Technical journals
Technical journals. The earliest technical journals published in Ukraine were financed by branches of the Imperial Russian Technical Society (IRTO, est 1866 in Saint Petersburg). The Kyiv branch published Zapiski Kievskogo otdeleniia Imperskogo russkogo tekhnicheskogo obshchestva po sveklosakharnoi promyshlennosti (1871–1916), Tekhnicheskii listok (1878–81), and Inzhener (1882–1916). Similar Zapiski were published by the Kharkiv (1881–1908), Odesa (1885–1916), Mykolaiv (1904–5, 1914, 1916), and Katerynoslav (1902–16) IRTO branches. The journals dealt with scientific and technical problems in various branches of industry. The first specialized technical journals were devoted to mining: Iuzhno-russkii gornyi listok (1880–7, 1888–1909), which was continued as Gornozavodskoe delo (1910–16), and Novosti tekhniki i promyshlennosti (1908–13), which was continued as Iuzhnyi inzhener (1914–16). Journals such as Vestnik iugozapadnykh zheleznykh dorog (1903–16) and Vestnik Ekaterininskoi zheleznoi dorogi (1907–16) dealt with railroad transportation; Listok inzhenernogo kruzhka (1901–12) dealt with civil engineering.
Ukrainian-language technical journals appeared under the Soviet regime in the 1920s. The most important was the monthly Naukovo-tekhnichnyi visnyk (1926–36), published by the Kharkiv Scientific Society. Its specialized supplements eventually became separate journals: Problemy teplotekhniky (1927–31), Sil’s’kohospodars’ka mashyna (1928–38), Ukraïns’ki sylikaty (1929–32), Budivnytstvo (1929–35), and Kharchova ta sil’s’kohospodars’ka promyslovist’ (1930–4). In the late 1920s a number of technical research institutions, such as the Kyiv Polytechnical Institute, the Institute of Technical Mechanics, and the Kharkiv Technological Institute, published their own transactions, and collections of papers were issued at irregular intervals by the Institute of Electric Welding of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (40 vols in 1932–9), the Institute of Chemical Technology (13 vols in 1929–39), and the Institute of Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (9 vols in 1934–48). With the suppression of Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian journals were discontinued gradually in the 1930s, and Russian technical journals, such as Energetika (1930–7), Novyi gorniak (1929–41), Stal’ (1931–40), and Koks i khimiia (1931–41), were started. A few popular magazines were published in Ukrainian (Tekhnika masam, 1929–37, and Radio, 1930–41) or Russian (Rabochii metallurg, 1931–5). During the 1930s, besides journals and collections, a number of technical books came out in Ukrainian. Whereas Ukrainian publishers in the social sciences were completely dismantled in 1934–9, those in technical fields and some in mathematics and the natural sciences were left untouched until 1948. During Andrei Zhdanov’s period practically all technical publications in Ukraine were converted to Russian.
Ukrainian-language technical journals began to come out again only in the 1950s. The Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR published Avtomatyka, Prykladna mekhanika, and Narysy z istoriï tekhniky. Many irregular collections by technical institutes appeared, mostly in Ukrainian. In the mid-1960s, interdepartmental republican collections began to appear regularly, of which about 50 series were devoted to technology. Only a few of them came out in Ukrainian: Detali mashyn, Mekhanika tverdoho tila, Pidiomno-transportne ustatkuvannia, and Hihiiena naselenykh mists’. In the 1970s there were Avtomobil’ni shliakhy i shliakhove budivnytstvo, Nauka i tekhnika v mis’komu hospodarstvi, Polihrafiia i vydavnycha sprava, and certain series of the Visnyk of the Lviv Polytechnical Institute and the Kyiv Polytechnical Institute (up to eight issues annually). By the end of 1977 the only Ukrainian-language technical journal in Ukraine was Avtomatyka.
After 1978 only the bimonthly Narysy z istoriï pryrodoznavsta i tekhniky appeared in Ukrainian. About 30 technical journals published in Ukraine came out in Russian, including Tekhnologiia i organizatsiia proizvodstva, Energetika i elektrifikatsiia, Mekhanizatsiia i avtomatizatsiia upravleniia, Ugol’ Ukrainy, Iskusstvennye almazy, Kibernetika, Radioelektronika, Problemy prochnosti, Upravliaiushchie sistemy i mashiny, Prikladnaia mekhanika, Poroshkovaia metallurgiia, Stroitel’stvo i arkhitektura, and Fiziko-khimicheskaia mekhanika materialov. The scientific level of the technical journals published in Soviet Ukraine wss high, and some of the thematic collections of the 1970s were unequaled, among them Mekhanika tverdogo tela (on the mechanics of solids), Tochnost’ i nadezhnost’ kiberneticheskikh sistem (on cybernetics systems), Problemy mashinostroeniia (on machine building), Teoriia sluchainykh protsessov, Kibernetika na morskom transporte (on naval cybernetics), Ergaticheskie dinamicheskie sistemy upravleniia, and Narysy z istoriï pryrodoznavstva i tekhniky (on natural and technological history).
Outside of the Ukrainian SSR the most important Ukrainian technical journal was Tekhnichni visty, published in Lviv in the interwar period. In Czechoslovakia the Ukrainian Technical and Husbandry Institute published Visty UTHI, and after the Second World War in Germany the institute published Visti and Biuleten’. In the United States of America the Ukrainian Engineers' Society of America published Visti ukraïns’kykh inzheneriv from 1950.
Stepan Protsiuk
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]