HISTORIAN AND HISTORIC ENVIRONMENT DESIGN STRATEGIES: KYIV ON MYKHAILO HRUSHEVSKYI’S MENTAL MAPS

Abstract

The article examines Mykhailo Hrushevskyi’s strategies of historical environment of Ukraine in the context of centralization around the “axial city” — Kyiv, endowed with symbolic capital. It is established that such centralization was carried out by the historian in the “classic” (“Promethean myth” of Ukraine), the formal scientifi c (geometrical — “triangle of Russ”), modernist (“neurasthenic”) and geopolitical ( “Naples-Rome”) strategies. The author concludes that Kiev, as “axial city”, is an imaginary point around of centralization and life maximization of the historian biographical space and historical environmaent in total. It is proved in this article, that the historian, who had pursued the «classical education (high school / university), used elements of “antique” strategy of large-scale representation of the territories as a means of legitimizing of the construction of the history of Ukraine Kyiv as its center. In the struggle for “Kyiv heritage” M. Hrushevskyi fought for the separation of “medieval” and imperial histography schemes. To do this, he searched for the answer in ancient “polis” strategies of representation of the historic space, but interpreted them according to the requirements of the modern era. “Geometric polis” strategy of cognitive maps allowed the historian to present historical environment as a triangle of “townspolicyholders” of historical Russ (Kyiv — Chernihiv — Pereyaslav). This concept opposed to the imperial strategy of the historical representation of the space as a set of «three areas». Using the ancient “Promethean myth”, M. Hrushevsky damanaged to delimit contemporary cultural space of Ukraine along the Center / West axis.