The 1917–1921 Ukrainian revolution and Donbas (a schematic version of history for wikipedians)

Abstract

The article examines the issue of representation of the events of 1917–1921 on the territory of modern Donbas in the Wikipedia article «Ukrainian Revolution in Donbas» and its transformation from the original article entitled «Civil War in Donbas». The article outlines the problems of reproducing the history of the revolutionary period in Soviet and postSoviet works.
The purpose of this article is to form a structural and chronological scheme of the key events of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921 in the region now called Donbas. The author proposes a schematic version of the history of the region that departs from the typical Soviet and post-Soviet versions of events and takes into account the Ukrainian national context.
The article presents a systematic and Ukraine-centric approach to covering the events of 1917–1921 in the region, which is important for Wikipedians seeking to create highquality content on historical topics. Since the history of the eastern part of Ukraine has long been presented through the prism of Soviet propaganda, the article helps to understand the past, ridding its descriptions of clichés and stereotypes inherent in Soviet historiography.
The research is based on the study of historical events, facts and processes in the context of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921 and personal experience of editing Wikipedia articles.
In contrast to traditional approaches that often treat Donbas as part of the Soviet space, the author demonstrates that this region was an important component of Ukraine, where processes and counter-processes of Ukrainian nation-building took place in all its diversity. This contributes to a revision of the established views on the history of the region and its role in historical processes.
The article raises issues that are usually ignored by historians or insufficiently covered in other studies. This allows for a more complete picture of the events and encourages historians to conduct new research.
The article not only analyses historical events, but also provides specific recommendations on how to reflect them in Wikipedia. Due to its structure and content, the article can serve as a basis or template for writing other articles about historical events related to Donbas and the Ukrainian Revolution. Also, the results of the study can be used for scientific research, popular science publications, as well as in archival, museum, library and memorial activities in the region.