Ukrainian Romantic Nationalism as it emerged in the early decades of the 19th century combined a veneration of peasant culture with the celebration of the past prowess of the Ukrainian Cossacks, a military social estate imagined as representative of the people as a whole.

The territory settled by the ethno-linguistic community now called Ukrainian had been in pre-historic times a transit zone for peoples moving from Asia into Europe and the location of significant pre-literate cultures. Between the 9th and the 13th centuries Kyiv had been the centre of the state of Kyivan Rus’; in the 16th century the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth dominated the region. It was at the southern margins of the Commonwealth, where warfare with the Tatars of Crimea was endemic, that the Cossack movement originated. In 1648 the Cossack hetman (chief) Bohdan Hmel’nyc’kyj led an insurrection that resulted in the establishment of a Cossack state; however, a treaty concluded in 1654 with Muscovy initiated the gradual erosion of Cossack autonomy. The divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between 1772 and 1795 brought most of Ukraine into the Russian Empire; the remainder was incorporated into the Habsburg dominions.

In the Russian Empire, the dominant Ukrainian literate class was the landowning nobility. Descended from notables of Hmel’nyc’kyj’s state, its members had received parity with the Russian aristocracy. Many, however, continued to cultivate nostalgia for Cossack liberties and pre-imperial autonomy. Such sentiments were nourished by Cossack chronicles, mostly compiled in the 18th century, which circulated in manuscript; chief among these was Istorija Rusov (“History of the Rus’”), an anonymous historical and political treatise probably from the early 19th century.

Eneïda (1798; final part published in 1842), a pastiche of the Aeneid by Ivan Kotljarevs’kyj (1769–1838), travestied the epic’s Trojans as burlesque Cossacks; the Cossack past was, in the first half of the 19th century, the focus of historiographical writings about Ukraine, notably Istorija Maloj Rossii (“History of Little Russia”, 1822) by Dmytro Bantyš-Kamens’kyj (1788–1850) and Istorija Malorossii (“History of Little Russia”, 1842-43) by Mykola Markevyč (1804–1860). Russian-language poetry and fiction of the period were also inspired by Cossack themes. Such works by Ukrainians, addressed to an Empire-wide audience, included Orest Somov’s novel Gaidamak (“The outlaw”, 1826), Taras Bul’ba (1835) by Nikolaj Gogol’ (1809–1852) and Hryhorij Kvitka-Osnov’janenko’s (1778–1843) short novel Panna sotnikovna (“The captain’s daughter”, 1840). Cossack history moved the Russian Decembrist Kondratij Ryleev (1795–1826) to write the narrative poem Vojnarovskij (1825) as an apologia of political liberty, and Aleksandr Puškin (1799–1837) to pen Poltava (1828-29) in the same genre, but without breaching loyalty to the autocracy. In Polish Romantic literature, a “Ukrainian School” thematized the Polish-Ukrainian wars of the relatively recent past: the narrative poem Zamek kaniowski (“Kaniv Castle”, 1828) by Seweryn Goszczyński (1801–1876) and the novels of Michał Czajkowski (1804–1886) and Michał Grabowski (1804–1863).

Ukrainian Romanticism in the Russian Empire originated at Kharkiv University, in 1805. A group of Kharkiv students and alumni, influenced by Herder, took inspiration from Ukrainian folklore, especially historical songs and dumy – recitatives, mainly about Cossack exploits, performed by wandering minstrels. Izmail Sreznevskij (1812–1880) published authentic and counterfeit dumy in his serial Zaporožskaja starina (“Antiquities of Zaporozhia”, 1833-38). Folklore on historical themes was represented in the miscellanies; Ukrainskij al’manah (“Ukrainian almanac”, 1831), Snip (“The sheaf”, 1841) and Molodyk (“Crescent moon”, 1843-44) were the main vehicles for Kharkiv Romanticism. Melancholy as well as heroic treatment of Cossack subject matter characterized the lyrical poetry of Amvrosij Metlyns’kyj (1814–1870), Levko Borovykovs’kyj (1806 or 1808–1889), Myhajlo Petrenko (1817–1862) and Mykola Kostomarov (1817–1885).

In the Habsburg lands, Ukrainian National Romanticism took root at first among members of the clergy, the only Ukrainian-speaking educated social stratum. Inspired by Pan-Slavic ideas and the example of the Kharkiv Romantics, Markijan Šaškevyč (1811–1843), Ivan Vahylevyč (1811–1866) and Jakiv Holovac’kyj (1814–1888) published a Ukrainian-language almanac entitled Rusalka Dnistrovaja (“Nymph of the Dnister”, 1837), whose content included dumy and other historical songs.

In his dramas Sava Čhalyj (1838) and Perejaslavs’ka nič (“Night in Pereiaslav”, 1841), both set in the Cossack period, Kostomarov highlighted Cossack valour and devotion to Orthodox Christianity as essential components of a Ukrainian national identity. Probably in 1845-46, as the main ideologue of the secret Brotherhood of SS Cyril and Methodius, he wrote a treatise conventionally known as Knyha buttja ukrajins’koho narodu (“Book of Genesis of the Ukrainian people”), an anti-tsarist, republican text whose proposal for a free and equal federation of Slav nations reflected the influence of Czech and Slovak Pan-Slavic thought. In biblical diction, the “Book” presented a mythicized narrative of the rise of nations and their deplorable submission to the rule of kings, and prophesied that Ukraine would guide other nations to a utopia of liberty. Exiled for his subversive writings, Kostomarov subsequently wrote voluminous historical works, especially on periods of popular upheaval in Ukraine and Russia, as well as a number of historical novels in Russian. Most were set in Russia but illustrated Kostomarov’s contrasting ethnotypes of the Ukrainian and Russian national character: the former freedom-loving, even anarchic, the latter enthralled by power and willingly subservient to it: Syn (“The son”, 1859-60), Kudejar (1875), Holuj (“The lackey”, 1878) and Černigovka: Byl’ vtoroj poloviny XVII veka (“The woman from Chernihiv: A true tale from the second half of the 17th century”, 1881).

The most eminent of Kostomarov’s colleagues in the Cyrillo-Methodian Society, Taras Ševčenko (1814–1861) and Pantelejmon Kuliš (1819–1897), accepted the significance of the Cossack past for Ukraine’s national mythology, but refrained from idealizing the period. While four of the eight poems in Ševčenko’s seminal verse collection Kobzar (“The minstrel”, 1840), which established him as Ukraine’s foremost poet, expressed nostalgia for the lost Cossack past, many of his subsequent works castigated the Cossack leadership for squandering Ukraine’s freedom and chided contemporary Ukrainian landowners for their misplaced pride in their Cossack ancestors. Ševčenko’s long historical poem Haidamaky (“The outlaws”, 1841) starkly represented the ferocious peasant uprising of 1768.

Kuliš’s Čorna Rada (“The commoners’ council”, composed in the mid-1840s and published in 1857), the first Ukrainian-language historical novel, followed Walter Scott in entwining the fictional plot of a personal romance with the narration of important historical events, in this instance the 1660s leadership struggle among Cossacks that exacerbated class rivalries and weakened the Cossack polity. In 1843 Kuliš had published, in Russian, Myhajlo Čarnyšenko, ili Malorossija vosem’desjat let nazad (“Myhajlo Čarnyšenko, or Little Russia eighty years ago”). Likewise, Danylo Mordovec’ (1830–1905) wrote most of his historical prose, much of it on Ukrainian themes, in Russian. His Idealisty i realisty (“Idealists and realists”, 1878) and Tsar’ i get’man (“Tsar and hetman”, 1880) dealt with the period of Peter I and the Ukrainian Cossack leader Ivan Mazepa (rendered iconic Europe-wide by Byron). In Habsburg Galicia, Ivan Franko, the pre-eminent western-Ukrainian writer and scholar, chose the theme of 13th-century resistance to the invasion of the Golden Horde for his historical novel Zahar Berkut (1882).

Despite prohibitions restricting Ukrainian cultural activity in the Russian Empire in the second half of the century, several historical dramas appeared, including Bohdan Hmel’nyc’kyj (1897) and Marusja Bohuslavka (“Marusja from Bohuslav”, 1899) by Myhajlo Staryc’kyj (1840–1904) and Sava Čalyj (1899) by Ivan Karpenko-Karyj (1845–1907). Jurij-Osyp Fed’kovyč (1834–1888) in Habsburg Bukovina celebrated a semi-mythical outlaw in his drama Dovbuš (1869).

Long after the world-view and stylistic conventions of Romanticism had ceased to be productive in the Ukrainian literary mainstream, literature on historical themes continued to foster the idea of a Ukrainian national community continuous in time and expressing a freedom-loving Ukrainian ethnotype. This was true no less of Ukrainian writers in Poland between the two World Wars – Andrij Čajkovs’kyj (1857–1935), Bohdan Lepkyj (1872–1941), Osyp Nazaruk (1883–1940) or Julijan Opil’s’kyj (1884–1937) – than it was of writers in emigration – Ulas Samchuk (1905–1987), Ivan Bahrjanyj (1906–1963), Vasyl’ Barka (1908–2003) or Emma Andijevs’ka (b. 1931) – or, indeed, in Ukraine within the USSR. Notwithstanding the obligation to promote the idea of unshakeable friendship of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples and the seniority of the Russian partner in this relationship, most Soviet Ukrainian writers of historical fiction cultivated the idea of the distinctiveness and dignity of the Ukrainian nation (Zinaida Tulub, 1880–1964; Petro Panč, 1892–1978; Jurij Janovs’kyj, 1902–1954), even extending the scope of the Ukrainian historical heritage to embrace the medieval Kievan state (Semen Skljarenko, 1901–1962; Pavlo Zahrebel’nyi, 1924–2009). The change in cultural climate with the advent of glasnost’ in the mid-1980s and Ukraine’s independence in 1991 required a relatively minor shift of ideological nuance in the historical fiction of such writers as Roman Ivanyčuk (1929–2016), Jurij Mušketyk (b. 1929) or Roman Fedoriv (1930–2001). Others, who had never fully adjusted to Soviet norms and thus were silent for much of the 1960s and 1970s, were able to re-enter the public sphere. Lina Kostenko (b. 1930) did so as early as 1979 with the verse novel Marusja Čuraj (on a woman song-writer during the Hmel’nyc’kyj years), and Valerij Ševčuk (b. 1939) followed suit with many works in which historical fiction merged into myth and fantasy, including Try lystky za viknom (“Three leaves beyond the window”, 1986), a chronicle of three centuries of decline into colonial dependence.