У статті розглядається центральне місце і роль історії серед гуманітарних наук.
The article regards the central place and crucial role of history among the Humanities, its significance
during the current transition of Ukraine and the rest of East-Central Europe from totalitarianism to
democracy, as well as dangerous consequences of neglecting or disregarding it. The dual position of history
as a complex of professional knowledge and a platform of other social branches has been considered, as
well as the importance of gradual approaches at elementary levels up to advanced interdisciplinary
researches. A special attention is also paid to the attempts to diminish or even exclude history from the
school and university curricula in post-soviet societies, when ex-communist functionaries desperately tried
to usurp educational administration, misusing naivety of common people in order to prevent or at least
hinder reforms and to manipulate with the public opinion; nevertheless, their subversive efforts are destined
to failure. We should keep attentive and vigilant about any attempts to falsify the past.
All Slavonic and East European peoples passed sequent generations of so-called philological, historical,
and political revival resulting in the national self-determination and state sovereignty with their common
features and local peculiarities. While the modern nation-states in Western Europe appeared as a result of
integration of medieval feudal principalities, the same result in the East of this continent has been achieved
in a seemingly opposite way: by disintegration of multinational empires. It is necessary to emphasize the
necessity of the adequate knowledge and comprehension of the main stages and moving forces, all principal
phenomena and trends in domestic developments compared to foreign analogues, especially in a nation’s
near abroad. As the aim of managing history and restoring its taste in this country, one should put forward
the task to make easy, quick, and painless actual, logical, and inevitable return of Ukraine to its natural
place as an active and loyal partner in the European civilization and globalizing World geopolitics.
