Since modern Slavic studies lack a uniform concept of the Ukrainian redaction of the Church Slavonic language, this article analyzes the major achievements of Ukrainian linguistics in the study of this phenomenon. Applying the method of linguistic historiography, the author describes the emergence of a national concept, according to which written sources – reflecting the features of the Ukrainian language from different periods of its formation – attest to the existence of a single Ukrainian redaction. The development of views on the Church Slavonic language is evidenced by the works of M. Maksymovych, I. Ohienko, G.Y. Shevelov, V. Nimchuk. Today different schools are primarily concerned with the quantitative interpretation of particular features of the Ukrainian redaction. Such an interpretation is largely premised on the 19th‑century Russian philological tradition which does not take into consideration the historical differentiation of East Slavic. Burdened with problematic terms like Russian, such an approach remains in contrast with Ukrainian linguistics, which accepts the existence of the Ukrainian redaction of Church Slavonic since the times of Kyivan Rus’.

The article offers a survey of works of Ukrainian linguists in the field of Church Slavonic, in particular its Ukrainian recension. While applying the historiographic approach, the author focuses on various publications and the study of the language of some records and their authors, and the reconstruction of orthoepy. The article also discusses some controversial questions of the interrelation between the Ukrainian (southern) and the Great Russian (northern) redaction of the Church Slavonic language from the second half of the 17th century onward. The author also highlights changes in the methodological principles and argues that, despite the use of sociolinguistic and cognitive methods along with the traditional structural and functional approach, the current discourse in Ukrainian linguistics appears to be incomplete.