RELIGION, PHYSICAL CULTURE, AND SPORT OF THE UKRAINIAN COSSACKS: HISTORICAL AND EDUCATIONAL ASPECTS

Abstract

The article clarifies that religion, physical culture, and sport, as powerful and simulta­neously contradictory socio-cultural phenomena, have to varying degrees permeated the entire history of the formation of Ukrainian society and are currently important moral factors capable of influencing the upbringing of the individual. A vivid example of the interrelation between religion, physical culture, and sport is the phenomenon of the Ukrainian Cossacks, in whose worldview, morality, and physical culture Christianity and other folk beliefs played a key role.

The aim of the article is to analyze the interrelation between religion, physical culture, and sport in the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks and its educational influence on the formation of the modern individual.

The research methodology employs the theoretical concepts of the American historian and sociologist of sport Allen Guttmann, who proposes considering all physical exercises and sports of different peoples as part of a global sports and physical culture that developed in connection with religious beliefs and cults.

The scientific novelty lies in the formation of a new methodological approach to the analysis of the interrelation between religion, physical culture, and sport in the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks and the possibility of its educational influence on the formation of the modern individual. It is proven that the interconnections of the physical «sporting» practices of the Ukrainian Cossacks with religious, spiritual, cultic ceremonies, folk customs, and traditions have valuable educational significance.

Conclusions. The Ukrainian Cossacks had significant achievements in the field of physical culture and developed their own unique tradition of physical education. The physical culture and sport of the Ukrainian Cossacks are closely connected with spiritual and religious ideas, cultural practices based on customary kinship relations, and reflect the peculiarities of human worldview. The worldview of the Ukrainian Cossacks was a symbiosis of Orthodox faith, ancient folk beliefs and worldview, which reflected the ideals of the harmonious development of the individual in the unity of their spiritual and physical qualities.