Ukraine – Europe: The Civilizational-and-Historical Discourse

Abstract

The aim of the study is the determination and showing the main aspects of historical discourse of Ukraine in the context of the European process, its European identity and evolution of relations with foreign countries and institutions, the forthcoming to the European values, the disclosure of the course to the European integration and the Ukrainians’ aspirations for the unity with the European peoples’ community.

The methodology of the research work is a set of scientific principles of historical research (historicism, objectivity), general scientific (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, analogy, comparison, abstraction, generalization), special-historical (synchronous, chronological, method of periodization, comparative-historical, retrospective, system-structural, typological) methods. The authors adhere to the civilizational, interdisciplinary and comprehensive approaches to the historical discourse of Ukraine in the world-historical context on the basis of the holistic use of sources on the issue.

The scientific novelty. The work demonstrates the author’s view of the European context of Ukrainian history from ancient times to the present, continues the research on the problems of Ukraine’s interaction with European countries, shows its place and role in the contemporary system of European development and establishes the thesis on the unity of Ukraine’s history with the European one, and hence global.

Conclusions. In the authentic and increasingly interconnected world, Ukraine has been and is an organic component of European civilization, historically evolving and forming a matrix of common destinies of European peoples. Over the centuries, the history of Ukraine has been revealing the turning points in the history of Europe, and the civilizational-European discourse of our country’s progress convincingly proves over centuries of history that its development took place in the interaction with the world historical process and has gained no alternativeness in the modern era of independence. The European vector of Ukraine remains a natural manifestation of the national statehood development.