Author Description

Mykhailo Hrushevsky's History of Ukraine-Rus'. Volume 7: The Cossack Age to 1625 inaugurates the History's subseries entitled "The History of the Ukrainian Cossacks". It focuses on the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks from their origins in the fifteenth century to their rise as an important military, social, and political force in the first decades of the seventeenth century. Hrushevsky examines the early history of the Cossacks in the context of Ukrainian colonization of the steppe and the extensive social changes taking place on the Ukrainian frontier. He discusses the causes and consequences of the Cossack anti-Polish uprisings of the period and investigates the interconnections between Cossackdom and the Ukrainian national, religious, and cultural revival. Hrushevsky's exhaustive study of the period marked a turning point in the historiography of Ukrainian Cossackdom. It largely ended the stage in which historians engaged mostly in the collection and publication of sources and the reconstruction of the sequence of events. Concurrently, it inaugurated the stage in which the analysis and interpretation of established facts became the primary goal of historical research. This volume was translated by Bohdan Struminski and edited by Serhii Plokhy (consulting editor) and Frank E. Sysyn (editor in chief) with the assistance of Uliana M. Pasicznyk.