Issues of Historical Demography in the Scientific Works of Mykhailo Vladymyrskyi-Budanov

The article deals with the contribution of the professor of Kyiv St. Volodymyr University Mykhailo Vladymyrskyi-Budanov to the formation of the demographical agenda of the Ukrainian historical science. The article analyzes the input of M. Vladymyrskyi-Budanov into the discussion of the 1860s–1870s concerning two theories of colonization of the south-eastern Ukrainian lands in the aftermath of the mid-13th century Tatar invasion. One of the theories maintained the idea that the ethnic composition of the Rus population changed as a result of the Turkic and Tatar blood mingling, whilst the second attributed colonization of the devastated by the Tatars Rus lands to the Polish state.Vladymyrskyi-Budanov conveyed his views on the subject in the introductions to the three volumes of the 7th part of South-Western Russia’s Archives, which contains descriptive and statistical documents regarding the south-eastern lands in the 15th–17th centuries. Relying on his profound knowledge of narrative sources and analysis of a large number of documentary sources, the historian proved that remote areas of Rus had not been totally devastated by Tatars. Vladymyrskyi-Budanov traced colonization processes in the south-eastern Ukrainian lands during the 13th–17th centuries; identified the periods of their rise and decline; established that the rulers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish Commonwealth participated in these processes; ascertained that the authorities of these states did not appropriately protect remote Rus areas. He was the first in the Ukrainian historiography who, on the documentary basis, estimated the population of the remote counties of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish Podillia in the mid-16th century, and reasonably argued that colonization of the south-eastern lands was carried out by the Rus people (peasantry, townsfolk, and gentry) under the protection of Cossacks, who constituted a real military force and actively participated in the development of those lands.