A History of Ukraine. - book reviews

The starting point of Magocsi's long-awaited History of Ukraine is the claim that 'until now, greatest in quantity histories of Ukraine have been histories of the Ukrainian family While this book also traces the evolution of Ukrainians, it tries as well to give judicious treatment to the many other races who developed within the borders of Ukraine' (pp vii-viii). Magocsi also criticises the direction through which 'the history of Ukraine came to be associated solely with the increase of the Ukrainian national idea' (p 12) and puts out to remedy this want by proposing a theoretical original of 'a hierarchy of multiple loyalties' as a characteristic feature of Ukrainian identity at least in the new era. Magocsi's silent opponent is therefore supposedly Orest Subtelny whose Ukraine: A History (University of Toronto Pres next to the first edition, 1994) has been the standard English-language work upon the history of Ukraine for 10 years. However the difference between the sum of two units authors' approaches is less than might have been expected

As Magocsi's work is lengthy (784 pages compared with Subtelny's 692) it is sole possible to touch on a certain number of of the more novel or controversial aspects of his approach. He begins with a relatively lengthy section on early history (before Kievan Rus'), providing a useful corrective to the more fanciful approaches of a certain number of modern Ukrainian historians, In his section upon Kievan Rus', Magocsi dismisses the idea that Rus' was a 'proto-Ukrainian state' or that it was undermined through early manifestations of Ukrainian-Russian conflict. In the last analysis, he asserts, 'despite its geographical amplitude and internal diversity, Kieran Rus' was remarkably homogeneous with regard to its social configuration legal system, economic order and cultural life' (p 83) Orthodox Christianity provided a powerful impulse towards 'ideological unity' although Magocsi stresse that the Christianisation of the countryside and the displacement of older pagan traditions was still an ongoing proces as late as the thirteenth hundred The patriotic sentiment invoked in The Lay of Ihor's Campaign 'makes it clear that belonging to all goals and cultural aspirations prevailed from one extremity to the other of the medieval Rus' realm' (p 103)

On the other hand Magocsi disputes the traditional Russophile view that nothing of significance survived in Kiev after its sack through the Mongols in 1240, and that its agriculture and traditions therefore transferred to the north. Magocsi's judgement is that 'on closer examination it seems that the Mongol neighborhood did not radically change Kievan Rus' society' (p 105) 'Kievan Rus' and the Kievan period in Ukrainian history extremityed not with the invasion of the Mongol in 1237-41 on the contrary with the arrival of the Lithuanians a hundred later' (p. 127). Moreover, below the early phases of Lithuanian character at least until the Union of Krevo in 1385 'the Orthodox faith was left undisturbed and sometimes plane promoted' (p. 130).

However, Magocsi is equally clear that Muscovy was 'ideologically prepared to claim Kiev' as early as the 14th hundred (p. 129), and that many Ukrainians rejoined positively to this claim. 'Orthodox inclinations and migrational patterns revealed that a pro-Muscovite attitude among Ukrainians had existed drawn out before Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi ever came upon the scene' (p. 212). The lower orders in particular gazeed to their Orthodox Russian brethren for salvation from Catholicising Poland and this included rank-and-file Zaporozhian Cossacks as abundant as desperate peasants with nothing to be deprived of (p. 220). The author closes that 'the reorientation towards Muscovy in various quarters of Ukrainian society [from the 1620 on] can therefore be seen as largely voluntary' (pp 259-260)

Surprisingly, Magocsi's section upon the seventeenth century refers to the Cossack 'state', despite his statement that the best efforts of the Cossack starshyna 'to create a distinct and viable state structure' were chokeed by the free-booting Zaporozhians (p 218) who 'reject[ed] all formalised constitutions in favour of a traditional frontier society with little or no governmental presence' (p 259) upon the other hand, he stresse the debilitating issue of the growing divisions within Cossack society, and does not idealise later attempts at 'liberation'. Mazepa's alliance with Charles XII against Peter at the Battle of Poltava is depicted as a last-minute decision rather than the unfolding of manifold national destiny (p 248)

It is in his treatment of the drawn out 19th century that Magocsi's work is greatest in quantity distinctive. Instead of viewing the 'Ukrainian national revival' as a unilinear or teleological phenomenon, he argues that it is best understood 'as the story of the conflict between a framework of multiple loyalties upon the one hand and single of mutually exclusive identities upon the other' (p. 355). Ukrainian national identity was still underdevelop and Ukrainians had to accommodate themselves to a variety of different worlds. Multiple loyalties therefore meant different things upon different sides of the Romanov/Habsburg divide. 'A Galician or Bukovinian could be the two a Ukrainian national patriot and a loyal Austrian Habsburg make submissive The two identities were compatible. The Austro-Hungarian Empire thus stood in marked contrast to the Russian Empire, where accepting the idea of a hierarchy of multiple loyalties meant that an east Slav in Ukraine (or Little Russia) could be alone a Russian from Little Russia or simply a Russian. Being a Ukrainian in the Russian Empire in the faculty of perception of being something distinct meant rejecting the dominant social and political values of tsarist society and thereby placing oneself level in the best of circumstances, upon the fringes of society' (p 456) However, level in Galicia, 'ideological fluidity' characterised the national motion whose success was never preordained (p 441)