Eastern ukrainian territories in the 16–18 centuries: the struggle of narratives and historical reality

Abstract

The problem of Slavic settlement and development of the border areas between present-day Ukraine and russia is extremely politicized and even irritating. In the course of the discussion, a complex of diametrically opposed narratives was formed, which the discussants operate with. It is unfortunate to state that Ukrainian scientific historiography on this issue is significantly inferior to the mass of russian works that have been systematically accumulated since imperial times, during the Soviet period, and continue to be actively replenished in recent decades. Within this direction, research centers and schools were formed at border russian universities – Rostov, Voronezh and Belgorod. However, the Eastern Ukrainian universities of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv, with rare exceptions, cannot boast of a similar systematic approach and achievements in the study of the muscovy-Ukrainian borderland, which did not have time to form, and was not formed even during the time of Ukrainian independence.
The main content and chronology of the stages of population and development of the Don-Donetsk-Azov region appears as follows.
The development of the Pole by Ukrainians and muscovites began simultaneously in the second half of the 16th century. The essential difference between these opposing colonization flows was that on the Ukrainian side it was the socalled people’s colonization, and from moscow – state colonization. Soviet historiography traditionally presented the process of the development of Poland as a joint effort of the fraternal Russian and Ukrainian peoples in the fight against the Turks and Tatars. Lately this stereotype has been revised by scientists: the original friendship of the two Slavic peoples has turned into fierce competition and even confrontation between the two neighboring peoples, in which the Ukrainian side was in no way inferior to the moscow side, at least until the middle of the 17th century. After a period of a certain balance between the two colonization flows, from about the second third to the middle of the 17th century. the power of moscow state colonization began to gain the upper hand over Ukrainian people colonization. This trend gained momentum in the second half of the 17th century, during which Slobozhanshchyna arose and became a part of the Muscovite kingdom, and the process of including the Left Bank region of the Seversky Donets began. It is from this period that we can talk not only about the development of the region, but also about its actual settlement.
In the 18th century the borders of muscovy, and later russia, gradually moved further south, as a result of which the Right Bank region of the Seversky Donets (Slov’yanoserbiya), and then the Northern Azov region (Land of the Don Army and Lands of the Zaporozhian Army), were included in the russian empire. In the process of gradual advancement of muscovy-russia borders to the south, the Ukrainian colonization flow, not disappearing, but even increasing, was gradually included in its state context.
The main factor that has always conditioned and determined the results of research on the issues under consideration is related to historical sources. The fact is that muscovy-russian documents were and remain the basic source in the researched issues, while Polish and Ottoman sources are much more limited and fragmentary. On the other hand, under the conditions of the folk character of Ukrainian colonization, the lack of full-fledged Ukrainian statehood during this period, the loss of the Stara Sich archive, there is a clear lack of Ukrainian sources. However, this circumstance should not be a reason to sit idly by, but an incentive for active and deep study of all available sources, which no one has done so far.