“Landlord's Truth”: Nobility of Left-Bank Ukraine and the Peasant Question During the Late Eighteenth Through the First Half of the Nineteenth Centuries is a revised and abridged Russian version of the book which was originally published in Ukrainian in 2011. The monograph seeks to reconsider two influential narratives of Ukrainian history of the period in question. The first one, devised by the nineteenth century populist historians and later modified by the Soviet scholars, focuses on enserfment and the increasing economic and social exploitation of Ukrainian peasants by the nobility. This narrative is critical of the former Cossack starshyna, who during Catherine II's reign acquired the status of the imperial nobility because of their betrayal of the broader responsibility for the fate of the fatherland and its society in favor of narrow economic and social interests of one's own estate. The second narrative, which is dominant in contemporary Ukrainian history writing and which was originally produced by historians from the statist school, concentrates on the gradual abolition of the Ukrainian Cossack autonomies in the late eighteenth through early nineteenth centuries. It positively highlights the activities of those members of the former starshyna who opposed the imperial unification, who collected and preserved sources from the past, and who penned historical works devoted to the glorious Cossack history.
Tat΄iana Litvinova argues that Ukrainian history of the late eighteenth through the first half of the nineteenth century cannot be reduced to the imperial unification and the opposition to it. She also believes that the nobility is misrepresented in both abovementioned narratives. In her view, it is the peasant question that defined the logic of historical changes during the period in question. Ukrainian noblemen were deeply immersed in the economic and social life of their estates. Their activities were guided not so much by the desire to increase exploitation of the newly enserfed peasants but by their desire to organize the economy of their estates on rational grounds. After the abolition of autonomy, the nobility did not also abandon their responsibility to the entire society. The noblemen attempted not only to take care of their own serfs; they also came up with various economic, educational, and charitable projects that had to benefit the whole local society.
To prove this argument, Litvinova examines ego-documents, speeches, projects, and publicistic works produced by noblemen from the former Hetmanate—the largest Ukrainian Cossack autonomous zone in the Russian Empire. Her analysis covers both individual noblemen like Hryhorii and Vasyl Poletyka, Fedir Tumansky, Semen Kochubei, Mykhailo Myklashevsky, Vasyl Lomykovsky, Hryhorii Halagan, and Mikhail Pozen, and collective petitions and projects submitted by the Ukrainian nobility to the Catherinian Legislative Commission, to Alexander I, or on the eve of the abolition of the serfdom in the late 1850s and early 1860s. She demonstrates that since the 1760s the peasant question gradually gathered importance and began to encompass not only the status of the serfs, but also issues associated with landlords: peasant relations, proper organization of the estate economy, and more broadly, the improvement of agriculture in the empire. The book also shows that, at least in the minds of the Ukrainian nobility, even in the mid-nineteenth century the Ukrainian economy and social relations were perceived as something distinct and not completely integrated into the imperial institutional framework.
Litvinova's aim to switch the discussion from the political history of imperial unification and attempts to build local historical identity to economic and social history is laudable. The latter fields, especially the history of economic life, have been at best marginal in the scholarship of the last decades. Litvinova's superb mastering of published and archival sources gives additional weight to her conclusions. She is also deeply immersed in the discussions in Russian and Ukrainian historiographies. Unfortunately, she practically does not engage English- and German-language scholarship (except for translated works). This sometimes makes her dependent on the questionable conclusions of Russian historians. A case in point is Litvinova's idealized depiction of Catherine II's policy concerning the peasant question in Ukraine. The latter was, in fact, very conscious, calculated, and pragmatic.
Landlord's Truth convincingly demonstrates the profound transformation of the Ukrainian nobility's views on the peasant question from the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries. Serfs, initially viewed by the nobility as “passive objects awaiting application of the landlord's energy” started to be perceived as subjects and even “partners” (623). Litvinova is less clear on how this transformation was made possible. Further research into the conceptual history of the peasant question combined with examining the impact of the Enlightenment and Romanticism on the Ukrainian nobility's worldview might help to clarify this issue. Still, Landlord's Truth is an important and timely contribution to the history of the Ukrainian nobility and the peasant question in the Russian Empire.
