund III Vasa, ordered Field Marshal
Stanislav Zholkewski to subjugate the Cossack forces. After several months of
fighting, Zholkewski surrounded Cossacks, led by Nalyvayko, Loboda and Shaula,
at river Solonytsya near Lubny. There were about 6000 Cossack fighters and just
as many women and children facing a much more superior force. The prolonged
siege, lack of food and fodder, internal squabbles (Loboda was killed in one
the fights between sections of Cossacks) and intensive cannon fire destroyed
defenders' capacity to resist. In order to save their families, Cossacks agreed
to Zholkewski's terms to let them go free in exchange for handing over their
leaders. However, after surrender, the Poles did not keep their word; they
attacked and started to massacre defenseless and disoriented Cossacks. Only a
section under leadership of Krempskyi broke through and joined with troops of
Pidvysotskyi, who were coming to the rescue of the besieged Cossacks.
Zholkewski, exhausted by prolonged fighting, decided to abandon the idea
to conquer the Cossacks. He returned to Poland, where he tortured and
executed the captured Cossack leaders. The most severe punishment was
handed to Nalyvayko, who was tortured for about a year prior to a brutal
execution.
ABRIDGED HISTORY OF UKRAINE - PART FOUR.
Loosely translated and abridged by George Skoryk from "HISTORY OF
UKRAINE" by Mykhaylo Hrushevs'kyi
Bohdan Khmelnytskyi
Although Zholkewski failed to destroy the Cossacks, he left them
considerably weakened and divided, often fighting among themselves. Hetman
Samiylo Kishka united all the Cossack forces and, after leading them in a
successful naval expeditions against the Turks and land raids on Moldova. This helped to restore the former
Cossack spirit and power.
In 1599, the Polish king, having difficulty with a war with the
Walachians in Moldova, had to
rehabilitate Cossacks in order to secure their help. Later he would use them in
a war with Sweden. Kishka
died in one of the battles with the Swedes but the Cossacks continued to fight
under the other hetmans. When this war ended in 1603, Cossacks demanded and
obtained equal status with the Polish military units and secured authority over
large area of Ukraine adjacent to the Dnipro river.
Cossack power continued to grow with raids on lands controlled by
Moscow—by helping the numerous pretenders for Moscow throne (1604-1613)—and the
Black Sea expeditions, in their boats called Chaykas. These took place on coast
of Turkey, Crimea and
the mouth of Danube in Moldova (1613-1618). Each 'Chayka' was manned by
about 60 Cossacks and was armed with 4 to 6 cannons. With fleets of between 30
and 80 Chaykas, the Cossacks destroyed or captured many Turkish galleons and
plundered Turkish cities during times when the whole of Europe was trembling
against the might of the Turkish
Empire.
It is estimated that the number of Cossacks fluctuated between 10,000
and 40,000 depending on circumstances. Their centre was the Sitch—an armed camp
in Zaporizhia, located "beyond the cascades" of the river Dnipro. The
Cossack Army was divided into regiments, consisting of between 500 and 4000
men, led by colonels. Each regiment had its own banner, trumpeter and drummer.
Regiments were divided into companies of 100 men led by captains which were
further subdivided into 'kurins' of 10 men led by 'atamans'. There was also a
small artillery force and orchestra. The Commander in Chief was a hetman,
elected by and responsible to Cossack Council called the Rada.
In the spring of 1618 hetman Petro Sahaydachnyi with force of about
20,000 Cossacks marched on Moscow,
conquering many towns and fortresses on the way. NearMoscow he joined up with Polish forces under
prince Wladyslaw, who pretended for Moscow throne. They failed to capture Moscow, but managed to secure peace terms
favorable to Poland.
The Poles, no longer endangered by its enemies, again turned their
attention to pacification of the Cossacks. Sahaydachnyi wanted to avoid
hostilities and in 1619 agreed to reduction of Cossack force to 3,000. This did
not please Zaporozhtsi (Cossacks in Zaporizhia), who then replaced Sahaydachnyi
by hetman Borodawka. Sahaydachnyi, who retained control of Cossacks on the
mainland, dedicated himself to promotion and defense of Ukrainian culture and
Orthodox faith by diplomatic means; Borodawka continued with traditional
raids on Turkey.
When, in 1620, Poland got into difficulties in war with Turks
(in Moldova the Polish army was defeated and
Zholkewski killed), Poles again called on Cossack help. Borodawka was keen to
oblige but Sahaydachnyi, pointing out the unfair treatment of Ukrainians, tried
to restrain the Cossacks until they received a better deal from the Polish
king. However, the Cossacks became impatient and under Borodawka marched on Moldova to fight the Turks. They lost many men and blamed it
on Borodawka's inefficient leadership and strategy. When Sahaydachnyi returned
from his negotiations with the king, the Cossacks dismissed, tried and executed
Borodawka and elected Sahaydachnyi as
hetman of all Cossacks.
In 1621 a big battle against the Turks took place on
the South side of the Dnister River near Khotyn with participation of 40,000 Cossacks and
35,000 Polish soldiers. It ended with the retreat of the Turkish army. Cossacks
got full credit for this victory but very little in way of compensation and
again the Poles insisted on the reduction of their numbers.
Sahaydachnyi, wounded in Khotyn battle, died on 10th April 1622. Under
his successors Cossacks continued to defend Orthodox faith, resisted
exploitation of Ukrainian land and peasants by the Polish landowners and
terrorized the Turks with their raids across Black Sea. Polish king, although unable to suppress
the Cossacks, continued with a policy of conversion of the Ukrainian population
to Catholicism by persecution of people of the Orthodox faith. In 1924 Orthodox
Church authorities asked Moscow for help butMoscow was not strong enough to get involved in hostilities
with Poland.
Later, in 1624, the Cossacks secured an unexpected alliance with the
Crimean
Tatars, who rebelled against the Turkish sultan. While the Turks sailed
against the Tatar rebels, the Cossacks twice raided Constantinople and plundered both shores of Bosphorus. They then
returned and helped the Tatars to expel the Turks from Crimea, thus securing friendly neighbors in their struggle
against Turks and Poles.
Unfortunately, in 1625, when many Cossacks were away on one of their
maritime expeditions against the Turks; Polish hetman Konietspolski attacked
and forced Cossack hetman Zhmaylo to accept terms, whereby the Cossack register
was to be reduced to 4,000 men. The Cossacks did not like this compromise and
replaced Zhmaylo by hetman Doroshenko. Doroshenko was a capable leader and
administrator and maintained a reasonably peaceful relationships with Polish
authorities. He even managed to restrain 'unregistered' Cossacks from raids on Turkey. However when Turks attacked Crimea, the Cossacks went to help the
Tatars and Doroshenko fell in one of the battles there.
Succeeding Cossack hetmans continued to uphold peaceful conditions until
1629 when Konietspolski returned from war with Sweden and
settled his soldiers on Ukrainian land, who started to make trouble. He also
tried to eliminate the 'unregistered' Cossacks.
In the spring of 1630, Cossacks from Zaporizhia led by hetman Taras Fedorowych
went on the march and caught up with the Polish forces and the
'registered' Cossacks stationed in Korsun. The Cossacks from Korsun went
over to Fedorowych, citizens rebelled and the Polish soldiers had to flee. This
signaled a general uprising, which eventually turned into a war in defense of
the Orthodox faith.
The reaction of the Polish administration was brutal and widespread.
Konietspolski enlisted a notorious hood, Lashch, to attack and massacre people
in churches, towns and villages. However, this made the Cossacks, and Ukrainian
population at large, more determined to get rid of the Polish yoke.
A decisive battle took place in mid 1630 near Peryaslav where the Polish
forces suffered a major defeat and Konietspolski had to make peace with the Cossacks.
After death of Polish king Sigismund III Vasa (in April 1632) Ukrainian
nobles and politicians intensified their efforts to gain a better deal for Ukraine by diplomatic means. The new king, Ladislas IV, was
more sympathetic to their cause, mainly in order to counteract the influence
from Moscow on Ukrainian scene. Although the Catholic
Church and the landowners resisted any concessions, Ukrainians managed to make
some progress in spiritual and cultural fields under the newly elected
archbishop Petro Mohyla.
The new king appreciated the Cossack's potential and used them in wars
with Turkey, Moscow and Sweden.
The Cossacks proved themselves to be just as efficient fighters on the Baltic
Sea as on the Black Sea; but the polish senate did not want war with Turkey and constructed a fortress called Kodak near
Zaporizhia in order to block the Cossack access to the Black Sea. This fortress was destroyed by Cossacks led
by hetman Sulyma in 1635, but 'registered'
Cossacks, in order to avoid retaliation, captured Sulyma and handed him
over to the Poles. In spite of his distinguished service in war with Turks and
efforts of the king and pope to save him, Sulyma was executed and his body was
cut up and hung on four corners of Warsaw streets.
The betrayal of Sulyma did not gain Cossacks much reward from Poles.
This led to an uprising under hetman Pavliuk in 1637, but Polish field marshal
Pototski suppressed it. Another unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Polish
occupation was made by the Cossacks, in 1638, under hetmans Ostryanin and
Hunya. After that the Cossack movement fell under Polish control, Kodak
fortress was rebuilt and it appeared that the Poles might have finally gained
unchallenged domination of Ukraine.
A lengthy period of peace, which followed, made it easier for the Poles
to maintain control over Ukraine.
Cossacks were no longer needed as a defense force. The Polish senate and nobles
managed to curtail king Ladislas' ambitions for aggressive wars. Polish
soldiers were on hand to keep a lid on the simmering discontent of the
Ukrainian population.
Deprived of protection from the Cossacks, peasants were exploited on
land as serfs, city dwellers were reduced to a state grudging conformity.
Political, cultural and religious matters were under Polish control and
commerce was predominantly in hands of Jewish merchants, storekeepers and
innkeepers.
An incident in 1646 started a chain of significant events with great
consequences. The farm of Cossack captain, Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, was destroyed
and his family harmed by local government officials in Subotiv. Angry and
distraught, Bohdan decided to organize an uprising. Conditions for it were very
ripe, and in 1647 Kmelnytskyi went to the Sitch where he was elected as Cossack
hetman. Fueled by rumors of imminent war, volunteers streamed to Zaporizhia to
join the free Cossack forces. This alarmed Polish authorities and an army,
which included 'registered' Cossacks was sent to restore Polish control.
However these Cossacks went over to Khmelnytskyi and the Polish force was
annihilated on the steppes near Zaporizhia in May 1648. Cossack victories, with
popular support continued. Even the Tatars, who were dissatisfied with their
treatment by the Poles, joined in. Marching westward, the main Cossack force
reached and besieged the city of Lviv and the fortress town Zamostc. Practically
the whole of Ukraine fell under Cossack control.
In the meantime king Ladislas IV died and his brother king Casimir V
made peace with Cossacks, agreeing to all their demands. Victorious Khmelnytskyi
with his army retreated and in January 1649 entered the Ukrainian capital of
Kyiv to a triumphal acclaim as liberator. When the king's emissaries arrived in
Kyiv they insisted that Ukraine must remain part of Polish Kingdom and
offered only to increase number of 'registered' Cossacks and concessions to the
Orthodox Church. This angered Khmelnytskyi because he now wanted full
independence and freedom for all Ukrainian people. He told the emissaries that
he would liberate the whole of Ukraine and said, "standing on the river
Vistula I will say 'sit there and be quiet Poles' and I will expel all dukes
and princess beyond the Vistula and if they start to bolt I will even find
them there for sure". He then set out to create an independent Ukrainian Cossack State.
In response the Polish army marched on Ukraine. After encountering a large force of Cossacks
and Tatars they retreated to a strong fortress Zbarazh and were besieged there.
Cossacks near Zboriv blocked their reinforcements. The Poles where nearly defeated
there but were saved by the Tatars, who defected from the Cossacks after
generous promises from the Poles. Faced with the combined force of Poles and
Tatars, Khmelnytskyi had to settle for the increase of the Cossack register to
40,000 and concessions to the Orthodox Church only (Treaty of Zboriv in Aug
1649).
This did not satisfy the Ukrainian population and soon Khmelnytskyi had
to fight again for their freedom. After coaxing the Tatars again over to his
side he defeated the Polish army at Korsun in 1650. However later he was again
betrayed by the Tatars and in August 1651 had to make another agreement with Poland, this time decreasing Cossack
register to 20,000 and without concessions to the Orthodox Church.
This agreement was treated by Khmelnytskyi only as a period of respite
and in spring 1652, with Tatar participation, he went on the march again. After
a period of bloody and exhaustive battles and another betrayal by the Tatars,
Khmelnytskyi decided to seek help from Moscow.
In January 1654 he met with emissaries from Moscow in
Peryaslav who promised help in defense of Ukraine from Poland if the Cossacks swore allegiance to their tsar. An
agreement was reached based on set of conditions, which in effect guarantied Ukraine independence, connected to Moscow only by
virtue of common monarch. It worked well in a military sense as the Poles were
expelled from Ukraine andBelarus, however there was no consensus
in the political sphere. Ukrainians wanted relationships with Moscow as equal, independent partners, whereas Moscow consideredUkraine as an acquisition of another country by its growing
empire.
Khmelnytskyi was very disappointed by such attitude and behavior from
his allies and began to look around for other friends. In 1655 Swedish king
Karl X requested and obtained Cossack help in his war with Poland. When the Swedes occupied northern Poland, the Polish king made peace with Moscow and tried also to attract the Cossacks over to his
side. But Khmelnytskyi, because of previous experience with Poland and Moscow,
decided to stick with Sweden and at the beginning of year 1657 resumed
hostilities withPoland. Unfortunately Khmelnytskyi got very sick and the
Cossacks led by colonel Zhdanovytch, unable to achieve any significant
victories, returned home. Khmelnytskyi died on 27th June 1657. See also:
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?AddButton=pages\K\H\KhmelnytskyBohdan.htm
He wanted his son to succeed him but, as Yurasj was yet to young and
inexperienced. The Cossacks elected Ivan Vyhowskyi as their hetman. At first
Vyhowskyi conducted a neutral policy toward Poland, Moscow and Sweden but
eventually, aggressive behavior of Muscovites on Ukrainian territory pushed him
toward Poland. In
September 1658, inHaydach,
he signed an accord by which Ukraine fell under jurisdiction of the Polish
king, albeit as an autonomous country.
With help from Poland and the Tatars, Vyhowskyi defeated Moscow’s forces in Ukraine, but in September 1659 a large
section of Cossacks rebelled, accused Vyhowskyi of trying to sell Ukraine to Poland and elected Yurasj Khmelnytskyi as their
hetman. Soon all Cossacks united under Yurasj and forced Vyhowskyi to resign.
After entering into another treaty with Moscow, the Cossacks and the Russians, in the summer
of 1660, marched on Poland. However
this campaign did not go very well and when the Russian forces were defeated,
the Cossacks had to submit to another union with Poland.
Although Ukrainians resented Moscow domination, Polish authorities failed to
capitalize on it and did nothing to gain popular support. The Cossacks on
Leevoberezhie (Left Bank), that is on the east side of river Dnipro, went over
to the Moscow side; Yurasj Khmelnychenko resigned in
1663 and his place was taken by Pawlo Tererya. Tererya was a Polish supporter
therefore he could not extend his authority to the Left Bank where
the Cossacks elected hetman Ivan Brukhowetskyi.
At the beginning of 1665 the Cossacks overthrew Teterya, thus freeing
territory on Pravoberezhie (Right Bank), that is on the West Side of the river
Dnipro, from Poland. Unwilling
to come under Moscow domination the Cossacks turned for support from the Tatars
by electing Petro Doroshenko as their hetman In 1667, by the treaty of
Andrysovo, Ukraine was partitioned along the Dnipro River: the western side
(Right Bank) went under Polish control, while the eastern side (Left Bank),
including Kyiv, became the autonomous hetman state or Hetmanate under Russian
protectorate. Zaporizhia still remained under independent Cossack rule, who
elected their own chieftains and followed their own impetuous policies.
On the Right Bank, Doroshenko accepted Turkish sultan Mohammed IV as his
superior in exchange for help to liberate Ukraine from
domination by Poland and Moscow. Later, in the spring of 1668, the Cossacks on
the Left Bank rebelled against Moscow resulting in the whole of Ukraine coming under the control of Petro Doroshenko.
Unfortunately later in 1668, when Doroshenko was occupied with a family matter,
the Russians attacked and once again the Left Bank fell under their domination,
with Demyan Mnohohrishnyi as hetman of Cossacks of that part of Ukraine. Polish forces also invaded Ukraine from West but, in the spring of1671, the Turkish
sultan sent in a large army and helped Doroshenko to expel the Poles from
western Ukraine.
Doroshenko then started negotiations with Mnohohrishnyi about
unification of Ukraine. This did
not please Moscow;
Mnohohrishnyi was tried (on trumped up charges) and sentenced to exile. The new
Left Bank hetman Ivan Samoylowytch was hostile to Doroshenko and, with help
from Moscow, marched on
Right Bank Ukraine. He
received a considerable support there because the Turks and the Tatars
antagonized the population by trying to promote their Muslim
religion.Doroshenko was this time unable to obtain help from Turks as they were
busy in war with Poland and retreated to his holding of Chyhyryn.
On 15th March 1674. Samoylowytch was proclaimed hetman of the whole Ukraineunder a Moscow protectorate.
This is one of the best known and loved paintings in Russia and Ukraine.
It shows the Cossacks of Zaporozh'e composing as insulting a reply as possible
to a Turkish demand for surrender (1675).
Doroshenko was ready to surrender but after receiving support from
Zaporozhtsi, encouragement from Poland and help from Turks decided to keep on
fighting against Samoylowych and his Russian backers. This war, with raids and
plunders by Turks, Tatars and Poles caused a mass exodus of people from the
west to the Left Bank.
Abandoned by his people Doroshenko surrendered in September 1676.
The Turks then recalled Yurasj Khmelnychenko, who continued to struggle
for the Right Bank until 1681, when the Turks replaced him by
the Walachian
Warlord Duky. In 1683 the Right Bank was taken over by the Poles under
Yan Sobyeski, who was supported by the Cossacks in a war with the Turks, which
figured significantly in the rescue of Vienna in 1683. For their services, Cossacks were
rewarded with land grants in southern Ukraine.
People then began to return from the east, which further helped Sobyeski to
fight the Turks. But still, the Cossacks resented Polish supremacy and Paliy,
with the other Cossack Colonels, planned an uprising and unification with the
Cossack on the Left Bank.
Over there Samoylowych tried to avoid anything which may displease Moscow, but at the price of continuing
loss of independence. The Uniate church disappeared and the Orthodox Kyivan
metropolitanate itself was transferred in 1986 from patriarchal authority of
Constantinople to that of Moscow.
Arts and education progressively lost its traditional Ukrainian character. Also
granting them land possessions ensured loyalty to Moscow by some
of the Starshyna (senior Cossack officers), which led to renewed exploitation
of peasants.
Samoylowych himself started to adopt autocratic style of rule and even
wanted to introduce his dynasty, which antagonized most of the Cossack
Starshyna. Therefore, when in 1686 Moscow joined with Poland in war
with Turkey, they
blamed Samoylowych for the failed expedition against the Tatars in Crimea. Samoylowych was exiled toSiberia,
where he died two years later.
On 25th July 1687 Ivan Mazepa was elected as new Cossack hetman. For the
first few years Mazepa continued with policies of his predecessor; also built
and renovated churches and monasteries. Literature, art and architecture, in
the distinctive Cossack Baroque style, flourished under his patronage and the Kyivan Mohyla Academy,
the first Ukrainian institution of higher learning, experienced its golden age.
However he neglected needs of peasants and ordinary people, who bore the
brunt of Moscow’s
domination. Attempted uprisings by Petryk took place between years 1693
and1696. He gained support from the Tatars but failed to gain the support of
the Cossacks. Eventually a Cossack, for monetary reward from Mazepa,
assassinated him. However discontent continued and population started to shift
to Zaporizhia and to the Right
Bank, where colonel Paliy was looked upon as a peoples hero due to his
successes in uprising against Poles.
In 1695 Moscow restarted war with Turkey and Crimea and the Cossacks had to fight wherever Tsar Peter sent
them to. The Tatars exposed Ukraine to devastating raids. In 1700 Tsar Peter
joined Poland in a war with Sweden in
order to gain access to the Baltic Sea and the Cossacks had to march to the
distant north, were many of them died in battles and from brutal treatment by
the officers from Moscow. They were
also used as manual labor in the construction of fortifications. To make things
worse, arrogant Russian regiments were pillaging Ukrainian towns and villages
and abusing not only general population but also Cossack leaders.
All this disturbed Mazepa and he began to have few second thoughts about
his alliance with Moscow. By the end
of 1705 the war with Sweden went bad and in 1706 Swedish king Karl XII
concluded peace with Poland thus leaving Moscow alone
in this war. Consequently Tsar Peter ordered Mazepa to defend Ukraine without help fromMoscow and to destroy the Polish nobles on the Right Bank, who supported the Swedes.
Mazepa used this opportunity to take over this part of Ukraine. But there was a popular Cossack
colonel Paliy. Mazepa solved this problem by inviting Paliy to his place, where
he was imprisoned and handed over to Tsar Peter, who sent him to Siberia for collaboration with the Swedes.
At the end of 1707 Tsar Peter ordered Mazepa to hand over the western
lands to Poland. Mazepa did
not obey, using all possible excuses to retain control of that part ofUkraine.
While still pretending to be faithful to Tsar Peter, he conducted secret
negotiations with Swedish and Polish kings. When in autumn of 1708 king Karl
approached Ukraineand
promised help in liberation from Moscow,
Mazepa decided to switch sides. Unfortunately Moscow became
aware of this plot before Mazepa could organize and inform the Cossacks and the
population in general about the reasons and the advantages of his plan. Tsar
Peter moved swiftly on Ukraine,
destroying most of Mazepa's supplies and armaments and ruthlessly eliminated
the people suspected of collaboration with Mazepa and the Swedes. He started
extensive rumors that Mazepa intended to return Ukraine to
Polish domination.
This resulted in most Cossacks siding with Moscow and
they subsequently elected a hetman submissive to Moscow—Ivan Skoropadskyi. The church stayed also
onMoscow's side. Only Cossacks in Zaporizhia came out in support of Mazepa and
his remaining four thousand troops.
The superior Muscovite forces routed Zaporizhia in May 1709 and next
month, supported by Cossacks, loyal to Moscow,
defeated Mazepa and theSwedes in a battle nearPoltava. Heartbroken Mazepa fled
to Moldova where he died on 22nd August 1709.
Mazepa supporters did not give up hope of liberation from Moscow. In April 1710 they elected Orlyk
as their hetman and continued the struggle, with the help fromSweden, Poland and Turkey for many years to come. They also drafted
many interesting resolutions concerning a proposed Ukrainian government, based
on democratic principles. See also:
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/featuredentry.asp
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?AddButton=pages\M\A\MazepaIvan.htm
ABRIDGED HISTORY OF UKRAINE - PART FIVE.
Loosely translated and abridged by George Skoryk from "HISTORY OF
UKRAINE" by Mykhaylo Hrushevs'kyi
After the defeat of Mazepa, Tsar Peter intensified his efforts to
subjugate Ukraine. Hetman
Skoropadskyi had his powers restricted by Russian supervisors. His residence
was transferred from Baturyn to Hlukhow near the Russian border, where two
Russian garrisons were stationed to ensure his loyalty to Moscow.
The Ukrainian population became burdened by the plundering of the
Russian military units, dispersed throughout the country. Cossacks were sent to
work on the construction of canals near St Petersburg, connecting the river Volga with the
Baltic Sea. Thousands of Cossacks died from hunger, exhaustion and
sickness. Russian nationals replaced many Cossack colonels.
In 1722, the Tsar appointed a council called the "Little Russian
Collegiate", which was controlled by senior Russian officers and headed by
brigadier Velmyaninow, to monitor and audit the hetman's activities and
decisions. This, for practical purposes, transferred all powers to the
Russians, leaving the Cossack hetman and his officers only with empty titles. Hetman
Skoropadskyi was very upset by such situation; he became ill and died in 1722.
Tsar Peter used this opportunity to abolish the office of hetman altogether. He
directed the Cossack colonel Polubotok to perform the hetman's duties under the
supervision of Velmyaninow and refused to agree to Cossack requests to the
election of a new hetman.
The Russian occupiers continued to persecute and impoverish the
Ukrainian population. They kept sending more Cossacks to work on construction
of the canals, connecting the Caspian Sea with the Baltic Sea. From 1721 to 1725, some 20,000 Cossacks
perished.
Polubotok was an honest and energetic man. He managed to improve law and
order within the Cossack establishment and to improve the living conditions of
the population. However this did not please the Russian authorities, who relied
on disorder and corruption to maintain their grip on Ukraine. They feared Polubotok's growing popularity
and his efforts to re-establish the Hetmanate.
Velmyaninow complained to the Tsar that Polubotok was not complying with
his directives. Consequently Polubotok was arrested and interrogated under
torture in Petropavlowsk fort, near St
Petersburg. He died there, as a martyr for the Ukrainian cause in the autumn of 1724, in spite of the Tsar's belated efforts to save him and to
reconcile with the Cossacks.
Tsar Peter died soon after, at the beginning of year 1725. Ukraine was thus left at the mercy of Velmyaninow and his
henchmen. As for the Cossack colonels, some were imprisoned near St Petersburg and the others, who were not already replaced by
Russians, kept quiet.
His wife Catherine succeeded Tsar Peter. Faced with a possible war with Turkey, she needed the Cossacks and wanted
to return to them some of their former freedoms. However she faced a stiff
opposition from the "old guard" in the Russian government,
consequently the Cossacks received only few minor concessions. Catherine died
in the spring of 1727 and the grandson of
Tsar Peter, Peter II became the newemperor of Russia.
The new Russian government sacked Velmyaninow and his "Little
Russian Collegiate", released the Cossack colonels from jail and appointed
70-year-old Danylo Apostol as Cossack hetman. On 1st October 1727 the Cossacks
formally accepted Apostol in a ceremonious election in Hlukhow. Although
reporting to Russian "resident" Naumow, the new hetman managed to
carry out considerable improvements in Ukrainian situation. His loyalty to Moscow was ensured by the presence of one of his sons who was
a virtual hostage in St Petersburg.
Tsar Peter II died in 1730 and his aunt Tsarina Anna became the new
ruler of Russia. When
hetman Apostol fell ill and became paralyzed, she refused to hand over his
powers to the Cossacks and ordered a Russian "resident", Prince
Shakhowski to form a council, consisting mainly of Russians, to take over.
Hetman Apostol died in January 1734 and later in that year the Zaporozhtsi in
the Sitch decided to come over from the Turkish to the Russian side.
With Ukraine becoming almost a province of Russia, the russification of political,
religious and cultural life intensified. Intermarriages with Russians were
encouraged and any efforts to regain independence were brutally suppressed.
Cossack colonels were kept under constant observation and subjected to house searches
at the slightest sign of disloyalty. Even any attempts to obtain justice were
punished; when, in 1737, Kyiv's city counselors tried to defend their rights
against Russian excesses, they were all jailed. Things were so bad, that when
in 1740 an English general Keith was temporarily appointed in place of a
Russian administrator, people were amazed by his human behavior and tolerance.
Times were hard for the top layer of Ukrainian society, but even harder
for middle and lower classes and peasants, who suffered most from Russian
exploitation. Cossacks were being forced to fight for Russia against
the Turks, Tatars and Poles for small rewards, and often for nothing. Under
such circumstances, the yearning for the return of the Hetmanate autonomy
persisted. The possibility of this would happen occurred after the end of war
with Turkey in 1740 and death of Tsarina Anna in 1741.
The short regency of Anna II was terminated by a palace revolution,
whereupon the daughter of Peter I, Elizabeth was installed on Russian throne. Elizabeth was sympathetic to Ukrainian cause because, prior to
becoming Tsarina, she befriended and fell in love with a handsome son of a
Cossack court choir singer, Oleksiy Rozumowskyi. She married him after her
coronation. While visiting Kyiv in 1744, she agreed to promote the Cossacks'
request to re-install the hetman's office and proposed Oleksiy's younger
brother Kyrylo Rozumowskyi for this position. Twenty year old Kyrylo, who
studied abroad, returned in 1746, married into the royal family and was
bestowed with many orders and titles.
In 1747 the Russian senate was requested to take steps toward the re-
establishment of the Hetmanate. In February 1750, the ceremonious formality of
election of new Cossack hetman took place in Hlukhow, followed by celebrations
and festivities.
In the spring of 1751 hetman Kyrylo Rozumowskyi, again with great
ceremony and parade was installed as hetman. Unfortunately, being brought up in St Petersburg, Rozumowskyi was a stranger
to Ukraine and the ways of life there. His Russian
advisor Teplow was unsympathetic to Ukraine's
newly won autonomy and did all he could to hinder its development. Rozumowskyi
himself was bored with life in Ukraine and preferred to spend most of his time in St Petersburg.
During this period, Ukraine was divided into several parts such as Left
Bank consisting of the Hetmanate, Slobidshchyna and the Zaporozhian Sich, The
Right Bank, consisted of Halychyna (Galicia), Wolhynia, Bukovyna and
Transcarpatia. The Hetmanate included areas around Poltava, Lubny, Peryaslav,
Kyiv, Nizhyn, Chernihiv, Hlukhiv and also areas, around Starodub, Pochep
and Mhlyn. The neighboring areas centered around Kharkiv were called
Slobidshchyna meaning free (from serfdom) lands also referred to as Sloboda Ukraine. They included Izyum, Balakleya,
Akhtyrka, Sumy and, areas around Bilhorod, Ostrohozhsk
and Sudza.
Originally adventurous people, who tried to establish themselves free
from Polish and Russian domination, settled these lands. They formed Cossack
regiments for protection from the Tatars and for some time was able to lead an
independent life, because they served as a buffer from the Turks and the
Tatars. However later they fell under direct Russian rule; the autonomy of
Loboda Ukraine was abolished under Catherine II in 1765.
To ensure lasting domination over these two parts of Ukraine, Russians tried to suppress the
Ukrainian culture. They disallowed Ukrainian language in books, schools and
theaters. Moscow controlled the church and government and
the only way for a person to advance was to speak Russian and to be loyal to Moscow.
While Ukraine on the east side of Dnipro (Left Bank) was
being russianized, the western Ukraine consisting of Galicia Wolhynia and
Bukovyna (areas around Lviv, Ternopil Lutsk and Chernivtsi) was under the
Polish influence. Polish authorities were preventing not only national, but
also economic development of the Ukrainians. The Orthodox Church was being
gradually taken over by Polish dominated Catholic Church.
Between western Ukraine and, the Russian dominated parts on the east
side of the Dnipro, was a large territory on the Right Bank, partly
de-populated by the recent wars involving the Cossacks, Poles, Russians, Turks
and Tatars.
Gradually, the Polish nobility began to return, reclaimed their
landholdings and started to exploit Ukrainian peasants as serfs. The resistance
to this, at first, was in the form of outlaw gangs, said to have robbed the
rich to help the poor. Some of the gang leaders were even considered as folk
heroes, such as Olexa Dowbush, who operated between 1738 and 1745. There were
also uprisings by the so-called Haydamaks, generally during hostilities between Poland and Russia.
The biggest uprising was in 1768. The Haydamaks, led by Maxym Zaliznyak
and Ivan Honta, captured Umanj and killed many Polish oppressors and their
Jewish collaborators. They expected help from their Orthodox
"brothers" from Russia.
However Russians made peace with Poland,
captured Zaliznyak, Honta and many other Haydamaks and handed them over to the
Poles. Those, who were not immediately tortured and executed, were tried in
Kodno and sentenced, in most cases, to death.
The Transcarpathian Ukraine (areas around Uzhhorod and Mukachiv) was
under Hungarian rule. Overwhelmingly rural in character, Transcarpathia had a
Ukrainian—Ruthenian peasantry, a powerful Hungarian nobility and a substantial
number of urban and rural Jews. The Ukrainian population there did not display
much enthusiasm for independence but managed to retain their language, customs
and religion.
Tsarina Katharine II, who ruled Russia from 1762, after short reign of her
husband Peter III, decided the cancellation of the Hetmanate. Hetman
Rozumovskyi resigned and, in his place, on November 1764, Tsarina
re-installed the "Little Russian Collegiate", under the
presidency of Graf Rumyantsev. Rumyantsev's policy was to eliminate all
remaining traces of
Ukrainian autonomy and separatism; to introduce serfdom of peasants and
to integrate Ukraine with Russia. The Cossacks and the population resisted this
at large.
In 1767 the Tsarina ordered the election of deputies from all parts of
the Russian Empire in order to be informed what kind of government the people
wanted. The deputies from Ukraine declared their desire for Hetmanate
autonomy. This angered Rumyantsev and he sent out his officers to persuade the
electors to elect deputies supporting his government. People who resisted were
jailed. However in spite of all efforts of Russian authorities, the popular
sentiment for return of the Hetmanate system continued.
In 1772 Galicia and, two years later, Bukovina were annexed to the Austro Hungarian Monarchy, which
had somewhat improved the conditions of the
Ukrainians. In 1774 the Uniate church (renamed to Greek Catholic church)
was, by imperial decree, equalized in status with the Roman Catholic Church.
Educational reforms in 1775 allowed for instructions in the Ukrainian language.
However on balance government policies favored the Poles.
The Cossack stronghold, the Zaporozhian Sitch, was subservient to Moscow and was utilized for raids on Crimea and Turkey. During the Turkish war, which
started in 1768, several thousand Cossacks supported the Russians in battles on
land and Sea. Their efforts were rewarded by eulogies from the Tsarina but
little else and restrictions of the Cossack freedoms continued. Their lands
were being colonized by Russians, Serbians and other foreigners with aim of
creation of so called Novorossiya or the New Russia state in the south of Ukraine.
After end of the Turkish war in 1775, the Cossacks were being gradually
disarmed and in the Summer of that year, Russian general Tekeli surrounded the
Cossacks in the Sitch itself with a superior force and demanded abandonment of
their fortress. Faced with such overwhelming odds, the Cossack chief
Kalnyshevskyj surrendered. The Sitch was destroyed and abolished by Tzarist
edict of 3rd August 1775.
Kalnyshevskyj and other Cossack leaders were exiled to Siberia. The Cossack lands were granted to
Russian nobles; Cossacks were told to disperse and settle in towns and villages
or to join Russian forces. Many Cossacks escaped and settled in Turkey near the Danube delta. In 1778 they were formally accepted
under Turkish rule. By end of 1780 all districts, which were formerly under the
Hetmanate, were incorporated into Russian regime. In 1783 all Cossack regiments
were transferred to Russian forces; peasants were prohibited to leave their
landlords, which made them serfs on their former land. Ukrainian church
autonomy was abolished and church property was transferred toRussian treasury.
Loosely translated and abridged by George Skoryk from "HISTORY OF UKRAINE" by Mykhaylo Hrushevs'kyi
As a result of the partitions of Poland (1772,
1793, 1795), Ukraine became occupied by two empires—Russian and
Austrian. Galicia, Bukovyna
and Carpathian Ukrainewere
incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire and the rest of Ukraine became part of Russia. These two totalitarian powers had strong
central governments, mighty armies and powerful police ready to suppress any
attempts by Ukrainian population to regain freedom and self determination.
Nevertheless conditions under Austria began to improve, whereas life under
Russian occupation deteriorated. Because of this, the renaissance of Ukrainian
culture and political activities began in western Ukraine.
WESTERN UKRAINE UNDER
THE HABSBURG MONARCHY
In 1772, Galicia and, two years later, Bukovina were annexed to the Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg)
Monarchy. In 1774 the Uniate church was renamed to the Greek Catholic church
and equalized in status with Roman Catholic Church. Educational reforms in 1775
allowed for instructions in Ukrainian language. However, on balance government
policies favored the Poles. Led by church activities, schools with Ukrainian
language began to develop. The new bishop of Mukachiv, Andriy Bachynskyi
(1772-1809), assembled many learned people, who later together with graduates
from Vienna university became professors in Lviv University (founded
in 1784).
Some subjects were taught in the Ukrainian language. However, after
death of kaiser Joseph in 1790, the Polish nobility increased their influence
on the Austrian authorities and, by spreading rumors of Ukrainian sympathy
toward Russia, caused the replacement of Ukrainian by the Polish language in
state schools. Only private schools were allowed to use the Ukrainian language.
Some Ukrainian clergy resisted this trend, notably metropolitan Levytskyi,
under influence of canon Ivan Mohylnytskyi, author of "Information about
Ukrainian Language", which defended use of Ukrainian language.
The first group defending Ukrainian culture was formed in 1820. A big impetus to academic activities was provided by
fierce polemics during the 1830s between supporters of the popular spoken
language and supporters of the old printed church language. The proponents of
old church language were Mykhaylo Luchkay and Yosyf Levytskyi; in defense of
the spoken popular language were Yosyf Lozynskyi and a group of young students
of Lviv Seminary.
Most prominent in Ukrainian literature were, so called "Ruthenian
Triad": poet Markian Shashkevych (1811-1843), professor of Ukrainian
language Yakiv Holovatskyi and historian, ethnographer, linguist Ivan
Vahylevych. They were treated with suspicion and animosity by the Austrian
authorities. Their first publication in 1834 "Zorya" (The Star) was
banned, Their second publication-a collection of folk songs and stories,
"Rusalka Dnistrova" (Dnister Mermaid), published in Hungary, was confiscated and not released
till 1848, after death of Markian Shashkevych.
Many changes came in 1848. Revolutions in Europe affected
the circumstances within Austrian Empire. There was a flurry of liberal
reforms: the end of censorship, a promise of a national constitution and the
end of serfdom in Galicia. To
counter Polish ambitions for independence, Austrian authorities began to lift
restrictions on the Ukrainian culture. In the autumn of 1848 the Congress of
Ukrainian Scientists was created to promote exclusively Ukrainian culture and
to plan activities such as establishment of a standard grammar for Ukrainians
under Austria and Russia. Stirred by fiery poems of Antin Mohylnytskyi,
they demanded the introduction of Ukrainian language in schools and
universities and separation of the Ukrainian part of Galicia, centered around Lviv from the Polish part
centered around Krakow.
The year 1848 was a turbulent year for Ukrainians under Austria. In their drive for
self-determination they had to contend not only with Austrian authorities but
also with Poles in Galicia, Rumanians
in Bukovyna and Hungarians in Carpathia. In the end, aspirations for
independence of Ukrainians and other nationalities within Austrian Empire were,
for the time being, kept under control. It was the beginning of quiet reaction
to the authoritarian regimes of Austria and Russia.
While in Russia, Ukrainians
were accused of siding with Poland,
Polish activists convinced Austrian authorities of Ukrainian sympathy toward Russia. This resulted in Polish dominance
of culture and politics in Galicia.
Faced with such situation many Ukrainians started to think that maybe the only
salvation was with Russia; they were
called Moscowphiles or Russophiles. They were ready to sacrifice Ukrainian
national identity for support from Russia against the Poles, Rumanians and
Hungarians and promoted the idea of one Russian nation from the Carpathian
Mountains to Kamchatka. Among
them were even former Ukrainians patriots such as Yakiv Holovatskyi, who was
professor of Ukrainian language in Lviv University.
But there were also many who remained steadfastly on pure Ukrainian
ground, mainly energetic elements of youth, but also some members of the old
generation. They keenly absorbed fiery poems of Taras Shevchenko and read books
of other writers from eastern Ukraine such as Panteleymon Kulish, Marko Vovchok,
Volodymyr Antonovych, Konysjkyi and Levytskyj-Nechuy. They guarded the survival
of Ukrainian politics, culture and language by means of publications such as
"Vechernytsi" (Evening Times) (1862), "Meta" (Destination)
(1863-1865), "Nyva" (Field) (1865), "Rusalka" (Mermaid)
(1866)and "Pravda" (Truth) (1867).
In Bukovyna, the main Ukrainian writers were Vorobkevych Brothers and
Osyp Fedjkovych. A local Association of Ukrainian Speakers founded in 1869 had
at first a russofile character but in 1880 Ukrainian patriots gained the
majority. To handle educational problems, a Ruthenian Pedagogic Society was
created in 1881. In 1910 a Regional School Union came into being comprising of
representatives of Ukrainian cultural, political and financial organizations,
headed by Professor Mykhaylo Hrushevskyi. Between 1907 and 1911 seven private
Ukrainian high schools were established.
The 1890s were years of intensification of political life in western Ukraine. A national movement was gaining
strength and attracted more of, previously neutrally orientated, people.
Unavoidably differences and splits within this movement developed. The
progressive elements were promoting democratic socialism based on national
values. The conservatives wanted to preserve the existing way of life based
mainly on the church and religion. Generally they sided with the Russophiles to
act against the Poles and government backers in the Galician Senate and
Austrian Senate. On the other hand the progressives were inclined to support
the government, which caused the formation of a break-away radical faction
opposed to the Polish-influenced government.
Eventually progressive nationals abandoned their support for government
and in 1900 joined with the radicals to form National Democratic Party. This
party included a distinguished historian M. Hrushevskyi a famous writer Ivan
Franko and a well known activist, ethnographer and lawyer, Wolodymyr
Okhrymowych, who was elected to the Austrian Senate in 1907.
As result of all this political activity and competition, Ukrainian
national awareness and consciousness spread into wide masses of the population.
There were also big achievements in Ukrainian culture and science. A new crop
of journals appeared such as "Narod" (People), "Gazeta i
Slovo" (Life and Word), "Sloboda" (Freedom). A very popular
daily newspaper "Dilo" (Deed) was born. A notable collaborator and
prolific contributor to these publications was Wolodymyr Okhrymovych. Famous
opera singer, Salomea Krushelnytska, started her world career on the stage of
the Lviv Opera in 1892.
The Shevchenko Association in Lviv was upgraded to a scientific
association in 1892 and in 1898 it was reformed to conform with academy of
science standards. Academics demanded permission to establish a separate
Ukrainian university in Lviv as only a limited number of subjects was conducted
in Ukrainian in the existing university. In literature the most prominent
writer was Ivan Franko (1856-1916), but there were also many other talents
namely Vasyl Stefanyk and Olena Koblyansjka. Many high schools were created and
an educational journal "Prosvita" (Enlightenment) was published. To
cater for physical culture there were sporting organizations "Sitch"
(named after the famous Zaporozhyan Cossack stronghold) and "Sokoly"
(Falcons). On economic front cooperatives and credit unions began to function
thus reducing reliability on Austrian and Polish institutions.
At the turn of the century, the ethnic conflict in Galicia deepened. Massive peasant strikes against the Polish
landlords occurred in 1902. Ukrainian students engaged in demonstrations and
clashes with the Poles, and in 1908 a student assassinated the Galician
governor.
EASTERN UKRAINE UNDER
IMPERIAL RUSSIAN RULE
The people in eastern Ukraine and even the outwardly russianized
intelligentsia had not lost their love for Ukrainian ways of life, language and
history. They longed for the former glory of Cossacks and independence. In
1791, during adverse relationships between Russia and Prussia, a Ukrainian nobleman Vasyl Kapyst
tried to enlist Prussian help in planned uprising against Russian oppression;
he did not succeed.
The situation improved somewhat after death of Tsarina Catherine in
1796. Her son Pavlo, under sway of his minister and confidant of Ukrainian
descent Oleksander Bezborodjko, began to relax the Russian grip on Ukraine. There was even talk about return
of the former order, as during the hetman's times (Hetmanate). Publications in
the Ukrainian language began to appear. The first outstanding literary work was
"Aeneid" by Ivan Kotlarevskyi (1769-1838) published in 1798; it was a
humorous parody on this famous Roman epic, transposed to the Cossack scene.
Kotlarevskyi also wrote operettas "Natalka
Poltavka" and " Muscovite Sorcerer". Another noteworthy,
contemporary writer in Ukrainian language was novelist Hryhoriy Kvitka.
The cultural activities in Ukraine during 18th century were taking place
mainly in church circles. The literature generally contained scholastic and
religious disputes. The dramatic art was confined to morality plays. A
noteworthy philosopher was Hryhoriy Skorovoda (1722-1794).
After the assassination of Tsar Pavlo in 1801 his successor, Tsar
Aleksander I, began to revert to strict Russian rule. There were some hopes for
a renewal of the Hetmanate, in 1812 and later in 1831, when Cossack regiments
were organized to help with Russian warfare, but it did not eventuate.
Russianization of Ukraine continued.
However, many literary works, although written in Russian, reflected Ukrainian
customs, history and folklore. The most famous writer of such works was Mykolay
Hohol (Nikolai Gogol), author of "Sorochynskyi Fair", "Taras
Bulba" and many more. Among non fiction works of this period was book
about the history of Ukraine up to abolition of Hetmanate, by George
Kosinskyi, published in 1840. Also a book on Ukrainian grammar by Pavlowskyi
appeared about same time. Folk stories, songs and art became very popular
subjects in printed publications, which brought Ukrainian peasants and intelligentsia
closer together.
Clandestine societies called "hromadas" (communities)
promoting Ukrainian culture were being organized. Associated with Kyiv Hromada
was Mykhaylo Drahomanov, who advocated transformation of the Russian Empire
into a federation of independent states. A secret political association called
the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius (formed in 1826) propagated
social equality and freedom of thought, conscience and speech. They also
envisaged a federation of Slavic states under the leadership of Ukraine.
Schools, universities and theaters began to develop. Books and journals
appeared, notably by professor at Kharkiv University (which opened in 1805) Petro Hulak-Artemovskyi,
ethnographer Amvroziy Metlynskyi and graduate Mykola Kostomariv, who later
became a famous historian. Still, the majority of books, although dealing with
Ukrainian matters, were published in the Russian language until the appearance
in 1840 of "Kobzar", a collection of poems by famous poet and painter
Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861).
Shevchenko, born a serf, was bought out of servitude by a group of
artists who recognized his talent for painting, but became famous mainly
through his poems. In his poems Shevchenko protested against injustices and
suppression of freedom in Ukraine,
encouraged preservation of Ukrainian language and reminded russianized
descendants of Cossacks forgotten truth and glory of Ukrainian past. His poetry
reflected a conception of Ukraine as a free and democratic society that had
a profound influence on the development on Ukrainian political thought. In 1845
Shevchenko worked at Kyiv University together with other prominent activists for Ukrainian
renaissance such as Maksymovych, Kulish and Kostomariv (author of History of
Cossacks).
Conditions deteriorated in 1847; members of Brotherhood of Saints Cyril
and Methodius, and many writers including Taras Shevchenko, were arrested,
tried and exiled and forbidden to write. They were not allowed to return till
after year 1850. Ukrainian reaction to Russian rule was renewed in 1850s,
mainly due to the return from exile by members of Brotherhood of St Cyril and
writer Kulish, who began to publish ethnographical material collected before
his exile. The new star of Ukrainian literature, Marko Vowchok published the
journals "Khata" (Home) and "Osnova" (Groundwork),
(1860-1862). A group called Osnova promoted the liberation of the peasants from
serfdom and education, organized Sunday schools and published Ukrainian
textbooks. They defended Ukrainian history and language from Russian and Polish
influences. This movement even gained support within some Russian circles.
In 1862, the St Petersburgh education committee recommended the
introduction of Ukrainian language into state schools. Russian writers became
interested in Ukrainian literature, especially in poems by Taras Shewchenko.
However all this came to a halt during a Polish uprising in 1863 when the
Russian government accused Ukrainians of supporting the Poles in their effort
to gain independence from Russia.
At the start of the 1870s the centre of the Ukrainian movement was in
Kyiv, where censorship was relaxed and which made literary and scientific
activity possible. Promoting Ukrainian sciences were Historian Antonovych and
Drahomanov, ethnographers Chubynsjkyi and Rudchenko, linguists Zhytetskyi and
Mykhaljchuk. In 1672 they founded a branch of Geographical Society in Kyiv,
which became the centre of Ukrainian culture. Talented writers such as
Rudansjkyi, Nechuy-Levytskyi, Myrnyi, Konysjkyi and Starytskyi represented
Ukrainian literature. Mykola Lysenko provided foundations for Ukrainian Music
by his collection of songs and compositions and by staging of many beautiful
concerts.
Although all these activities were of cultural and scientific nature
only, avoiding political, or even social affairs, they did not escape the
attention of Ukrainian enemies. Government officials Regelman and Yusefovich
kept complaining to Russian authorities that promotion of Ukrainian language
and literature was a Polish and Austrian intrigue intended to separate Ukraine from Russia.
Consequently, a commission in 1875 instituted censorship of Ukrainian
literature and banned books from western Ukraine, except those published by Russophiles, which
supported Moscow. The Kyiv
branch of the Geographical Society was closed down and in 1876 came the ban on
publication of books in Ukrainian language. Thus cultural activities moved
again west and centered on the Taras Shevchenko Association, founded in 1873 in Lviv with help by Ukrainians from the east.
In Kyiv, to circumvent ban on Ukrainian language, a scientific and
historical journal, "Kievskaya Starina" (Ancient Kyiv), came out in
1882. It was written in the Russian language but by Ukrainian authors and in
the 1890s included some articles in Ukrainian. The literature in Ukrainian
language was at first restricted to cheap popular novels but later more serious
themes were introduced by prominent authors such as Kotsubynsjkyi, Hrinchenko,
Samiylenko and Lesya Ukrainka (1871-1913). There was a strong development of
Ukrainian theater generated by plays based on folklore, notably by
Kropyvnytskyi and Karpenko-Karyi (Ivan Tobylevych) and performances by many
talented actors.
Political activity accelerated toward the end of the century. Younger,
primarily student led hromadas became involved in politiical activities. One
such group in Kharkiv developed into the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party, which
in a pamphlet published in 1900 advanced a political goal of "one, single,
indivisible, free, independent Ukraine"
The ban by Russian authorities on Ukrainian language being used during
meetings and seminars intensified the struggle and political activity in
defense of the Ukrainian culture. In December of 1904 a special
commission of ministers concluded that the Ukrainian national movement does not
constitute a serious danger to Russia.
In 1905 the cancellation of the ban on Ukrainian language created great
expectations for progress in cultural and political life. However attempts in
1906 to advance the Ukrainian cause by some deputies in Russian parliament
(Duma) did not achieve any significant results. The anti-Ukrainian attitude of
the authorities hindered, but did not stop progress of Ukrainian culture,
education and economy.
The newspapers "Khliborob" (Bread Producer), "Hromadsjka
Dumka"
(Community Thought), "Ridnyi Kray" (Native Country),
"Selo" (Village)
and journals "Viljna Ukraina" (Free Ukraine) and "Nova
Hromada" (New
Community) were being widely read. The creation of the Ukrainian
Scientific
Association in 1907 assembled scientific forces of different
disciplines.
The Ukrainian movement looked forward with confidence toward the future.
THE COSSACKS
The Cossack stronghold, Zaporozhian Sitch, was subservient to Moscow and was utilized for raids on Crimea and Turkey. During the Turkish war, which
started in 1768, several thousand Cossacks supported the Russians in battles on
land and Sea. Eulogies from the Tsarina but little else and restrictions of
Cossack freedoms continued rewarded their efforts. Their lands were being
colonized by Russians, Serbians and other foreigners with an aim of creation of
the so-called Novorossiya or New Russia state in the south ofUkraine.
After end of Turkish war in 1775, the Cossacks were being gradually
disarmed and in the Summer of that year, Russian general Tekeli surrounded the
Cossacks in the Sitch itself, with superior forces, and demanded the
abandonment of their fortress. Faced with such overwhelming odds, Cossack chief
Kalnyshevskyj surrendered. The Sitch was destroyed and abolished by Tzarist
edict on the 3rd of August 1775. Kalnyshevskyj and the other Cossack leaders
were exiled to Siberia.
The Cossack lands were granted to Russian nobles. The Cossacks were told
to disperse and settle in towns and villages or to join the Russian forces.
Many Cossacks escaped and settled in Turkey near the Danube delta.
In 1778 they were formally accepted under Turkish rule. By end of 1780 all
districts, which were formerly under the Hetmanate, were incorporated into the
Russian regime. In 1783 all Cossack regiments were transferred to the Russian
forces, peasants were prohibited to leave their landlords, which made them
serfs on their former land. Ukrainian church autonomy was abolished and the
church property was transferred to Russian treasury.
When the Cossacks in Turkey,
under pressure from Russian field marshal
Potemkin, were told to resettle further inland beyond the Danube river, many of them returned home. Potemkin, in order
to encourage this process to continue and to discourage future exits of
Cossacks from Ukraine, decided
in 1783 to organize the Cossacks under name of Black Sea Force. These Cossacks,
after another Turkish war in 1792, were resettled to Kubanj and were allowed to
reestablish their former system and customs. Other Cossacks settled in lands
under Austrian rule. The Cossacks, who remained inTurkey, were under constant
pressure from Russia to return. At the start of another Turkish
war in 1828 Cossack chief Osyp Hladkyj decided to go over to the Russian side
and many Cossacks followed him. After the war they at first settled near
Mariupol on coast of Azov Sea and in the 1860s resettled in Kubanj.
Cossacks, who remained in Turkey were dispersed, as reprisal for betrayal
by Osyp Hladkyj.
The country was reconquered and experienced a Soviet rule that
engineered two genocidal famines (1921-1922 and 1932-1933) - known as the
Holodomor - in which over 8 million died. In World War II, Nazi German and
Soviet armies were responsible for some 7 million more deaths. However, after
the WWII, Ukraine borders where extended to the West by
shifting Poland, see Curzon
line, and to the East by acquiring Crimea.
Renewed independence was achieved in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union
and Ukrainewas a
founding member of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
3. The
cultural-historical process in Ukraine.
The Culture of Ukraine is a result of influence over
millennia from the West and East, with an assortment of strong
culturally-identified ethnic groups. Like most Western countries, Ukrainian
customs are heavily influenced by Christianity. Russian and other Eastern
European cultures also have had a more or less significant impact on the
Ukrainian culture.
Many people don't know much about Ukraine. Ukraine is a quite large country in Eastern Europe
(about the size of Texas or France) with a fairly large population (48 million).
It is a Slavic country with two dominant languages — Ukrainian and Russian —
that are spoken about equally (though only Ukrainian is the official state
language). Most Ukrainians today consider themselves Christians, with major
religions being Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
The capital of Ukraine — Kiev (or Kyiv) — has over 3 million
people. Other large cities are Kharkov (or
Kharkiv), Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk (or Dnipropetrovsk), Odessa(or Odesa), and
Lviv. The spelling of
these cities in English can differ depending on whether the names have been
transliterated from Ukrainian or Russian.
Ukraine was part of the
Soviet Union, or USSR, until its
breakup in 1991. Parts of Ukraine have been independent countries in the
past, and modern-day Ukraine has been independent since August 24,
1991. Ukraine maintains close economic, political,
cultural, and linguistic ties to Russia,
but is a separate country with its own political system and geopolitical
strategy. Other countries that border Ukraine are: Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania,
and Moldova.
Ukraine is poorer than
most countries in Europe, but its market economy has been growing fast since
2000 after years of depression following the collapse of the Soviet Union's command economy. During
this collapse, industrial production dropped more than during the Great
Depression in the United States.
This caused millions of Ukrainians to emigrate to western countries in search
of work and a better life. Now things are getting better — especially in the
big cities — and some Ukrainian emigrants have been moving back. Today there
are quite a few rich people, but most of the country remains poor, and there is
a small but growing middle class. Ukraine's
currency is the Hryvnia. U.S. dollars and Euros are also widely used. Ukraine is not part of the European Union, but many Ukrainians
hope to join it some day.
Ukraine is a democratic country with a parliament (Verkhovna Rada) and a
president (currently President Viktor Yuschenko). In late 2004, the Orange
Revolution brought Yuschenko to power after election results were falsified in
favor of Viktor Yanukovich, who is now the Prime Minister of Ukraine. There is
much competition for power and control of large industries in Ukraine. Voters
themselves are split between those who favor a European political course
(mostly in the west and north) and those who favor closer ties with Russia (mostly in the east and
south). These two halves of Ukraine also
have cultural and linguistic differences.
Ukraine is a mostly flat
or rolling country with fertile plains which are heavily farmed and some
forests in the north. There are large rivers such as the Dnipro, which flows
south into the Black Sea. There
are low mountain ranges in Crimea — in the extreme south of Ukraine — and in the far west (the Carpathians). The highest
peak is Hoverla at 2061 meters above sea level ( 6762 feet). Most of Ukraine is
quite cold and often snowy in the winter, but warm or hot in the summer. The
weather is similar to the northern Great Plains and Upper Midwest (i.e. North
and South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa).
Ukraine is not a common
destination for international tourists, but it is slowly growing in popularity.
Travelers from the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, Japan, and some other countries do not need a visa to
visit. The most visited cities are Kiev,
Lviv, and Odessa. The peninsula of Crimea is also popular as a summer destination
because of its many beaches and resorts (such as Yalta) along the Black Sea coast.
There is also skiing in the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine. Visitors to Ukraine usually visit Orthodox and Catholic churches, Jewish
sites, and ancient monasteries and fortresses. Ukrainian souvenirs are also
popular among tourists and include woodwork, painted eggs, and embroidery. Ukraine's crime rate is quite low —
especially violent crime — and the country is safe for tourists. English is
spoken well by just a few young and middle-aged people.
Ukrainians are known for their hospitality and enjoyment of
conversations, eating, and drinking. It is quite easy to make friends in Ukraine. Many foreigners come to Ukrainefor romance as well. In the cities
you will see a lot of people with a European mentality side by side with Soviet
influences. Much of Ukraine is agrarian, and people in villages often
live in old-fashioned houses and ride horse carts around. Cell phones and
electronic devices have become very popular in Ukraine, and people are buying automobiles right and
left, which has created traffic problems in the cities.
When we speak of culture as a distinguishing mark of a specific nation,
we mean, of course, not culture in the widest sense of the word, but those
well-known cultural peculiarities which characterise every European nation.
The Ukraine lies wholly within the confines of the
greater European cultural community. But its distance from the great
culture-centers of Western andCentral Europe has, of course, not been without profound effect. The Ukraine is at a low stage of culture, and must be measured by
Eastern European standards.
The Ukraine, which in
the 11th Century caused great astonishment among travelers from Western Europe,
because of its comparatively high culture, can now be counted only as one of
the semi-cultural countries of Europe.
The very low stage of material culture, to which the economic conditions of the
country bear the best witness, is characteristic of the Ukraine in its
entire extent. The intellectual culture of the people appears frightfully low.
The number who know how to read are 172 out of a thousand in Volhynia, 155 in Podolia, 181 in Kiev, 259 in Kherson, 184 in Chernihiv, 169 in Poltava, 168 in Kharkiv, 215 inKaterinoslav, 279 in Tauria, and 168 in Kuban. These hopeless figures, to be sure,
are only a result of the exclusive use of the Russian language, which is
unintelli- gible to the Ukrainians, in all the schools. Even in the first
school-year, it is not permitted to explain the most unintelligible words of
the foreign language in Ukrainian. This frightfully low grade of education of
the people permits of no progress in the economic life of the country. Even the
most well-meaning efforts of the government or the Zemstvo, break on the brazen
wall of illiteracy and ignorance of the Russian language. And Ukrainian books
of instruction and information are forbidden as dangerous to the state. No
wonder, then, that the Ukrainian farmer tills his field, raises his cattle, carries
on his home industries, cures his ills, etc., just as his forefathers used to
do. There is a small number of the educated who are still cultivating
literature and art, feebly enough for the size of the nation — but how could
one speak of a distinct, independent culture here?
And yet it exists. For the low stage of culture which every foreign
tourist, who only knows the railroads and cities, immediately notices, applies
only to the culture created in the Ukraine by the ruling foreign peoples, to- gether
with the small mass of Ukrainian intelligenzia. (The intellectual culture of
the Ukrainian educated classes will be discussed later). In the same way, every
hasty observer would consider the Ukrainian peasant as a semi-European,
standing on a very low level of culture. And yet this illiterate peasant
possesses an individual popular culture, far exceeding the popular cultures of
the Poles, Russians and White Russians. The settlements, buildings, costumes,
the nourishment and mode of life of the Ukrainian peasant stand much higher
than those of the Russian, White Russian and Polish peasant. Hence, the
Ukrainian peasant easily and completely assimilates all peasant settlers in his
own land. The rich ethnological life, the unwritten popular literature and popular
music which, perhaps, have no counterpart in Europe, the highly developed popular art and standard
of living, preserve the Ukrainian peasant from denationalization, even in his
most distant colonies. The power of opposition to Russification is particularly
great. The Ukrainian peasant never enters into mixed marriages with the Russian
muzhik, and hardly ever lives in the same village with him. The ethnological
culture of the Ukrainian people is, by all means, original and peculiar;
entirely different from the popular cultures of all the neigh- boring peoples.
Even in prehistoric times, Ukrainian territory was the seat of a very
high culture, the remains of which, now brought to light, astonish the
investigator thru their loftiness and beauty. In ancient times the early Greek
cultural influences flourished in the Southern
Ukraine, then the Roman, and in the Middle Ages the Byzantine. Byzantine
culture had a great influence upon ancient Ukrainian culture, and its traces
may still be seen in the popular costume and in ornamentation.
The most important element in Ukrainian culture, however, is entirely
peculiar, and independent of these influences. The entire view of life of the
common man, to this day, has its roots in the pre-Christian culture of the
ancient Ukraine. The
entire creative faculty of the spirit of the nation has its source there ; all
the customs and manners and very many of the songs and sayings. Christi- anity
did not destroy the old view of life in the Ukraine, but was adapted to it. This accommodation was
all the easier, because the character of the ancient faith and philos- ophy of
life of the Ukrainian people were not so gloomy and cruel as was the case with
many of the other peoples of Europe.
Outside of the prehistoric, Byzantine and Christian body of culture, we
observe extremely few foreign influences in the popular culture of the Ukraine. It is highly inde- pendent and
individualized. The Polish and Muscovite influences are very insignificant, and
appear only here and there in the borderlands of theUkraine.
It would require the giving of a detailed ethnological description of
the Ukrainian people if we wished to draw a complete picture of its peculiar
culture. Such a description has no place in geography, and certainly none in a
book of such general nature as this. Therefore, I shall discuss but briefly the
various phases of the popular culture of the Ukraine, so that in this respect, too, the independent
posi- tion of the Ukrainians among the peoples of Eastern Europe may appear in the proper light.
The Ukrainian villages (with the exception of the mountain villages,
which consist of a long irregular line of farms) are always built
picturesquely, in pretty places. The huts of a typical Ukrainian village are
always surround- ed by orchards, which is hardly ever the case among the
Russians and White Russians, and very rarely so among the Poles. These
neighbors of the Ukrainians plant orchards only in the few regions where
professional fruit- growing has developed. In a Ukrainian village, the green of
the orchards is considered absolutely necessary. The Russian will not endure
trees in the neighborhood of his hut; they obstruct his view. In the Ukraine an orchard is an indispensable constituent part of
even the poorest peasant homestead. And the separate farms, in which very much
of the spirit of the glorious national past still lives, are hidden in the
fresh green of fruit orchards and apiaries.
The Ukrainian house is built of wood only in the moun- tains and other
wooded areas. In all other regions it is made of clay and covered with straw.
The front windows are always built facing the south. In this way, different
sides of the houses face the street, and in general, too, street life does not
play so important a part in a Ukrainian village as it does in Polish, White
Russian or Russian villages. The Ukrainian houses are always well fenced in,
altho not so strongly and so high as the Russian houses in the forest zone, or
as the White Russian houses. They usually stand (except in Western Podolia) rather far apart. Thus,
the danger of fire is less than in the Russian villages of the Chornozyom
region, where the huts lie very close together. As a result, the insurance
companies, for instance, charge smaller premiums in the Governments of Kursk and
Voroniz for insuring Ukrainian village proper- ties than for Russian.
The general external appearance of the Ukrainian huts, which are always
well whitewashed and have flower gardens before the windows, is very
picturesque, and contrasts to advantage with the dwellings of the neighboring
races, especially the miserable and dirty Russian "izbas." All the
houses of the Ukrainians, excepting, of course, the poorest huts, are divided
by a vestibule into two parts. The division into two we do not find in the typical
huts of the Poles and White Russians. A further characteristic in which the
Ukrainian house differs from the houses of the neighboring peoples, is its
comparative cleanliness. Particularly does it differ in this respect from the
Russian izbas, which are regularly full of various insects and para- sites,
where sheep and pigs, and, in winter, even the large cattle, live comfortably
together with the human inhabi- tants. The well-known authority on the Russian
village, Novikov, relates a very characteristic little story in this
connection. Several Russian families settled in a Ukrainian village. Naturally,
cattle were kept in the living room. And when the Ukrainian village elders
expressly forbade the keeping of cattle in the huts, the Russians moved out, because
they could not become accustomed to the Ukrainian orderliness. It happens very
seldom that the Russians live together with the Ukrainians in one and the same
village. In such a case, the Russian part of the village lies separate, on the
other side of a ravine, a creek, or a rivulet. In the regions of mixed
nationality we see, adjoining one another, purely Ukrainian and purely Russian
villages.
The interior arrangement of the houses and the arrange- ment of the
barnyard differentiate the Ukrainian very sharply from his neighbor. Still more
decidedly does he show his individuality in his dress. The mode of dress is
quite varied thruout the great area of the Ukraine, and yet we observe everywhere a distinctness
of type and individu- ality as opposed to the dress of neighboring peoples.
Only the dress of the Polissye people bears some trace of White Russian
influence, on the western border of Polish influence, in Kuban of Caucasian
influence (Russian influence appears nowhere). But all these influences are
slight. Ukrainian dress is always original and esthetic. No one can wonder,
therefore, that the Ukrainian costume is surviving longer than the Polish,
White Russian and Russian, and is giving way very slowly to the costume of the
cities.
The description of even the main types of Ukrainian costume would take
us too far afield ; similarly, we cannot discuss the diet of the people in
detail, altho in this respect, too, the Ukrainian race retains its definite
individuality, those cases excepted, of course, in which economic strain forces
the people to be satisfied with "international" potatoes and bread.
We now come to the intellectual culture of the Ukrainian people. If the
material culture of the Ukrainians, despite its originality and independence is
not at a strikingly higher level than that of the neighboring peoples, the
intellectual culture of the Ukrainian people certainly far outstrips all the
others.
The Ukrainian peasant is distinguished, above all, by his earnest and
sedate appearance. Beside the lively Pole and the active Russian, the Ukrainian
seems slow, even lazy. This characteristic, which is in part only superficial,
comes from the general view of life of the Ukrainians. According to the view of
the Ukrainian, life is not merely a terrible struggle for existence, opposing
man to hard necessity at every turn; life, in itself, is the object of
contemplation, life affords possibilities for pleasure and feeling, life is
beautiful, and its esthetic aspect must, at all times and in all places, be highly
respected. We find a similar view among the peoples of antiquity. In the
present time, this view is very unpractical for nations with wide spheres of
activity. At all events this characteristic of the Ukrainian people is the sign
of an old, lofty, individual culture, and here, too, is the origin of the noted
"aristo- cratic democracy" of the Ukrainians. Other foundations of
the individuality of the Ukrainian are the results of the gloomy historical
past of the nation. It is the origin, first of all, of the generally melancholy
individuality, taciturnity, suspicion, scepticism, and even a certain in-
difference to daily life. The ultimate foundations of the individualism of the
Ukrainian are derived from his his- torico-political traditions; preference for
extreme individu- alism, liberty, equality and popular government. Pro- -
ceeding from these fundamentals, all the typical char- acteristics of the
Ukrainians may be logically explained with ease.
The family relations reflect the peculiarity of the Ukrainian people
very clearly. The comparatively high ancient culture, coupled with
individualism and a love of liberty, does not permit the development of
absolute power in the head of the family (as is the case among the Poles and
Russians). Likewise the position of woman is much higher in the Ukrainian
people than in the Polish or Russian. In innumerable cases the woman is the
real head of the household. Far less often does this state of affairs occur
among the Poles, and only by exception among the Russians. A daughter is never
married off against her will among the Ukrainians; she has human rights in the
matter. Among the Russians, this business is in the hands of the father, who
takes the so-called kladka for his daughter, that is, he sells her to whomever
he pleases. Grown sons among the Ukrainians, as soon as they are married, are
presented by their fathers with a house and an independent farm. The dwelling
under one roof of a composite family (a family clan), as is usual among the
Russians, is almost impossible among the Ukrainians, and is of exceedingly rare
occurrence. The father has no absolute power in this case (as among the
Russians) to preventjiiscord in the family.
It is part of the peculiarity of the Ukrainians that they seldom form
friendships, but these are all the more lasting, altho reserved and rarely
intimate. The Russians make friends among one another very easily, but they
separate very easily, too, and become violent enemies. The Poles form close
friendships easily and are true friends, too. Enmity is terrible among the
Russians; among the Poles and Ukrainians it is less bitter, and is, moreover,
less lasting. The capacity for association is very considerable in the
Ukrainians. All such association is based on complete equality in the division
of labor and profit. A foreman is elected and his orders are obeyed, but he
receives an equal share of the profits and works .together with the rest. Among
the Russians, the bolshak selects his workmen himself, does not work, and is
simply an overseer. Still he receives the greatest part of the profits. Among
the Poles the capacity for association is but slightly developed.
At this juncture we may also discuss the relation of the Ukrainians to
their communities. The Ukrainian community (hromada) is a voluntary union of
freemen for the sake of common safety and the general good. Beyond this purpose
the Ukrainian hromada possesses no power, for it might limit the individual
desires of some one of the hromada members. For this reason, for example,
common ownership of land which has been introduced, following the Russian
model, chiefly in the left half of the Ukraine,
is an abomination in the eyes of the Ukrainian people, and is ruining them,
economically, to a much greater extent than the division of the land in the
case of individual ownership. The Russian "mir" is something entirely
different. It is a miniature absolute state, altho it appears in the garb of a
communistic republic. The mir is complete- ly a part of the Russian national
spirit, and the Russian muzhik obeys the will of the mir unquestioningly, altho
its will enslaves his own.
The general relation to other people has become a matter of fixed form
to the Ukrainians; a form developed in the course of centuries. The ancient
culture and the individual- istic cult have produced social forms among the
Ukrainian peasantry which sometimes remind one of ancient court- forms. The
proximity and influence of cities and other centers of "culture"
have, to a great extent, spoiled this peasant ceremonial. But in certain large
areas of the Ukraine it may still be observed in its full
development. Great delicacy, courtesy and attention to others, coupled with
unselfish hospitality, these are the general substance of the social forms of
our peasants. These social forms are entirely different from the rough manners
of the Polish or Muscovite peasants, which, in addition, have been spoiled by
the demoralizing influence of the cities.
The relation of the Ukrainian people to religion is also original and
entirely different from that of all the adjacent nations. To the Ukrainian, the
essence of his faith, its ethical substance, is the important factor. This he
feels deeply and respects in himself and others. Dogmas and rites are less
significant in the Ukrainian's conception of religion. Hence, despite
differences in faith, not the slight- est disharmony exists between the great
mass of the ortho- dox Ukrainians of Russia and the Bukowina, and the 4,000,000
Greek-Catholic Ukrainians of Galicia and Hungary. From the ancient culture and consideration of
the individual comes, also, the great tolerance of the Ukrain- ians toward
other religions, a tolerance which we do not find among the Poles and Russians.
The spirit of the Ukrainians has, likewise, been very indifferent toward all
sects and roskols. Among the Poles, sects flourished very luxuriantly in the
16th Century; among the Russians, there are to this day any number of sects,
often very curious ones, and more are constantly arising. Among the Ukrainians,
a single sect has been formed, the so-called stunda (a sort of Baptist creed).
This sect is not the result of rite formalism, however, but merely an effect of
the Russification of the Ukrainian national church. In order to be able to pray
to God in their mother-tongue, more than a million of the Ukrainian peasantry
is persevering in this faith, which came over from adjacent German colonies,
despite harsh persecution on the part of the Russian clergy and government.
The worth of Ukrainian culture appears, in its most beautiful and its
highest form, in the unwritten literature of the people. The philosophical
feeling of the Ukrainian people finds expression in thousands and thousands of
pregnant proverbs and parables, the like of which we do not find even in the
most advanced nations of Europe.
They reflect the great soul of the Ukrainian people and its worldly wisdom. But
the national genius of the Ukrainians has risen to the greatest height in their
popular poetry. Neither the Russian nor the Polish popular poetry can bear
comparison with the Ukrainian. Beginning with the historical epics (dumy) and
the extremely ancient and yet living songs of worship, as for example,
Christmas songs (kolady), New Years' songs (shchedrivki) , spring songs
(vessilni), harvest songs (obzinkovi), down to the little songs for particular
occasions (e. g. shumki, kozachki, kolomiyki) , we find in all the productions
of Ukrainian popular epic and lyric poetry, a rich content and a great
perfection of form. In all of it the sympathy for nature, spiritualization of
nature, and a lively comprehension of her moods, is superb; in all of it we
find a fantastic but warm dreaminess; in all of it we find the glorification of
the loftiest and purest feelings of the human soul. A glowing love of country reveals
itself to us everywhere, but particularly in innumerable Cossack songs, a
heartrending longing for a glorious past, a glori- fication, altho not without
criticism, of their heroes. In their love-songs we find not a trace of
sexuality; not the physical, but the spiritual beauty of woman is glorified
above all. Even in jesting songs, and further, even in ribald songs, there is a
great deal of anacreontic grace. And, at the same time, what beauty of diction,
what wonderful agreement of content and form! No one would believe that this
neglected, and for so many centuries, suppressed and tormented people could
scatter so many pearls of true poetic inspiration thru its unhappy land.
This peculiarity of the poetical creative spirit enables us, just as do
the other elements of culture, to recognize the vast difference between the
Ukrainian and the Russian people. The Russian folk songs are smaller in number
and variety, form and content. Sympathetic appreciation of nature is scant. The
imagination either rises to super- natural heights or sinks to mere trifling.
Criminal mon- strosities and the spirit of destruction are glorified as objects
of national worship. The conception of love is sensual, the jesting and ribald
songs disgusting.
Like their popular poetry, the popular music of the Ukrainians far
surpasses the popular music of the neigh- boring peoples, and differs from them
very noticeably. Polish popular music is just as poor as Polish popular poetry,
and almost thruout possesses a cheerful major character. Russian popular music
has many minor ele- ments in addition to the major elements. But the Russian
popular melodies are quite different from the Ukrainian. They are either
boisterously joyous or hopelessly sad. The differences in the character of the
melodies are so great that one need not be a specialist to be able to tell at
once whether a melody is Ukrainian or Russian.
Popular art, in our people, is entirely original and much more highly
advanced than in the neighboring peoples. The remains of the ancient popular
painting are still in existence in the left half of the Ukraine. Wood carving has developed to a highly
artistic form among the Hutzuls (there are the well-known peasant-artists
Shkriblak, Mehedinyuk, and others). The chief field of Ukrainian popular art,
however, is decoration. Two fundamental types are used; a geometric pattern
with the crossing of straight and broken lines, and a natural pattern, which is
modelled after parts of plants (as leaves, flowers, etc.). In the embroideries,
cloths and glass bead -work, we find such an esthetic play of colors, that even
tho each individual color is glaring, the whole has a very picturesque and
harmonious effect. The decorative art of the Russians is much lower. It is
based on animal motifs or entire objects, e. g., whole plants, houses, etc.,
and evinces an outspoken preference for glaring colors," which are so
combined, however, as to shock the eye. Among the Poles, the art of
ornamentation is very slightly developed. As for colors, they prefer the gaudy,
not many at a time; usually, blue is combined with bright red.
For the sake of completeness, we must still say some- thing about
Ukrainian manners and customs. In this aspect, too, the Ukrainian peasantry is
richer than its neighbors. Only the White Russians are not far behind them. The
entire life of a Ukrainian peasant, in itself full of need and poverty, is,
nevertheless, full of poetic and deeply significant usages and customs, from
the cradle to the grave. Birth, christening, marriage, death, all are combined
with various symbolic usages, particularly the wedding, so rich in ceremonies
and songs, so different in its entire substance from the Russian or Polish. The
entire year of the Ukrainian constitutes one great cycle of holidays, with
which a host of ceremonies are connected, most of which have come down from
pre-Christian times. We find similar ceremonies among the White Russians, some
also among the Poles, e .g., Christmas songs, songs of the seasons, but among
the Russians, on the other hand, we find no parallel to the Ukrainian
conditions. Among the Russians, neither the Christmas songs (kolady) are
customary, nor the ceremonies of Christmas eve ibohata kutya), neither the
midwinter festival (shchedri vechir), with its songs (shche- drivki), nor the
spring holidays (yur russalchin velikden) and spring songs (vesnianki), nor the
feast of the solstice (kupalo), nor the autumn ceremonies on the feast-days of
St. Andrew or St. Katherine, etc. The entire essence of the popular metaphysics
of the Ukrainians is quite foreign to the Russians, and almost entirely so to
the Poles. Only the White Russians form a certain analogy, but, among them,
pure superstition outweighs customs and ceremonies in importance.
Sufficient facts have been given to make clear to the reader the
complete originality and independence of Ukrainian popular culture. We now come
to a brief survey of the cultural efforts of the educated Ukrainians.
The number of educated Ukrainians is comparatively small. Hardly a
century has passed since the intelligence of the nation awoke to new life, yet,
in its hands lies the development of the national culture in the widest sense
of the word. The disproportion between the magnitude of the task and the small
number of the workers for culture, is at once apparent. And yet the results of
the work, in spite of obstacles on every side, have grown in volume.
The Ukraine lies within the sphere of influence of
European culture. This culture has spread from Central and Western Europe over
the territory of theUkraine and its
neighboring peoples, the Poles, Russians, White Russians, Magyars and
Roumanians. Each one of these nations has accepted the material culture of Western Europe to a greater or less degree, and adjusted the
spiritual culture to its national peculiarities. The Ukrainians, for a long
time after the loss of their first state and the decline of their ancient
culture, found no line along which they could develop their national culture
independently. For centuries they vacillated between the cultures of Poland and Russia.
To this day, now that the conditions are much better, one may still find among
the Ukrainians individuals who, culturally, are Poles or Russians, and only
speak and feel as Ukrainians. Such a condition is very sad, and causes the Ukraine untold injury — most of all in the field of material
culture, which, in both these neighboring nations, is very incomplete.
Agriculture, mining, trade and commerce, are on a much lower plane among the
Poles than in Western Europe.
And what is to be said of the Russians, who are a mere parody of a cultured
nation in almost every field, altho they possess so great a political
organization? No one need be surprised that material culture is of so low a
grade in the Ukraine. On the
other hand, it has become clear to every intelligent Ukrainian, that the
development of material culture is possible only thru Western European
influence, by sending Ukrainian engineers, manufacturing specialists, merchants
and farmers, to Western and Central
Europe to learn their
business.
In the field of Ukrainian mental culture, the chief influences to be
considered are Polish and Russian. In this field, Polish culture is
comparatively very high. It possesses a very rich literature, considerable
science and art, and very definite principles of life. The influence of Polish
culture is limited almost exclusively to Galicia at the
pre- sent time. But it was very strong until very recent years, when it began
to decrease. At one time, however, the entire Ukraine, particularly the right half, was emphati-
cally under the influence of Polish culture for centuries (16th to the 18th
Century).
There is one element in the spiritual culture of the Poles which
certainly deserves to be, and is, imitated by the Ukrainians. It is the tone of
national patriotism, the love for the nation, its present and its past, which
is everywhere evident. Hence, modern Polish literature must be a model for
Ukrainian literature in its tendencies and its sentiments. But, beyond its
patriotic tone, Polish culture is not appropriate for the Ukrainian people. It
is aristo- cratic, by reason of its descent and its philosophy of the universe.
It is far removed from the mass of the people it should represent. In spite of
all efforts, the Polish culture of the educated classes has been unable to
establish an organic connection with the common people of Poland. It has been built up above the
masses and has not grown out of them. To build up Ukrainian culture entirely
after the model of Polish culture, would mean to tear it from its life-giving
roots in the soul of the people. That it would be deadly to Ukrainian culture,
the Ukrainians have perceived for a long time.
Russian culture is much more dangerous to the Ukrainian people than
Polish. In its material aspect it is of a very low grade. In the spiritual
field it possesses a very rich literature and a noteworthy science and art. The
spiritual culture of Russia now dominates all of the Russian Ukraine,
and has, to a great extent, become prevalent even among those educated
Ukrainians in Russia who possess real national consciousness.
This very circumstance constitutes a great danger for the development of
Ukrainian culture. For, let the Mus- covite conquest extend over the
Ukrainians, even in the cultural field, and there is an end of all the
independence of the Ukrainian element, and its beautiful language will be, in
fact, degraded to a peasant dialect. But a still greater danger lies in the
quality of the Russian cultural influence. The first evil characteristic of
Russian culture is the complete lack of national and patriotic sentiment, which
is absolutely necessary for an aspiring culture like the Ukrainian. Russian
culture is infecting the Ukrainians with an ominous national indifference.
Another unfavor- able characteristic of all Russian culture, is the fact that
it is undemocratic thru and thru, and very far removed from the Russian people.
The Russian people did not create this culture; the educated, in producing it,
took nothing from the people. An intelligent man, brought up in the atmosphere
of Russian culture, is unspeakably distant from the Russian people, so that it
is impossible for him to work at the task of enlightening them. The views of
the Russian "lovers of the people" (narodniki) , or of a Tolstoy,
con- cerning the common people and its soul, simply offend us thru their
unexampled ignorance of the peculiarities and customs of the common people,
A culture so far removed from the people as the Russian can bring no
benefit to the Ukrainians. We observe this, best of all, in the condition of
the muzhik, to whom the educated Russian has never been able to find an
approach, and now the latter looks on indifferently, while the masses sink
deeper and deeper down into the abyss of intellectual and spiritual darkness.
To guide the common people along the path of organic social-political and
economic progress, is a task which an intellect permeated with Russian culture
can never perform. The last Russian revolution, and the beginning of the era of
constitutional government forRussia, have furnished the best proof for the
truth of this assertion.
The other chief characteristic of Russian culture is its manifest
superficiality. Hidden beneath a thin veneer of Western European amenities lies
coarse barbarism. The external manners of the educated Russian very often
strike one by the coarseness, lack of restraint and brutal reckless- ness
accompanying them. We see, then, that even the external forms of European
culture have only been out- wardly assumed by the Russians. Still poorer is
their condition with respect to the things of the spirit. We have observed to
what a slight degree the Russians have been able to assimilate the material
culture of Europe. The same
holds for spiritual culture. Russian literature, particularly the latest, has
brought ethical elements of the most questionable worth into the world's
literature. (Artzibashev and others). Russian science, altho it can point to
some great names and has unlimited means at its disposal, stands far behind
German, English or French science. In Russian science, everything is done for
the sake of effect, without thoroness, without method, hence fatal gaps appear.
Let us consider, for example, our science of geography. Hardly a year passes in
which the Russian government does not send one or more great scientific
expeditions to Asia or to the North Pole. Each expedition
hands in volumes of scientific results, and, at the same time, the surface
configuration of the most populous and cultur- ally most advanced regions of
European Russia, for example, is barely known in its main aspects. The best
geography of Russia was written by the Frenchman Reclus. A
modern, really scientific geography of Russia does not exist.
Even more emphatically does the superficiality of Russian culture appear
in social and political questions. These two directions of human thought have,
in most recent times, become very popular in all Russian society. But what an
abyss separates a European from a Russian in this field! In Europe the theses of the social sciences or of politics are
the result of life. They are adjusted to life conditions and treated
critically. In Russia they are life- less dogmas, about which Russian scholars
of the 20th Century dispute with the same heat and in the same manner as their
ancestors, a few hundred years ago, disputed as to whether the Hallelujah
should be sung twice or three times, whether the confession of faith should
read "born, not created" or "born and not created," whether
one should say, "God have mercy upon us" or "Oh God, have mercy
upon us," whether one should use two fingers in crossing oneself or three,
and so on. Naturally, at that time religious questions were the fashion. Today
it is social questions. And what does it amount to? Rampant doctrinism, the
eternal use of banal commonplaces, an immature setting up of principles. And
the result is — extreme unwieldiness of Russian society in internal politics
and in parliamentarism, in social and national work, together with a deep scorn
of the depraved West (gnili zapad) .
With this superficiality of Russian culture, its most evil
characteristic is connected; the decline of family life and a certain moral
perverseness. This phenomenon is commonly met with in all peoples who have but
recently come in contact with Western European culture. The bad quali- ties of
a high civilization are always assumed first, the good qualities slowly. In
this field the Russians have far outstripped their European models.
The above facts suffice to prove that Russian cultural influences are
dangerous for the Ukrainian people. The severe, rigid materialistic character
of the Russian people will, without any doubt, enable it to outlast the storm
and stress period of the present Russian culture, and guide it to a splendid
future. But for the Ukrainian people, with its sentimental, gentle character,
the assuming of Russian culture would be a deadly poison. Even supposing that
the Ukrainian people might survive such an experiment, a thing which is not
likely, it would forever remain a miser- able appendage of the Russian nation.
And besides, such an experiment is entirely unnecessary. Either we say,
"We are Ukrainians, an independent race and different from the
Russians," and build up our culture quite independently, or we say,
"We are 'Little Russians,' one of the three tribes of Great Russia and of
its high culture," and, in that case, we may calmly lie down on the world
renowned Ukrainian stove. For then it does not pay even to work at the
development of our language. A third alternative does not exist.
At present, however, the former view is generally predominant among the
intelligenzia of the land, and the fact that many intelligent Ukrainians are
permeated with Russian culture is due, not to an ideal conviction, but only to
the powerful influence of the Russian schools and the Russian cities. How do
these educated people stand beneath the Ukrainian peasant who, even on the
shores of the Pacific Ocean, does not exchange his individual Ukrain- ian
popular culture for the Russian, and deserves the scornful, but in our eyes
very commendable saying of the Russians, "Khakhol vyesdie kharkhol!"
If, then, we are to remain a really independent nation, there is only
one avenue open to Ukrainian culture, and that is to follow the culture of
Western Europe step by step, to seek its models among the Germans,
Scandinavians, English and French. And this entire development we must base
upon the broad foundation of our high popular culture. Let us consider with
what piety the really cultural nations of Europe preserve
the little remains of their popular culture. Their few usages or superstitions,
their little body of folk-songs ! How much richer than they are we in all our
misery! The Ukrainian people spoke a mighty first word thru Kotlarevsky a
century ago; it then found the first diamond upon its path, the pure language
of the people. Unfortunately, no Ukrainian has yet arisen who could speak just
as mighty a second word by finding ways and means of lifting the treasures of
the home culture of the land, and enabling the entire nation to work at the
task of using them to advantage. This "apostle of truth and science,"
as he is called by Shevchenko, has not ap- peared, altho he has had several
ancestors, like Draho- maniv. But there are already very many Ukrainians who
would place their seal upon the declaration: "that the Ukraine possesses
so rich a popular culture, that by develop- ing all its hidden possibilities
and supplementing them by elements drawn from the untainted sources of Western
European culture, the Ukrainian nation could attain a complete culture just as
peculiar to itself, and just as exalted among the great European cultures, as
Ukrainian popular culture is among the popular cultures of other peoples."
Hence, the way lay clearly indicated for the Ukrainians of the 19th and
20th Century. Ethnological investigations and the scientific study of folk-lore
have been taken up very eagerly by Ukrainian scholars, so that in this parti-
cular field, recent Ukrainian science, perhaps, ranks highest in all Slavic
science. In no other cultured nation of Europe is the
life of the educated elements so permeated with the influences of the nation's
own popular culture. The Ukrainian cultural movement is hardly a century old,
and yet it has results to show which, even today, guarantee the cultural
independence of the Ukrainian nation. Active relations with Central and Western
European cultures have been established, which may become of incalculable
effect in the further development of Ukrainian culture.
The History of Ukraine-Rus' is the most comprehensive account of the
ancient, medieval, and early modern history of the Ukrainian people. Written by Ukraine’s greatest modern historian,
Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the History remains unsurpassed in its use of sources and
literature, even though its last volume was written sixty years ago. In the
development of the Ukrainian national movement, it is the definitive scholarly
statement that Ukrainians constitute a nation with its own historical process.
For Ukrainians the work is comparable in significance to František
Palacký’s History of Bohemia for the Czechs. The great work of Czech
national historiography was published in the early nineteenth century, but its
Ukrainian counterpart did not appear until the turn of the twentieth. To a
considerable degree, the delay reflects the difficulties Ukrainians faced in
demonstrating that they were not a subgroup of the Russians or Poles and that
they had their own history.
Ukraine found its
Palacký in the person of Mykhailo Hrushevsky. From 1894 to 1934,
Hrushevsky not only wrote the magnum opus of Ukrainian historiography, but also
organized and led the two most productive schools of Ukrainian historical
studies in modern times, the Shevchenko Scientific Society of Lviv, from 1894
to 1914, and the Instituteof History of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, from 1924 to
1930. Hrushevsky’s more than 2,000 works in history, literary history, and
other fields were matched in accomplishment by his inspiration of scores of
younger scholars and his leadership of the Ukrainian national movement. But
while the individuals he trained and the institutions he nurtured were
destroyed in the vortex of Stalinism, his History of Ukraine-Rus'—except for
the lost volume ten, part two, which remained in manuscript—survived. It
weathered the Soviet assault on Ukrainian culture because no collective of
specialists commanded by Soviet bureaucrats was able to produce a comparable
work.
Born in 1866 to the family of an educator, the descendant of Right-Bank
clerics, Hrushevsky spent most of his formative years outside Ukraine, in the Caucasus. As a young gymnasium student in Tbilisi, he was strongly impressed by the
classic works of Ukrainian ethnography, history, and literature. This
impression was reinforced by the appearance in 1882 of the journal Kievskaia
starina (Kyivan antiquity), which contained an abundance of material on
Ukrainian affairs. After initial attempts to work in Ukrainian literature, the
young Hrushevsky decided to go to Kyiv, the center of Ukrainophile activities,
to study history.
The Ukrainian movement, organized in the Kyiv Hromada, was still reeling
from the Ems ukase and the banishment of Mykhailo
Drahomanov (1841–95), the leading Ukrainian intellectual of his generation. The
Ukrainian leaders in Kyiv were withdrawing from political activities. Their
goal became the mere survival of the Ukrainian movement. Professor Volodymyr
Antonovych typified the trend with his decision that continuing to research and
teach would be of more long-term significance than any hopeless political
protest. His student Hrushevsky would prove to be the vindication of that
decision.
Under Antonovych’s supervision, Hrushevsky received a firm grounding in
the examination of extensive sources in order to describe Ukrainian social and
economic institutions of the past. Antonovych’s work concentrated on the vast
sources for the history of Right-Bank Ukraine in the sixteenth to eighteenth
centuries, a time when, significantly, the area had not been part of a Russian
state. Hrushevsky followed his mentor’s lead in brilliant studies of the
medieval history of the Kyiv region and of the early modern nobility and
society of the Bar region. He might have been expected to follow Antonovych in
making an academic career in the difficult political situation of
imperialRussia, but developments in the neighboring Habsburg Empire were to
provide him with a much more conducive environment for furthering Ukrainian
historical studies.
In 1890 the dominant Poles of Austrian Galicia showed a willingness to
reach an accommodation with the growing Ukrainian national movement in the
province. Although the Polish-Ukrainian accommodation proved abortive, it did
yield some concessions to the Ukrainians, the most important of which was the
establishment of a chair intended to be in Ukrainian history with Ukrainian as
the language of instruction. Professor Antonovych was called to the chair, but
declined, proposing that his student Mykhailo Hrushevsky be appointed instead.
Hrushevsky’s arrival in Lviv was the culmination of the process whereby the
Ukrainian intelligentsia in the Russian Empire circumvented the imperial
authorities’ restrictions on Ukrainian activities by transferring them to the
Habsburg Empire.
The young Hrushevsky’s inaugural lecture at Lviv University in 1894 sketched an image of Ukrainian
history as the evolution of the Ukrainian people from ancient times to the
present. He called for the application of methods and data from all scholarly
fields, from anthropology to archaeography, to that endeavor. Addressing the
audience in Ukrainian, he demonstrated that a scholarly language appropriate to
both sides of the Zbruch River could be forged. In practice, Hrushevsky was
initiating his life’s project, the writing of a history of Ukraine. He was to use his lectures at Lviv University to
compose the work. He attracted students to seminars where research papers
filled the gaps in the project. He reshaped the Shevchenko Scientific Society
into a scholarly academy with a library and a source publication program that
provided material for his history. By 1898 he had published the first volume of
the Istoriia Ukraïny-Rusy (History of Ukraine-Rus'), which went up only to
the end of the tenth century rather than to the end of the Kyivan Rus' period,
as he had originally planned. The last of the published volumes would appear,
posthumously, in 1937, bringing the project up only to the 1650s.
The very title of Hrushevsky’s work was a programmatic statement. A
history of Ukraine-Rus' emphasized the continuity between Kyivan Rus' and
modern Ukraine. Written
at a time when most Western Ukrainians still called themselves Rusyny
(Ruthenians), the title served to ease the transition to the new name, Ukraine. In selecting a geographic name,
Hrushevsky was defining the categories employed by his contemporaries. Ukraine was not an administrative entity at that time. In Russia the term was forbidden, and even the accepted ‘Little
Russia’ often did not encompass all the territories inhabited by Ukrainian
majorities. To Galician Ukrainians, Ukraine often meant the territories in the Russian
Empire. The term ‘Great Ukraine,’ applied by Galicians to those territories,
implied in some way that the Habsburg Ukrainian lands were ‘Little Ukraine.’
Hrushevsky defined the borders of his Ukraine as the lands in which Ukrainians had
traditionally constituted the majority of the population, the object of the
striving of the Ukrainian national movement. Most importantly, his use of the
term ‘Rus'’ and the emphasis on continuity with Kyivan Rus' also challenged the
monopoly that Russians had on that name and tradition in scholarship and
popular thinking.
The subject of Hrushevsky’s history was the Ukrainian people and their
evolution, both in periods when they possessed states and polities and when
they did not. Hrushevsky rejected the view that history should deal only with
states and rulers. Deeply imbued with the populist ideology of the Ukrainian
national movement, he saw simple people as having their own worth and history.
This meant that elites in Ukrainian society, which had often assimilated to
other peoples, were of little interest to him. He sought to write the history
of the narod, and in his conceptualization it was relatively easy to conflate
its dual meanings of populace and nation. That conflation has always made it
very difficult for commentators to identify his orientation as either left- or
right-wing on national or social issues.
In addition to his populist sentiments, Hrushevsky relied on his Kyiv
training in the documentary school. He sought out all sources and perused
masses of literature. His notes were replete with the latest Western works in
archaeology, linguistics, and anthropology. He weighed and dissected sources in
reaching a conclusion on any issue. His reader was drawn into the kitchen of
scholarship and shown the full array of ingredients and utensils.
Between 1898 and 1901, Hrushevsky published three large volumes. In 1901
Hrushevsky wrote volume four, dealing with the political situation in the
Ukrainian lands under Lithuanian and Polish rule from the fourteenth to the
sixteenth century. He began work on the fifth volume in 1902 and issued its
first part in early 1905, but his efforts to disseminate his research slowed
down the pace of his writing. Hrushevsky searched for a German publisher and
prepared a new edition of volume 1 for translation into German. He also revised
volumes 2 and 3 for a new printing when the ban on Ukrainian books lapsed in the
Russian Empire in 1904.
The 1905 revolution in the Russian Empire improved the situation for the
Ukrainian movement and for scholarship on Ukraine, providing an opportunity to repeat the
Galician advances in the lands where most Ukrainians lived. During the
revolutionary events Hrushevsky took an active role as a publicist. His
Russian-language outline was reissued with a summary of more recent events.
Hrushevsky began to transfer Ukrainian cultural and scholarly activities to
Kyiv. The journal Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk (Literary-Scientific Herald)
made the move, and Hrushevsky established a scholarly society in Kyiv.
Ultimately the political reaction in the Russian Empire after 1907 and
the relatively less favorable conditions for the Ukrainian movement there than
in Galicia—above all,
the ban on Ukrainian in schools—undermined some of these initiatives. One
indication of continued opposition to the Ukrainian movement was the refusal to
appoint Hrushevsky to the chair at Kyiv University for which he applied in 1908. Beginning in the late
1890s, Russian nationalist circles had begun to see Hrushevsky as the architect
of ‘Mazepist separatism,’ and his manifest scholarly achievements infuriated
them. They succeeded in denying him the chair. Taking advantage of whatever
opportunities were available to him, Hrushevsky divided his energies between
Kyiv and Lviv (and, to a degree, St.
Petersburg), turning his attention to writing popular histories of Ukraine.
Hrushevsky did not, however, abandon his major scholarly work. In 1905
he published the second part of volume five, followed by volume six in 1907,
thereby completing his account of the Polish and Lithuanian period. Next
Hrushevsky began his discussion of what he saw as the third period of Ukrainian
history, publishing volume seven under the title of a subseries, ‘The History
of the Ukrainian Cossacks,’ in 1909. This volume, which covered events to 1625,
was followed in 1913 by the first part of volume eight, dealing with the years
1625 to 1638. The increasing source base, due in part to Hrushevsky’s vigorous
archaeographic activities, was overwhelming him. In addition, mindful of the
importance of public opinion for the acceptance of his ideas and
interpretations in the Russian Empire, Hrushevsky issued part of volume one in
Russian translation in 1911; in the course of doing so, he revised the work and
issued a third Ukrainian edition of that volume in 1913. In 1913–14,
Russian translations of volume seven and the first part of volume eight also
appeared.
The outbreak of World War I found Hrushevsky, a Russian citizen,
vacationing in the Ukrainian Carpathians of Austrian Galicia. Realizing that
his presence abroad would provide propaganda for reactionary Russian forces,
which had already begun a campaign against the Ukrainian movement before the
war, Hrushevsky decided to return to Kyiv. He was immediately arrested. The
intervention of highly placed friends changed his place of exile from Siberia to Simbirsk. Later he was permitted to take up
residence in theuniversity city of Kazan. In 1916 the intervention of the Russian Academy of
Sciences succeeded in gaining permission for him to live in Moscow under police surveillance.
Before the war Hrushevsky had written a draft of his history up to the
Zboriv Agreement of 1649. In Simbirsk he was unable to continue
research on the primary sources needed for the History, so he turned his
attention to writing a world history in Ukrainian. In Kazan, however, he had returned to his major project,
revising and publishing volume eight, part two, for the years 1638 to 1648.
With access to the archives and libraries of Moscow, Hrushevsky continued to expand his draft to
cover the period up to the spring of 1650 and prepared it for publication.
Volume eight, part three, was printed, but the press run was destroyed during
the revolutionary events in Moscow and the book reached the public only in
1922, when it was reprinted in Vienna from a single preserved copy.
The Russian Revolution of February 1917 gave Hrushevsky his political freedom.
It also resulted in his becoming president of the first independent Ukrainian
state, which took him away from scholarship. During 1917 he headed the
Ukrainian Central Rada, which developed into the autonomous and then
independent government of Ukraine.
In taking the city of Kyiv in early 1918, the Bolshevik
artillery specifically targeted Hrushevsky’s house, thereby destroying his
library, priceless manuscripts, and museum, as well as the materials he had
prepared for the History of Ukraine-Rus'. On 29 April 1918, he was elected
president of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR), which evolved out of the
Central Rada, but the German military authorities, whom he called in to protect Ukraine from the Bolsheviks, supported a coup by General Pavlo
Skoropadsky to depose Hrushevsky and the UNR and to establish the monarchist
Hetmanate. The fall of the Central
Rada at the end of
April removed Hrushevsky from power and the subsequent loss of Kyiv by its
successor, the UNR Directory, in January 1919, made him a political refugee. He
then served as the foreign representative of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist
Revolutionaries, which he had supported since 1917. After extensive travels
through Western Europe, he settled near Vienna, the initial center of the Ukrainian political
emigration. He had lost considerable political authority among the tens of
thousands of Ukrainian political émigrés, in part because of his
failure to back the UNR fully and because of his political move to the left. He
was, however, looked upon as the greatest Ukrainian scholar and was expected to
organize Ukrainian scholarly and intellectual life.
Initially Hrushevsky fulfilled these expectations. He organized the
Ukrainian Sociological Institute and published a French version of his general
history, a discussion of early social organization, and an account of the
development of religious thought in Ukraine.
In 1922 he turned his attention to his second monumental work, the Istoriia
ukraïns'koï literatury (History of Ukrainian Literature), and
published the first three volumes in Lviv. Hrushevsky’s attention, however, was
already directed to events in Soviet Ukraine. Although the Ukrainian movement
had failed to maintain an independent state, it had succeeded in
institutionalizing its view that Ukraine should be a distinct administrative entity
and that the Ukrainian nation had its own language and culture. While the
Bolsheviks had accepted those tenets, they remained a group with relatively few
ethnic Ukrainians in their leadership and even fewer followers versed in
Ukrainian culture. When the Soviet leadership adopted a policy of
indigenization, accompanied by a reversal of its more radical ideological and
social policies, the government in Kyiv sorely needed cadres who would be perceived
as legitimately Ukrainian.
In 1923 Hrushevsky began seriously to consider returning to Kyiv. Rumors
to that effect caused consternation in Ukrainian political circles, which saw
such an action by the first president of the Ukrainian state as a major blow to
the cause of Ukrainian independence. Hrushevsky was offered a professorship at
the Ukrainian Free University and a number of other posts in hopes that he
would abandon his plans. In 1924, however, he decided that he would go to Kyiv
instead of Prague. The
reasons for his decision have been debated to the present day. Certainly his
assertion that he planned to bring his History of Ukraine-Rus' up to 1917 and
could only do so with access to libraries and archives inUkraine weighed heavily in his decision.
Accepting an offer from the Kharkiv government, Hrushevsky returned to
Kyiv to take up a position at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He showed his
customary energy in organizing scholarship. Reinvigorating the academy’s
Zapysky (Annals), Hrushevsky also revived the journal Ukraïna (Ukraine).
He gathered a talented group of co-workers and launched a number of new series,
including Za sto lit (In One Hundred Years), a publication devoted to the
nineteenth century. New journals specializing in unearthing and studying
sources, such as Ukraïns'kyi arkheografichnyi zbirnyk (Ukrainian
Archaeographic Collection) and Ukraïns'kyi arkhiv (Ukrainian Archive),
were launched. He also continued his work on the History of Ukrainian
Literature, publishing volumes four and five. Returning to his magnum opus, he
prepared volume nine on the period from 1650 to 1658, publishing it in two
separate massive parts in 1928 and 1931. Hrushevsky’s research on the History
was indeed stimulated by his return to the academic environment and archives of
Kyiv, but the city did not long provide a conducive environment for his work.
The very sweep of Hrushevsky’s activities threatened the communist
leadership. They had sought legitimacy by inviting Hrushevsky to return, but
then found his revitalization of non-Marxist Ukrainian historiography
dangerous, particularly at a time when the Ukrainization policy presented
opportunities for the old Ukrainian intelligentsia to reach the masses.
Attempts to obviate Hrushevsky by promoting the newly developing Marxist cadres
led by Matvii Iavorsky did not have the desired effect. Ultimately the
communist authorities in Kharkiv did not decide the fate of Hrushevsky’s
historical school, for the rising tide of centralization accompanying the
ascent of Joseph Stalin engulfed them as well. Ukrainian national communism was
judged to be as dangerous as the more traditional Ukrainian national movement
in a Soviet state that was increasingly becoming a successor to the Russian
Empire. Beginning in 1928, Hrushevsky came under mounting attack by party
officials. As arrests and trials of the Ukrainian intelligentsia proceeded,
Hrushevsky became an isolated figure. Following an all-out attack by Volodymyr
Zatonsky, Hrushevsky was warned to leave for Moscow. Departing in early March 1931, he was arrested
in Moscow and sent back to Kyiv, but then returned
to Moscow. As
Hrushevsky was exiled to Russia,
the Institute of History was
dismantled and its scholarly programs halted. Deprived of his Ukrainian
context, Hrushevsky nevertheless continued his scholarly work, publishing in
Russian journals and completing volume ten of his history. Illness overtook him
during a trip to Kislovodsk in 1934, and he died under somewhat mysterious
circumstances, as the result of an operation. The best testimony to the power
of his name is that he was accorded a state funeral in a Ukraine devastated by famine and terror. His daughter Kateryna
even succeeded in printing the first part of volume ten of his History, dealing
with the years 1658–60, before she herself was arrested in the new terror. The
second part, sometimes called volume eleven, which covered the period to 1676,
remained in manuscript in Kyiv until the 1970s, when it disappeared.
Hrushevsky did not complete his history, but he had written more than
6,000 pages outlining his vision of the Ukrainian past. His shorter histories
allow us to see how he would have treated subsequent periods. He viewed the
Ukrainian past as a process in which a people had evolved on a given territory
under various rulers. Although he discussed the territory from the most ancient
times, he dated the origins of the Ukrainian people to the fifth-century Antae,
whom he viewed as Slavs. His goal was to use all available evidence to study
periods of the Ukrainian past for which written evidence was sparse. Just as
the nineteenth-century historians had turned to ethnography and folklore to
understand the past of the common folk, who had left few written records, so
Hrushevsky turned to the rapidly developing disciplines of historical
linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, and sociology to penetrate the distant
past of the entire Ukrainian people.
The translation of Hrushevsky’s magnum opus into an international
scholarly language is being realized ninety years after the historian sought to
arrange the German translation. In issuing a work begun nearly a century ago by
scholar who died more than six decades ago, one must consider whether the work
continues to have relevance and whether there is a need for a version other
than the Ukrainian original. New archaeological finds have been made, new and
better editions of sources have been published, new literature has appeared,
and new theories and methods have emerged.
Hrushevsky’s Istoriia Ukraïny-Rusy is the major statement of a
historian of genius. In breadth and erudition it still has no equal in
Ukrainian historiography, and its examination of many historical questions
remains unsurpassed. In some ways this is due to the unfortunate history of Ukraine, above all, the Soviet policies
that not only imposed official dogmas, but also discouraged study of pre-modern
Ukrainian history and the publication of sources. This policy, as well as the
relative neglect of Ukrainian history in surrounding lands and in the West, has
made new source discoveries and expansion of information more limited than
might have been expected. The tragic fate of Ukrainian archives in the
twentieth century—above all, the losses occasioned by wars and
revolutions—frequently means that Hrushevsky’s discussions and citations are
the only information extant. The reprinting of the History in Ukraine demonstrates to what degree Hrushevsky’s work is the
starting point for rebuilding historical studies there. The appearance of the
English translation now permits a wider scholarly community, which has often
only known of Hrushevsky as a “nationalist” historian, to examine the type of
national history that this great scholar wrote. The appearance of the History
of Ukraine-Rus' should serve as a basis for understanding the Ukrainian
historical process to the seventeenth century and as a tool for the examination
of the thought of the Ukrainian national revival and the views of one of its
greatest leaders.
Study of the subject Ukrainian and foreign culture is of great
importance as far as it deals with the question of genesis and development of
the human civilization and analysis of the national cultures and their
contribution to the world one. So, the course is directed at enriching of
knowledge and expansion of outlook of students in the field of the cultural
heritage of the mankind, establishing of their aesthetic and cultural
background, acquaintance with the cultural achievements of different historical
epochs and nations, so that it will enable students to develop sense of beauty
and harmony in their life and career. Speaking about the notion of culture we
should emphasize that this concept is of a complex character. The term culture
is originated from a Latin word cultura – education, development. An attempt to
define this notion was made at the world conference on the cultural policy,
which was held under UNESCO in 1982, so that it was declared: “ Culture is a
complex of special material, spiritual, intellectual and emotional lineaments
of the human society ”. In other words we can determine culture as the social
heritage: the total body of material artifacts (tools, weapons, houses, places
of work, worship, government, recreation, works of art, etc.), of collective
mental and spiritual artifacts (system of symbols, ideas, beliefs, aesthetic
perceptions, values, etc.), and of distinctive forms of behavior (institutions,
groupings, rituals, modes of organization, etc.) created by people in their
ongoing activities within their particular life – conditions, and transmitted
from generation to generation. Speaking about the structure of culture we can
say that it can be represented either by the material means or spiritually. The
material aspect of culture includes productive means and results of the human
activity on each stage of the development of the mankind. The spiritual aspect
is realized through religious, intellectual, moral, legal, artistic and
pedagogic cultural constituents. In terms of geographic regions we distinguish
the world and the national culture. The world culture is determined as the
system of human values, which constitute the best lines of the cultures of
different nations. The national culture is an aggregate of ecological,
political, domestic, ritual, moral factors typical for a separate nation.
Depending on the level of development of the human society the elite, folk and
mass cultures can be distinguished. The elite culture is a result of the
activity of the higher social strata, however it should not be considered
separately from other cultural constituents. The folk culture is a part of the
social heritage – customs, institutions, conventions, skills, arts that is
typical of a group of people feeling themselves members of a closely bound
community and sharing a deep – rooted attachment to it. It is predominantly non
– literate, and so closely knit as to be transmitted from generation to
generation by oral means and by ritual and behavioral habituation. The notion
of the mass culture is often linked to the concept of the mass society and connected
with development of the market relations and the process of globalization. Its
use became common in cultural criticism in 1930 – 1950 – s to describe the
typical products of the commercially – driven mass communication industries –
films, radio, records, advertising, the popular press and television.
Historically, depending on certain geographic and ethnic factors, such
cultural regions as European, Far – East, Indian, Arab – Muslim, African and
Latino – American were formed, each of them having its own peculiar features.
To study the system of culture of separate regions and of the world in general
we should apply a historical – comparative method (the synchronic approach –
analysis of the same problem in different periods of time and the diachronic
approach – comparison of the stated problem in different regions at the same
period of time) and a method of the structural – functional analysis, so that
it will enable us to better understand and comprehend the notion of culture,
its complex character and interconnection of its constituent elements.
The concept of culture is closely connected with the notion of
civilization, although they should not be mixed, as far as the first reflects
the level of each stage of either material or spiritual development of the
human society.
The primeval culture of primitive societies is one of the most important
periods in development of the mankind as far as it established its material and
spiritual background that in further epochs was only improved by the human civilization.
The first people started their existence two million years ago. The term
primitive is usually associated with something plain and simple. However, it
can be hardly stated about the primitive society art. Depending on tools used
by the ancient people, the history of the primeval world is divided into the
Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods), the Copper Age, the
Bronze Age and the Iron Age.
The first pieces of art appeared during the late Paleolithic period
(40000 – 8000 BC). People of this period were, first of all hunters. Their
creative activity was inspired by a surrounding nature, a rich animal world and
dedicated mostly to hunting. The Lascaux Caves in the South of France and some other regions are
considered among the most exquisite and well – preserved examples of
prehistoric culture still available to modern eyes (remember that the term
prehistoric simply means before historical documentation, and carries with it
no intrinsic value judgment). Inside the impressive tunnel complex there
remains a vast array of drawings, which date back 20000 – 25000 years. It
appears that these images served some function relating to the hunt. The
Paleolithic peoples were essentially migratory; their very existence relied on
the success of the hunt. Two consequences follow on from such a basic level of
survival: the first is a reverence for the food supply (together with a respect
for the natural order of things and a giving of thanks for the coming of the
herds) and the second is the necessity of moving to find food. It is within
this context that Paleolithic communities first produced visual
expressions. The hunt was most likely a central focus in these
early communities, since agriculture had not been developed yet. Given these
severe conditions, it seems quite appropriate that beasts of prey, like other
natural objects and events, should become the focus of enormous attention and
admiration in the human communities – particularly since their very lives
depended on them. It is from these conditions that religion and art evolve.
Religion explains and orders the universe around a set of collectively adopted
and assumed principles of reality, and if the reality of 20000 BC was
survival through the hunting of wildebeest or some such delight, then one can
assume that the animal in question had a vital role in the continuation of the
universe. Part of the anticipation of the hunt would, then, be the necessary
contemplation and appeasement of the animal’s spirit through some form of
ritual or ceremonial activity. The probable result was the production of visual
expressions to serve as surrogates and objects of contemplation for the most
basic experiences of life. The first pieces of the prehistoric art were
schematic and static. Gradually, images of animals became more dynamic and
vivid. In 15000 – 8000 the first three – dimension images of bulls and mammoths
appeared (Alta Mira Caves inSpain, Nio Caves in France).
The ancient people initiated the
development of all the trends of Fine Arts: graphics (images and silhouettes),
painting (images made by means of color mineral paints), sculpture (figures
either cut of stone or made of clay). The so – called Venus of Willendorf,
perhaps the oldest surviving three – dimensional depiction of a human body, is
approximately 25000 years old and it exhibits notably different
characteristics. The Venus figure is portrayed in the round, possessing volume
and interacting with real space – the same features the modern culture has come
to recognize as essential characteristics of the art of sculpture. Of over 200
surviving Paleolithic figurines, there has yet to emerge a single male
statuette, thus the mystery of childbirth elevated the status of the woman.
This statuette is most likely a fertile symbol. The massive breasts and stomach
suggest the life-giving qualities of the woman as a child – bearer, so that
emphasis was placed on creating images that appeared as embodiments of power
and mystery. The scale seems to appear as such: as the depicted forms move from
animal life, through humans, to cult figures and godheads, their visual
identities become increasingly abstract, with certain features accentuated and
other diminished.
During The Mesolithic and Neolithic
periods people, alongside with hunting and fishing started breeding cattle and
cultivating soil, what made them improve their stone tools and invent new
devices like bows, arrows, pottery, etc. Besides, development of agriculture
required establishment of some kind of a calendar and improvement of a system
of the astronomic knowledge. The first calendars were based on the phases of
the Moon. Later on, the Sun calendar was invented. Cattle breeding made the
ancient people deal with counting and exchange, so that it later resulted into
establishment of a system of figures and counting. The Bronze and Iron Age were
marked by spread of the first metal tools (primitive axes and knives).
Gradually, people mastered different building materials, so that to
solve the questions of the house – planning. This put the beginning of
architecture. The painting of that time is characterized by intention to
express some scenes from hunting or war actions. Ornament as a technique of
decorating became wide – spread, especially, in the territory of Ukraine and was typical for the culture of Trypillia (3000 –
2000 BC the Western Ukraine and the region of the DnieperRiver). A Trypillia settlement consisted of
houses placed on a circle. The red and black paints were mostly in use.
Trypillian people had the cults of bull, goat, snake and heathen ceremonies.
The ceramic production is one of the best manifestations of the material and
cultural development of Trypillian people. The plastic art was developed as
well. The labor implements were made from stone, bones and horns. Taking into
consideration the content, role and significance of Trypillia culture in the
history of Ukraine and the world one, we can state that
Ukrainian nation is a heir of the cultural legacy of Trypillia people as far as
they are direct ancestors of Ukrainians. It should be emphasized that all the
elements of Trypillia culture – the system of economy, topography of
settlements, decorative house painting, a mode of life, cooking, clothes and
character of ornamental ceramics constitute the organic part of the Ukrainian
culture. New architectural constructions – primitive fortresses and burials -
appeared in the late Neolithic period and founded the monumental stone
architecture. To some extent, war actions contributed to development of surgery
and primitive medicine that empirically came to the practice of injections
against catching diseases. Besides, megalithic (made of huge stones) buildings
were wide – spread as well. Among them we can point out dolmens (round – formed
graves covered with a placid stone) and cromlechs (cult structures in the form of a round fence made of
huge stones). Out of the most famous surviving Neolithic building structures is
Stonehenge in southern England.
Most likely constructed as a shrine, the outer of its two concentric rings has
the interesting distinction of being laid out in exact accordance with the
directional path of the sun at the summer solstice. This celestial
consideration is indicative of the Neolithic community’s growing awareness of
natural phenomena and the cycle of seasons. But perhaps its most important
attribute is its very survival; Stonehenge remains one of the earliest examples
of public architecture in Northern
Europe to survive to this
day. Manufacturing of silver and gold decorations, bone carvings, application
of bronze and iron tools in every – day life (invention of a plough) marked the
late period of the ancient society. The analysis of the social aspect of the
culture of the ancient society enables us to point out its peculiar
features. The culture of the
prehistoric times was homogeneous. Initially, the first people appeared only in
one region of the Earth (North Africa and Middle East) and, gradually, they
moved to other continents, so that in the prehistoric period these people were
representatives of one race, their mode of life was the same including their
outlook, beliefs and other elements of the culture of that time. The primeval
culture was a complex system of taboos (prohibitions). As far as ancient people
could not find explanation for many things that are considered obvious
nowadays, they were simply prohibited even to think about. The outlook of the
primeval culture was of a mythological – sacred character. Its main constituent
was a ritual. The ritual activity of ancient people was grounded on the
principle of taking after natural phenomena that greatly influenced all the
spheres of life in the prehistoric times and resulted into establishment of the
system of beliefs among which we can point out Animism, Fetishism, and Totems.
Animism (from Latin - anima – spirit, soul) is a term first
used by E. B. Tylor for belief based on the universal human experiences of
dreams and visions, in “ spiritual beings ”, comprising the souls of individual
creatures and other spirits. It terms of sheer quantity, ancient people thought
natural phenomena to possess the human features. This belief grew into the idea
of spirit and soul embodied in every animal and plant, so that it resulted into
creation of myths (Greek – a word). Their main function was to accumulate
knowledge about the surrounding world. Fetishism was a belief into supernatural
abilities of things to help people. An object to worship could
be either a stone, a tree, means of labor or a talisman. People thought
that these things or their depiction could satisfy all their needs. A totem
belief is a kind of belief into a tight connection of people with its totem – a
kind of animals or, sometimes, plants. A tribe was called after the name of its
totem and its members believed into their origin from it. A totem was not
worshiped. Mostly, it was considered to be “ Father ” or a “ senior brother ”
that helped a tribe. This belief was a kind of the ideological reflection of
connection of a tribe with the surrounding nature.
The culture of the prehistoric times
formed a background for establishment of the world culture and development of
new civilizations (Mesopotamia, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, Iran,
etc.). The process of study of the primeval epoch is not finished yet as far as
archeologist all the time discover new amazing and beautiful artifacts of the
culture of ancient people.
During the Miocene Period in Tertiary Age of Cenozoic Era, some 12
million years ago, most of Ukraine was covered by sea. At the end of this
period the seas receded to the approximately present day coasts of Black, Azov
and Caspian seas to form one big sea. The climate was very hot and humid, lush
vegetation covered the ground and there were all kinds of large animals and
birds.
Then, during the Pliocene period, some 6 million years ago, the climate
began to cool. Many plants and animals disappeared and only those, which could
adapt to lower temperatures, such as fury mammoths and rhinoceroses, remained.
Later the ground froze up and soon ice sheets covered most of the northern part
of Ukraine. That was
the Pleistocene Period in Quaternary Age of Cenozoic Era, about 1 million years
ago,
Commonly known as the Ice Age.
When the ice retreated, life started to reappear. Traces of human
habitation in Ukraine, dating
back at least 30 thousand years, became evident during geological excavations.
Primitive stone tools, carvings from mammoth tusks, arrow heads made from flint
stone, earthenware, bronze tools and weapons and gold jewelry found in
different layers of earth enabled geologists to
reconstruct the way of life of early man.
At first, during Old Stone Age (Paleolithic Age), humans did not have
domestic animals, could not make utensils and relied exclusively on hunting and
fishing. Then, gradually, during Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic Age) they began
to make stone tools and weapons.
Later, during Late Stone Age (Neolithic Age), they began to make
utensils from earth, kept domestic animals for milk and meat, constructed
dwellings and cultivated the soil.
During the Bronze Age, about 3000 BC, and Iron Age, about 1000 BC, metal
agricultural implements and weapons came into use; crafts and commerce began to
develop.
From 7th century BC Greeks started to colonize the coast of the Black Sea. They traded wine, oil, and textiles,
silver and gold wares and utensils with local tribes for grain and hides but
they also engaged in slave trade. They introduced Greek Culture and many tribes
adopted Greek customs and religion. The Greek historian Herodotus documented
information about Ukraine of this period.
There were numerous tribes in Ukraine,
some nomadic, some agricultural; most of the time at war with each other. The
oldest known main inhabitants ofUkraine were Cimmerians. They were replaced in 5th century BC
by Scythians, who ruled till 2nd century BC; Sarmatian tribes then replaced
them. Later in 1st century AD the tribesmen of the dominant horde were called
Alanis.
These tribes, mainly of Iranian origin, were conquered in 2nd century AD
by German tribe called Goths from Baltic region. About 370 AD, the first Asian
horde of Huns, on their way to western Europe, defeated and expelled Goths from Ukraine. They were followed in 5th-6th
centuries by the Bulgars and Avars.
The exact origin of Slav people is unknown, but it can be assumed that
they existed for a long time before they were mentioned in historical records
by Romans in 1st century AD. A very strong Slav tribe called Wends developed in
4th century; their settlements extended from central Ukraine up to Baltic Sea. When in the 6th century they
moved to Southwest Germany, Antes became the dominant tribe in Ukraine.
At different times they were fighting with and against Goths, Huns,
Avars, Greeks and Slovyans. Although ruled by princes, they also had people's
councils and tribal elders.
According to legends, Kyiv was founded in the 5th century by three
brothers Kiy, Shchek and Khoriv and their sister Lebid; later Kyiv was reigned
by princes (or chieftains) Askold and Dyr.
At end of 7th century AD, Khazars established themselves on Caspian
steppes, which somewhat shielded Ukraine from other Asian hordes. Also in the 7th
century Greeks left Black Sea shores, thus causing a considerable gap in the
documented history of Ukraine.
Khazar control of the steppe was breached in the late 9th century by the
Magyars, who later were replaced by Pechenegs and then by Polovetsians as
dominant tribes.
Prince Olekh established the Kyivan State proper in 879. He conducted military expeditions to
the shores of Caspian Sea and raided Byzantine cities. Prince Ehor
followed him, in 912, who not only continued external raids but also had to
fight insubordinate tribes of Ulitchs and Derevlans. He died during a battle
with Derevlans in 945. His wife Olha revenged his death by brutal suppression
of Derevlans. In 964 she became a Christian and established her son Svyatoslav
on the throne.
Svyatoslav was an able and courageous prince; he fought Asian hordes in
the East and conducted raids on Bulgaria.
He divided his state between his sons, then continued with his expeditions and
battles. When he died in 972 during battle with Pechenegs, his sons fought
between themselves, often with help from their enemies.
In 980, Prince Volodymyr defeated all his brothers and unified the
country into one powerful state with Kyiv as the capital. He adopted
Christianity in 988 and started to convert the population, which had up to
then, worshiped Pagan gods. Force was often used against those who resisted. He
produced silver and gold coins with his portrait on one side and the trident on
the reverse side (The trident is Coat of Arms of present day Ukraine).
In History he is known as Volodymyr the Great or Saint Volodymyr. During
his reign, pillaging Pecheneg hordes defeated the Khazars, pushed out the
Hungarian hordes from the southern steppes and became a menace to the state.
Volodymyr started to fortify Kyiv against them. After his death in 1015,
fighting and assassinations between his sons ensued, resulting in victory for
prince Yaroslav in 1019.
Yaroslav the Great consolidated nearly whole of his father's territory,
defeated the Pechenegs and became one of the most powerful rulers in Europe. A church hierarchy was
established, headed (at least since 1037) by the metropolitan of Kyiv, who was
usually appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople.
Yaroslav promoted family ties with other kingdoms, built many churches,
improved Kyiv's fortifications, introduced laws and established courts.
However, in the same way as his forefathers, he divided the country
between his sons, who after his death in 1054, started to fight among
themselves and divide their land between their sons. This resulted in a number
of small principalities which not only fought each other, but also had to
defend
themselves from marauding Turkish and Polovetsian hordes, who plundered
the countryside.
In 1097 all princes agreed to stop fighting between themselves. In 1103
they united their forces under leadership of prince Monomakh (one of the
grandsons of Yaroslav the Great) and defeated the Polovetsian hordes.
However, the constant warfare weakened the country's economic strength
and caused a near collapse of cultural and political system of Ukraine.
After death of Monomakh in 1125 Ukraine remained fragmented into the numerous
principalities, each having their own customs and rules, with only
nominal allegiance to the Prince of Kyiv ( this position was occupied by
sons of Monomakh on rotational basis). Gradually Kyiv lost it's power and
influence; many principalities separated. An outstanding chronicle of events
was compiled in Old Church Slavonic language by Venerable Nestor in 1136.
In 1169 prince Andrey Bogolyubski conquered and destroyed Kyiv and
established his capital in Vladimir near present site of Moscow, thus originating present Russian
state.
The Ukrainian princes continued to struggle on against the Polovtsi.
One particular battle led by Prince Ehor in 1185 was enshrined in a poem
"Slovo o Polku Ehorevim" (The Tale of Ehor's Regiment).
Western parts of Ukraine - Halych (Galicia) and Volynj (Volhynia)—free
from Polovetsian raids, gradually emerged as leading principalities. Prince
Roman ruled there in 1199. His sons succeeded in uniting both principalities
into one rich and powerful state.
About year 1220, when a new horde of Mongols and Tatars invaded
Ukraine, the princes have reached some sort of accommodation with
Polovtsi and fought together to expel this new horde. They succeeded at first
but, toward the end of year 1240, Tatars returned and besieged Kyiv. On 16th
December 1240 they conquered, plundered and ruined the city. Afterward they
moved westward, plundering Halych, Poland and Hungary then in 1245 they
returned and occupied eastern Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Prince Danylo (son of Prince Roman) established himself in
Halych and his brother Vasylko in Volynj. Together they managed to keep the
Tatars away from their principalities. Danylo founded city Lviv in 1250 as a
defense site against Tatars. In 1253 he accepted the royal crown from the pope
and effected a short-lived church union with Rome.
After Danylo died in 1264, his sons continued to rule in peaceful
coexistence with the Tatars. In 1303 they created a separate archbishopric
office in Halych, responsible to Byzantine. Earlier, in 1299 Kyivan
archbishopric seat was moved to Moscow.
The dominant prince was Danylo's son Lev. He died about year 1300. His
son Yuriy would again unite the Halych and Volynj principalities with Lviv as
the capital. He was seen as a mighty and just ruler and the country was rich
and peaceful under his rule. After
Yuriy, his two sons ruled until 1320. They both died without leaving male
successors. This created an unstable situation and an internal power struggle
ensued, which was exploited by neighboring countries—Poland, Hungary and
Lithuania—in their efforts to occupy this part of Ukraine. Local boyars and
People's Councils tried to resist by accepting princes from other dynasties and
countries and by forming alliances with the Lithuanians and even the Tatars,
but to no avail. In 1349, Polish king Kazimyezh managed to occupy Halych and
part of Volynj. About same time, Lithuanian princes intensified their takeover
of eastern principalities of Ukraine. Finally about year 1360, the Prince of
Kyiv was overthrown.
Ukraine was partitioned between Poland and Lithuania with Tatar Golden
Horde remaining in some parts of southern steppes and the Crimea.
The Lithuanian princes were reasonable rulers. In some cases they were
assimilated where they adopted the local customs, language and religion. People
did not resist them and appreciated their protection from Poland, Moscow and
the Tatars. However, under Polish rule, western Ukraine was subjected to
exploitation and colonization by an influx of people from Poland and Germany,
who were taking over the property and offices from local boyars.
During the period of 1393-1430 the Grand Dutch of Lithuania was ruled by
the Grand Duke Vytautas, who also is named Vytautas the Great for all the
political and military achievements he brought to Lithuania. During his reign,
the push eastward by the German Order was broken. In 1410 Vytautas, along with
his cousin Yahaylo the King of Poland, won the Battle of Grunwald (Germany),
against the might of the Order that way finishing almost 200 years of war. He
also brought the Christianity to the pagan Lithuania. At the end of his era,
Lithuania became one of the strongest states in Europe, stretching from the
Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
In 1400 Lithuania, together with its Ukrainian principalities, separated
under king Vytautas- Yahaylo's cousin. Yahaylo’s younger brother, Svytryhaylo,
opposed this arrangement. Ukrainian principalities under Vytautas were loosing
their national character and independence to Polish influences.
In 1413 a decision was made to allow only Catholics to occupy important
government positions ("Horodlo Privilege"). Wide-spread
discrimination against the Orthodox population followed. Nearly all Ukrainians
in those days were Orthodox, therefore Ukrainian princes and boyars ended up
helping Svytryhaylo in his fight with Vytautas. After Vytautas died in 1430,
Svytryhaylo defended himself from Poles, but by the year 1440 his sphere of
influence was reduced to the Volynj principality.
There was a period of hostilities between Lithuania and Moscow, when
about 1480 Moscow annexed several principalities in eastern Ukraine. Also
several popular uprisings took place. In 1490, a rebellion under Mukha,
occurred in western Ukraine. Mukha sought help from neighboring Moldova. In
1500 in eastern Ukraine, there was an uprising under Prince Mykhaylo Hlynskiy,
who expected help from Moscow and the Tatars. However Poland and Lithuania, at
that time, were very strong and all uprisings were squashed.
Meanwhile, in the South, marauding Tatar hordes converted a large area
of the country into wilderness, without any law or order. It was a very rich
part of Ukraine with productive soil, wild animals and rivers full of fish. It
attracted many adventurous people, who although they had to fight the Tatars
there, would be free from suppression by the Polish and Lithuanian overlords.
They began to organize under Hetmans, thus originating Cossack society.
To defend themselves from the Tatars, they constructed forts called
"Sitch" and amalgamated them into a sort of union, with Zaporizhia as
a centre. It was downstream of the Dnipro river cascades.
In 1552, one of Ukrainian princes, Dmytro Wyshnevetskyi, being among the
Cossacks, built a castle on the island Khortytsya. From there, the Cossacks
conducted raids on Crimean towns sometimes with help from Moscow. Dmytro wanted
to develop Zaporizhia, with help from Lithuania and Moscow, into a powerful
fortress against Tatars and Turks. Being unable to achieve this goal, he left
Zaporizhia in 1561, became involved in a war in Moldova and was captured and
executed by the Turks in 1563.
In 1569, with the Union of Lublin, the dynastic link between Poland and
Lithuania was transformed into a constitutional union of the two States as the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Most of Ukraine became part of Poland. The
settlement of Polish nationals followed and Polish laws and customs became
dominant.
Polish nobles replaced most of Ukrainian princes and boyars, except for
a few—notably Ostrozkyis and Wyshnevetskyis. Peasants lost their land ownership
and civil rights and gradually became serfs, exploited as manpower in
agriculture and forestry, by the new landowners. Suppression of the Orthodox
Church retarded the development of Ukrainian literature, arts and education.
Preferential treatment of Catholics inhibited the economic and political
advancement of Ukrainians.
In spite of that there was a modest revival of Ukrainian culture later
in 16th century. Church schools and seminaries were set up, based at first on
the properties of Ukrainian magnate Hryhoriy Khodkovych and later on the holdings
of Ostrozkyi princes. A printing industry began, culminating in the publication
of the Bible in a print shop ran by Ivan Fedorovych. Trade and church
brotherhoods sprang up. Schools were established and hospitals became centers
of defense of the Orthodox Church and the fight for justice and equality.
Such a situation was the main cause, which multiplied the influx of
people to Cossack territory, increasing the Cossack’s strength. The Tatars were
pushed out into Crimea and the Cossacks became more daring in their raids on
Turkish cities.
While Ukrainian Cossacks defended not only Ukraine, but also the whole
of eastern Europe from the Turks and Tatar hordes, they were causing diplomatic
problems for Poland because Turkey used Cossack situation as an excuse for wars
against Poland. When Cossack leader, Ivan Pidkova, conquered Moldova in 1577,
the Poles captured and executed him in order to appease the Turks. They tried
to control the Cossacks by recruiting some of them into the Polish military
system as, so called, Registered Cossacks, but they could never really tame
them.
With decreasing danger from the Tatars, Polish nobles and Ukrainian
princes loyal to the king, were granted possessions in territory controlled by
the Cossacks and began to introduce their freedom limiting, unpopular laws.
Dissatisfied with such treatment Cossacks, under Kryshtof Kosynskyi, rebelled
about 1590, and by year 1593 controlled most of eastern Ukraine. After
Kosynskyi, Hryhoriy Loboda became Cossack Hetman in 1593.
Another section of Cossacks, numbering about 12000, under Semeryn
Nalyvayko, were recruited by the Pope and the German Kaiser for war against
theTurks. They conquered Moldova and in 1595 returned to Ukraine to fight
against Polish rulers and to defend the Orthodox population from the Jesuits,
who were instigating amalgamation with the Catholic Church. In 1596 at a synod
of Brest, the Kyivan metropolitan and the majority of bishops signed an act of
union with Rome. The Uniate church thus formed recognized supremacy of the pope
but retained the Eastern rites and the Slavonic liturgical language.
Also in year 1596 Polish king, Sigismund III Vasa, ordered Field Marshal
Stanislav Zholkewski to subjugate the Cossack forces. After several months of
fighting, Zholkewski surrounded Cossacks, led by Nalyvayko, Loboda and Shaula,
at river Solonytsya near Lubny. There were about 6000 Cossack fighters and just
as many women and children facing a much more superior force. The prolonged
siege, lack of food and fodder, internal squabbles (Loboda was killed in one
the fights between sections of Cossacks) and intensive cannon fire destroyed
defenders' capacity to resist. In order to save their families, Cossacks agreed
to Zholkewski's terms to let them go free in exchange for handing over their
leaders. However, after surrender, the Poles did not keep their word; they
attacked and started to massacre defenseless and disoriented Cossacks. Only a
section under leadership of Krempskyi broke through and joined with troops of
Pidvysotskyi, who were coming to the rescue of the besieged Cossacks.
Zholkewski, exhausted by prolonged fighting, decided to abandon the idea
to conquer the Cossacks. He returned to Poland, where he tortured and
executed the captured Cossack leaders. The most severe punishment was
handed to Nalyvayko, who was tortured for about a year prior to a brutal
execution.
ABRIDGED HISTORY OF UKRAINE - PART FOUR.
Loosely translated and abridged by George Skoryk from "HISTORY OF
UKRAINE" by Mykhaylo Hrushevs'kyi
Bohdan Khmelnytskyi
Although Zholkewski failed to destroy the Cossacks, he left them
considerably weakened and divided, often fighting among themselves. Hetman
Samiylo Kishka united all the Cossack forces and, after leading them in a
successful naval expeditions against the Turks and land raids on Moldova. This
helped to restore the former Cossack spirit and power.
In 1599, the Polish king, having difficulty with a war with the
Walachians in Moldova, had to rehabilitate Cossacks in order to secure their
help. Later he would use them in a war with Sweden. Kishka died in one of the
battles with the Swedes but the Cossacks continued to fight under the other
hetmans. When this war ended in 1603, Cossacks demanded and obtained equal
status with the Polish military units and secured authority over large area of
Ukraine adjacent to the Dnipro river.
Cossack power continued to grow with raids on lands controlled by
Moscow—by helping the numerous pretenders for Moscow throne (1604-1613)—and the
Black Sea expeditions, in their boats called Chaykas. These took place on coast
of Turkey, Crimea and the mouth of Danube in Moldova (1613-1618). Each 'Chayka'
was manned by about 60 Cossacks and was armed with 4 to 6 cannons. With fleets
of between 30 and 80 Chaykas, the Cossacks destroyed or captured many Turkish
galleons and plundered Turkish cities during times when the whole of Europe was
trembling against the might of the Turkish Empire.
It is estimated that the number of Cossacks fluctuated between 10,000
and 40,000 depending on circumstances. Their centre was the Sitch—an armed camp
in Zaporizhia, located "beyond the cascades" of the river Dnipro. The
Cossack Army was divided into regiments, consisting of between 500 and 4000
men, led by colonels. Each regiment had its own banner, trumpeter and drummer.
Regiments were divided into companies of 100 men led by captains which were
further subdivided into 'kurins' of 10 men led by 'atamans'. There was also a
small artillery force and orchestra. The Commander in Chief was a hetman,
elected by and responsible to Cos