VASYL IVANYS AND HIS VIEWS ON THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE CAUCASUS

Abstract

Vasyl Ivanys (1888-1974) is an extraordinary personality of the Ukrainian political and cultural world of the XX century. He was a politician and public figure, engineer, economist, publicist and historian. Exept this, the person of Vasyl Ivanys is interesting because he, as a native of the North Caucasus, directly knew this part of the world, its history, the course of the revolutionary events of 1917-1921, and, unlike other famous figures of Kuban or Ukraine at that time, left a complex idea of the region in the published work «On the problem of the Caucasus». The ideas and views expressed in this publication are the subject of this paper. In addition to «On the problem of the Caucasus», the source base includes the first two volumes of Vasyl Ivanys memoirs of «Paths of Life», publications «Another tragedy of the Cossacks» and «The Kuban struggle for independence».
The article pays a lot of attention to the identity of Vasyl Ivanys, which was due to its origin. First of all, he was a Cossack, a native of the North Caucasus, but at the same time he felt his belonging to the Ukrainian cultural space. His publication «On the Problem of the Caucasus» focuses mainly on the ancient history of the region, Russia’s conquest of the Caucasus, the resettlement of the Cossacks in the Kuban, the revolution of 1917-1918 in the North Caucasus and the future of this part of the world.
The author of the article concludes that Ivanys views on the history and future of the Caucasus region, expressed in the «On the problem of the Caucasus», due to the origin and its political orientation. The Kuban occupies a central place in the publication, but Vasyl Ivanys covers its history in the general historical context and emphasizes its belonging to the North Caucasus. Although «On the Problem of the Caucasus» is based on extensive bibliographic material, but has a journalistic character. At the same time, Ivanys publication remains one of the few generalizations in Ukrainian historiography that covers the history of the Caucasus from ancient times to the second half of the XX century, gives an idea of the economic and cultural potential of the region and reflects the geopolitical ideas prevailing in Ukrainian politics emigration.