WHOSE LANGUAGE DO WE SPEAK? SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE MASTER NARRATIVE OF UKRAINIAN HISTORY WRITING

This article reconstructs the general scheme for structuring and narrating Ukrainian history that was finally crystallized at the turn of the twentieth century and is usually associated with the name of Mykhailo Hrushevsky. The authors reconstruct the genesis of this scheme, noting the collective nature of the enterprise and registering its persistence to this day as the master narrative of Ukrainian history. They identify several key elements of this narrative: its populism and insistence on the primordial democratism of Ukrainian social institutions; the cult of revolution as a culmination of the teleological process of nation-building; the idea of fundamental unity of all “ethnographically Ukrainian” territories (sobornist’); and the belief in Ukraine’s historical mission as an intermediary between the civilizations of the West and the East. Drawing on the broad survey of Ukrainian historiography, the authors demonstrate that, at various times, individual elements of this narrative have been deconstructed and criticized by Ukrainian historians. However, these partial revisions were always marginalized and rebuffed by the very fact that they did not fit the established, coherent, and all-embracing master narrative, but also did not offer an equally comprehensive alternative story. The authors conclude that the main reason for the remarkable perseverance of the master narrative of Ukrainian history was the persistence of circumstances that are usually regarded as the most hostile and damaging to the Ukrainian national project. Abandoning the nation-centered historical paradigm did not seem appropriate in the situation of the unresolved or jeopardized nation-building project. Another reason is the global prevalence of a national model of history writing, with partial methodological innovations unable to undermine the archetypal national master narratives. The available approaches to postnational historiography have not yet gained universal acceptance, so all that historians can do at present to keep the power of narrative in check is to sustain a more conscious and self-critical attitude to the language of their own texts. © 2020, Ab Imperio. All rights reserved.