Author
Kushnir Viacheslav
Doctor of History, professor of the Department of Archeology and Ethnology of Ukraine, Faculty of History and Philosophy, I. I. Mechnykov Odesa National University (Odesa, Ukraine).
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3058-3019
Intercultural Communications in Levko Yurkevych’s Ethnographic Survey
Abstract
The article deals with the text of Levko Yurkevych’s manuscript about the Pokodyma gentry as of 1927. The main attention is paid to the topic of ethnographic nature, which is directly related to such issues as the ethnic composition of the Pokodyma region population in the Balta district, the planning of settlements, estates, household and customary-ritual complex of the Polish gentry is considered as a real subject of intercultural interaction. These materials illustrate the dynamics of the level of identity of the Poles of the Pokodyma.
Levko Yurkevych describes Pokodyma as a territory where representatives of different nationalities and social groups live and communicate. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in the Balta district, a significant percentage of the population, in addition to Ukrainians, were Moldovans and Jews. The Poles, in this context the Polish gentry, stood out among others for a number of features of their customary and ceremonial culture and, despite their relatively small number, played a significant role in the history of the district, but not sufficiently studied primarily at the local level. Comparing different ethno-cultural traditions, the researcher traces the results of the interaction between at least four of these communities and draws attention to the gentry, which at the beginning of the 20th century was still an active participant in economic, social and cultural processes, but as a numerically smaller community, was gradually integrating into the Ukrainian socio-cultural space and only certain customary practices and belonging to the Catholic Church still performed an important consolidating function and remained the basis of Polish self-identification.
The text of the manuscript reflects the process of acculturation of the Polish gentry, which confidently mastered the Ukrainian language of communication, moved from the Roman Catholic rite to the Orthodox rite, lost other identifying features, and transformed from an ethnic group into an ethno-social group.
Keywords
Levko Yurkevych, the Pokodyma gentry, identity, intercultural communications, Ukrainians, Poles, Jews.
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