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Thomas M. Prymak. Mykola Kostomarov: A Biography. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. xxiv, 263 pp. $60.00 cloth.
Thomas Prymak's biography of Kostomarov follows his authoritative study of another major Ukrainian historian, Mykhailo Hrushevsky: The Politics of National Culture (University of Toronto Press, 1987). His choice of subject is understandable given Kostomarov's role as a "leading light of the Ukrainian national awakening of the nineteenth century" (p. xv). Certainly Kostomarov must be regarded as the founder of modern Ukrainian historiography, with his studies of Khmelnytsky, Cossackdom, and "south Russian" folklore. Kostomarov also championed a new theoretical approach to Russian history, challenging the dominant "state school" by focussing on the narod rather than the state as the wellspring of historical development. He contended that Russian history had been driven by a dialectical tension between "northern" and "southern" Russians, who embodied respectively "monocratic" and "federal" state principles, as reflected in the tension between Muscovite order and Cossack liberty. From his farreaching research into Novgorod, the Time of Troubles, or the figure of Mazepa, Kostomarov arrived at the interesting conclusion that Russia ought in its statehood [gosudarstvennost] to reconcile both of these elements, which were equally, to his view, "Russian."
Prymak's biography operates on two levels, narrative and analytical. The book's structure is provided by the turns in Kostomarov's life; within this framework, Prymak analyzes key texts of each...