The 90-year anniversary of the History Faculty

19.3.2024

This year, the Educational and Research Institute of Social and Humanitarian Sciences is celebrating its 90th anniversary.

During this time, “History Faculty” trained about 10,000 specialists, gave the university five rectors and a number of vice-rectors, many outstanding scientists and teachers, statesmen and creative personalities. Curricula and names of specialties, volumes of state contracts and locations of the institute, generations of students and teaching staff changed, but the atmosphere of hard study and scientific research, romance and humor of student life, love and faith in “History Faculty” did not change. We offer to remember together the brightest moments of this journey.

Officially, the history of the Institute dates back to 1934, when the Socio-Economic Faculty was transformed into the History Faculty at the then Luhansk State Pedagogical Institute. But even then, a number of famous historians worked in the institution. Thus, the first professor of history is a close relative of the outstanding Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, the founder of the Scientific Society in Donetsk region, Serhii Hrushevskyi. Back in 1926, on his initiative, a research department was created with two sections – historical and pedagogical. It was a kind of graduate school: here, for three years, teachers conducted scientific research. An active participant in this work was a well-known activist of the Poltava provincial “Enlightenment” of the time of the Ukrainian revolution, Ukrainian archivist Ivan Lyshchyna-Martynenko, who worked at the Institute as a professor since 1926. Popularizer of the work of Taras Shevchenko, the history of Ukraine, the history of the Ukrainian church and national culture, he created the first department of Ukrainian studies in Donbas at the institution.

The newly formed Faculty was headed by Yakiv Pichkurenko, a graduate of the Institute in 1929, associate professor of the Department of History of the Peoples of the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1937, he was replaced by Ivan Rednikin, a teacher of modern history, who remained dean until 1941.

The Faculty consisted of three departments: the Department of History of the Peoples of the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Department of Ancient History, and the Department of Modern History. A powerful team worked here: an honorary member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, a well-known archaeologist and local historian Serhii Loktyushev, a member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, a representative of the historical school of Dmytro Batalii, a well-known researcher of the history of the Hetmanate, peasant movements of the beginning of the 20th century. Natalia Mirza-Avakyants, Yukhym Sapozhnikov, Ivan Pogodin, Kostiantyn Tsykin, Hanna Hliadkivska, Oleksandr Milanych. Mykola Kun, Nina Barshchevska, and Porfyrii Klymysha.

In the second half of the 1930s, the History Faculty was the largest in the Institute: in order to meet the needs of schools, the state plans for admission to the institute were increased to 480 places, of which 180 were allocated for historians. From 1934 to 1936 in the curricula, the number of hours for specialized subjects was increased, practices in the specialty were introduced in the third and fourth years, as well as state exams in four disciplines: history of the USSR, history of the Middle Ages, history of modern times, and pedagogy.

Among the graduates of the faculty at that time were his future teachers Felix Badaiev (Director of the Institute in 1939–1941), Hryhorii Prasolov, Hryhorii Soroka, Mykhailo Hulii, Pavlo Samkov, and hundreds of history teachers.

At the same time, the politicization and ideologization of the educational process became more noticeable, the study of Marxism-Leninism, the history of the CPSU(b), philosophy and political economy was mandatory for students. The Faculty did not escape the disaster of massive political repressions in the 1930s. Almost all professors of history were arrested, the scientific potential of the departments was significantly weakened. In particular. in 1933, the Director of the Institute, Kostiantyn Tsykin, the head of the Department of History of the Peoples of the USSR, Ivan Pogodin, was repressed, in 1936, Natalia Mirza-Avakyants was released and soon repressed, and in 1941, Oleksandr Milanych was repressed. Most of the repressed were shot and rehabilitated only posthumously.

Educational and Research Institute of Social and Humanitarian Sciences