Zenon E. Kohut: Selected Pages of an Intellectual Biography

• Published in: Journal of Ukrainian studies 2004-07, Vol.29 (1/2), p.1
• Main Author: Kravchenko, Volodymyr
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Historians; Historiography; History; Library collections; Scholars
• ISSN: 0228-1635

[...]about the mid-1980s, such studies appeared to be burdened with ethnic prejudices cultivated, on the one hand, by Russian emigrants who carried on the traditional great-power understanding of the history of Eastern Europe and, on the other hand, by exiles from Ukraine whose work was largely defined by the struggle for Ukrainian national identity.9 In turning to the history of Ukrainian-Russian relations, Dr. Kohut saw it as his task not to fight for the half-rotted blanket of the historical and cultural legacy of Old Rus' or condemn Russian imperialism and its allies but to strive to comprehend the problem through the prism of political culture, geopolitics, mentality, and the social behavior of the elites of both peoples as defined by the broad framework of Slavia Orthodoxa, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire and determined by perfectly concrete conditions and motifs of everyday life. In his words, rather than discussing questions of "union," "reunion," "alliance," or "protectorate," it is more useful to establish the true interests and motives underlying the policies of both sides, with particular reference to the questions of what Khmelnytsky was trying to achieve in conducting negotiations on the Pereiaslav Agreement, what plans the Muscovites had concerning Ukraine and Eastern Europe, and in what respects their interests coincided and diverged.12 No less persuasive in this respect is Dr. Kohut's understanding of the nature of Ukrainian-Russian relations in the mid- and late eighteenth century. [...]he explains the abolition of Ukrainian autonomy not by a mystical desire on Russia's part to destroy Ukraine but as the result of perfectly rational motives on the part of an autocratic state that was adopting Western Enlightenment models and saw socio-political and cultural unification as the key to the country's effective development: "The evolution of the Russian Empire on Western absolutist patterns may be a key to explaining the change in Russia's policies toward Cossack Ukraine. [...]scholars still discuss the problem of the national identity of the Kyivan Synopsis, so to speak, characterizing it as either a Russian or a Ukrainian monument.21 Dr. Kohut defends the instrumental nature of this work, determined by concrete political conditions in the life of the clergy of the Kyivan Cave Monastery during the period of the Ruin, especially its interest in Russian protection. [...]the directive of the president of Ukraine "On th