Repressed regional studies and the Ukrainian pantheon

It is a thankless task to enumerate all the honorary titles that have been conferred on Mykola KOSTRYTSIA. This well-known Zhytomyr-based scholar heads the Department of the Methodology of Natural and Mathematical Disciplines at the Zhytomyr Oblast Institute of In- Service Teacher Training and is the president of the Zhytomyr Ethnographic Society of Volyn Researchers. He is especially proud of the fact that in 2001 the reference work Who’s Who in the World named him as one of the 2,000 most prominent scholars of the 21st century. In 2003 he received a special diploma and the 21st Century Award for Achievement from the International Biographical Center in Cambridge (UK). He recently successfully defended his doctoral dissertation at Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University on the history of geography, the subject he introduced in Ukraine.

Could you explain what led you to write a dissertation on the history of geography?

Since we live in a three-dimensional system of coordinates — space-time-socium — national regional studies are divided, in my opinion, into these three main directions. Space is geographical regional studies, time is historical regional studies, and socium is the rest, including literary regional studies, etc. The dissertation establishes the theoretical and methodological background for this division. I singled out such stages of geographical regional studies as sources (origins) and the founding of scientific schools, the period of complex transformations in the 1940s- 1980s, when geographical regional studies served as an amorphous basis for the Russocentric and, later, the Soviet-centered paradigm of scholarly development, and its establishment as a scholarly discipline in independent Ukraine.

Have there been any gains, special features, or conflicts in Ukrainian regional studies from the early part of the 20th century until independence?

The first attempts to establish a Ukrainian branch of the Russian Geographical Society were made in 1871, but two years later the tsarist government abolished it, viewing it as a manifestation of centrifugal forces. The first attempt to set up an independent Ukrainian geographical society (as a branch of the Leningrad-based central organization) was in 1947. A truly independent Ukrainian geographical society was founded in 1992 at a founding meeting in Rivne, and I have been the head of its regional branch in Zhytomyr since then. It is important to note that Ukrainian geographical regional studies enjoy top priority. A recent conference in Ternopil officially marked the 130th birth anniversary of Stepan Rudnytsky, the founder of Ukrainian geographical science. This scholar proved that geographical regional studies are an important element of geography.

But its development should not be considered in isolation from regional studies as a whole. The difference between geography and geographical regional studies is the object, not research methods. A number of small local streams flow into the large river of Ukrainian regional studies. The precursor of the Volyn-Podillia school, one of the early 20th-century most prominent schools in the Russian Empire that I singled out, was the Zhytomyr-based Society of Volyn Researchers founded in 1900. This society is associated with the names of such outstanding geographers as Pavlo Tutkovsky, Stepan Bielsky, Pavlo Postoiev (who was repressed, like many of his pupils and colleagues, in the 1930s), and the ethnographer Vasyl Kravchenko (deported from Zhytomyr in the same years and branded as a Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist). After 20 years of the society’s existence, the Soviet government abolished this independent civic institution for fear that the study of local history or geography could run counter to the government’s goals. Other well-known researchers of Volyn were repressed in the 1930s: the ethnographer Kornii Cherviak, director of the regional archive and professor at the Volyn Institute of Public Education Volodymyr Hnatiuk, full member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences Stepan Rudnytsky, and many others.

After Ukraine became independent, a notable impetus was given to Ukrainian regional stud

ies. One can see this in Zhytomyr oblast, too, where a large number of works have already been published.

In 1989, before Ukraine became independent, the revived All-Ukrainian Union of Regional Researchers held an organizational session under the aegis of the Regional Studies Section of the Institute of History attached to the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which was headed by the well-known scholar Petro Tronko. In 1990 the Zhytomyr Regional Studies Society, which called itself a successor to the Society of Volyn Researchers that was active in Zhytomyr in 1900-20, held its founding session. The history of its revival is quite complicated: in the early part of the 20th century, one of its full members was the outstanding Ukrainian scholar and public and religious figure, Zhytomyr-born Ivan Ohiienko whom fate propelled first to Europe and then to Canada. In Winnipeg, some Volyn-born emigres revived the Society of Volyn Researchers in 1949. It existed until 1999, and Ohiienko appointed this society and the Institute of Volyn Studies as the legal custodians of all his works. In 1999, when I was the head of the Zhytomyr Regional Studies Society, I received their entire library comprising over 60 publications, including 20 volumes of the proceedings of the Institute of Volyn Studies and the Society of Volyn Researchers, which they decided to bequeath to their historical homeland.

What is the direction of your research and are there any concrete results today?

There are centers of the Society of Volyn Regional Researchers in all the districts and cities of Zhytomyr oblast as well as in many other regions of Ukraine, in the near and far abroad. The society is also part of the All-Ukrainian Union of Regional Researchers. Our work consists of conducting and popularizing regional studies by holding workshops dedicated to significant landmarks in the history of Ukraine and Zhytomyr oblast and to outstanding figures born in this region. For example, in 2007 we held conferences marking the birth centenary of Oleh Olzhych, who was born in Zhytomyr, and the 70th anniversary of the oblast. Among international-level events there was a scholarly conference in 1996, when the international community, under the auspices of UNESCO, marked the 150th birth anniversary of Nikolai Miklukho-Maklai whose family lived for a long time on an estate near Malyn. Another direction of our work is the publication of a series of studies, including Scholars of the Zhytomyr Region, books on the life of outstanding academics (studies have already been published about the geologist Volodymyr Bondarchuk; president of the Ukrainian Geographical Society Petro Shyshchenko; member of the Higher School Academy Ion Vinokur, and others). We have published several editions of the textbook Native Land and the manual Geography of Zhytomyr Oblast. Also in the works is the series Cities of Zhytomyr Region, including a very popular book on Zhytomyr, which is being published with the assistance of the Zhytomyr Municipal Council. This literature is designed for people from all walks of life: schoolchildren, students, teachers, etc. Next year we are going to hold a scholarly conference dedicated to the 150th birth anniversary of Pavlo Tutkovsky, who was one of the founders of Ukrainian geographical science. In compliance with a directive issued by President Viktor Yushchenko and ex-prime minister Viktor Yanukovych, in January 2009 we will hold an international conference to mark the 125th birth anniversary of the native of Chudniv, Ivan Feshchenko-Chopivsly, who was a prominent figure in the Ukrainian National Republic and the prime minister of its government in exile.

Which of your fellow countrymen from Zhytomyr oblast should be included in Ukraine’s pantheon?

One of the directions of our work is the publication of a bibliographical dictionary of Zhytomyr oblast. I am one of the authors of the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Ukraine, which profiles Ukrainians who lived in the 20th century. We have already published five volumes (A to G), which contain over 500 entries on individuals born in the Zhytomyr region. The dictionary includes approximately 1,200 first-level entries on 16-19th-century figures. The Zhytomyr region was the birthplace of the founder of the Zaporozhian Sich Ostap Dashkovych, hetmans Ivan Vyhovsky and Ivan Samoilovych, the commander of the Paris Commune troops Jaroslaw Dabrowski, Sergei Korolev, who is widely known, and many other illustrious figures.