Chronicle of the Butovskys: source study opportunities to research the positions of the Left-Bank Ukrainian nobility on the eve of the Great Reforms

Abstract

Using Chronicle of the Butovskys as a source example, the paper analyses its potential for describing positions of the Ukrainian elite in the Great Reforms and the place of converted Jews among this process. After changing faith, converted Jews like M. Posen were able to achieve a high position in society, receive a noble title, and take part in the development of a number of important projects for reforming the empire. The formation of M. Posen’s historiographic image was markedly influenced by the ideological struggle during the preparation of the 1861 Reform and the tendentious assessments of his positions by “liberal bureaucrats”, becoming dominant in historiography. Such an image of M. Posen and the positions of the Left-Bank Ukrainian nobility in the Great Reforms still remains tendentious and poorly understood. The purpose of the research is to show the attitude of the uyezd nobility in the Great Reforms, based on the Chronicle of the Butovskys compiled by General A. Butovsky. The study used various approaches of interdisciplinary analysis: microhistorical approaches, hermeneutic methods, etc. Outlined is here not only the circle of acquaintances and the degree of influence of M. Posen on other landlords, who were the members of the Editing Commissions, but also the attitude of the uyezd nobility to the ideas of converted Jew about the modernization. To a large extent, it was possible to establish the peculiarities of the relationship between the reformer and the local nobility and the everyday practices of their communication. The paperʼs perspective of the paper, thanks to the expansion of the circle of sources, allows us to trace the connection between different generations of the nobility, the situation of a  converted Jew and also to overcome the historiographical tradition in the perception of different ideas by nobility at the county and all-imperial levels during the preparation to the Great Reforms.