New Volume of Hrushevsky’s History of Ukraine-Rus’ in English

MYKHAILO HRUSHEVSKY HISTORY OF UKRAINE-RUS’

Volume 6: Economic, Cultural, and National Life in the 14th to 17th Centuries

lxxii, 619 pp. 3 maps, 1 photograph

$119.95 (cloth)

Presented by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press and the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research, Volume 6 of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s History of Ukraine-Rus’ focuses on life in Ukraine before the Cossack Age of the Seventeenth Century. It depicts life in Ukraine during the transitional Lithuanian-Polish period of its history. Presented here are the master historian’s discussion and analysis of economic life, society, political affairs, everyday life, culture, church history, inter-ethnic relations, and national identity in the Ukrainian lands during that time.

The volume opens with an account of trade, manufacture, and agriculture in the lands of western Ukraine and the initially less settled lands of central and eastern Ukraine. Relying on a wealth of sources, including statistical and other data, Hrushevsky thoroughly examines the rural economy, tracing developments in agricultural practice and husbandry from Old Rus’ times to the expanded grain production, increased corve, and exhaustive use of natural resources in the late Fifteenth and subsequent centuries. He discusses the composition of Ukraine’s population and its cultural and national interrelations, with attention to the peasantry, the burgher stratum, the clerical order, the nobility, and the highest echelon of society, the magnates. Hrushevsky’s depiction of everyday life includes in-depth information about cultural, religious, and national traditions, education, book and literary production, and artistic creativity. His analysis of social values and norms uses sources ranging from individuals’ wills to contemporary accounts of daily life to the religious works of the ascetic Ivan Vyshensky. Topics also treated in depth include the religious lay brotherhoods and the guild system.

The latter part of the volume focuses on the origins and development of the ideological, religio-national, and political struggle within the Orthodox Church for and against church union. It includes discussion of the roles of the Catholic Church and the Lithuanian, Polish, and (after 1569) Commonwealth governments. Also discussed are the literary polemics that shaped the struggle over the Union of Brest (1596), including the works of Ipatii Potii, Stefan Zyzanii, and Meletii Smotrytsky. The volume relates the course of the struggle to the first decades of the Seventeenth Century, when the new phenomenon of Cossackdom was coming to the fore in Ukrainian affairs. Hrushevsky’s own bibliographical Notes have been amplified by editor’s additions of major works published subsequently. The editorial apparatus also includes a glossary, two maps, a bibliography of works cited by Hrushevsky, two appendixes, and a comprehensive index.

The preparation of this volume for publication was funded by a generous donation from Dr. Jeanette Bayduza and the late Dr. Peter Jacyk, founding donor of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research. Additional support was provided from the estate of the late Edward Brodacky of London, England, and by individual donors.

About the Author

Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866-1934) was Ukraine’s greatest historian. His academic career began at Kyiv University, where in 1890 he graduated from the Department of History and Philology. Appointed Professor of History at Lviv University in 1894, he became a leading figure in the Shevchenko Scientific Society and in the scholarly and cultural community centered in Lviv. In 1918, he was head of the government of the independent Ukrainian republic. From 1924 to 1931, in Kyiv, he organized historical studies at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. An extraordinarily prolific writer, he produced some 2,000 scholarly works. His magnum opus, the Istoriia Ukrany-Rusy (History of Ukraine-Rus’), appeared between 1898 and 1937.

These ten published volumes (in eleven books) trace Ukrainian history from the earliest times to the post-Khmelnytsky era in the late 1650s. The History was internationally acclaimed at the time of its publication, but in Soviet Ukraine after the 1930s no scholarly references to it were permitted to appear. Attempts in the 1960s to “rehabilitate” Hrushevsky and his works failed, and it was only in the late 1980s that the Ukrainian public began to regain access to the History.

Subscription Price

Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s History of Ukraine-Rus’ (Vols. 1-10) (in 12 books): $1,100

Order online at: http://tinyurl.com/hrushevsky-subscription

Volume 6: $119.95

Order online at: http://tinyurl.com/hrushevsky-v-6

e-mail: cius@ualberta.ca

telephone: (780) 492-2973 between 8:30 am and 4:30 pm (MST).

fax: (780) 492-4967 or

mail: CIUS Press, 430 Pembina Hall, University of Alberta, Edmonton AB Canada

T6G 2H8

A presentation on the publication of the new volume of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s History of Ukraine Rus’ (in English translation) will be part of the event “Celebration of Three CIUS Milestones” that also includes honouring Dr. Zenon Kohut for his many years of service as CIUS Director, and welcoming Dr. Volodymyr Kravchenko upon his arrival as the new CIUS Director. This event will be held on October 26 at 7:30 pm., KUMF Gallery – Canadian Ukrainian Art Foundation, 2118-A Bloor St. W., Toronto.