Methodological aspects of the reconstruction of the east-slavs ethnic historyin the modern ukrainian historiography

Abstract

Modern Ukrainian historians, during the reconstruction of the East Slavs’ ethnic history before the Mongol era, rarely adhere to clearly formulated methodological guidelines and theoretical postulates that allow such studying. Therefore, for contemporary Ukrainian historiography of this problem are inherent outdated rudiments of «Soviet positivism», misunderstanding and reluctance to apply modern western approaches, conscious self-isolation within the national narrative. The main idea of the article is to show that in modern Ukrainian historiography there are no satisfactory methodological principles for the scientific reconstruction of the East Slavs’ ethnic history, and most Ukrainian researchers are still confused by the conditions of methodological pluralism. The purpose of the study is to analyze the methodological aspects of the reconstruction of the East Slavs ethnic history in contemporary Ukrainian historiography. This scientific topic has not been analyzed in historiography till now, so the problem, we have raised, has acquired such a value for the first time. The methodology of the research is determined by the critical analysis and is based on the principles of historicism, systematic, scientific, ethnological verification, objectivity, ethnosocial constructivism, moderate relativism, methodological pluralism. In order to solve this problem, were used such historiographical methods as analysis, synthesis, «second level historiography», comparative, hermeneutic, abstract, historical-genetic, typological, terminological analysis. The scientific novelty is determined by the fact that for the first time, with the method of remote monitoring and analysis (so-called method of «second level historiography») is clarified the development of methodological foundations of the newest Ukrainian scientists’ researches devoted to the reconstruction of the East-Slavic communities’ ethnic history in the pre-Mongol era. The comparative approach allowed us to trace the influence of methodological pluralism on modern Ukrainian historiography and to establish the significant methodological confusion and ignorance with new tendencies among historians and other humanitarians. Conclusions. The reconstruction of the East Slavic communities’ ethnic history, including the Ukrainians ethnogenesis, is one of the key issues in modern Ukrainian historiography. The proposed analysis shows that in Ukrainian historical science there is no satisfactory transformation of the identified segment of cognition, and most Ukrainian humanitarians are confused in the terms of methodological pluralism. On the other hand, many leading historiographers in modern Ukraine mark the significant changes in this area during last decades, that allows us to believe in improving the situation, including the situation in ancient ethnical history researches.