Quarantine conditions of education and life of Osyp Bodiansky in 1830–1831 (according to the letters of the Bodіansky brothers)

The chronological boundaries of this study cover one academic year. That was the last year of Osyp Bodiansky’s studies at the Poltava (Pereiaslav) Seminary. The main source base consists of Osyp and Fedir Bodiansky’s letters from Pereiaslav addressed to their parents. The article aims to study the quarantine period of Osyp Bodiansky’s life in Pereiaslav during the second cholera pandemic. It is an attempt to recreate one year of Osyp Bodiansky’s life from the moment he arrived to study before leaving for Moscow. The sequence of events helps to answer the question: where did O. Bodiansky live, how did he earn from the conditions, what was distance education in 1830–1831 like, how did he manage to avoid cholera? This year began with finding a good apartment and a trip to Kyiv to buy some books. O. Bodiansky planned to re- ceive 660 rubles from the conditions. In October, the seminary was quarantined and all the students were sent home. There were two attempts to resume the study, but cholera reached Pereiaslav and the study did not take place. O. Bodiansky completed a full seminar course in Pereiaslav only in September 1831 and went to continue his studies at Moscow University. The main focus of the article is the quarantine conditions of study in the seminary and the life in the city. This study has a prosopographic context, which contributes to the retrospective of the social portrait of O. Bodiansky and the city of that time. Osyp Bodyansky was one of those who studied in this city and kept in touch with the locals throughout his life. His character was formed here together with the desire to know the truth, love for the Ukrainian way of life.The relevance of the study of such a historical figure as O. Bodiansky, who made a significant contribution to the preservation and development of Ukrainian history and culture in the Moscow ideology, is dictated by the socio-political realities of today when Ukrainian culture once again needs protection and promotion. This is a human-dimensional vision of both the history of a particular region (in this case, Pereiaslav in the early nineteenth century) and the understanding of a person of a particular era and region as a person, not a known historical figure without any ideological involvement.

Sensory landscape of the Russian empire in “The Letters from Russia” (1856–1857) by Juan Valera

The article considers new perspectives in working with travel notes as a historical source. Through the careful reading of “The Letters from Russia” (1856-1857) by Spanish diplomat and writer Juan Valera (1824-1905), the article examines the role of sensory impressions and their place in constructing Russia’s image. Particular attention focuses on the analysis of methods and approaches of sensory history. By applying content analysis, it was possible to identify four topics addressed by the Spanish diplomat: colours, tastes, sounds, and smells. Thanks to the interdisciplinary approach, we reconstructed the author’s percep- tion of Russia’s visual and sound landscape, his attitude to the Russian elite’s and the ordinary people’s tastes (food and drinks), the smells that he encountered during the trip. For example, the Russian empire seemed to the Spanish author brilliant, golden and silver, and its sound perception was characterized by the loud sound of local bells and melodic singing of church choirs. At the same time, a Spanish diplomat was openly disappointed with the common people’s food and its smell, and the Russian countryside, in general, seems colourless to him. The Spaniard’s idea of Russia was established under the influence of his native environment and by the St. Petersburg elite. Given the fact that the author spent most of his time in the company of the Russian elite, he managed to recreate Russia’s holistic sensual landscape only in the context of its sounds and smells. In the case of Russian food and colours, readers can observe an unfinished image that only partially reproduces the author’s vision of “folk” and “parade” Russia. For example, due to the author’s limited mobility, the text contains almost no information about the color palette of a Russian city or village. Despite this, the study of these phenomena not only revealed the basic features of the then Russian everyday life but also allowed a better understanding of the personality of Juan Valera and the way of forming his ideas.

The Volhynian mass murders of 1943 in Polish-Ukrainian historical discussions in the 1990s

The article analyzes the first public discussions of the last decade of the 20th century about mass murders of Polish population in Volhynia in 1943. The author explores the emergence of the topic of “Volhynia” in the public space and Polish-Ukrainian historical debates about these mass murders in the 1990s. The research is based on the published sources and interviews with the participants in the Polish-Ukrainian dialog. The article focuses on the first mentions of the Volhynian events in the post-communist period, on the way this issue was discussed at seminars of Polish and Ukrainian historians, and in the leading Polish newspapers “Gazeta Wyborcza” and “Rzeczpospolita”. Particular attention is paid to the discussion about the mass murders in the “Gazeta Wyborcza” in 1995. The Volhynian issue appeared in the public space after almost fifty years of silence initiated from the Polish “kres” and veteran circles which represented the victims of the mass murders. This topic was arousing interest gradually. It did not immediately take a lead- ing place in Polish-Ukrainian historical debates. In the 1990s, the discussion about “Volhynia” took place primarily between historians and within the groups to which this topic was important. There was only one discussion about the Volhynian events in the press, namely in the “Gazeta Wyborcza”. This newspaper, which appeared as an organ of Solidarity, pays attention especially to the relationship between Poland and its neighbours, particularly Ukraine. In the Ukrainian central media, the Volhynian issue remained completely without attention. Although the debates about “Volhynia” were not actively conducted in the 1990s, certain tendencies were established during this period, which remained characteristic in the following years. In Poland, these events were perceived as one of the most traumatic episodes of the national history, so it was the Polish side who initiated the discussions about this topic. The Ukrainian side was forced to respond to these initiatives.

The problem of defining the women’s status in sugar-refining industry: “woman” – “half-worker” – “worker” (on an example of sugar factories of Kyiv province, 1880s–1900s)

This article regards the problem of defining the women’s status in the sugar-refining industry of the Russia Empire post-reform period. Based on the cases of sugar factories of Kyiv province during the 1880s–1905s, the author illustrates a complicated process of determining the role and the place of female laborers in the professional structure of industrial institutions which relate to this type of industry. Due to the fact that women had been recruited to unqualified parts of the working class (in the majority of cases), they remained at the bottom of the hierarchy of industrial labor. In contrast to men-laborers, who were distributed by the qualification parameter and professional skill (qualified/unqualified labor force), women-laborers were distributed by the gender parameter. Based on the archival materials of the factory inspection funds and in-factory documentation, it was found that working women were most often identified into the category “women” (“zhenschina”), less often as “part-time workers” (“polurabochaya”), and even less often as “workers” (“rabochaya”). It is possible to say that such division differed significantly from the distribution among the male part of the working class (“rabochiy/polurabo- chiy”). After all, a woman working in an industrial space was generally perceived not as a full-fledged unit of labor but as a supplement to qualified male labor. However, the model proposed by the author of this study: “woman” – “semi-worker” – “worker”, opened a different angle, according to which a woman’s professional position was not clearly fixed and could de facto change, regardless of the type of the performed work (qualified or unqualified). As a result, all these sources and evidence allow us to state that the period of industrialization and modernization provided for women (though not significant) a space for opportunities to realize their own work.

Several documents on the history of everyday life of students of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in the eighteenth century

This publication presents the inventory of the documents related to the history of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in the eighteenth century. The documents belong to the collection of the Institute of Manuscripts of the National Library of Ukraine named after V. Vernadsky, and they have not been introduced so far into the scholarly circulation. The accompanying text provides an analysis of the documents and introduces the unknown data on the biographies of the students of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

Sources for the history of Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church (the former Jesuit Church) discovered in the funds of Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv

The article analyzes the sources on the history of Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church (the former Jesuit Church) discovered in the funds of Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv. In particular, the documents that are of practical importance for the process of church revitalization as the building remained closed from 1946 until 2011 are distinguished. The significant corpus of sources concerning the church history is the archive of Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv, the depository of which was located in the church until the end of 2011. With these documents, it is possible to trace the history of the church building during the Soviet time and the changes that happened during this period. Moreover, the collection of photographic materials with the depiction of different parts of the church constitutes a significant corpus of sources. This information is valuable for the conservation professionals working on the renewal of church exteriors and interiors. Particularly, the photographs that show the process of the roof restoration in 1959 offer an opportunity to assess the degree of the ceiling destruction during the Second World War. Photographs of the frescoes in the main nave demonstrate the state of the ceiling and frescos as of the beginning of the 20th century and therefore give an insight into the progress of conservation works during the interwar period. The analysis of the photograph of the altar of Saint Stanislaw Kostka makes it possible to understand what one of the three chapels in the church looked like. The other two chapels (of the Virgin Mary and Saint Stanislaw Kostka) will be restored in course of time. As for the third chapel of Saint Benedict the Martyr, important documents concerning the restoration of this chapel at the beginning of the 20th century are stored in the funds of the library. With these documents, it is possible to specify the appearance of the chapel and the peculiarities of its decorations, as the chapel does not belong to the church nowadays. To sum up, it can be stated that the funds of Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv contain a relatively small amount of materials on the history of Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church (the Jesuit Church). At the same time, some of them are important for the studies of the history of the church, so they deserve attention from the researchers.

Travelling to improve yourself and to increase common good of humankind and your country: recommendations of Leopold von Berchtold in the context of the Enlightenement discourse

The recommendations of the Bohemian philanthropist of the late eighteenth century Leopold von Berchtold to travelers were not unique: there were others before and after. In the previous centuries other authors also tended to recommend their readers to pay attention to the economic state of foreign countries and provided them with a long list of questions they had to ask the people in the country of their destination. However, Berchtold’s recommendations were the product of his time, the age of Enlightenment, and they mentioned numerous topics and problems characteristic for that period. For instance, the author believed that self-improvement of a traveler had to begin long before the start of the trip. In Berchtold’s opinion, a traveler prepared for the journey was a kind of ideal, universal superhuman who was physically proficient, expert in all spheres of science, mechanics, economics, and medicine, who knew many languages, and was a talented artist and musician. Among the topics related to the Enlightenment, to which the author paid attention, were, for instance, patriotism of the traveler, which he understood as civil virtue, destined to improve not only his own country but also the whole of humankind. Moreover, patriotism in Berchtold’s interpretation did not contradict cosmopolitanism but rather it based itself on it. Philanthropy – which in the eighteenth century was a kind of secular religion – also featured a lot in Berchtold’s recommendations. Finally, the theme of doubt, as a basis for a critical assessment of reality and verification of authorities, pierced through the whole text of Leopold Berchtold. So did the topic of the public sphere, especially sociability and creation of social networks. The recommendations of Berchtold are thus valuable as a source that can tell a lot about the age of Enlightenment – not only about the practical side of traveling but also about the intellectual history of that period.