Two Pioneers of Critical Studies on Ukrainian Ethnography: M. Kostomarov and M. Drahomanov

Mykola Kostomarov and Mykhailo Drahomanov were leading Ukrainian folklorists as well as historians, political theorists, and intellectuals during the 19th century. Their ideas were still relevant in the early twentieth century, when the Ukrainian national movement was provoked and encouraged by their writings. Kostomarov was the first critical folklorist who shifted the focus of Ukrainian folklore study away from the collection of old folk materials towards the enthusiastic search for Ukrainian historical and cultural ground on which contemporary Ukrainian national identity would be created. Furthermore, Drahomanov continued Kostomarov’s legacy and even advanced the level of ethnographic studies, attempting to prove the historical reality of folksongs and other genres. Drahomanov believed that Ukrainian peasants were able to comprehend and draw to the same ideas like freedom, liberty, fraternity, as did the most progressive and educated European people. Because Ukrainian noble classes and intelligentsia were Russified or Polonized, he appealed to them to return to their roots and to look for them in the culture of Ukrainian peasants. This study attempts to discuss these two pioneers’ contributions to the study of Ukrainian folklore and the way how the discipline was developed by them in various aspects.