"Chronicle" of Samuel Wieliczka

2 June 2021 in Chernihiv Historical Museum named after VV. Tarnovsky there was a presentation of the full academic edition "Chronicles" Samueland Wieliczka.

"Chronicle" is a unique monument of Ukrainian identity, Cossack historical thought and Ukrainian literature of the first half of the eighteenth century. The original "Chronicle" is now stored in the National Library of St. Petersburg. Until now, it has not been thoroughly researched and published in full.

The main compilers of the publication, Andriy Bovhyria, visited the event (Ph.D., senior researcher at the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) and Alona Bagro (Ph.D., researcher of the history of the Hetmanate). They told the audience about the thorny and long way to the publication of the "Chronicle". So, Andriy Bovhyrya drew attention to the pages of the biography of Samiil Velychko, the author of the monument, features of his creation of the "Chronicle". Alyona Bagro spoke about the painstaking and monotonous work on the text of the memo.

During 2012–2019, a group of scholars from the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Center for the Study of the History of Ukraine at St. Petersburg State University prepared a complete academic edition of Samiil Velychko's Chronicle for publication.. The publication contains the full text of Wieliczka's work, biography of the author of the monument, analysis of the original manuscript and its Kyiv copy of the end of the 18th century., history of creation and storage of the manuscript.

Today there are several Cossack chronicles: "Chronicle" of the Seer, "Chronicle" by Hryhoriy Hrabyanka and "Chronicle" by Samiil Velychko. All of them tell about the history of the Hetmanate since its foundation, with excursions into ancient history. "Chronicles" of Samovydets and Grabianka have reached us in dozens of copies, which were created in the XVIII century. Their originals have not yet been found. And only Wieliczka's "Chronicle" has survived to this day in its original form. This is its great value. This work is the most detailed, systematic presentation of the history of the Hetmanate from its founding to the beginning of the XVIII century, with prehistory: description of the times of Hetman Sagaidachny and the first Cossack uprisings.

Samiylo Velychko was the military chancellor of the Hetman's Chancellery and the General Military Chancellery. He had access to a huge number of documents of state importance, which he could use as sources for his work. Moreover, he was educated: graduated from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, was erudite, knew several languages, at least Latin, Polish and German.

Do 1703 year the event occurred, which pushed C. Wieliczka to write a work. He visited the Right Bank Ukraine as part of the military contingent, which at that time was part of the Commonwealth. He was very impressed by what he saw. It was a devastated country, destroyed cities and buildings. And he asks in his text: which led to this? How it happened, that once flowering land, the cradle of Cossack statehood, turned into a ruin? He tried to find the truth in our "registers", from foreign authors, but could not find the answer. So Wieliczko decided to write his own story, using all the potential available to him.

С. Wieliczko completed his work on 1701 year, although he lived until 1729 year. He did not describe the dramatic events of 1708-1709. This was influenced by the circumstances of his personal biography. Do 1708 He was arrested as a supporter of Hetman Ivan Mazepa and was imprisoned until 1715 year.

Wieliczka's "Chronicle" is the largest, in comparison with other Cossack chronicles, after all, its volume is about one and a half thousand manuscript pages. С. Velichko, creating your text, worked closely 270 documents, over 20 historical works, as many literary works. He did not just mechanically combine all this in his work, and each document, each fragment was placed in the appropriate context, he discusses with the authors, with the content of documents, explains them.

Старший науковий співробітник музею, Candidate of Historical Sciences Igor Sity told about the exhibition, which was created to honor Samuel Wieliczka and his work. It presented the "Chronicle of the Seer" in the list of the second half of the XVIII century. You could see the list of "Chronicles of Grabianka" of the second half of the XVIII century. (chronicle was created in 1710 year), which got to the Chernihiv Historical Museum. VV Tarnovsky from the collection of the Chernihiv Provincial Scientific Archival Commission, as a gift from Count Grigory Miloradovich.