SUMMARY:

In his article Yaroslav Hrytsak reviews the development of Ukrainian historiography in the past decade after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, situating it in the context of contemporary Ukrainian politics of identity. The author traces early revisions of Marxist-Leninist historiography and official memory in the context of Perestroika, which provided initial impulses for discussion of politically relevant issues of the past. Hrytsak analyzes the establishment of ethno-populist canon of Hrushevsky from early Perestroika on, which was consciously reconstructed and presented as an alternative historiographic model for national history outside of the academic establishment. The author then surveys institutional and intellectual aspects of Ukrainian historiographic development in Ukraine after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, attributing special significance to the influence of Ukrainian diaspora on development in independent Ukraine. Special sections of Hrytsak’s article are devoted to the distribution of topics in Ukrainian historical studies and to methodological debates and trends in historical scholarship. The author pays close attention to the emergence of new academic institutions and those groups of Ukrainian historians, who consciously engaged theoretical issues in an attempt to modernize historical studies and overcome the shortcomings of the ethno-populist canon of Ukrainian history. Welcoming these groups’ contribution to the Ukrainian historical profession, Hrytsak takes a cautious stance towards historians’ seclusion in theory, observing parallels between the historiographic situation in contemporary Ukraine and the historiographic world at large, which is characterized, in the author’s opinion, by a growing gap between empirical historians and those concentrating on methodological revisionism.