On October 27, the list of "30 iconic books of our Independence" was announced. This project was initiated by the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy and implemented by the Ukrainian Book Institute. Through the joint efforts of expert and capable readers, we have identified thirty books that have influenced the formation of our identity. It was first and foremost about the values ​​that we share and that those books represent. At the end of the summer, the Book Institute published a list of one hundred slogans, which were compiled and processed by experts. From mid-September, for a month on the website of the Book Institute, you could vote for your favorites from the list. On the basis of a general vote, a list of "30 iconic books of our Independence" has now been formed.

In 2020, "Chronicle", which just turned three hundred years old, and its author three hundred and fifty, was republished. And finally published in the form in which it was written by the author. A beautiful book of 1,016 pages, published in antiquity, was published (Clio Publishing House made considerable efforts to publish it).

Work on the publication began in 2012. Well-known historian Tetyana Tairova-Yakovleva (she works in St. Petersburg at the Center for the Study of the History of Ukraine) found Wieliczka's manuscript in the "reserves". She turned to the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine to publish the Chronicle together. It was agreed that there would be two working groups - one in Russia, headed by Tairovа-Yakovlevа, the other in Ukraine, headed by Gennady Boryak.

It is clear that the publication of such a large-scale historical document is an extremely difficult matter. And by the way. At a certain stage of the work, the researcher turned for help to patrons, graduates of the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School. In total, about a million hryvnias were collected for the publication of the Chronicle. The book appeared and was presented in Baturyn.

Samiylo Velychko was a chancellor of the Zaporozhian Army during the time of Hetman Ivan Mazepa. He was of Cossack origin, before his service he was obviously educated, most likely at the Kyiv Academy. This service was necessary for service in the military office. Chancellors in those days were recruited from the children of significant Cossacks, did not receive pay for their work, and were those who are called state personnel.

Unlike our other Cossack chronicles, Samiil Velychko's books have only one copy. It is said that this happened because of the monstrous volume of the Chronicle, since not everyone will rewrite more than a thousand pages. But the original manuscript of Wieliczka has been preserved.

For a long time the manuscript was kept in the library of the Kochubeys, then it ended up in the book collection of the famous bibliophile Hryhoriy Paletyk (this is where the Kyiv copy of the "Chronicle" was made). Paletyk's grandson sold the manuscript and eventually it went to the Russian historian Mikhail Pogodin. Pogodin understood perfectly what text he was dealing with, and we will report on the chronicle of Mykhailo Maksymovych and Osyp Bodyansky, Ukrainian historians. But at the same time he set such a price for the manuscript that none of them collected it. At Pogodin's initiative, the manuscript was published in the 1840s, and this distorted and terribly censored version of Wieliczka's Chronicle was only available to us until the 2020 edition. The original manuscript still remains in St. Petersburg.

The actual circulation of the "Chronicle" is a thousand copies. It seemed that this publication could only greet a small circle of "its people". The inclusion of the "Chronicle" in the list of "30 iconic books of our Independence" not only according to experts, but also the general readership proves that the circle that is able to appreciate this extraordinary book is not so close.

 Congratulations to all involved!