Civilizational changes in the Podillia province in the context of incorporation into the Russian empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

The purpose of the study is to reveal the essence, nature and peculiarities of civilizational changes in the territory of Podillia province caused by internal and external factors in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The research methodology is based on anthropological, civilizational, cultural and interdisciplinary approaches, application of the principles of historicity, scientificity, objectivity, multifactoriality and systematicity, as well as historical and geographical, historical and genetic, historical and comparative, historical and retrospective, problematic and chronological methods. The scientific novelty lies in the development and comprehensive coverage of modern methodological approaches to the study and scientific reconstruction of civilizational transformations in Ukraine and its individual regions; substantiation and disclosure of a practically new problem for national historical science about the nature, content, essence and features of civilizational changes in the Podillia region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, caused by the annexation by the Russian Empire after the second partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, incorporation into the state organism through the prism of autocratic policy aimed at rigid political and national-cultural leveling, border location and social transformations on the European continent under the influence of the French Revolution. Conclusions. It is noted that the civilizational progress of Podillia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries took place on its own historical and ethno-national basis and in close interconnection and mutual influence of the Russian factor, national minorities and colonists who inhabited it. The indigenous inhabitants of the region not only preserved their national and cultural identity from destruction, but also, together with Ukrainians throughout the Naddniprianshchyna, acted as a powerful lever of civilizational influence in the Russian Empire.