Romanovsky, Viktor

Romanovsky, Viktor [Романовський, Віктор; Romanovs'kyj], b 16 or 18 January 1890 in Hlukhiv, Chernihiv gubernia, d 10 February 1971 in Stavropol, RSFSR. Historian, archeographer, and archivist. He studied at Kyiv University (1909–14) under Mytrofan Dovnar-Zapolsky, lectured there (1914) and at the Kyiv Archeological Institute (1918), and was deputy director (1914–21) and director (1921–31) of the Kyiv Central Archive of Old Documents. He was also an active member of the Commission for the Study of the History of Western-Ruthenian and Ukrainian Law at the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) and the Commission for the Study of the Socioeconomic History of 18th- and 19th-Century Ukraine, and secretary (1929) and director (1930–4) of the VUAN Archeographic Commission; and was an associate of the Scientific Research Institute of the History of Ukrainian Culture in Kharkiv. Romanovsky was arrested during the Stalinist terror in 1934 and imprisoned in a labor camp in Kazakhstan. After his release he lectured at the Karaganda Teachers’ Institute (1940–7) and then chaired the history department at the Stavropol Pedagogical Institute.

Romanovsky wrote several articles on 17th- and 18th-century Ukrainian history, a book about the pioneering printer Ivan Fedorovych (Fedorov) (1925), a book of essays in archival studies (1927), and a critical evaluation of the 1666 population census in Left-Bank Ukraine and its organization (1967). He edited the VUAN publication of the 1666 census books (1931). His doctoral dissertation (1947) on the state economy of Ukraine in the second half of the 17th century remains unpublished, as does his compilation of the codex of charters granting Magdeburg law to 16th- to 18th-century Ukrainian cities.

Arkadii Zhukovsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]