SUMMARY:

The article by Natalya Yakovenko deciphers the complex of political, national, state, and social estate (corporate) identity of the seventeenth century gentry man Jan (Joachim) Erlich, the author of a diary that has attracted historians’ attention since the nineteenth century. Yakovenko gives her interpretation of the political and social loyalties of Jan Erlich whose case, in her view, contradicts the accepted views about “macro-identities” of Rzecz Pospolita. She examines Erlich’s sense of geography, his understanding of “rus’ka” identity, and his confessional and state loyalties, especially vis-а-vis contemporary meanings of “Ukraine.” Five levels of analysis produce five possible “situational” identities and loyalties: local; corporate; “Kievan”; “Ukrainian” (limited to the Kiev lands); and Russian Orthodox, which is representative of the Rzecz Pospolita’s szlachta. The later, in Yakovenko’s view, is the least elaborated identity, because Erlich’s macro-political consciousness is very limited. Erlich’s picture of the world does not provide grounds for constructing larger ideological loyalties and their corresponding entities (for example, historiography’s rather popular “Rus’kii people”). For Yakovenko this indicates multiplicity of early modern identities and political loyalties, as she allows for a more ideologically motivated feeling of groupness for more politically and publicly engaged noble men.