AXIOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF HISTORICAL PROSE BY YURI YANOVSKY: TRADITIONS OF INTERPRETATION AND INNOVATIONS OF UNDERSTANDING

Abstract

The article is devoted to Yuriy Yanovsky’s novels which refer to the events of Ukrainian revolution of 1917–1921. Particulary to the remarkable trilogy “Four swords” – “Baihorod” – “Vershnyky”. These compositions are not connected by the story line, but all of them are about the events during Ukrainian revolution of 1917–1921. They are and they can be subject of literary analysis, of reconstruction of historical events, of the analysis of revolution period results for realisation of its historical lessons. The aim of article is archive interest of readers to these composition, new attentive reading of them in terms of rethinking of revolutionary events in Ukraine in 1917–1921. Y. Yanovsky’s drew a little known episode from the history of atamanship during the period of Ukranian revolution was focused on the basis of new archive sources. The purpose of the article is to draw readers’ attention to these works of Y. Yanovsky, as a variant of alternative history, their new and careful reading in the context of reinterpretation of the events of the liberation struggles of 1917–1922. The author analyzed the historical basis of three works of this author: the novel “Bayhorod” (events of the “Narodne Uprising of 1918” in Yelysavetgrad) and the novel “Four Sabers” (the role of Ukrainian rebels in the events of 1919, the fight against interventionists in the south of Ukraine) and the novel “Riders” – analysis of the events of the liberation struggles on the territory of Central Ukraine in 1919. The author draws attention to the fact that the topics raised by Y. Yanovsky in his historical prose are promising directions for research on the history of Ukraine: the insurgent movement, the Ottoman Empire, the phenomenon of multiple sovereignty during the Ukrainian Revolution, historical regionalism, especially in the context of research into the history of the liberation struggle of 1917–1922 on the territory of Central and Southern Ukraine. According to some researchers, the historical prose of Y. Yanovsky, who was a contemporary and participant in the events of the revolutionary period of 1917–1920s, became one of the first examples of alternative history. His works were used in their works by researchers of the military history of Ukraine, as an example of understanding the processes of the Ukrainian revolution of 1917–1921.