Proskurova S. Chumatstvo as an Ukrainian sociocultural phenomenon

The dissertation is devoted to the problems of a complex research of such a traditional trade of Ukrainian people as Chumatstvo. It is regarded as an ethnosociocultural phenomenon. The division of the chumak history has been developed in the dissertation. It has four periods during X-XIX centuries each of which has its own characteristic features which depend on historical and socio-economical conditions. The role of Ethnographic commission All-Ukraine Academy of Sciences (1921-1931) has been analyzed in fundamental research of Chumatstvo. The result of the scientific activity of less known researchers of Chumatstvo have been introduced. Chumak culture proved to have archaic material spiritual and social standards. Psychological type of chumak as a person has been reconstructed on the base of the available resources. It was determined that psychological type of chumak was formed by the natural condition of Ukrainian Steppe and Forest-Steppe and by two historical layers of mentality of the Ukrainian peo ple - peasantry and cossacks.