Issue 130 (2016)

L. Mogylnyi, Dr. habil., Professor

Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/1728-2640.2016.130.3.12

AUTONOMISTS MOVEMENT IN UKRAINE IN THE LATE XVIIITH – THE EARLY XIXTH CENTURY

This research looks at the premises and key reasons for the shaping of autonomist ideas among the Ukrainian Cossacks elite in the left-bank Ukraine in the late Eighteenth and the early Nineteenth centuries. We consider the written materials of that time, which defended the autonomous status of Ukrainian lands and criticized measures of the Russian Empire to concentrate its power during the reign of Catherine II, Paul I and Alexander I. We focus also on investigation of the controversial elements raised because of Russian Empire's oppression of the Hetmanschyna autonomous rights in the work by S. Divovych "Conversation between Velikorossia and Malorossia" and "History of the Rus" by an unknown author. We analyze the activities of the autonomists, who gathered in Novgorod-Siversky and included representatives of Ukrainian nobility. The contribution of the most prominent members of Novgorod-Siversky circle of autonomists and the participants of "Little Russian Secret Society" to the national movement is considered. In this paper, we analyze the process of coagulation of Ukrainian autonomists' movement in the early Nineteenth century and directions of its impact on the development of Ukrainian national revival in the first half of the Nineteenth century. We consider also the role and importance of Ukrainian nobility in defending the inalienable right to self-determination of the statehood in Ukraine.

Key words: Hetmanschyna, autonomists, Stepan Divovych, Vasyl Kapnist, Iakiv Lukashevych, "History of the Rus", "Little Russian Secret Society".