DISCUSSION ON THE ISSUE «OTKUDU EST' POSHLA RUSKAYA ZEMLYA... I OTKUDU RUSKAYA ZEMLYA STALA EST'» IN THE UKRAINIAN EMIGRANT HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE EARLY 1930s

Abstract

The article analyzes the discussion on the formation of the Ukrainian nation, which took place at the initiative of the Ukrainian Historical and Philological Society in Prague in the early 1930s and associated with criticism of the views of Miron Korduba. The ideological, not scientific, positions of the opponents of Korduba are revealed. The course of the discussion and its stages have been clarified. It was established that Korduba had supporters among Ukrainian historians, and not just opponents. Ukrainian emigrant historiography, concentrated at that time in Czechoslovakia, Germany and Poland, demonstratively tried to act as a united front with the point of view that the Ukrainian nation was already formed as part of Kievan Rus’ and that the history of the ancient Russian state belongs only to Ukrainians. Korduba's opinion was about an all-Russian state and a single cultural sphere of the Eastern Slavs in antiquity, when the nations had not yet formed. He believed, based on historical facts, that the Ukrainians, as a separate nation, emerged in the XIV century as part of the Lithuanian state.