The scientific novelty of the dissertation is that it is the first in modern culturology generalizing study of the calendar ritual culture of the Hutsuls of Bukovina. In the work presented for defense: based on a comprehensive analysis of written, archival, museum, ethnographic, and folklore materials, the calendar rituals of the Hutsul population of Bukovina in the context of socio-historical processes of the second half of the twentieth - early twenty-first century were comprehensively studied for the first time; the symbolism and ideological content of the main seasonal holidays are investigated; the main structural elements of the complex of winter, spring, summer, and autumn rituals of the Hutsuls of Bukovina are characterized; the transformation of the phenomena of customary and ritual culture is traced, taking into account the factors’ totality of the historical development of a particular territory at different chronological stages, in particular during the Soviet era and in the conditions of independent Ukraine. The dissertation characterizes the current state of celebration of calendar holidays in the Orthodox-religious and state-secular calendars of Bukovinian highlanders; introduced into scientific circulation a significant amount of new factual material on traditional and modern rituals collected during field research in 42 settlements of Vyzhnytsia district of Chernivtsi region; traced the degree of viability of traditional cultural values associated with the festive and ritual traditions of the Hutsuls of Bukovina.
The practical significance of the dissertation research is that the information and conclusions obtained can be used by professional creative teams for writing scripts, staging ethnographic calendar holidays, festivals, and recreation of authentic rituals, as well as for managers of the tourism and recreation sector. The materials of the dissertation can be used for writing teaching aids in such disciplines as cultural studies, ethnology, history, etc.
The historiographical review describes the state and problems of studying calendar rituals in the Bukovyna Hutsul region from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present day. It is found that, unlike other parts of Hutsulshchyna (Galician and Transcarpathian), Bukovyna was less in the field of view of ethnologists and cultural studies of the older generation. In the nineteenth century, empirical data on the culture and life of the Hutsul highlanders were collected by Polish historians W. Pol, O. Kolberg, Polish writer J. Kożeniewski and others. The scientific study of the Hutsul region was initiated by Slovak and Czech historians and ethnographers P. Shafaryk, and Ukrainian scientists I. Vahylevych and
Y. Holovatskyi.
An important role in the study of Hutsulshchyna of the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was played by such well-known scientists and cultural figures as Y. Fedkovych, V. Shukhevych, R. Kindl, I. Franko,
V. Hnatiuk, F. Kolesa, and others. The generalized historical and ethnographic monograph Hutsulshchyna (1987), prepared by scientists of the Lviv Department of the Institute of Art History, Folklore, and Ethnology of NASU is of significant scientific value. Unfortunately, this monograph, like other works of the Soviet period, is not free from typical ideological flaws of Soviet science.
During the years of Ukraine’s independence, interest in the traditional culture of Ukrainians of Bukovina has significantly revived, as evidenced by numerous works by H. Kozholianko, О. Kozholianko, O. Kurochkin, A. Moisei, V. Klapchuk,
A. Hotsalyuk, and others, in which different aspects of the system’s development of calendar customs and rituals of the population of Bukovyna are covered.
To comprehensively cover the topic of the dissertation, several museums, archival, and field materials were processed during the research, in particular: Chernivtsi Regional Art Museum, the State Archive of Chernivtsi region, the archive of the Institute of Art History, Folklore and Ethnology named after M. T. Rylsky of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and others. Materials from field research in 42 settlements of Bukovyna Hutsulshchyna were collected.
The methodological basis of the study is grounded on the principles of objectivity, historicism, and consistency, as well as on cultural and general scientific methods.
Taking into account several socio-cultural factors and peculiarities of the ethno-cultural region, which the researchers of the Hutsul region included the originality of spiritual and material culture, socio-historical, natural-geographical, territorial-administrative factors, etc. the boundaries of the study area were outlined.
