Authorship

The Eyewitness Chronicle was written in Middle Ukrainian (late Ruthenian),^[1] which was close to the vernacular (the prosta mova or "simple speech").^[2][3] This contrasts the Eyewitness Chronicle and Velychko Chronicle with the Hrabianka Chronicle, which was written in late Church Slavonic, the literary standard in the Tsardom of Russia, far removed from the everyday language spoken by Ukrainians and Belarusians living in the Cossack Hetmanate.^[3] The author of the chronicle is not known by name, but he belonged to the Cossack elite and held a prominent position in the Ukrainian government for some time. Researchers have long tried to establish his name. In 1846, the amateur historian D. Serdyukov was the first to attribute the authorship to Roman Rakushka-Romanovsky [uk] (c. 1622–1703), general treasurer under Ivan Briukhovetsky, and in the last decades of his life, a priest in Starodub.^[2][b] However, he could not prove it. This became possible after the works of Vadim Modzalevsky [uk] on Rakushka-Romanovsky in 1919. In the 1920s, a number of authors (Viktor Romanovsky [uk]; Oleksander Ohloblyn and especially Mykola Petrovsky [uk]) independently of each other, based on an analysis of autobiographical material in the Chronicle, came to the conclusion that the author of the Eyewitness Chronicle was indeed most likely Roman Rakushka-Romanovsky.^[2]

This opinion was accepted by most historians (Dmytro Bahalii, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Dmytro Doroshenko, Ivan Krypiakevych and others, and in particular modern historiography).^[2] But some authors have named other candidates for authorship: Ivan Bykhovets [uk], military clerk (according to Lev Okinshevych [uk]), Fedir Kandyba [uk], colonel of Korsun (according to Mykola Hryhorovych Andrusiak and Mykhailo Voznyak), and others. Frank Sysyn noted in 1990: "Time, place, and authorship of composition have remained hotly debated, with Roman Rakushka as the favored candidate for author on the basis of internal evidence. (...) Whether its compiler witnessed the events of Khmel'nyts'kyi's uprising himself and wrote them down later or whether he incorporated an earlier account into his text remains uncertain. In either case, the laconic Eyewitness Chronicle is the only Cossack chronicle still credited with containing some primary information on the Khmel'nyts'kyi period."^[1]

Manuscript circulation

The original Chronicle, written at the end of the 17th or beginning of the 18th century, has not survived.^[1] Several copies made in the 18th century or later have been preserved. The oldest and most complete are the manuscripts of H. Iskritsky (first half of the 18th century) and Yakov Kozelsky (second half of the 18th century), which form the basis of scientific publications on this monument. In total, six copies (two of which from the first half of the 18th century, the rest later) were known to the publishers of the 1846 and 1878 editions.^[1]

As of 1992, there were 7 known manuscripts, 4 of which were kept in the manuscript department of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, and one each in the manuscript departments of the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg, the Kharkiv Korolenko State Scientific Library, and the Vasyl Tarnovsky Chernihiv Regional Historical Museum.^[5]

Publications

For the first time, having received it from Panteleimon Kulish (who gave it the name "Eyewitness Chronicle"), it was published by Osip Bodyansky in 1846 in Readings of the Moscow Society of Antiquities.^[2] A more scientifically prepared edition was published in 1878 by the Kyiv Archaeographic Commission, edited and with an introductory article by Orest Levytsky based on Kozelsky's manuscript under the title "Chronicle of an Eyewitness based on newly discovered lists with the addition of three Little Russian chronicles: Khmelnytsky, 'Brief Description of Little Russia' and 'Collections of History'".^[2] It was published again by Yaroslav Dzyra at the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 1971,^[2] based on the manuscripts of Iskritsky, Kozelsky and Mykhailo Sudiyenko, and by "Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies" in 1972.^[6]