Zenon Kohut's "Roots of Identity" launched in Ukraine (11/28/04)

Zenon Kohut's "Roots of Identity" launched in Ukraine

EDMONTON - The concepts of Ukrainian nationhood and identity are issues that are sure to spark passionate discussion among scholars and students of Ukrainian history. Zenon E. Kohut's recently released book "Korinnia Identychnosty: Studii z Ranniomodernoyi ta Modernoyi Istorii Ukrainy: (Roots of Identity: Studies on Early Modern and Modern Ukraine), will no doubt add new insight into the debate and will be of interest to all concerned with the question of identity both in past and present-day Ukraine.

This collection of 15 articles, originally written in English between 1977 and 2002, is the fourth book in the series of Ukrainian-language historical monographs of the Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. It was published in Kyiv by Krytyka Press.

Although these essays were not originally written for a single volume, they have a common thread that unites them. Whether dealing with fundamental problems of political history, historiography or questions of historical memory, these articles touch upon the formation and reformulation of early modern and modern Ukrainian identity, hence the title of the collection, "Roots of Identity."

The first part of the book primarily deals with the development of identity in the 17th and 18th century. Unlike rigid modernists who believe that Ukrainian nationhood is simply a late 19th or 20th century "invention," Dr. Kohut sees the conceptualization of a "Little Russian Ukrainian Cossack Nation (narod)" in the Cossack [Kozak] chronicles as a precursor to the idea of modern Ukrainian nationhood. At the same time, the Little Russian component of this identity had contradictory consequences, at times stimulating and at other times delaying the development of modern Ukrainian consciousness.

In the second part, the essays mainly discuss the emergence and development of Ukrainian national historiography in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in challenging the All-Russian imperial and Polish narratives that denied Ukrainian nationhood. Other topics include Ukrainian historical discourse on identity formation in independent Ukraine as well as Ukraine's relations with Russia.

"Roots of Identity" was introduced in Ukraine through a series of launches - which took place in September in Lviv, Ostrih and Kyiv - where it was met with critical acclaim by Ukraine's scholarly community. The noted Lviv historian, Iaroslav Dashkevych, whose views represent a more traditional school of Ukrainian history, and the foremost historian of the early-modern period, Natalia Iakovenko, who has a decidedly more modernistic and post-modernistic approach, both agreed that the book was an important contribution to the question of identity and nationhood and gave it high praise.

The first launch took place at the Lviv Book Forum. A panel, chaired by the manager of Krytyka Press, Andrii Mokrousov, included three noted historians, Dr. Iakovenko, Volodymyr Kravchenko and Dr. Dashkevych, placed Dr. Kohut's contribution within the field of Ukrainian and East European history.

The second launch was held at the National University of "Ostroh Academy." Here the book was discussed by Alla Atamanenko, director of the Institute for the Study of the Diaspora, and Lubomyr Wynar, president of the Ukrainian Historical Association.

The final launch, in Kyiv, attracted much of its academic community. Speakers included historians Dr. Iakovenko, Volodymyr Kravchenko, Volodymyr Rychka and Viktor Horobets, Martha Bohachevska-Chomiak (Fulbright Program), literary scholar George Grabowicz, (Harvard University) and Sofia Hrachova, the translator of the work. The event was taped by STB Television and was covered in local newspapers.

At each of the gatherings, Dr. Kohut spoke about the underlying motivations in pursuing his research, which he outlines in more detail in the introduction to his book, responded to questions, autographed books and presented copies to university students in the three mentioned cities.

Dr. Kohut's ("Roots of Identity") can be purchased from CIUS Press for $39.95 (cloth) and $29.95 (paperback). Outside Canada, prices are in U.S. dollars. Orders can be placed online by credit card via a secure Internet connection www.utoronyo.ca/cius by e-mail, [email protected]; by telephone, (780-492-2973); fax, (780-492-4967); or by mail, CIUS Press, 450 Athabasca Hall, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2E8.

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