National Identity and Historical Memory

Abstract

According to a British researcher of nation phenomenon A.D. Smith, national identity is a main form of collective identity, a dominant criteria of culture and identity. That’s way the aim of the article is a clarification of two notions: national identity and historical memory.National identity has relations with national self-consciousness. National self-consciousness consists of knowledge and presentations of national community, its historical past and present, spiritual and material culture, language and national character.There are three conceptions of roots of Ukrainian national identity. The first is a chauvinistic conception. According to this conception Ukrainian nation never existed. It’s only a dialect group of Russian nation. The second is unity of three nations – Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian and the senior brother is Russian nation and Ukrainian and Belorussian are juniors. The third conception is the autochthonous-autonomic conception (the author is M. Grushevs’ky).The autochthonic-autonomic conception has two poles of origins of Ukrainian nation. The first pole – Tripoli culture, Ukrainian nation was born in 7–2 millennium B.C. The second pole – 10–11 centuries A.C. The Illarion’s ‘Word about Law and Grace’, ‘Kyiv-Pechersky Patericum’ etc. are the basics of Ukrainian nation.In contemporary Europe we can observe reformation of the problem of national identity and rising of an ethnical factor and a historical memory. A historical memory is a complex of installations, stereotypes, habits, traditions, constant aspects of national character, national senses, their mark by social consciousness.National senses are ground of installations and stereotypes. They are emotional-psychological background of actions of a national character. National senses are a part of a political self-consciousness, a personal political culture.