Kyiv Archeographic Commission

Kyiv Archeographic Commission (Временная комиссия для разбора древних актов; Vremennaia komissiia dlia razbora drevnikh aktov). A government institution affiliated with the governor-general’s office in Kyiv. It was established in 1843 at the initiative of Mykhailo Maksymovych and existed until 1917. The task of the commission was to collect, research, and publish documents found in government archives, monasteries, and private collections in Ukraine and elsewhere. It concentrated on materials pertaining to the history of Right-Bank Ukraine (the Kyiv region, Volhynia, and Podilia). The government’s intention was to demonstrate that this territory had been Russian since ancient times, thereby helping to justify the policy of Russification implemented thereafter the Polish uprising of 1830–1. All the same, Ukrainian cultural figures such as Maksymovych, Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Ivanyshev, Panteleimon Kulish, Mykhailo Sudiienko, and Nikolai Rigelman, who were associated with the commission, made important contributions to Ukrainian studies, especially regarding historical and archeological research. Eventually, some outstanding scholars became associated with it, among them Volodymyr Antonovych, Mikhail Vladimirsky-Budanov, Stepan Golubev, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Mytrofan Dovnar-Zapolsky, Ivan Kamanin, Veniiamyn Kordt, Orest Levytsky, Nykandr Molchanovsky, Andrii V. Storozhenko and Mykola V. Storozhenko, Serhii Ternovsky, and Volodymyr Shcherbyna. The commission published collections of documents in Ukrainian history, archeology, paleography, and cartography, including Drevnosti Iugo-Zapadnogo Kraia (Antiquities of the Southwestern Krai, 3 fascicles, 1846), Pamiatniki izdannye Kievskoi komissiei dlia razbora drevnikh aktov (Memoirs Published by the Kyiv Commission for the Study of Ancient Documents, 4 vols, 1845, 1846, 1852, 1859), Arkhiv Iugo-Zapadnoi Rossii (Archives of Southwestern Russia, 45 vols in 8 series, 1859–1914), Samiilo Velychko’s (4 vols, 1848, 1851, 1855, 1864) and Hryhorii Hrabianka’s (1853) chronicles, Materialy po istorii russkoi kartografii (Materials on the History of Russian Cartography, 2 vols, 1899, 1910), Paleograficheskii izbornik (A Paleographic Collection, 1899), Sbornik materialov dlia istoricheskoi topografii g. Kieva (A Collection of Materials for the Historical Topography of the City of Kyiv, 1874), and Sbornik materialov po istorii Iugo-Zapadnoi Rossii (A Collection of Materials on the History of Southwestern Russia, 2 vols, 1914, 1916). In 1921 the commission was merged with the Archeographic Commission of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. (See also Archeographic commissions).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Zhurba, O. Kyïvs'ka arkheohrafichna komisiia, 1843–1921 (Kyiv 1993)
———. Stanovlennia ukraïns'koï arheohrafiï: Liudy, ideï, instytutsiï (Dnipropetrovsk 2003)

Arkadii Zhukovsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]