Essentials of chronology and periodization of the history of the lands of Donbas in the middle ages. Part 2

The authors propose a periodization of the history of the Donbas lands during the High and Late Middle Ages. The beginning of a large cycle of migration processes caused by the invasion of the Oghuz tribes invasion was a marker of the High Middle Ages in the region. The demographic crisis at the end of the 14th century is considered as a marker of the beginning of the Late Middle Ages. Generally, the Middle Ages come to an end at the late 16th century when the southern borders of the Muscovite state were systematically moving further into the steppe. Particular attention should be paid to the characteristics of the regional features of the transitional periods from the Late Middle Ages to the Modern Era: there was a change in the vector of ethnic and political dominance in the middle and lower reaches of the Seversky Donets. Conditional periods and epochs, identified according to ethno-cultural and political criteria, are as close as possible to the existing conventional periodization. The proposed local model of the periodization of the history of the Donbas lands largely does not coincide with the periodization of the history of the neighboring regions of southern Eastern Europe. The elaboration of subdivided periodization permits us to more accurately reflect the features of the historical process in the region as parts of global history. Civilization criteria of periodization become more significant in the transition from the characteristics of epochs to the characteristics of specific periods. Migration processes are an important criterion for distinguishing between different epochs. Economic and ethnopolitical processes are of decisive importance for identifying periods of local history. A distinctive feature of the evolution of the lifestyle of medieval nomads was the trend towards sedentarization, the increase in the complexity of the food supply, and the development of sedentary settlement strategies. The principles of elaborating the periodization, tested in this study, can be used in discussing the problems of periodization of global history. Discussion of variants for periodization of local history leads to the improvement of the necessary conceptual apparatus. In the context of the periodization of the history of Donbas, the term “Middle Ages” is largely a conditional concept, different from the classical model.