The Journal of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. Series History

Lesser Armenia in the Second Half of the Second to the First Half of the First Centuries BC: Independence and the Pontic Phase

Sergey Litovchenko — 2026-05-20

Over several centuries of academic research on Hellenistic Asia Minor, Lesser Armenia has generally remained overlooked by scholars — a consequence both of the merely episodic appearance of this country in ancient sources and of the minor role it played in the fast-moving events in the region. Only recently, as it has become clear that historical reconstructions based exclusively on the Greco-Roman narrative suffer from one-sidedness, has the history of Lesser Armenia begun to attract closer attention from specialists, above all from scholars of Roman foreign policy and the Mithridatic Wars. Even now, however, the concern is usually not with the history of Lesser Armenia as such, but only with certain episodes in which it happens to figure. This in turn can give rise to several, often contradictory, reconstructions of events. Focusing directly on Lesser Armenian history will, in our view, make it possible to avoid such contradictions and to restore agency to the Lesser Armenian state, which is often denied statehood, a defined territory, or a distinct ethnic identity. The present study argues that Lesser Armenia maintained its independence for most of the second century BC. It came under the authority of neighboring Greater Armenia only occasionally (probably twice), without, however, being fully incorporated into the larger Armenian kingdom, as the local dynasty retained its power. Only at the end of the second century BC did Lesser Armenia become part of the Pontic Kingdom of Mithridates VI Eupator. Even then, however, Lesser Armenia retained a degree of subjecthood: Lesser Armenian troops, at least, were for a time deployed as distinct ethno-territorial units. This may be why, despite a fairly prolonged loss of statehood (approximately forty years), Lesser Armenia was not incorporated into the new Roman province by Gnaeus Pompey and instead regained a qualified independence.

A Bracelet of the “Eastern European Notched Enamel” Tradition from the Vicinity of Eskhar in Kharkiv Region

Volodymyr Koloda — 2026-05-20

A bronze bracelet was found in a forested area on the left bank of the Siverskyi Donets River near the southern edge of the village of Eskhar (Novopokrovka territorial community, Chuhuiv District, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine). In the typology of G. F. Korzukhina, it belongs to Type I (wide bracelets, triangular in cross-section, with scallops, with or without enamel); in the typology of O. S. Khomyakova – to Type 2b (bracelets with an openwork movable shield-segment attached by hinged joints to scallops located at the ends of the hoop). The ornament of the Eskhar bracelet consists of several elements: a) three ridges with oblique notch-chasing; b) engraved compositions on two faces of the hoop; and c) longitudinal grooves on the end faces of the scallops. Similar bracelets come from the Bryansk (Usokh) hoard and from Pisky. The bracelets from the Bryansk hoard, Pisky, Eskhar, and Panikovets were made according to different constructional schemes. The concentration zone of this category of finds encompasses the Middle Dnipro region, the Dnipro-Donets forest-steppe and the adjacent forest belt, and the upper reaches of the Oka and Don rivers. Individual finds come from Masuria, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, the upper reaches of the Southern Buh, the middle reaches of the Don and Khopyor, the Lower Don, and the Middle Volga. In terms of its position within the typological sequence of such objects, the Eskhar bracelet belongs to the “earlier” end and represents the middle stage of development of Eastern European notched enamel ornaments, dated to the late second through the mid-to-late third centuries. Finds belonging to the “notched enamel” tradition attest to the formation of prestige costume assemblages among the populations of the middle and upper Dnipro basin and the Desna region, the upper Oka, and certain cultures of the southeastern Baltic. “Notched enamels” serve as an indicator of intercultural contacts among different population groups across Eastern Europe during the Roman era. In the Dnipro-Donets forest-steppe, finds of the “notched enamel” complex are associated with settlements and burial grounds of the Late Zarubyntsi stage and the initial phase of the Kyiv culture, or belong to the post-Zarubyntsi horizon, specifically to its second period, dated to phases B2/C1 and C1a (approximately mid-to-late second through early third century).

Belles-Lettres in the Private Libraries of the Clergy of the Ukrainian Eparchies (Second Half of the Eighteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries)

Liudmyla Posokhova — 2026-05-20

The aim of the paper is to identify and analyze the corpus of Enlightenment-era literary works held in the private libraries of the clergy of the Hetmanate and Sloboda Ukraine in the second half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This category of books serves as a marker of the distinctive intellectual and cultural tastes of the Ukrainian clergy and reflects important shifts in reading culture. The study focuses in particular on the registers of sixteen private book collections belonging to clergymen. The choice of collections is justified by the similar trajectories of their owners’ lives: education at the “Latin schools”, teaching career, and service in various parts of the Hetmanate or Sloboda Ukraine. Methodologically, the paper draws on approaches to the study of cultural phenomena developed in French historiography, involving statistical methods and serial analysis. The author finds that Enlightenment belles-lettres constituted the second largest segment among the “secular” books in clerical libraries, after scientific works and textbooks. The Ukrainian clergy sought out didactic and encyclopedic reading matter, as well as reading for entertainment. These traits are characteristic of Enlightenmentera reading culture. The body of new books in clerical libraries, including belles-lettres, displays the features of “extensive” reading and of the so-called “reading revolution”. The contents of libraries attest that in the second half of the eighteenth century a proportion of the Ukrainian clergy was swept up in the extraordinary enthusiasm for imaginative literature (particularly novels) that was simultaneously affecting reading culture in Western and Central Europe. Library registers and other sources point to the functioning of an intellectual network through which this cultural product circulated. The private book collections of the senior clergy of the Ukrainian eparchies illuminate the workings of cultural transfer and the channels and limits of dissemination of new ideas, helping to make an empirically grounded case for the region’s involvement in the pan-European cultural and intellectual developments of the Age of Enlightenment.

Jews in the City: Major Perspectives in the Study of Jewish History in the Russian Empire

Artem Kharchenko — 2026-05-20

The paper examines the historiography of Jewish history in the Russian Empire, which can be stratified not only chronologically but also thematically. Within Jewish studies, the history of the Russian Empire for a long time occupied a distinct place, with the lachrymose conception serving as the dominant framework that reduced this history to a narrative of restrictions and persecution. As a result, Jewish history in the Russian Empire was effectively homogenized and set in contrast to Jewish history in other European countries. However, the Baltic lands and the Caucasus, Belarusian and Lithuanian territories within the empire all differed substantially in their socioeconomic conditions, as did the Jewish communities that inhabited these regions. Given these particularities, a promising approach is to examine the history of Ukrainian Jews through the lens of individual researchers’ scholarly interests and agendas. The present study analyzes the historiographical process with the aim to identify distinct periods on the basis of such criteria as social context, researchers’ agency, and prevailing scholarly fashions. Across the long span from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, the paper locates several key moments, described as historiographical situations. The attention given to authors whose books have become landmarks in Jewish studies, from Simon Dubnow to John Klier, reflects in part a personalist approach, but more importantly an emphasis on the significance of the context in which these authors worked. The paper concludes that studies of Jewish history have operated at varying spatial scales. Early on, authors tended to choose the macro level, fitting the heterogeneous Jewish population of the empire into typological models. A macro-regional approach persisted as researchers tackled the phenomenon of Ashkenazi Jewry as a component of the history of Central and Eastern Europe. At the local level, cities were the primary nexus of scholarly interest. The city was, however, too complex a space to be reduced to a common denominator, and while the first half of the twentieth century saw researchers focus on mythologized images of the shtetl, the final third of the twentieth century brought growing interest in large urban centers – a research field whose potential has not been exhausted to this day.

The Raid on Lavochne and Tukhlia, or the (Non-)Boyko Soviet Republic

Oleksii Vasechko — 2026-05-20

The paper is concerned with the events of 21–25 August 1920, when an anti-Polish armed uprising broke out in Skole County (povit) under the leadership of Fedir Bекеsh. Soviet historiography coined the term “Boyko Soviet Republic” to describe these events, and the term remains in circulation today. The author analyzes the sources and circumstances that gave rise to this label, establishing that contemporary accounts of the anti-Polish uprising in Skole County (including early testimony by Fedir Bekesh himself) contain no mention of a “Boyko Soviet Republic”. The paper provides a detailed account of the historical background and preparation of the armed uprising, and discusses the broad composition of its participants, which included local residents, soldiers of the Galician Army previously interned in Czecho-Slovakia, and communist supporters. Drawing on new sources, the author reconsiders the biography of the uprising’s leader, Fedir Bekesh, and shows that he was simultaneously a committed socialist and an advocate of Ukrainian independence who actively collaborated with the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic. The paper offers a detailed account of the uprising itself, particularly the rebels’ railway raids in the area of the villages of Lavochne and Tukhlia, and of the conditions under which it was suppressed. It also critically examines the claim that the Skole County uprising was connected to the raid by V. Prymakov’s 8th Division of the Red Cossacks, during which the city of Stryi was captured on 20 August 1920. The author cites reports of the appearance of anti-Polish insurgents near the town of Dolyna simultaneously with the uprising in Skole County. It is argued that the term “Boyko Soviet Republic” was likely invented considerably later by Soviet historiography.

The Section for the History of Western European Culture at the Kharkiv Institute of Public Education

Albert Venher — 2026-05-20

In the early twentieth century, Ukrainian historical scholarship underwent a profound transformation driven by the entrenchment of a novel Marxist methodology and sweeping changes in the structure and organization of higher education. Universities as centers of academic life were abolished and replaced by institutes of public education, whose primary mission was teaching rather than research. To preserve the scholarly potential of university-level instructors, special research departments were established. The largest center for the study of world history in Kharkiv was the Department of the History of European Culture at the Kharkiv Institute of Public Education (KhINO), which included a Section for the History of Western European Culture specializing in the history of Europe from the Middle Ages to the modern era. The department recruited such prominent Kharkiv historians as V. Buzeskul and M. Holdin, whose research focused on modern history. It also hosted a graduate program; one of its first graduates, M. Pakul, subsequently joined the department’s faculty. By the mid-1920s, the department boasted a substantial cohort of graduate students, most of them working in modern and, to a lesser extent, medieval history. The Section for the History of Western European Culture at the KhINO pursued wide-ranging research in modern history, with special attention to social movements, the history of the peasantry, and the development of European thought. Holdin worked on topics from agrarian policy and the labor movement to French socialism, while Buzeskul studied Western European historiography. The section’s graduate students (Kyktiev, Chukmarov, Oleksandrov, and others) tackled problems of the Peasants’ War in Germany, pre-scientific socialism, and materialist philosophy, producing some of the earliest Marxist interpretations of these subjects in the USSR. Their work contributed to the shaping of new approaches to the study of European history and bore fruit in important publications and document collections.

The Clergy of Kharkiv Region in a Time of Persecution and Hardship, 1931–1933

Yurii Volosnyk — 2026-05-20

The paper considers the situation of the clergy and religious communities of Kharkiv region during the violent collectivization campaign and the Holodomor. A review of the existing scholarship leads to the conclusion that, while numerous studies addressing various aspects of this subject have appeared in recent decades, the regional dimension of events, including in Kharkiv Oblast, remains insufficiently and largely superficially treated in the historiography. Further research in this area is both timely and necessary. The paper’s source base encompasses periodical publications, published thematic document collections, and, most importantly, a wide range of unpublished archival materials. The violent wholesale collectivization of agriculture was accompanied by an atheist assault on society, forcible secularization, and a sharp deterioration in the position of the clergy and religious communities of all confessions. In its campaign against religion and the clergy, the Bolshevik regime deployed, amid conditions of hunger and famine, a wide arsenal of methods: tax pressure, crushing requisitions of agricultural produce, obstruction of priests’ collection of donations, forced buying of government bonds, frivolous fines, “labor mobilizations”, repression, dekulakization and deportation, prohibition of religious services, refusal to register clergy, the creation of intolerable conditions for their residence in villages, and the closure of houses of worship. Outright brutality and humiliation of clergymen and church activists became routine for local administrators – including often ostentatious mockery of clergy and church officials, contempt for the religious feelings of believers, and flagrant violations of the law, including the right to freedom of conscience and other fundamental civil rights and freedoms.

Textbook and Teaching Manual: The Primary Tools for the Teaching of Medieval History in Soviet Secondary Schools, 1934–1956

Serhiy Dyachkov — 2026-05-20

The Communist totalitarian system eventually abandoned the experimental efforts that dominated public education during the first fifteen years of Soviet rule. The reform of 1934 introduced sweeping changes in the organization of history education in Soviet secondary schools. The Soviet state equipped teachers with a diverse “arsenal” of instructional and methodological resources. In the general-education school of the Stalinist era (1934–1956), the library of the average teacher of medieval history consisted of a single “unionwide” textbook supplemented by a methodological manual for teachers, a reader, and a book for classroom reading. The present paper analyzes the teacher’s two primary working tools: the textbook and the lesson-by-lesson methodological manual. A defining feature of the Soviet approach to teaching and learning in secondary schools was the involvement of leading scholars from institutions of higher education and research, along with highly qualified methodologists. Throughout this period, a select professorial cohort handpicked by the Party leadership (Ye. Kosminsky, S. Skazkin, N. Gratsiansky, and others) served as authors and editors of textbooks, methodological manuals, readers, and classroom reading books. A trusted group of methodologists worked alongside these scholars, together providing the necessary level of professional support for the instructional process. In the view of Soviet authorities, this combination of expertise in research and teaching methods guaranteed a high standard of instruction. The most important publications (textbooks, readers, and manuals) were translated into the languages of the union republics, including Ukrainian, ensuring the implementation of Soviet educational policy among the national minorities. A major feature of the teaching of medieval history in Soviet general-education schools was the oversaturation of its content and substance with Soviet ideological directives and Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist postulates, to the detriment of genuine knowledge and understanding of historical phenomena, developments, and events.

The Role of the International Congresses of Historical Sciences in Shaping the Scholarly Repertoire of the Global Community of Historians, 1900 to 2022

Mariia Dotsenko — 2026-05-20

The paper examines the role of the International Congresses of Historical Sciences in the functioning of historical scholarship worldwide during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. To explore the relationship between the work of these global forums and the broader trends in the evolution of historical scholarship, the study applies a repertoire-based approach, which makes it possible to analyze the congresses’ contribution to shaping the scholarly repertoire in the field of history. The paper considers the influence of the International Congresses of Historical Sciences on the formation of the organizational, theoretical, methodological, and thematic repertoires of the global research community of historians. It argues that the emergence of this form of academic communication was driven by the need to develop a crisis-response repertoire aimed at overcoming the organizational and theoretical-methodological crisis in historical scholarship at the end of the nineteenth century. Particular attention is given to analyzing the impact of the geopolitical upheavals of the period on the transformation of the repertoire of the global historical community. The paper stresses that the emergence of the congresses as a communicative space for generating new repertoires took place with the active support of the International Committee of Historical Sciences, and that this institution’s close involvement in organizing and hosting the forums enabled it to bring together scholars from diverse countries in the search for ways to overcome the crisis in global historical scholarship. The paper concludes that the International Congresses of Historical Sciences played an important role in establishing what may be called a “horizontal” model of scholarly communication and in developing transmission mechanisms for the organizational and research practices of the global historical community. In particular, it is shown that the congresses facilitated the transition from the positivist model of historical writing to anthropologically oriented “new history” and helped to legitimize new problem fields in historiography worldwide.

Using the Omeka Web Publishing Platform in Historical Research and Teaching

Yevhen Rachkov — 2026-05-20

The paper discusses the adoption of Omeka software as a tool for historical research and teaching in the context of growing interest in the development and dissemination of digital resources on historical subjects using specialized software. Omeka is an open- source content management system that enables users to create and publish digital collections and exhibitions, providing standardized metadata description and comprehensive representation of historical materials. Omeka comes in several versions: Omeka Classic and Omeka.net (the hosted version) are best suited for personal use and local projects, while Omeka S is designed for large institutions and large-scale collaborative projects. The platform offers historians a range of advantages for both teaching and research, thanks in particular to its adherence to high scholarly standards and its orientation toward users without specialized technical skills. Omeka supports flexible combinations of inperson and remote work and facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration between historians and specialists in other fields and disciplines. The use of the platform has assumed particular relevance in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian War, when the digitization of cultural objects, creation and dissemination of digital archives, documentation of cultural heritage, and related tasks have become priorities for researchers and institutions alike. Of course, like most software products, Omeka carries certain potential risks. To counteract these risks, users must pay heightened attention to the methodological, organizational, technical, and other aspects of working with the platform, as well as be able to strike a balance among available resources, the goals of educational and research projects, and the quality requirements for the digital representation of historical materials. Only combining systemic and critical approaches to working with the platform allows users to fully realize its potential in historical research and teaching and fosters both informed use of digital tools and critical engagement with the digital resources they help produce.

Chronicle of Events at the Faculty of History for 2025

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