BOOK REVIEW

A biography of Mykola Kostomarov, a leader in Ukraine's national awakening

Mykola Kostomarov: A Biography by Thomas M. Prymak. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996, 263 pp., $60 cloth ISBN 0-8020-0758-9.

by Maria Hrycaika Zaputovich

A difficult feat for any biographer is to maintain objectivity, and Thomas Prymak has admirably achieved this with his well-written biography of Mykola Kostomarov (1817-1885).

Kostomarov was of Ukrainian and Russian parentage, and was known as a leading light of the Ukrainian national awakening of that period. A consummate scholar and intellectual, he was an unusual academic in that he empathized with the common people and championed the use of the Ukrainian language in education.

Kostomarov, who had access to many primary sources that are no longer available, dealt with issues which were as explosive then as they are today: the non-Slavic origins of the Russian people; the separate historical, cultural, and linguistic entities of Russia and Ukraine; and the assertion that Kyivan Rus' was the predecessor of Ukraine, not of Russia.

Kostomarov also documents Ukraine's suffering under Polish and Russian occupation. That his scholarship was impeccable and unbiased is strengthened by the fact that he had intimate friendships with members of the members of the Polish and Russian intelligentsia. He was also a loyal Russian subject.

A distraction for this reviewer, was the use of Russian spelling of Ukrainian place-names. If English speakers were able to make the leap from Wade-Giles transliteration to Pinyin with respect to China, surely a less radical change from Russian to Ukrainian spelling could be accommodated. Mr. Prymak has also confused the name of a territory "Slobidska Ukraine," with the name of its settlement "Sloboda." These points, however, can easily be corrected in the second printing.

This book is bound to generate much discussion, and should be included in every university's East European curriculum.

Maria Hrycaiko Zaputovich lectured in Chinese and Russian history at the University of Guelph, and Chinese and Japanese history at the University of Toronto.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, September 13, 1998, No. 37, Vol. LXVI

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