“The Frontier Creates Its Own World On Both Sides” – Conversation with Denys Shatalov

Olha Haidamachuk in Conversation with Denys Shatalov

In 1923, the Publishing House “Ukrainske Slowo” in Berlin published Stepan Rudnytsky’s study The Ukrainian Affair from the Perspective of Political Geography[1]. This prominent Ukrainian geographer and historian[2] argued that Ukraine’s geographical location at the crossroads of three worlds (European, Oriental-Islamic, and nomadic Asian) had once transformed Ukraine from a borderland into a country of borders. Historian and political scientist Vyacheslav Lypynsky[3] outlined the essence of Ukraine as a territory between East and West[4]. Later, philologist and historian Ihor Ševčenko[5] presented Ukrainian culture at the heart of the dialogue between the West and the East[6]. Contemporary historian Serhiі Plokhy explored the history of Ukraine’s emergence as a strategic gateway between East and West, from the Roman and Ottoman empires to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union[7]. Such approaches demonstrate that the interactive metaphors of a border, a borderland, a country of borders, or a frontier have become largely defining for Ukrainian culture. It is based, among other things, on the Cossack myth. In this conversation with Denys Shatalov, we focused on the question: What historiographical misunderstandings could the frontier theory reveal when applied to the study of the Ukrainian Cossacks as a border phenomenon?

Olha Haidamachuk (OH): Dear Denys, in an earlier article[8]which you published together with Dr. Svitlana Kaiuk[9]on Cossack-Tatar relations in the Ukrainian section of the Great Border from the end of the 15thuntil the end of 16th century, you emphasized numerous historiographical misunderstandings in the coverage of relations between Ukrainian Cossacks[10]and Crimean Tatars of this period. Please explain briefly the essence of those misunderstandings.

Denys Shatalov (DSh): I admit that such current attention to my old text is pleasant and unexpected. I wrote it as a student with my academic supervisor I was struck then by the potential of the Frontier/Great Border theory, which Dr. Svitlana Kaiuk introduced in her course on Ukrainian history. It allowed us to understand topics familiar from school textbooks in a new way.

In short, the essence of the misunderstandings boils down to the fact that the conditions of the Frontier and their specifics were being ignored, and the standard framework for describing regular borderlands was being applied to the same extent as for non-frontier communities. Often, no distinction was made between borderland states and Frontier communities, which mostly only nominally were subordinated to their central authorities. Hence the idea of the constant hostility of the Crimean Khanate[11] to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, while most of the plundering raids were not actions sanctioned by the Khan, but rather carried out against his will, just as the Cossack raids to the south or their pirate attacks on the Ottoman Black Sea coast were not sanctioned by the Grand Duke or the King. And these actions by both sides were not driven by any political or expansionist aims; they were, first and foremost, a specific economic activity of the Borderland, and by no means ‘expansion’, as they had previously been interpreted.

OH: And in your opinion, have those historiographical misunderstandings lessened over the last 16 years, given the growing interest in Ukrainian historical studies in the context of the current Russian-Ukrainian war?

DSh: I would not say that in 16 years the Frontier theory has already taken a leading place in interpretations of Ukrainian history. But its reception has taken place. This can be seen in references to the Great Border that are now present in Ukrainian school textbooks, and in 2024 a group of Ukrainian historians published the book Ukrainian Multifrontier. A New Scheme of the History of Ukraine (Neolithic ‒ Early 20th Century)[12]. In this work they propose a rethinking of the entire history of Ukraine through the prism of the Frontier theory.

OH: Perhaps you could also recommend a couple of English-language books for international readers, non-Ukrainian speakers interested in the history of Ukraine through the lens of the Frontier theory?

DSh: Perhaps this is a consequence of a gap in my knowledge, but it seems that such works are absent. The concept of the Border was first applied to the territory of Ukraine, although not separating it from the space of the Russian South, in 1964 by the American historian William McNeill in his book Europe’s Steppe Frontier, 1500-1800[13]. However, later, as far as I know, no special works appeared that would interpret Ukrainian history from the perspective of this concept.

OH: Let’s get back to discussing your article. You present the Ukrainian lands of the mid-15th century as an arena of struggle for the Horde inheritance and emphasize the cardinal change in the policy of the Crimean Khan Mengli-Gerai towards Ukrainian lands (constant Tatar attacks), since the Khan chose the Principality of Moscow as his new ally. What do these historical facts teach us now, in the 21st century, when Ukrainian lands have once again become an arena of struggle?

DSh: Yes, the Ukrainian steppes as part of the Great Steppe were then part of the Golden Horde heritage. After the collapse of the Golden Horde, several Tatar states existed in modern Ukrainian lands. The Great Horde as the direct successor of the Golden Horde fought for the Golden Horde inheritance with the Crimean Khanate, but this struggle ended in its defeat by Mengli Gerai in 1502. This struggle, based on an alliance with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then alliance with the Principality of Moscow, two opposing forces in the region, fit right into the standard logic and pragmatics of interstate relations, subjugation, conquest, etc. However, we must also remember the conditions of the Great Border – during the period of hostile relations with neighbors, raids on the border could be directly sanctioned, led by the Khan, they were a form of military activity; however, unauthorized predatory raids are recorded even during periods of officially peaceful interstate relations.

OH: Comparing the relations between the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Crimean Tatars from the end of the 15th until the end of the 16th century, you draw attention to their multi-vector nature, and in your conclusions you emphasize that the antagonism in their relations is atypical for the territory of the Great Frontier. Please tell me how you would outline the typical features of these frontier relations?

DSh: Well, in the old historiographic tradition, the relations of the Crimean Khanate and the hordes of the Northern Black Sea region subordinate to it with their neighbors were depicted as unambiguously hostile, this hostility was simply presented as their existential trait. Similarly, the position of the Cossacks was also depicted as unambiguously hostile to the Tatars, the emergence of the Cossacks in most versions was explained precisely by the Slavic reaction to the Tatar threat. This was typical of the works of the 19th century, starting with the works by the Ukrainian historians Mykola Kostomarov and Dmytro Yavornytsky. Similar provisions were also presented in Soviet works, and even in Ukrainian school textbooks. But the Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky in the beginning of the 20th century, as well as contemporary for him Russian historians Sergei Solovyov and Vasily Klyuchevsky, paid great attention to this factor of the Steppe and its colonization as a determining circumstance of the life of the region, it is a pity that they did not formulate these observations into a concept, like Turner[14].

I would probably define a typical feature of frontier relations as their flexibility. The frontier is an open space, open to the outside, to the Steppe – where there is no stable control by states, and no hierarchies established in estate societies. So, here, their own relationships were formed. The “classical” Frontier described by Turner was the American Wild West, and he defined American democracy as a product of the Frontier. Here I find an interesting parallel – the Cossacks are of paramount importance for the Ukrainian national myth. And since the 1860s, the main emphasis in the Ukrainian national movement has begun to be placed precisely on the Zaporozhian Sich – because it is in it that the traditions of Ukrainian democracy are embodied, precisely in this frontier community.

Another feature, as I see it, is that the Frontier creates its own world on both sides. The Frontier communities on both sides are more “their own” to each other, for example, Ukrainian Cossacks and Tatar raiders, while for the people of the Frontier, the settled world and societies of the hinterland (zones deep within states, outside the Frontier) are rather alien. I find the episode from 1643, cited from primary sources in the monograph of the Soviet historian Alexei Novoselsky, to be very illustrative. Then, a plundering raid on the borderlands of the Moscow state was jointly organized by the Nogai Tatars and the Zaporozhian Cossacks, on the terms that the human captives remained with the Tatars, and the other booty: horses, money, movable property – was taken by the Cossacks.[15]

OH: Ukrainian historian Viktor Horobets[16], focusing on the Ukrainian Cossacks as a political and cultural phenomenon, proves that the Cossacks were not and are not a homogeneous phenomenon during the 15th–21st centuries. Their predecessors were also heterogeneous, among whom he mentions Chorni Klobuky[17](11th–12th centuries), Brodnyks[18](12th–13th centuries), Bolokhovians[19](12th–13th centuries), andUkhodnyky[20](14th–16th centuries). Therefore, even comparing the Cossacks of the 15th century, the Cossacks of the 16th century, the Cossacks of the 17th century, and the Cossacks of the 18th century, we will each time see completely different phenomena, differing in their socio-cultural essential content[21]. However, the question is how decisive for the evolution of the essence of the Cossacks at all these stages is the frontier factor?

DSh: I hardly disagree with this, especially considering that I formulated the same thesis both in my monograph based on my dissertation. In modern Ukraine, the term “Cossacks” (“kozatstvo”) is usually used in the singular as a collective term to refer to diverse communities and phenomena that existed in the 15th‒18th centuries. I can quote a small fragment of my book here: “The very concept of “Ukrainian Cossacks” presupposes a certain homogeneity. This does not raise any objections when presenting history before 1648, when the Cossacks, although divided into nyzovi and gorodovi (registered and non-registered), formed an overall homogeneous social organism. However, after the time of Khmelnytsky, during the Ruin, the Cossacks already appeared fragmented into several heterogeneous formations: Zaporizhzhia, the Hetmanate, the Right-Bank and Sloboda regiments. Although, with the exception of Zaporizhzhia, these Cossack structures demonstrated a more or less homogeneous structure and status of the Cossack, they were already different formations. In the “late Cossack period” – from the 1730s – the differences only increased, although the similarity of the Cossack status in all autonomous formations remained, which provided for the performance of irregular military service as a condition for land possession and economic privileges.

However, already at this time the situation was “complicated” – due to the creation of new formations with the name “Cossack”, in particular the Bakhmutsky and Chuguyevsky regiments. In the “post-Cossack period”, from the end of the 18th century, the concept of “Ukrainian Cossacks” lost its meaning. ”[22] That is, here we have a classic case from the history of concepts: the phenomenon itself, like the concept of “Cossacks”, has evolved, so its specific content depends on the specific conditions and context of use. Therefore, each time it is necessary to clarify the contexts: a Cossack in the early 16th century and a Cossack in the mid-18th century are people who are very different in status and activity, and the simple definition of “Cossack” says little, because it does not take into account belonging to a specific community and various other nuances. In the same vein, this situation reminds me of what we have to deal with in Western reception – where “Cossack” is often perceived as a universal characteristic, without understanding that even the imperial Russian Cossacks differed from each other, and that there is no universal “Cossackness” around the world (although such an idea is promoted by modern Russian Cossacks). The Frontier is a determining factor in the history of the Cossacks, while the whole phenomenon of the Cossacks is a product of the conditions of the Frontier. The disappearance of this phenomenon on Ukrainian lands coincides precisely with the closure of the local segment of the Great Border. And before that, the situation regarding social status of the Cossacks changed in accordance with the changes in conditions on the local section of the Frontier. In general, Cossacks and the Frontier are very closely intertwined concepts. If we look along the entire Eurasian Frontier, we will see a whole “belt” of Cossack communities – from the Ukrainian steppes through the Don, the Caucasus, the Urals, Siberia to the Far East, and in the Balkans, in the form of Szekely, Haiduky, Uskoky and Hranychary, were their own counterparts of the Cossacks. Moreover, the Russian Empire used Cossack communities as a tool for imperial development and control of the Frontier.

OH: What advantages and disadvantages do you currently find in the application of the frontier theory to Ukrainian history?

DSh: I do not see any shortcomings in its application to interpret Ukrainian history as the Frontier theory allows us to adequately explain many events and processes. In the steppes of the northern Black Sea region, a section of the Great Border/Frontier existed for millennia. This understanding allows us to more adequately understand the nature of borderland communities and their relationships, as well as the process of the emergence of modern Ukraine.

OH: Thank you very much for the еnlightening conversation!

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About the Author

Denys Shatalov is an independent Ukrainian scholar who obtained his PhD in History in 2016 from Oles Honchar Dnipro National University in Ukraine, with a thesis on Ukrainian Cossacks in public discourse from the second half of the 18th to the first half of the 19th century. From 2015 until 2021, Denys was a Research Fellow at the “Tkuma” Ukrainian Institute for Holocaust Studies and the Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine Museum. He was a Prisma Ukraïna visiting fellow in 2019/20 and has been a part of the “Prisma Ukraïna: War, Migration, Memory” research group at the Forum Transregionale Studien as non-resident Gerda Henkel Fellow from 2022‒2025.

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References

[1] Рудницький С. Українська справа зі становища політичної географії. Берлін: Вид-во “Українське слово”. 1923.

[2] https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CR%5CU%5CRudnytskyStepan.htm

[3] https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CL%5CY%5CLypynskyViacheslav.htm

[4] Липинський В. Релігія і Церква в історії України. Філадельфія, 1925.

[5] https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CK%5C0%5CK0evJ0enkoIhor.htm

[6] Ihor Ševčenko. 1996 Ukraine between East and West: Essays on Cultural History to the Early Eighteenth Century. Edmonton, Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.

[7] Serhii Plokhy. The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine. [London] :Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2015.

[8] Каюк С. М.; Шаталов Д. В. Козацько-татарські стосунки на українській ділянці Великого Кордону в кінці XV–XVI ст. Наддніпрянська Україна: історичні процеси, події, постаті. 2010. Вип. 8. С. 212-221. (URL: http://nbuv.gov.ua/UJRN/Nuippp_2010_8_24)

[9] Associate Professor of the Department of History of Ukraine at Oles Honchar Dnipro National University. (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KI_JP08AAAAJ&hl=en)

[10] Denys Shatalov also shared his thoughts about Cosaks’ myth on the Trafo-blog: The Cossack Myth in Eastern Europe – Interview with Denys Shatalov, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 09.12.2019, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/21007

[11] The Crimean Khanate (the Throne of Crimea and Desht-i Kipchak or also known as Little Tartary) was a Crimean Tatar state 1441-1783.

[12] Український Мультифронтир. Нова схема історії України (неоліт — початок ХХ століття). 2024. Укладач С. Громенко. Харків: ВД “Фабула”. 480 с. https://resource.history.org.ua/item/0018554

[13] William H. McNeill. Europe’s Steppe Frontier, 1500-1800. The University of Chicago Press, 1964.

[14] Frederick Jackson Turner. 1893. Significance of the Frontier in American History.

[15] See, for example: Новосельский А. А. 1948. Борьба Московского государства с татарами в первой половине XVII в. Москва-Ленинград.:АН СССР.

[16] https://resource.history.org.ua/person/0000096

[17] https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CC%5CH%5CChorniKlobuky.htm

[18] Котляр М. Хто такі бродники: (До проблеми виникнення українського козацтва). Український історичний журнал,2025,(5),95–101. https://nasu-periodicals.org.ua/index.php/uhj/article/view/15564

[19] https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CB%5CO%5CBolokhovians.htm

[20] Ukrainian ukhodnyky or dobychnyky were primarily beekeeping, fishing, and hunting. https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CS%5CL%5CSlobidskaUkraine.htm

[21] Віктор Горобець. Лекція “Козацтво як політичний і культурний феномен”. 1:07:41. УКУЛЬТУРА. 28.03.2023.https://uculture.com.ua/publications/48 (in Ukrainian with English subtitles).

[22] Here is a continuation of the quote that deepens the context: “Under the label of Cossacks at that time there were very diverse phenomena: the estate of so called “Little Russian Cossacks”, who lost their military organization and were actually privileged state peasants in status; Cossack Hosts – heirs of the traditions of Zaporizhzhia (Chornomorsk, Ust-Budzhak, Transdanubian Sich), Hosts formed according to the “all-Russian model” from Ukrainian Cossacks (Azov and Danube), as well as Hosts and formations that had very little in common with the previous Cossack tradition of Ukrainian lands – Katerynoslav and Bug, Chuguiv Regiment, Ukrainian Cossack Army, gathered in 1812 from the population of Kyiv and Podilla governorates. Is it legitimate to unite them all into one category called “Ukrainian Cossacks,” since it does not capture, apart from the name, any common features of all these forms of Cossack existence? Perhaps it would be more appropriate to speak of “Ukrainian Cossackinesses”?” (Шаталов Д. Уявлення про козацтво. Українське козацтво у суспільній думці другої половини XVIII – першої половини ХІХ ст. Дніпро: Домінанта Прінт, 2017. С. 9–10.)

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Citation: Denys Shatalov, “The Frontier Creates Its Own World On Both Sides” – Conversation with Denys Shatalov, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 30.07.2026, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/?p=66934

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