Українознавство (Sep 2018)
Volodymyr Baran’s Ethnocultural and Ethnogenetic Studies
Abstract
The article analyzes the ethnocultural and ethnogenetic issues in the scientific works of V. Baran, published by him in 1991–2017. It is discovered that the destruction of the USSR and the existence of sovereign Ukraine freed the scientists from the totalitarian ideological pressure, allowed them investigating any scientific problems and obtaining unbiased conclusions. It is substantiated that the development of the Ukrainian state and its political, economic, cultural, military, educational, scientific, and other spheres was accompanied by a number of objective and subjective problems, in particular underfunding and shifting state priorities. All those post-Soviet realities, on the one hand, threw science and scientists back to the margins of sociopolitical life at the turn of the millennium, while on the other, compelled them to make non-standard decisions that eventually favored the development of Ukrainian humanities. Given such circumstances, V. Baran began fruitful cooperation with the Institute of Ukrainian Studies of Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv (in 2000 transformed into the Research Institute of Ukrainian Studies of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and the Center for Ukrainian Studies of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv), as well as with other scientific institutions. This resulted in the scholar’s refusal to support the ideologized concept of the so-called Old Rus people and the creation of his own vision of the Ukrainian ethnogenetic process. It is proved that, as a result of more than a quarter-century scientific work in the conditions of the Ukrainian state, V. Baran formed a unique ethnogenetic theory of the origin of Slavs and creatively substantiated and developed the early-medieval conception of the origin of the Ukrainian people founded by M. Hrushevsky. It has been revealed that, freed from the Soviet ideological bias, V. Baran’s ethnogenetic and ethnocultural studies in the post-Soviet Ukraine became complete and acquired the systematic comprehension; due to this, they became a solid and reliable foundation for constructing the author’s models of Slavic and Ukrainian ethnogenesis.
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