Talk:Nikolay Kostomarov

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[edit] Modification moved to talk

Text below moved from the article. If kept in the article in current form, it would only bring flames. Let's try to moderate and encyclopedize this.

As a historian, Kostomarov was a proponent of populism and federalism; that is, he strove to write the history of the common people, especially the common Ukrainian people, and was very innovative in his use of folksong and ethnography to do this. He believed that folksong revealed the true spirit of a people and thought that both in their history and in their national songs, the Ukrainian and Russian peoples differed from each other, as well as from their close neighbours, the Poles. He thought that the Russians were more autocratic in nature, the Poles more aristocratic, and the Ukrainians more democratic. Kostomarov saw federal principles at work in the early history of Rus', which was a varied and highly decentralized entity before the emergence of the Tsardom of Muscovy in the seventeenth century.

The anon editor who wrote it, please don't take this disagreement personally. Let's work this through. -Irpen 03:16, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Dear Irpen:

Kostomarov caused a great deal of controversy by his debunking of Russian historical myths during his lifetime, and, as you can see from the passage above, promoted a few of his own. I do not think that we should ignor them as they were very important, if controversial, in his own day, and are still very much operative, if still controversial, in the East Slavic world today.

Author, June 14, 2005

Hi Author (sorry to address you impersonally, but since you chose not to register, there is no WP pseudonym I can use). I agree with you that importance of K was rather profound and we certainly should not ignore his influences. He was one of the pioneers in the East-Slavic historical thought dominated then, and I admit to a large degree now, by russophilic scholarship (and by russo- I mean Great Russian (Velikorossiya)). OTOH, he certainly had his own prejudices. I did not read much of analysis on Kostomarov, but I can certainly tell from his book that he was heavily biased towards Eastern Orthodoxy. I researched very little and recently compiled a brief article on the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius as well as this one. This, and my memories from reading his book, is not enough for me to write anything else. I opposed the text you included in that form (and moved it to the talk page) because I would like to see more sources if we are going to include the text that may seem inflammatory for revert wars. "Russians autocratic, Ukrainians democratic and Poles aristocratic" seems like stereotyping and oversimplification even if he thought along these lines. The Brotherhood article briefly mentions his Slavophile federalism ideas. Perhaps we should stay within those limits also here unless we are ready to dig deep in research. Regards, -Irpen 04:20, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Dear Irpen:

I have taken your comments into consideration in my rewrite and additions to the Kostomarov article. I trust that it is now "objective" enough and "encyclopedic" enough for your taste. We might not like them today, and they do seem rather out of date after the events of 1991, but Kostomarov's opinions were what they were in the mid-19th century.

I have also deleted the word "Slavophile" from the article as Kostomarov definitely did not fit the profile of the famous Moscow Slavophiles of the 19th century who as a rule were anything but "progressive". He was, however, very much a promoter of Pan-Slav cooperation and this comes out very clearly in his illegal pamphlet generally ascribed the title "The Books of the Genesis of the Ukrainian People" which was the major programmatic document of the Cyril Methodian Brotherhood, and should be mentioned in the Wikipedia article on that organization.

Best wishes, author

The word "Slavophile" you deleted is mentioned in the Brotherhood article in Encyclopedia of Ukraine [1]. If you think, Pan-Slavism is a more appropriate term, I don't mind that. Are you sure that K. was a "close friend" of Shevchenko? I know Shevchenko joined his "Brotherhood", but it does not mean yet they were close friends. Also, you write "Northern and Southern Rus'". In his letter he seems to freely interchange Northern with Great (Rus') and Southern with Little (Rus'). I included this info in my edit and linked to appropriate terms. I would appreciate if you edit the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius should you like to add the info on the pamphlet you mentioned. Thanks, --Irpen 07:37, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] His attitude towards religion

I temporary moved to talk the following piece which raises my doubts:

"However, he was quite open towards western forms of Christianity and seldom betrayed any strong bias against Catholicism. At times during his career, he was even accused of being a Polonophile."

If one looks at the last paragraph of his book's chapter devoted to Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski, (K. calls him and the chapter: "Knyaz' Konstantin Konstantinovich Ostrozhskiy"), his misgivings about Catholicism and polonization are very strong. There he present a very negative analysis of this phenomenon. Please see here. Also, this chapter devoted to Peter Mogila reveals similar sentiments. If you can't read in Russian, I will try to provide a brief translation of the most relevant material. Or perhaps the English translation of the book exists. Does it? -Irpen 18:56, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Dear Irpen:

Thank you for your critical comments and the references. I have read that final paragraph from the essay on Ostrozhky (though my Russian is getting a bit rusty, I admit) and my impression is that it is quite typically Kostomarov. Of course, he was critical of Polonization. But what Ukrainian historian wasn't? Well, perhaps Lypynsky, or Tomashivsky to some extent.... But I still believe that Kostomarov did not share that blind hostility to Catholicism and everything Polish that was propagated by reactionary Russian Slavophiles like M.I. Koialovich, who wrote extensively on the evils of the Church Union. Kostomarov too saw many problems with the Union, but he dared to speak Polish in Vilnius on the eve of the Polish insurrection and was critical of Old Muscovy for not allowing the construction of Catholic churches on its territory. He even gave a copy of On the Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis to his fiancee on the eve of his wedding day. In sum, I believe that for all of his undeniable and very sincere devotion to Orthodoxy, Kostomarov knew and was more open to Catholic culture than many of his contemporaries.

All good wishes.... Author

Hi author, thanks much for improvement to the article. I don't doubt that K. might have expressed less animosity to Poland, the Catholic church and the Union than most of his contemporary colleagues in the Imperial Russia. But his attitude, being less negative than others' and perhaps even tolerant, was still highly critical for very understandable reasons. Leaving the text in the original version may somewhat mislead the reader who is likely to be unfamiliar with the details of that time's debates among Russian historians. So, we should either bring this into the full context of strong anti-Catholicism of mid-19th century Russia (which would be not easy to do in a couple of sentences) or just leave this part out of the article, at least for now. I changed "debunked" by "doubted" for Susanin because the issue wasn't settled neither then nor now. I also added an image. The article doesn't seem to be a stub anymore, but of course it can use some expansion. There is plenty of info, even on the internet. Hopefully, other editors will join. -Irpen 06:17, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)