Mytrofan Brechkevych and the Training of Medievalist Historians at Kyiv University (Second Half of the 1940s)

Abstract

The aim of the study is to examine the post-war experience of organizing science at Kyiv University by M. Brechkevych. The methodology is based on the use of historical-genetic, biographical, and prosopographical methods, as well as the method of generalization. Scientific novelty. The study provides the first detailed examination of the post-war activities of M. Brechkevych as an organizer of scholarly work. It also reconstructs the biographies of his students and analyses their contributions to the development of medieval studies in the late 1940s — 1950s. Key results of the study. It has been established that in post-war Ukraine, Kyiv University became one of the centres for training a new generation of medievalists, where doctoral dissertations on the history of European medieval times were prepared thanks to the efforts of Professor M. Brechkevych. The article highlights the work of three of M. Brechkevych’s students and analyses the limited circulation of their works. It argues that these studies belonged to a “shadow historiography.” An explanatory concept of “shadow historiography” is proposed to describe and interpret the distorted scientific process in Soviet conditions, particularly in the field of medieval studies. The essence of the phenomenon is that the collection of works and research practices by historians remained outside the scientific discourse. It was found that, after defending their dissertations, the students of M. Brechkevych dispersed and pursued their professional careers outside Kyiv University, thereby weakening the continuity of the academic tradition within the university. M. Brechkevych was unable to create a stable environment for the continuity of academic tradition based on the teacher-student model. Prospects for further research include studying medieval studies in the post-war era in academic centres of Ukraine and determining their role and place in the development of general Soviet medieval studies, as well as research on establishing the mutual influences of “centre — periphery” in historical science.