In the public opinion and periodicals, and sometimes in the scientific researches there still exists the stereotype (i.e. “fixed and common belief that generates a certain standardized collective experience, as well as the images of the world and society imposed (dimmed) on the individual in the process of education and communication” (Zashkilniak,2009:7–8) about the “miserable” peasants of Dnieper Ukraine in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It makes one think, on the one hand, about the historical sources of its origin and transformation, use for “internal group integration and mobilization” (Zashkilniak, 2009:17, 20). On the other hand, the concept of the poor villagers is attractive as “historiographical myth” and “historical stereotype” in which “the elements of the outmoded historical images” are substituted by new senses with time (Zashkilniak,2009:23, 34). From this point of view, it is important to examine the tendencies of reflecting the realities of peasant poverty in contemporary Ukrainian historiography, with an emphasis on study of the structural features of poverty and impoverishment situation, as well as the scenarios of the poverty trap reduction used by peasants and proposed by the state and society.

In the context of the article volume, it shows selected bibliography. From the translated works of the foreign scientists the article refers only to the works of George G. Grabowicz (1998), Daniel Beauvois (2020), and William Noll (1999) are widely cited by the Ukrainian historians.