TRANSFORMATION OF HISTORIOGRAPHICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE UKRAINIAN VILLAGE (THE SECOND HALF OF THE 20th – THE BEGINNING OF THE 21st CENTURY): CONCEPTUAL PRINCIPLES AND STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The research is devoted to a systematic study on the historiographical and methodological genesis of the scientific thought about the Ukrainian village and the agrarian relations from the 1950s to the beginning of the third decade of the 21^st century. The purpose of the research is to carry out a comprehensive analysis regarding the transformation of conceptual foundations and stages of the historiographical and methodological understanding of the Ukrainian village in the second half of the 20^th – at the beginning of the 21^st centuries, as well as identifying the vector of the research guidelines development from the classical Soviet approaches to modern practices of historical science. The methodology of the research is based on the principles of historicism, scientificity, verification, authorial objectivity, the use of the historical, institutional, systemic and problem chronological method, as well as methods of comparative judgment and generalisation. Scientific novelty. There have been clearly distinguished and substantiated three qualitatively different stages of the historiographical and methodological understanding of the topic: the Soviet one, which was characterised by ideologization and adherence to the Marxist-Leninist formational approach, the transitional one with its inherent de-ideologization and nation-oriented approach, and the modern one, characterised by the methodological pluralism, interdisciplinarity, and synergy. Conclusions. The transformation of the historiographical understanding of the Ukrainian village during the mid-20^th –the beginning of the 21^st centuries went from an ideologised formational paradigm to a human-centered and interdisciplinary strategy for studying this cradle of the Ukrainian history. This process was implemented through three consecutive stages, each of which is characterized by a radical change in methodological tools and a significant expansion of the intellectual horizons of researchers. The first stage was the Soviet one, which is known as the period when historiography was methodologically limited and distorted. The agrarian historians focused exclusively on the “successes” of the collective farm and the state farm system (growth in production, mechanization, “the rapprochement of the city and the countryside”), completely ignoring the tragedies that befell the Ukrainian countryside during the 20th century. The above-mentioned led to the creation of an ideologically biased image of the countryside, which violated one of the most important methods of historical research – the method of objectivism. The second stage was a transitional one, during which a historiographical and methodological break occurred. In the late 1980s – early 1990s, due to the works written by L. Berenstein, S. Kulchytsky, P. Panchenko and other agrarian historians, the processes of de-ideologization and destruction of the Soviet myths have been initiated. The main emphasis was shifted to criticism of the collective farm system and rethinking the tragedies of the Ukrainian peasantry. The third stage was the modern one, which was characterized by methodological pluralism and interdisciplinarity. The main focus was on the human dimension of the transformational changes, the mentality of the peasantry, environmental factors and cultural transformations in the research and is becoming more relevant. The modern historical school seeks to implement global trends to move from a limited abstract description of facts to a thorough understanding of the role of the peasantry as an important component of the Ukrainian nation in modernization projects.

Key words: historiography, methodology, agrarian history, peasantry, interdisciplinary approach, synergy.