In the dissertation an attempt is made to carry out a historiographical analysis of the history of Polish land tenure in the right-bank Ukrainian lands. The focus is on finding and studying all the sources on the topic that have been accumulated since the second half of the XIX century. The research made it possible to distinguish the levels of scientific study of the issue over about two centuries, to find out the directions and features, completeness and reliability of historical knowledge about the formation of massive land tenures, and development and evolution of Polish land tenure of the Right-Bank Ukraine.
Analysis of historiographical achievements revealed that during the XX and early XXI centuries a significant array of information on critical evaluation of research into Polish land tenure was gathered. There are several thematic groups of studies: historiographical generalizations which provide the analysis of the general situation in historical science at various stages of its progress; works analyzing the creative biographies of prominent historians and their contribution to the study of the history of Polish land tenure; works that contain specific historiographical generalizations about the state of elaboration of the topic of the Polish presence in the socio-economic history of Right-Bank Ukraine of the imperial era. The analysis of historiographical achievements has shown that the study of land tenure of Polish origin within the Ukrainian provinces has not yet been the subject of a special study.
The dissertation is based on a set of historiographical and historical sources, which include individual and collective monographs, articles published in collections of research papers, scientific periodicals; dissertations and abstracts of dissertations on Polish land tenure in Right-Bank Ukraine, which had affected the accumulation of scientific knowledge and the further progress of historical thought. The research results of Ukrainian and Russian authors are taken into account. Historical sources, which comprise legislative, statistical, statistical and economic descriptions, sources of personal origin, made it possible to specify certain topics raised by researchers.
Methodological principles of the study include the principles of scientific objectivity, historicism, comprehensiveness, continuity and a set of general scientific and special historical methods, such as problem-chronological, comparative-historical, historical-typological, historical-genetic, and historical-biographical. The complex of the aforementioned methods was applied to study how the interest in the history of Polish land tenure emerges in general historiography, how knowledge was accumulated and the concepts were formed.
In elaboration of the sources, three stages of research into the history of Polish land tenure were distinguished: the imperial stage (the second half of the XIX and early XX centuries), the Soviet stage (20s – 80s of the XX century), and the modern one (90s of the XX – early XXI century). Within each stage, analyzed and generalized were the views of researchers of three generations, which differed in thematic direction, content, nature of argumentation and conclusions.
The paper analyzes the Ukrainian and Russian historiography of the study of Polish land tenure. It is noted that studying this issue, Russian scholars considered it in the context of agrarian relations in the Russian Empire, while Ukrainian authors focused their attention on the territory of Ukraine.
Imperial stage researchers mostly addressed the problems of land tenure and land use on an all-Russian scale. Polish land ownership was studied only by a few authors, who mostly described events rather than analysed them thoroughly. Ukrainian researchers looked at the history of Polish land tenure in order to substantiate the right of the Ukrainian people to independent development and study the origins and course of the Polish-Ukrainian confrontation. Russian authors paid attention mainly to the context of political and socio-economic history of the Russian Empire.
In general, the history of Polish colonization of Ukrainian lands, shifts in land tenure of people of Polish origin under the influence of socio-economic changes, and restrictive measures taken by the Russian government against the Polish element resonated considerably. The greatest achievement of this period was the accumulation of statistical material, due to which the works acquired archeographical significance, having formed the grounds for further research.
