It is extremely important for Ukrainians to be aware of their national identity and internal unity in modern conditions. The revival of Ukrainian traditional culture, including interest in traditional Ukrainian clothing, is a sign of this process. Ukrainian vyshyvanka has become an important marker for Ukrainians both in Ukraine and also abroad. Slobidska Ukraine, Kharkivshchyna in particular, is not an exception. Ukrainian traditions are being revived here. A powerful ethnological school, founded by the academician Mykola Sumtsov, has existed in Kharkiv from the late nineteenth century until the early 1930s. The scientific activities of Vira Biletska are of a great importance in the study of Ukrainian traditional clothing of Slobozhanshchyna. Unfortunately, this scientific school has been destroyed by the pro-Stalinist totalitarian regime in the 1930s and the heritage of the scientists has been put in a so-called special storage department. The studies of the traditional culture of Slobozhanshchyna are resumed only after Ukraine has gained independence. The creative activity of folklore and ethnographic groups in the Kharkiv region is of a great importance in promoting the traditional culture of Sloboda Ukraine, including Ukrainian folk clothing, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Muravskyi Shliakh (Kharkiv) and Verbychenka (Nova Vodolaha) take a prominent place among these groups, considered as an example in terms of performance skills and the authenticity of the reproduction of Slobozhanshchyna folklore and research activities as well as in the terms of the accuracy of stage costumes. These facts are also facilitated by the organization and regular holding of the Krokoveie Kolo traditional folk culture festival for children and youth by the Union of Folklorists and Ethnologists of Kharkiv. The interest in folk traditions of the Kharkiv region at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has influenced the emergence of craftswomen, both reproducing traditional Ukrainian women’s, men’s and children’s clothing, but also educating new generations of craftswomen. The activities of the Ukrainian traditional culture masters contribute to the formation of the Ukrainian national identity in the Kharkiv region. A wider circle of Kharkiv residents is becoming aware of the historical origins of Ukrainians in Slobozhanshchyna owing to the fruitful long-term creative activity of these groups involving youth and children.
Sushko et al. (Sat,) studied this question.