Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History

Abstract

Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History. By SERHII PLOKHY (Toronto: U. of Toronto P., 2005; pp. xvi + 614. £60). ‘FOR it is well known’, said the Ukrainian Hetman Mazepa, ‘that formerly we were what the Muscovites are now; government, seniority and the very name of Rus' went over to them from us’ (‘Istoriia Rusov ili Maloi Rossii’, Chteniia v imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh, 4 [1846], 2nd pagination, p. 204). Ascribed to the Hetman by an anonymous Ukrainian chronicler of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, these words foreshadow some of the ideas that Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866–1934), ‘a primordialist par excellence’ (Plokhy, p. 119), made central to the modern Ukrainian historiographical tradition. The chronicler and Hrushevsky both believed that Ukraine was older than Russia, that it showed Russia the way, and that therefore it did not deserve the humiliation to which it had often been subjected. If the views of these people ever start to command universal assent, Ukraine will be able to think about adopting the name Russia and Russia may have to think about adopting the name Ukraine; for the medieval entity called Rus' from which the word Russia is derived was centred on Kyiv (which is the capital of Ukraine), and Russia, from the point of view of Kyiv, is the borderland (which is the meaning of the word Ukraine).

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