The image of the Crimean Tatars in Jewish chronicles of the Khmelnytsky period

Abstract

Introduction. The purpose of the article is a detailed analysis of the assessments contained in the Jewish historical chronicles of the Khmelnytsky uprising period and related to the characteristics of the Crimean Tatars who took an active part in the uprising of B.M. Khmelnitsky. Based on these assessments, we can reconstruct the image of the Muslim Tatars that developed in the historical consciousness of the Jewish late medieval society under the influence of the experienced catastrophe. Methods. Since the peculiarity of this study is the exceptional attention to the text of the source, methods based on text analysis and methods based on contextual analysis of speech and semantic constructions used by Jewish publicists and comparing them with the facts of biographies and historical events that could possibly affect the texts of chronicles were widely used. To solve the tasks set in the work, such concrete historical methods as historical-comparative and historicaltypological were also used. Results. On the basis of the work done, it can be concluded that for Jewish authors – creators of historical chronicles of the period of the «Khmelnichiny», the Muslim Tatars act, though evil, but much less than the evil that the Orthodox Ukrainians carried to the Jewish population. In the image of the Crimean Tatars, to some extent, one can even find positive assessments showing pity and concern for those Jews who surrendered to them. The same cannot be said about the image of the Orthodox population that has developed in Jewish chronicles under the impression of the horrors of the People's Liberation war in Ukraine in the middle of the XVII century. Conclusion. The Crimean Tatars who took part in the uprising of Bohdan Khmelnytsky were perceived by Jews as enemies, but with a certain shade of respect, which we absolutely will not find in the current image of the Orthodox population of Ukraine.