A Rational Sense of History
I will answer only the first question, but at greater length to embrace the main aspects.
Any science has two supplementary branches. The first is educational: the principles and techniques of mastering the arsenal of science. Particularly, methods of simplifying this arsenal, to make it accessible to the student. The other is summary and analytical. It addresses the history of the science; in other words, it is an analysis of the creative efforts of those that developed its arsenal in the past, teaching methods and ways to master the underlying ideas and those keeping this science in progress.
History also has its discipline. Studied at grade school, it is a faint resemblance of the science. It has its own history and philosophy, historiography, source study, and dozens of special disciplines.
After listing these generally known aspects, it is possible to formulate that which distinguishes history from any other science. It’s what we habitually refer to as the topicality of historical knowledge. Here one must mention not history as a whole but national history against the backdrop of general history. National history must be an inherent component of universal history, rather than an independent science asserted on the ruins of the history of neighboring countries and peoples (as is rather often the case).
Therefore, if we delete the scientific and teaching content from national history, it won’t disappear as all the others. Something elusive will remain. Our attitude to that history, that awareness of the past at the intellectual rather than instinctive level, placing man apart from the animal world. What will remain will be one’s awareness of belonging to one’s nation, its traditions, ideals, and mentality.
Aleksandr Pushkin was keenly aware of that quality of history which we could conditionally describe as the “topicality of historical knowledge.” He aptly formulated it: “love of the parents’ coffins.” Whatever is the cause of acts of vandalism at cemeteries (mercantile or ideological), it is evidence that this society is ailing.
As a professional scientist, I have experienced two outbursts of patriotic interest in national history within this society. The first took place at the turn of the 1990s. Without exaggeration it gave us our independent Ukraine. As we see, “love of the parents’ coffins” may have a fateful manifestation. The other outburst is taking place before our very eyes. It has a lot of specific manifestations: coming anniversaries marked by good round figures (the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav; 1932-33 Holodomor; 60th anniversary of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army), school history textbook debates, and so on. It is good that Den’ in its sections “History and I” and “Ukraine Incognita” responds to these specific topics. It is good that this newspaper has from the outset allocated space for information and analyses concerning topical historical problems. It is extremely important, because there are newspapers mooching on historical subjects, borrowing material from editions such as “100 Great Lovers.” Their print run shows that our society also needs them, but such editions will never show the road to the future.
