Zapiski o Iuzhnoi Rusi

Zapiski o Iuzhnoi Rusi (Notes on Southern Russia). A two-volume collection of materials concerning the Cossack period, published by Panteleimon Kulish in 1856–7 with the financial assistance of two magnates of the Chernihiv region, Hryhorii Galagan and Vasyl Tarnovsky. The first volume consists of dumas, folk songs collected by Kulish, and legends about Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Semen Palii, leading Zaporozhian Cossacks, Cossack battles against the Tatars, and struggles of the Cossacks against the Church Union of Berestia. The second volume contains folk tales recorded by Lev Zhemchuzhnikov, an account of a meeting with the kobzar Ostap Veresai, accounts of haidamaka uprisings (the manuscript of S. Zakrzewski), a number of articles on Ukrainian history, ethnography, and linguistics, and a series of documents on the history of the Hetman state in the 18th century. Because of censorship Taras Shevchenko's poem ‘Naimychka’ (The Hired Girl) was first published in the collection, as a work of an unknown author. Mykola Kostomarov and Shevchenko greeted the collection with enthusiasm; Mykhailo Maksymovych met it with guarded criticism.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]