Images of the "east" in ukrainian historiographic tradition: the problem of mental maps designing

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to study the genesis concept of the «East» as the manifestation form of the spatial and the civilizational representations in the Ukrainian historiography, keeping track on the evolution of the historians’ point of views concerning the Ukrainian position in relation to the diverse images of the «East», elucidating the concept correlation between the East and Asia, the West concept in Ukrainian historical thought, the analysis of the concept content of the East in historical texts. The methodology of the research is based on the mental maps as the cognitive reflection means of the geographic and spatial entities in the intellectuals’ consciousness. The significant component of the methodological basis of the study is also the imagelogy as the strategy of looking into the images of «own» and «alien». The deconstruction of Orientalism (a specific way of perceiving and describing the concept of the East by the Western «intellectual thought» representatives), carried out in the researches of E. Said and L. Vulf, also serves the theoretical basis of the article. The scientific novelty of the research is based on the fact that the article is the first attempt of a special historiographical reflection on the specifics of the concept «East» usage in the Ukrainian historiographical tradition of the ХІХth – ХХth centuries. The conclusions are as follows: the several images of the concept of the «East» coexisted in the Ukrainian historical texts: the Slavic East, the Orthodox East, the Byzantine East, the Muslim East, the Turkic-Nomadic (Steppe) East. Some of these concepts convey the similar meaning and could be partially interchangeable, while the others are completely mutually exclusive. Numerous images of the East were differently identified by the Ukrainian historians according to the imagelogy evaluation formulae of «own» and «alien». If the Slavic East of the Orthodox East were perceived as «own», while the Muslim East and the Nomadic East were clearly construed and interpreted as «alien» or «hostile». Such kind of images of the East were marked in the historical texts as Asia. The Ukrainian historical thought has evolved from the complete inclusion (or exclusion) of the national-historical image of Ukraine to one of the Easts content (the XIXth – first quarter of the XXth century) to the spatial and civilizational identification formula, in which Ukraine combines the elements of the East (or several Easts) and the West. The above-mentioned idea is depicted in the popular historiographical formula «Ukraine between the East and the West».