Makarenko, Mykola O.

Makarenko, Mykola O. [Макаренко, Микола], b 4 February 1877 in Moskalivka, Romny county, Poltava gubernia, d 4 January 1938 in Tomsk, RSFSR. Art historian, archeologist, and graphic artist; full member of the Ukrainian Scientific Society (UNT) and the archival commissions in Chernihiv and Poltava (see Poltava Gubernia Learned Archival Commission). A graduate of the Shtiglits Technical Art School and Archeological Institute in Saint Petersburg, from 1902 to 1917 he conducted many digs in Ukraine and Russia for the Russian Archeological Commission and the Moscow Archeological Institute while teaching art history and working as an assistant curator in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. In 1919 he moved to Kyiv, where he became chairman of the UNT art section, full member of the All-Ukrainian Archeological Committee, the first director (1920–5) of the Museum of Arts of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) (now the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts), and a member of the Restoration Commission (est 1924). He continued working as an archeologist; he excavated settlements near Romny, Olbia, Oster, and Pryluky and oversaw restorations of medieval churches and monasteries in Chernihiv, Kyiv, and Pryluky. He wrote many articles; a book in Russian on kurhans and fortified settlements in Poltava gubernia (1917); books in Ukrainian on the VUAN Museum of Arts (1924), 16th- to 18th-century Ukrainian book ornamentation (1926), and the Mariupol burial site (1933); and long articles on the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Chernihiv (1928) and sculpture and carving in Kyivan Rus’ before the Mongol invasion (1930). He was arrested in late 1933 and exiled to Kazan, Russia, where he taught at the university for two years. In 1937 he was rearrested and executed by the NKVD.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]