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Mykola Zharkikh (Kyiv)

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Historiography

Nicholas Zharkikh

In this section, I will consider only monographs that cover the entire topic I have chosen. Articles devoted to special issues are considered in excursuses in connection with these issues.

I do not consider (mostly) works that have a wider territorial and / or chronological range. I believe that generalizing works are based on special studies at the regional level and therefore depend on the latter.

To facilitate the orientation of the reader, I will highlight correct statements with a green background, a false (in my opinion) – with a yellow background.

Conclusions

, that at least 226 Ukrainian children have been killed since the beginning of the criminal war of the Rotten-Straw Horde against Ukraine.

Children, my love! At least (that is, it can be more)!

I understand – if I walk on the walls and further on the ceiling from such news, it will not change anything in the course of our righteous war with the Horde. Therefore, I continue what I can do (May 9, 2022 at 9:30 a.m.), and I ask readers to remember the "blood price" of this section of my work.

What can be the conclusions from the works read on the narrow topic I have chosen?

Regarding the periodization of the development of historical thought, three periods can be distinguished:

- the first scientific period, represented by the monographs of P. Golubovsky and D. Bagalij. Not everything is perfect in these works, and the main drawback is the adherence to the "partial-viche theory" that was widespread at the time, although no traces of the "viche" are visible in the Chernihiv lands, and even with the partial principalities there it is difficult;

- it was replaced by the first pre-scientific period, which began with the publication of a completely fantastic book by R. Zotov in 1892 and continues to this day. So, "development" in our particular case goes from better to worse, to the presentations that is clogged with the fantasies of Tatishchev and Zotov (we have "negative progress", as modern rotten-straw propagandists say);

- the second scientific period must begin with my work, which for the first time rejects all the fiction accumulated over the past 130 years. Whether it will really start, or whether works of a pre-scientific level will continue to be published – I cannot know.

Part of the works of the pre-scientific period is at the same time anti-scientific, which manifested itself in the application of the obviously erroneous concepts of "feudalism" and "class struggle" to the selected material.

Another sign of the anti-scientific approach is the ignoring of special works devoted to the same topics on which the actors of the anti-scientific approach "work". This tendency has not yet become general, so it is too early to talk about the anti-scientific period that replaced the pre-scientific period. But anything can happen, and such a possibility should not be dismissed.

The greatest merit in the study of the ancient history of Chernihiv region belongs to Martin Dimnik, whose books give the most balanced and complete picture of events. We have a very rare case when a person, who is in no way connected with the Chernihiv region, chose the history of this region as the main theme of his life. It is a pity that our historians ignore his achievements, and his name is unknown in Ukraine.

The main type of scientific works on the topic are monographs that consider the history of Chernihiv region "in a tangent", while considering a wider range of topics of the history of Rus’ in the 13th century or even the history of ancient Rus’ in general. Among those discussed in more detail are the books by Mavrodin, Fennell, and Maiorov. Similarly, those authors who put the Tatar invasion in the center (Nasonov, Khrustalev) touch lightly on the history of Chernihiv region. The list of such books can be continued.

This is neither good nor bad – the state of our sources is such that it forces the authors to talk about all of Rus’. That is why I did not want to select fragments about Chernihiv region from general works, and that is why N. M. Karamzin, M. S. Hrushevsky, B. D. Grekov and P. P. Tolochko are not in my historiography, although such fragments are undoubtedly present in their books.

Did the general features of the movement of historical thought manifest in the studies of Chernihiv region?

Yes, we have at least two such manifestations. The first is the lost time of Soviet historiography, and the second is the division of the historiographical process into normal and Soviet. As a result, in 1981, Martin Dimnik in Canada continued the studios of Golubovsky and Bagalij in Kyiv, and if the number of centuries on the title page had not changed from "8" to "9", no one would have noticed that a hundred years had passed between them.

Were there any special influencing factors in these studios?

Thus, on the example of the Chernihiv-princely science, one can very vividly show the role of the individual in history, and even more specifically – negative the role of a person in history. Rafail Zotov and his "research" can be compared to the evil fairy Karabos, who enchanted the castle of Sleeping Beauty for a hundred years. These hundred years have passed just at the time of the independence of Ukraine, but the sleeping beauty does not show any signs of awakening at all and prefers to remain in a lethargic sleep, to which everyone is accustomed as a normal state. Will a knight appear who will cut down the thorns that overgrown the castle and still wake up the beauty, unite the separated historiographic currents and direct them in a normal (scientific) direction?

Well, for this the knight must start by realizing the fact that the current state is not normal…

An unfortunate conclusion for me from the study of historiography is the lack of a scientific method, which historians of ancient Rus’ have not been able to develop in two hundred and a half years since Karamzin. No one has tried to lay out the research procedure in the form of an algorithm, that is, a finite sequence of steps that lead to the goal. It seems that our historians do not even understand why such an algorithm is needed.