The Brief Description of Little Russia, abbreviated KOM, is a Ukrainian chronicle written by an anonymous author in the 1730s.
Composition The main source for the KOM was the Hrabianka Chronicle. From this, the author selected the most significant facts and summarised them, whilst writing his own original account of the events of the first third of the 18th century. The work is written in literary Ukrainian (Late Ruthenian).
Contents The chronicle provides an overview of events from 1506–1734, with a brief intro from the Mongol invasion of Kyivan Rus' (1240) to 1506, with "1340" as the first year explicitly mentioned. It becomes more detailed from 1506 onwards, taking the form of annalistic entries by year (although many years are skipped between 1506 and 1620), with the most detailed account covering the era of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Great Northern War (1700–1721). The author (who presumably belonged to the patriotically-minded Cossack starshyna) links the Cossack period of Ukraine’s history with the history of Kyivan Rus’; he recounts the history of the Cossacks, extols the Ukrainian people’s struggle for liberation against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and expresses sympathy for its leaders (Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Ivan Bohun, Severyn Nalyvaiko, Semen Paliy and others).
Popularity and influence
Manuscripts of the Brief Description of Little Russia (KOM) began to circulate in Ukraine in the 1740s. The KOM gained widespread popularity in Ukraine, where it has been preserved in more than 50 manuscripts and editions. Reasons for its great popularity have been attributed to its concise and clear style of writing, the fact that it was based on the similarly popular Hrabianka Chronicle, and according to Mytsyk (1999) "that the unknown author managed to give the reader an idea of the historical past of Ukraine during the Cossack era (from 1506) in the most concise form". Given that it appeared in a time when the Ukrainian people were "devastated by Russian colonialism" as the Cossack Hetmanate and Zaporizhian Sich were gradually being eroded and abolished, the picture that the KOM painted of a glorious past with full state independence awakened patriotism and hope for a better future in its readers. According to Serhii Plokhy (2012), by 1777, the KOM "had become the most popular compendium of Ukrainian history in the Hetmanate." It also greatly influenced Ukrainian historiography and literature from the mid-18th century until the early 19th century.
The KOM became the basis or an important source for the following works: Novhorod-Siverskyi Chronicle (1760s), used the Brief Description of Little Russia as a source Vasyl Ruban, «Краткой летописи Малыя России c 1506 no 1776 год…» [A Brief Chronicle of Little Russia from 1506 to 1776, with the Disclosure of a True Picture of the Local Administration and the Publication of a List of Earlier Hetmans, General Officers, Colonels, and Hierarchs.] (Saint Petersburg 1777). Ruban claimed that the 1734–1776 continuation had been written by Oleksandr Bezborodko, Colonel (Polkovnyk) of Kyiv. Jean-Benoît Schérer, published manuscripts of the KOM in supplements in 1786 in Paris, and used it as the basis of his "Annals of Little Russia, or History of the Ukrainian and Zaporizhian Cossacks". French edition: Annales de la petite Russie ou Histoire des Cosaques-Saporogues et des Cosaques de l’Ukraine (Paris 1788). German edition: Geschichte der Ukrainischen und Saporogischen Kasaken nebst einigen Nachrichten von der Verfassung und den Sitten derselben (Leipzig). History of the Ruthenians (Istoriya Rusiv, 1800), heavily through the French edition of Schérer's Annales. «Лѣтописце, или кратком описании знатнѣйших дѣйств и случаев, что в котором году дѣялося в Украинѣ Малороссійской обѣих сторон Днѣпра и кто именно когда гетьманом был козацким» ["A Chronicle, or a brief account of the most notable events and occurrences that took place in that year in Little Russia, on both sides of the Dnieper, and who exactly served as Cossack hetman and when"], (1888).
See also The History of the Zaporizhian Cossacks (1740s), historical work written by Semen Ivanovych Myshetsky
Notes
References
Bibliography Critical editions
Osip Bodyansky, Eyewitness Chronicle, with the Brief Description of Little Russia (Лѣтописецъ въ Малой Россіи) ["Chronicler in Little Russia"] as an appendix (Moscow 1846).
Literature
(A monograph entirely dedicated to examining the History of the Ruthenians manuscript tradition).
Further reading Volodymyr Antonovych, [Передмова] (Foreword). In the book: Сборник летописей, относящихся к истории Южной и Западной Руси [A collection of chronicles relating to the history of Southern and Western Rus’]. Kyiv (1888). Volodymyr Ikonnykov. Опыт русской историографии [The Expertise of Rus' Historiography], Vol. 2, Book 2. Kyiv (1908). Dmytro Bahalii. Нарис української історіографії [An Overview of Ukrainian Historiography], Vol. 1, No. 2. Джерелознавство [Source Studies]. Kyiv (1925).
External links «Короткий опис Малоросії» . Літературознавча енциклопедія [Literary Encyclopedia] : in 2 vols. / ed. by Yu. I. Kovaliv. Kyiv: ‘Akademia’ Publishing Centre, 2007. Vol. 1: A–L. p. 528.