Kievskaia starina

Kievskaia starina (Kyiv Antiquity). A learned monthly for Ukrainian studies printed in Russian and published in Kyiv from 1882 to 1906. In 1907 it was renamed Ukraïna (1907) and appeared in Ukrainian. The journal was founded by Teofan Lebedyntsev, Volodymyr Antonovych, Oleksander Lazarevsky, and Pavlo Zhytetsky, and was financed mostly by Vasyl Symyrenko. As the unofficial organ of the Hromada of Kyiv, which in 1893 became its real owner, it was published and edited by T. Lebedyntsev (1882–7), Oleksander Lashkevych (1888–9), Ye. Kyvlytsky (1889–92), and Volodymyr Naumenko (1893–1907). For over 25 years Kievskaia starina was the only printed medium of Ukrainian scholarship in Russian-ruled Ukraine. It published a wealth of research and documentary materials in history, archeology (particularly its supplement Arkheologicheskaia letopis’ iuzhnoi Rossii, 1899–1901), ethnography, philology, and bibliography. In 1890 it began to publish belles-lettres, which from 1897 appeared in Ukrainian, and literary criticism. The leading Ukrainian scientific minds and cultural figures of the time were grouped around the journal, forming something like a learned society. At the turn of the century Kievskaia starina became a sort of encyclopedia of Ukrainian studies. Among its contributors were the following scholars: Mykola Kostomarov, Volodymyr Antonovych, Mykhailo Drahomanov (whose articles appeared under the nom de plume of P. Kuzmychevsky as well as others), Petro S. Yefymenko and Aleksandra Yefymenko, O. Lazarevsky, Mykola I. Storozhenko and Andrii V. Storozhenko, Mykola Dashkevych, P. Zhytetsky, Kostiantyn Mykhalchuk, Oleksander Rusov, Ivan Manzhura, A. Vostokov, Yakiv Shulhyn, Nykandr Molchanovsky, Vasyl Horlenko, V. Naumenko, Ivan Luchytsky, Mykola I. Petrov, Stepan Golubev, Vladimir Ikonnikov, Dmytro Bahalii, Mykola Sumtsov, Ivan Franko, Apolon Skalkovsky, Volodymyr Shcherbyna, Ivan Novytsky, Orest Levytsky, Mykola Vasylenko, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Ahatanhel Krymsky, Mykola Biliashivsky, and Volodymyr Hnatiuk.

The journal published such historical materials as the diaries of Mykola Khanenko (1884–6), Yakiv A. Markovych (1893–7), Stanisław Oświęcim (1882), K. Chojecki (1883), Ivan Ostrozky-Lokhvytsky (1886), and Petro Seletsky (1884); memoirs of Mykhailo Tyshkevych (1889) and Mykhailo Chaly (1890–6); and correspondence of several prominent Ukrainians in the nineteenth century, including the letters of Panteleimon Kulish and the Myloradovych Liubetskyi archives (1897). It made an enormous contribution to the development of Ukrainian learning and culture. A systematic index to the journal was published in 1911.

Oleksander Ohloblyn

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