PROFESSOR P.F. TUSHKAN’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDIES OF THE DROUGHT PROBLEM IN UKRAINE

Abstract

The article highlights the life path of Pavlo Fedorovych Tushkan (Tushkanov) (1867— 1942), assistant Director of the Poltava Experimental Field and Secretary of the Poltava Society of Agriculture, Professor and first Head of the Agriculture Department of the Poltava Agricultural Institute, active participant in the organization of sectoral education during the Ukrainian Revolution, as well as his agricultural research work in the Agricultural Scientific Committee of Ukraine and the All-Ukrainian Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The research methodology is based on science history analysis, systematization, biographical method. The scientific novelty consists in using and analyzing documents from Tushkan’s family archive and highlighting little-known facts of his biography and research work. The contribution of P.F. Tushkan to the study of the drought problem in Ukraine is shown; on the basis of rare unpublished materials from the family archive of the great-granddaughter of the scientist, Olga Sergiyivna Radchenko, the vicissitudes of preparation and attempts to publish his unique manuscript “Agricultural Droughts and Their Study in Ukraine” are reproduced. Currently, the fate of the manuscript and its location remain unknown; there is only a journal version of the paper, dated August 1941, first published by the author of this article. Research of the drought problem in Ukraine occupied a significant place in the scientific heritage of the professor P.F. Tushkan. His vision of this phenomenon proved to be so revolutionary for that time (30s–40s of the 20th century) that the scientific community did not dare to give recommendations for publishing of his work, although it was considered as evidence-based and useful for science. P.F. Tushkan was the first to prove the dependence of droughts in the Ukrainian steppes on the solar activity, by personally collecting and analyzing statistical data on climate change in Ukraine over 300 years, to give a fundamentally new definition of “drought”, and to estimate the frequency of its occurrence in the steppe zone of Ukraine.

Keywords: P.F. Tushkan, “Agricultural Droughts and Their Study in Ukraine”, agricultural research work, branch education, droughts, drought control, meteorological observations.

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