Lecture 1. The Subject of the Course "The History of " 1. The Essence and Structure of Culture. 2. Civilization, Ethnic Culture and National Culture. 3. Specific Features of Ukrainian Culture.

1. The Essence and Structure of Culture. Culture (Latin: cultura, lit. "cultivation" of soil) is based on a term first used in classical antiquity by the Roman orator Cicero: "cultura animi" (cultivation of the soul). The non-agricultural use of the term "culture" re-appeared in modern Europe in the 17th century. It meant the betterment or refinement of individuals, especially through education. During the 18th and 19th century discussion of the term was often connected to national aspirations or ideals of whole peoples. German romanticist Jo- hann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) defined culture as that attitude towards the world that reveals the soul of the people, how a particular people maintains its own values. Other scientists used the term "culture" to refer to a universal human capacity. The British anthropologist Edward B. Tylor was the first to put the scientific sense of "culture". He defined culture as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits ac- quired by man as a member of society." Culture includes all these capabilities and habits in contrast to those numerous traits acquired otherwise, by biological heredity. UNESCO defines culture as the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, mate- rial, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group including modes of life, ways of living together, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions, beliefs and arts. Previously, there was a tendency to view cultures as essentially fixed and their content being transmitted between generations unchanged. Today cultures started to be understood as shifting entities. Culture is a process whereby societies evolve along pathways that are specific to them. Cultures are internally affected by both forces en- couraging change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structures and natural events. They are involved in the perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures, which themselves are subject to change. Envi- ronmental conditions, social conflict and the development of technologies can pro- duce cultural changes. Within a society they alter social dynamics and promote new cultural models. Social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. It is through culture that person expresses himself / herself, becomes aware of himself / herself, recognizes his / her incompleteness, questions own achievements, seeks untiringly for new meanings and creates works through which person trans- cends his / her limitations. Culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is a fragile phenomenon. It is constantly changing and easily lost. Our written languages, governments, build- ings, and other man-made things are the products of culture. These things were made and used through cultural knowledge and skills. Aspects of human expression consist of both material culture and spiritual elements. The latter include: language, sci- ence, technology, cuisine, art, fashion, values, ideology, social structure, social con- ventions, norms, taboos and etiquette, gender roles, recreational activities such as fes- tivals and holidays, commercial practices, . The basic layer of culture consists of cultural universals – learned behavior pat- terns, traits or institutions that are shared by all of humanity collectively. No matter where people live in the world, they share these universal traits:  communicating with a verbal language;  using age and gender to classify people;  classifying people based on marriage and descent relationships;  raising children in some sort of family setting;  having gender division of labor;  distinguishing between good and bad behavior;  making jokes and playing games;  having art;  having leadership roles for the implementation of community decisions. Passing from one social group to another, one discovers differences that cannot be due to anything but social convention. The significant layer of culture that may be part of your identity is a subculture. If people have come from many different parts of the world to a complex society, they often retain much of their original cultural tradi- tions. As a result, they are likely to be part of an identifiable subculture in their new society. The shared cultural traits of subcultures make them distinctive from the rest of their society. Members of each of these subcultures may share a common identity, traditions, dialect or language, and other cultural traits that come from their common ancestral background and experience. A subculture, which is part of a dominant culture, is distinct with its own values, folkways and mores. A counterculture, on the other hand, is considered somewhat deviant against society. This type of subculture defies at least one aspect of the dominant culture.

2. Civilization, Ethnic Culture and National Culture. The terms "culture", "civilization" and "peoples" may have different connota- tions depending on context. One may understand distinctions between civilization and culture by stating that the former refers more to material, technical, economic, and social facts while the latter refers to spiritual, intellectual and artistic phenomena. Culture is customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social organization of a particular county or particular group. On the other hand civilization is all people in the world and the societies they live in, considered as a whole. A culture ordinarily exists with- in a civilization in this regard each civilization can contain not only one but several cultures. Civilization can be distinguished from other cultures by their high level of complexity and organization, and by their diverse economic and cultural activities. A civilization is a complex society or culture group characterized by substan- tial economy and trade, state form of government, occupational specialization, urban- ism and class stratification. Along with this core elements, civilization is often marked by combination of a number of secondary elements, including a developed transportation system, writing, formal legal system, great art style, monumental archi- tecture and science. The term "civilization" refers to cultures that affirm their values or worldviews as universal. They adopt an expansionist approach towards those that do not (or do not yet) share them. It helps to denote their set of ideas, knowledge, values, institu- tions and achievements. But civilization may be understood as work in progress, as the accommodation of each of the world’s cultures, on the basis of equality, in uni- versal project of humanity. The term civilization is widely used to indicate a high state of progress – a certain level of social, cultural, political, economic and techno- logical development of human community. There exists a wide range of distinct cultures in our world. Cultural diversity has inherent value. Ethnicity may be understood as a specific sociocultural mecha- nism of human adaptation to both natural and social conditions. Certain natural and geographic conditions (climate, flora, fauna, relief etc.) dictate corresponding mode of life to local human population. Ethnicity is a named human population with a myth of common origins and ancestry, shared historical memories, one or more elements of common culture, a common territorial association and a measure of solidarity. It is the culture above all that transforms a population into self-conscious community called people (ethnicity). Whenever someone believes that their own culture is superior over another cul- ture, this is ethnocentrism. Herder postulated that "every nation has its center of happiness within itself" and that it is not "up to us to be their judge, to evaluate or condemn their customs by our own standards". Rather than judging other societies negatively because they have different cultural beliefs one should maintain cultural relativism and tolerance. This involves neutrally noticing other culture’s practices and the differences of behaviors from the position of our own culture. One may not accept every behavior of other cultures, but one should be open to understanding why the other cultures do so. Nation is in some way interconnected with ethnicity. Whereas ethnicity is a group of people with a shared cultural identity, spoken language etc., a nation is far more self-conscious community that, being formed from one or more ethnicities, pos- sesses or claims the right to political identity and autonomy as a people, together with the control of specific territory in a world thought of as one of nation states. The emergence of nations comes along with political development of humanity. In order to protect their interests members of nation possess or seek for a government of their own. It is a cultural-political community that has become conscious of its coherence, unity, and particular interests. Not only does national identity develop out of the con- stituent elements of ethnic identity, but the latter is often defined by loyalty to com- mon culture and mythology, as well as to common political institutions.

3. Specific Features of Ukrainian Culture. The are an East Slavic people constituting the native population of . Its ethnographic territory extends form the ethnographic Belorussian territo- ry in the north to the Black Sea in the south, and from the Polish ethnographic territo- ry in the west to the Russian in the east. The Ukrainians are the second-largest Slavic nation in the world and the sixth-largest nation in Europe. They include people whose native language is Ukrainian (an objective criterion) whether or not they are national- ly conscious, and all those who identify themselves as Ukrainian (a subjective criteri- on) whether or not they speak Ukrainian. A territorial-political concept of Ukrainian nationality on the Western European model was successfully introduced from the 1990s. The accepted view today is that all permanent inhabitants, citizens of Ukraine are, therefore, Ukrainians regardless of their ethnic origins or the language in which they communicate. The official declaration of Ukrainian sovereignty of 16 July 1990 stated that ‘citizens of the Republic of all nationalities constitute the people of Ukraine.’ Ethnic Ukrainian Culture functions in present-day Ukraine as a centre of gravity in a complex cultural system. It also includes the layers of Russian-language Ukraini- an Culture and post-Soviet culture. Thus ethnic culture of Ukrainian is important for the maintenance of the state’s identity. But it doesn’t equal a modern national identity in a civic, multinational state. The oldest recorded names used for the Ukrainians are Rusyny, Rusychi, and Rusy (from Rus’). In the 10th to 12th centuries those names applied only to the Slavic inhabitants of what is today the national and ethnic territory of Ukraine. The modern name Ukraintsi (Ukrainians) is derived from Ukraina (Ukraine), a name first docu- mented in the Rus Chronicle under the year 1187. Ukraintsi attained currency under the influence of the writings of Ukrainian activists in Russian-ruled Ukraine in the 19th century. Until the final quarter of the 19th century the Ukrainians, with few exceptions, lived on their aboriginal lands, which now, basically, constitute Ukrainian ethnic ter- ritory. In the late 19th century Ukrainians under Russian rule began a massive emi- gration to the Asian regions of the empire, and their counterparts in Austro-Hungary immigrated to the New World. The number of Ukrainians outside of their homeland had grown from 1 million in 1880 to over 14 million by 1989. Thus, approximately one-quarter of all Ukrainians in the world today live outside of Ukraine. The greatest number live in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe; they are followed in number by those in Asia (i.e., within the former USSR), North and South America, and Austral- ia. is the second most widely spoken language of the 12 surviv- ing members of the Slavic group of the large Indo-European language family. Geo- graphically, it is classified with Russian and Belarusian as an East Slavic language. Actually, like Slovak, it occupies a central position: it borders on some West Slavic languages, and it once bordered on Bulgarian, a South Slavic language. The circumstances in which Standard Ukrainian evolved have largely deter- mined the peculiarities of its vocabulary. It did not develop in an urban environment. Hence, it is based mostly on the peasant vernacular. In the second half of the 19th century many writers modeled their language as a matter of principle on rural folk speech. So the Ukrainian language has the highly developed vocabulary of rural life and labor. The Ukrainian language, like every other great European language, is not uni- form. Because of the great extent of the Ukrainian territory and the numerous popula- tion favorable conditions have always been present for the formation of dialects and idioms. Although these dialects and idioms differ very little from one another: the Slobozhanyn and the Boiko, anUkrainian inhabitant of Polissiya and of Bessarabia understand one another without a slightest difficulty. Ukrainians frequently absorbed expressions of local and foreign origin into their vernacular. Today the vocabulary of Standard Ukrainian is relatively close to the speech of the people without being confined to the language spoken in any certain locality. Ukrainian includes many loan words, particularly from English, German, Turkish, Tatar, and Polish, and in more recent times many Europeanisms, especially with Latin or Greek components. The total number of words in contemporary Ukrain- ian is about 170,000. Ukraine lies wholly within the confines of the European cultural community. But its distance from the great culture centers of Western and Central Europe has not been without profound effect. The Ukrainians share certain linguistic traits and traditional religion with the two other East Slavic nations, the and . A complex interethnic pro- cess unifying as well as dividing the Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians occurred. But the Ukrainians are quite as independent Slavic nation as the Czechs, , Bye- lorussians, Russians, Serbs or Bulgarians. The historic roots of the Ukrainian nation extend just as far back into the early middle ages as the roots of the German, French or English nations. However Kyivan Rus’ society couldn’t have national conscious- ness. Its high culture was based Old Church Slavonic, while the population spoke numerous languages and dialects. The distinctive Ukrainian national identity is based on the Cossack Baroque and Romanticism with its interest in folklore. Sometime ago the German critic, Johann Gottfried Herder wrote about these people: "In time Ukraine will become a new Greece; the beautiful sky of these peo- ple, their happy mood, their musical nature, their fertile soil, will someday awaken them from sleep … a nation will come into existence and her boundaries will extend to the Black Sea and from there into the wide world." The cultural ability of the Ukrainian people was felt by all those who came into contact with them. Those who travelled through Ukraine with open eyes testified to the mental alertness of the Ukrainian peasants, to the liveliness of their emotional re- actions, and their talent in expressing their thoughts and emotions. The Ukrainian is never apathetic or sluggish, either emotionally or intellectually. Not even the worst calamities, personal or national, will drive him to despair. He is somewhat inclined to strong emotions and relishes their effect. He is equally contemptuous of the emotion- al sluggishness of the Russian and the emotional laxity of the Pole. The intellectual curiosity of the Ukrainians has always urged them to seek knowledge, to accept it from all sources and, once it was his, to spread it around him. This thirst for learning has characterized the Ukrainian from the very outset of his history. The important feature of Ukrainian culture is the combination of Western and Eastern influences in it. Through the ages western influences include Western Euro- pean and Polish particularly. Eastern impacts comprise both nomadic tribal and Byz- antine influences. Ukraine’s role is understood as a cultural mediator and heir to both Eastern and Western traditions. In spite of the rarity of peaceful moments in her his- tory, and the shortness of the periods of her free existence, Ukraine has enriched the civilized world with the idea of national freedom and with many treasures of art – the creation of the temperament of a people placed on the boundaries between two worlds. In the 20th century the Ukrainians have absorbed many features of modern Eu- ropean secular culture. Modernized Ukrainian high culture is created by selecting and developing certain components of folk tradition. Contemporary Ukrainian culture may be defined as a set of material and spiritual values produced by Ukrainians. It also includes the rich cultural heritage of national minorities living in Ukraine such as Russians, Poles, Jews, Armenians, Georgians, Tartars etc. Much of the present day Ukrainian mass culture functions both in Ukrainian and in Russian. An individual nation must have its own historical tradition, its own sacrifices and heroes, its own historical grief and joys. These are the basis of the united aspira- tion to an ideal of the future. Now it is really the historical and cultural traditions which are very strongly developed in the Ukrainians. The story of their fatherland, full of the most terrible catastrophes and the oppression enduring for centuries, cou- pled with great love for their country, language, customs, art and national heroes still live in the consciousness of the Ukrainians. The History of Ukrainian culture covers such periods and themes as:  Ancient culture in Ukraine  Ukrainian Medieval culture  the Age of Renaissance in Ukraine  Ukrainian culture of the 17th – 18th centuries (the Age of Enlightenment)  Ukrainian Culture in the 19th century  Contemporary Ukrainian Culture  Culture of Slobidska Ukraine. Each of themes focuses on the specific cultural features of that time. For exam- ple, Renaissance in Ukraine refers to the revival of the Kyivan Rus legacy. It covers the flourishing of education, publishing and religious thought during the 15th – early 17th centuries. And Ukrainian Culture of the 19th century reveals the development of modern high culture based both on the traditional way of life, peasant vernacular, community and modernization. Contemporary Ukrainian culture (20th – early 21st centuries) and the culture of Slobidska Ukraine are expected to be the most interest- ing part of our study. We’ll get acquainted with present state of Ukrainian culture and contemporary artistic movements, cultural life in Kharkiv region, its cultural and his- torical sites and prominent personalities. The courage and tenacity shown by Ukrainian people in their continuous strug- gle for freedom, their initial vigor in colonizing, the idea of self-determination which they have preserved in their long struggle with despotism, together with Ukraine’s rich natural resources and the strategic importance of its geographical position make the study of Ukrainian culture both actual and interesting for us.

Checking comprehension 1. Describe the origin of the term "culture". 2. What contemporary scientific definition can you give to the concept of cul- ture? 3. What is the structure of culture? 4. Describe the concepts of ethnicity and nation. Find the correlation between these concepts. 5. What is the place of the Ukrainians among other peoples of the world? 6. Name some specific cultural traits of the Ukrainian people. 7. What is the content of the course "The History of Ukrainian Culture"? Questions to discuss 1. Consider the significance of cultural universals in your life. What other traits shared by all the humanity can you add to the list above. 2. Why culture should be better understood as a shifting entity rather than essen- tially fixed? Give your arguments. 3. Compare such concepts as culture and civilization? What kind of cultural communities are more likely described as civilization? Give your examples. 4. How does Ukrainian traditional ethnic culture influence its present state? Can you reveal the links and influences between traditional ethnicity trait and contempo- rary culture in your country? 5. What are the objectives of studying the history of Ukrainian culture? How can this be useful in your everyday life?