Contribution of the military to the study of the history of cossacks in the territory of South Ukraine in the second half of the ХІХ - in the beginning of the XX century

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study how officers of the army of the Russian Empire of the Odesa Military District explored and popularized the history of the Cossacks in the early twentieth century. Our task is to establish the circle of these individuals, establish the relevant facts of their biographies, compare views on the Cossacks and approaches to popularizing historical facts, identify the factors that influenced the cognition process, correlate their views with modern approaches and update the experience of history. The interest on the part of the military in the history of the Cossacks was recorded by us in almost all the main centers of the development of historical thought in Ukraine (except Kherson and Elisavetgrad). It is concluded that the attention of military historians was attracted by various Cossack troops, but mainly Ukrainian, Zaporozhye, and Russian, Don. The main motive for the officers to study the history of the Cossacks was not only scientific, but also the task of educating the patriotism of the military. The great historian of the Cossacks, the representative of the neo-romantic, populist movement in the historiography of D.I. Yavornitsky. All authors perceived the various groups of the Cossacks as branches of a single family of Cossacks. But the works of P.N. Andrianova and A.G. Avchinnikov contributed to the formation of the image of the Ukrainian Cossacks as a unique historical phenomenon, which was different from the Russian Cossacks. The texts of the officers expressed a whole range of assessments of the history of the Ukrainian and Russian Cossacks, but apologetization, that is, the protection of Cossacks from a negative historiographic tradition, generally prevailed. The authors made a lot of efforts to combine loyalty to the Romanov dynasty and the freedom-loving Cossack freemen.

Метою цієї статті є висвітлення процесу дослідження та популяризації на початку ХХ ст. історії козацьких формувань представниками офіцерського складу армії Російської імперії, які служили у полках, що дислокувалися на території Південної України (Одеська військова округа), або перебували тут у відставці. Нашим завданням є намітити коло цих осіб, встановити відповідні факти їх біографій, порівняти погляди на козацтво та підходи до популяризації історичних фактів, виявити чинники, що впливали на процес пізнання, співвіднести їх погляди з сучасними підходами і загалом актуалізувати тогочасний досвід.