Mshanets Oral History Project

Abstract

I am involved in a collaborative effort to produce a history of the Ukrainian Carpathian mountain village of Mshanets, Stary Sambir District, Lviv Province. Mshanets is rare among East European villages in that its relatively strong documentary base has been largely preserved despite the wars and upheavals that have severely damaged the region's historical record. The purpose of my research trip is to supplement the documentary data by interviewing current and former inhabitants of Mshanets and its vicinity and, secondly, to gain a sense of village's topography before writing about it. I have already shared some preliminary finding with Ukrainian historians; a monograph on the village (a longer-term goal) will be an innovation in Ukrainian historiography and might help open new directions for the discipline, currently finding its way after the fall of Communism and the lifting of Soviet ideological and political strictures on scholarship.