Kharkiv Historical-Philological Society

Kharkiv Historical-Philological Society (Kharkovskoe istoriko-filologicheskoe obshchestvo). Scholarly society founded at Kharkiv University in 1876, whose objective was to study Left-Bank Ukraine and Slobidska Ukraine and subsequently carry on educational and cultural work. The Kharkiv society, along with a number of other official Ukrainian scientific societies, focused exclusively upon scholarly subjects following a period of increased intolerance that culminated in the Ems Ukase in 1876. The society's members consisted of lecturers from the university and other educational institutions and the local intelligentsia, among them such prominent figures as Dmytro Bahalii, Vladyslav Buzeskul, Aleksandra Yefymenko, Petro S. Yefymenko, Oleksander Rusov, Dmytro Yavornytsky, Boris Liapunov, Dmitrii Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky, Mykhailo Khalansky, Mykola Hrunsky, Volodymyr Riezanov, Yakiv Novytsky, Viktor Barvinsky, Oleksa Vetukhiv, Yevhen Ivanov, Ivan Manzhura, and Oleksander Biletsky. The presidents of the society were V. Nadler (1877–8), Oleksander Potebnia (1878–90), Marin Drinov (1890–7), and Mykola Sumtsov (1897–1918). The society founded an archive (1880), containing significant documentation from the period of the Hetman state before 1782 and the Little Russian Collegium, an ethnographic museum, and two libraries. It organized archeological and ethnographic expeditions, describing them in its various serial publications: Sbornik Khar’kovskogo istoriko-filologicheskogo obshchestva (21 vols, 1886–1914), Trudy (7 vols, 1893–1902), and Vestnik (5 issues, 1911–14). The society ceased to function under Soviet rule in 1919. Its archive is now located at the Central State Historical Archive in Kyiv.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).]