A historian presented an academic perspective on the my…

There is a myth that the southern steppes of Ukraine were empty, uninhabited, and “wild” before the arrival of the Russian Empire, and that civilization and life were brought here exclusively by Russian colonization in the 18th century during the reign of Catherine II. However, historical data tells a completely different story.

Historian and ethnographer Valentin Dolgochub spoke to Intent about the true history of the Northern Black Sea region.

The expert noted that scholarly works on the history of the Northern Black Sea region prior to the Russian conquest in the late 18th century were in fact published both during the Russian Empire and during the Soviet Union. There were not many such works, but they did exist, and they by no means claimed that these territories were uninhabited and deserted. In particular, active research on burial mounds was conducted during the Soviet era.

It’s just that the field of historical science had not yet taken shape as of the first half of the 19th century. And once it became clear how to write about the past from a scientific perspective, other topics were tackled first, rather than this one. Therefore, according to the historian, the imperial government had no deliberate intention of portraying this region as uninhabited and desolate.

However, as the historian emphasized, there was a certain goal—if not to erase, then at least to downplay the Turkic component. And this is understandable, because it was literally a political rival in these lands. The early Middle Ages were also omitted, because little was known about that period at the time.

To be fair, if you were to ask today what was happening in the Odesa region during the 8th–7th centuries, well, even a professional historian who doesn’t specialize in that period would be unlikely to give a clear answer. This is because there are very few sources on the subject. Evidently, the settlements were indeed very scattered, isolated, and small in number. Although they did exist, and early Slavic monuments have been documented here, albeit in small numbers,” the historian noted.

Dolgochuv explained that when the empire conquered new lands, it sent not only a military administration but also officials tasked with compiling topographical and statistical descriptions of these newly annexed territories.

This was an absolutely urgent need for the imperial government, since people simply did not know what these lands looked like, who lived there, what the population was, and so on. The primary interest was in the number of potential taxpayers.

Today, it’s normal for us to view a territory from space—or at least from the sky. Even children know the geographical outlines of Ukraine—what the Crimean Peninsula looks like, what the Black Sea looks like. But at the end of the 18th century, such a possibility simply did not exist,” Dolgochub noted.

The researcher noted that imperial officials (sometimes even military officers who had participated in the conquest of these lands) often carried out these tasks very conscientiously. They left behind detailed descriptions of who lived in these lands, how many people were there, the names of the settlements, and so on.

And quite a few of these descriptions have survived. They are kept in archives, and historians are working with them today. They are an excellent source for researching the history of this region.

Earlier, duringexcavations on Primorsky Boulevard in Odesa, an archaeological expedition discovered one of the towers of the Khadzhibey Castle. For the first time in 240 years, researchers were able not only to pinpoint the exact location of the defensive complex but also to determine its actual dimensions, which had previously been a matter of debate.

Юлія Калабайда

A historian presented a scholarly perspective on the myth of the "Wild Field" in the South

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