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| - As a historian, Kostomarov's writings reflected the romantic trends of his time. He was an advocate of the use of ethnography and folksong by historians, and claimed to be able to discern the "spirit" of the people, including "national spirit", by this method. On the basis of their folksongs and history, he claimed that the peoples of what he called Northern or Great Rus' on one hand and Southern or Little Rus' on the other (Russians and Ukrainians, respectively) differed in character and formed two separate nationalities. In his famous essay "Two Russian Nationalities" ("Две русские народности"), a landmark in the history of Ukrainian national thought, he propagated what some consider to be the stereotypes of Russians inclined towards autocracy, collectivism, and state-building, and Ukrai
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| abstract
| - As a historian, Kostomarov's writings reflected the romantic trends of his time. He was an advocate of the use of ethnography and folksong by historians, and claimed to be able to discern the "spirit" of the people, including "national spirit", by this method. On the basis of their folksongs and history, he claimed that the peoples of what he called Northern or Great Rus' on one hand and Southern or Little Rus' on the other (Russians and Ukrainians, respectively) differed in character and formed two separate nationalities. In his famous essay "Two Russian Nationalities" ("Две русские народности"), a landmark in the history of Ukrainian national thought, he propagated what some consider to be the stereotypes of Russians inclined towards autocracy, collectivism, and state-building, and Ukrainians inclined towards liberty, poetry, and individualism. In his various historical writings, Kostomarov was always very positive about Kyivan Rus', about what he considered to be its veche system of popular assemblies, and the later Zaporozhian Cossack brotherhood, which he believed in part was an heir to this system. By contrast, he was always very critical of the old Muscovite autocracy and its leaders. In fact, he gained some popular notoriety in his day by doubting the story of Ivan Susanin, a legendary martyr hero viewed as a savior of Muscovy. In the realm of his work with folklore, he wrote the short story, "Animal Riot," which takes Russia as its analogue, and imagines a revolution of farm animals. Originally written in 1879-80, and published in 1917, the work has been cited as a possible antecedent to George Orwell's Animal Farm. [1] [2]
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