Ways of Ukrainian Identity and Statehood Formation: Indigenous Farming and Deep Spirituality

Author

Serhiychuk Volodymyr – a Doctor of History, a professor at the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University’s Department of Ancient and Modern Ukrainian History

Ways of Ukrainian Identity and Statehood Formation: Indigenous Farming and Deep Spirituality

Abstract

The Ukrainian ethnic group was created primarily on the ground of farming culture, which we have cultivated for at least 7 thousand years, since when seeds of cereals have been planted for routine sowing in local chernozems. While at the crossroads of nomadic cultures and civilizations of the East and West, our ancestors melted creative elements of the latter in the process of their ethnic crystallization. Gradual transition to the settled farming life has changed mode of existence of all the peoples who arrived to the lands of present-day Ukraine – Scythians, Sarmatians, and Goths. They quite quickly lost the mobility inherent in nomads. They also became nonaggressive, instead developing sagacity and leisureliness. This fusion of many hundred years from nomadic and farming cultures, on the territory of present-day Ukraine, has constituted a completely different individual. This individual, losing military skills, quite quickly came to be notable for prevailing marks of farming mentality.

The Antes, who inhabited the territory from the Danube to the sources of the Don and the Azov Sea, later formed the eastern branch of the Slavs, which is the direct ancestor of the Ukrainians. The high level of economy and international contacts influenced the development of the Antes’ socio-political system, which had a democratic nature. This gave an opportunity to create the state system, which lasted for about three centuries (late IVth to early VIIth century) and perished in 602 under the pressure from the Avars.

Since the VIIth century, chronicles had already used the name Slavs – concerning the people who lived on the Right Bank of the Dnieper. They settled mostly on banks of rivers and lakes. Their dwellings were made of wood and daubed with clay. They lived according to traditions of tribal system. Patriarchal communities by consanguinity possessed property, land in the first of place.

In the course of a long time, spiritual culture of our ancestors has evolved in accordance with demands of daily life, general advance of civilization, intensity of intertribal relations and various ethnic impurities ensued due to the geographical location of Ukraine between Europe and Asia. Nevertheless, the ethnic substratum, the main ethnic base of the population grown in symbiosis with Ukrainian chernozem remained the same over the millennia. Consequently, it created a completely distinct anthropological type that differs from adjacent nations. Settled farming based on chernozem cultivation also exerted influence on the peculiarity of mentality. The latter had its own features that were different from those of our neighbours.

At the same time, on the ground of indigenous farming and borrowings from the experience of neighbours, proper self-government was gradually formed that eventually transformed into the Kyiv, i.e. the Ukrainian, state tradition, which since the mid-IXth century had been recognized by the world.

Keywords

farming, spirituality, Ukrainianhood.

References

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