When I think about European history and historiography of the eighteenth-century, the image of one struggling with their identity comes to mind. This “identity struggle” manifested itself quite differently in various European polities and societies during and around the 1700s (depending on one's preferred chronology for this century), as it did in the studies of it as well. Indeed, the question of the “true identity” of this historical period, of it being a precursor to modern Europe, a “watershed,” and/or a historical epoch in its own rights with its distinctive social, cultural, and intellectual dynamics, among other elements, was and remains hotly contested. This holds true regardless of whether we are searching for the survival of previous historical forms or tracing the emergence of new patterns of modernity, in this case in relation to eighteenth-century Ukraine.
The reviewed collection of studies lays a strong claim to position itself as both a new and authoritative presentation of eighteenth-century Ukrainian history, which “. . . has long been a marginal and even neglected period in the dominant master narratives of Ukrainian history . . .” and “. . . it has fared hardly better in the interpretations developed after 1991, being either absorbed into the broader early modern age or confined into a pale transition period between the pivotal ‘long’ seventeenth and ‘long’ nineteenth centuries” (3). Recently, “. . . eighteenth-century studies have demonstrated a steady quantitative and qualitative growth . . . that have turned the period into one of the most dynamic and innovative fields in Ukrainian history writing” (3). As argued by this volume's editors, eighteenth-century Ukrainian history “became a testing ground for often methodologically sophisticated studies in the new social and cultural histories, historical demography, women's history and childhood studies, religious studies, and the history of education, as well as intellectual and new imperial histories,” thus introducing the international academic public to recent trends in the study of eighteenth-century Ukraine” (3).
Where the chronology and methodology of studying the eighteenth-century Ukrainian history are concerned, the editors offer a brilliant supposition considering and studying this period “not as a simple series of chronological epochs that succeeded one another,” but as “an accumulation of layers, some of which are already completed at a point when others continue” (46). This understanding of history's dynamics, its fluidity as continuity and change, sets a stage for bringing in “new cultural and social histories of Ukraine” to its audience (10). While the scope of this review does not allow for a more extensive and profound discussion of this volume's many contributions, there are several standpoints worth mentioning.
The aforesaid “identity struggle” in relation to Ukraine manifests itself in both history and historiography where ethnic identity and geography are concerned. It can be understood in part by studying “the emergence and transformation of such entities as ‘Ukraine,’ ‘Little Russia,’ ‘Sloboda Ukraine,’ or ‘Southern Russia’ on the mental maps of the Russian Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Western Europe” (6–7). Many of these and other changes relevant for this period cannot be fully understood without studying the struggles and demise of Ukrainian Cossack polity (the Hetmanate), combined with Russian imperial expansion in Ukraine during the 1700s, which set the stage for significant societal and cultural changes in the Ukrainian population. We can identify particular issues associated with shifting authority and power imbalances: “cartographic propaganda” and its politically-motivated application influenced by agendas and contradictions (47–49), changes in political language, terminology, and target audiences pertinent to Ukraine during that age (561–78), transition from a corporation-based ideology (Cossacks and the new co-opted Russian nobility from among Ukrainian population), to the budding cultural and national revival and the Ukrainian nation's concept of the 1800s, and the further evolution of the “Fatherland” concept (4) as some of the examples of such significant and complex hallmarks and transformations characteristic for eighteenth-century Ukraine.
This volume largely delivers on the promise of offering “new perspectives” on the eighteenth-century Ukrainian history to its readers. However, I was also hoping for a concluding, and unifying, argument that would accomplish the task of further flushing out and summarizing these perspectives and individual authors’ findings while also mapping out the existing and emerging problematic areas fit for future academic endeavors. After reading this volume, I am still pondering to a degree over the question of what exactly was that eighteenth-century Ukraine that I have read about.
The studies presented in this collection offer some stimulating and thought-provoking insights and form a larger narrative, which does not paint a “pale transition period” in Ukrainian history. Certainly, there are “layers” analyzed in relation to the “Fatherland” topic and the transition from the “Cossack” to “Ukrainian” content and conceptualization (542–59), which paint a deep and nuanced picture. Meanwhile, the coverage of some other topics does not necessarily offer the same benefit. Perhaps, this is just me wondering about history as an “accumulation of layers” and placing the presented studies within the framework of this concept while occasionally asking myself: “What other layers in relation to certain topics am I hoping to find here, yet missing?” One topic that immediately comes to mind has to do with the significant changes in Russian imperial historiography during the later 1700s to early 1800s in relation to contemporaneous Ukraine. But this is likely neither the time nor the place to ask about, and to ask for specific studies and topics that are hopefully forthcoming, or for some form of a unified concept of eighteenth-century Ukrainian history, but to gratefully accept and to take a true intellectual delight in the answers provided to date, which come in the form of these undoubtedly important studies on Ukraine's social, cultural, and intellectual history.
