Odesa Society of History and Antiquities

Odesa Society of History and Antiquities (Императорское одесское общество истории и древностей; Imperatorskoe odesskoe obshchestvo istorii i drevnostei). A scholarly society established in Odesa in 1839 to collect, describe, and protect all archeological monuments and historical documents pertaining to Southern Ukraine (including the Zaporozhian Cossacks), the Crimea, and Bessarabia; to prepare and publish historical studies of those regions; and to compile statistical and geographical data about them. The society conducted excavations at the sites of ancient Hellenic colonies (see Ancient states on the northern Black Sea coast) and kurhans; created a large library, archive, and museum (est 1840, merged with the Odesa Municipal Museum of Antiquities [now the Odesa Archeological Museum] in 1858); supervised museums in Teodosiia (from 1850), Kerch, and Sevastopol (today the Khersones Historical-Archeological Museum) and the Genoese fortresses at Sudak and Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi; and published its own scholarly Zapiski Imperatorskogo Odesskogo obshchestva istorii i drevnostei (33 vols, 1844–1919), monographs, catalogs, and indexes. In 1893 the society had 16 honorary members, 122 full members, and 40 corresponding members and associates. Prominent members included Oleksii Andriievsky, O. Berthier-Delagarde, F. Brun, A. Florovsky, Dmytro Kniazhevych (the first president), V. Latyshev, Nikolai Murzakevich (the first secretary), M. Popruzhenko, Apolon Skalkovsky, E. von Stern, B. Varneke, and V. Yurgevich. The society was abolished under Soviet rule in 1922. Its traditions have been carried on by the Odesa Archeological Society (est 1959).

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