Архієпископ Варлаам Шишацький на тлі епохи та у вимірах української історіографії

The aim of this article is to explore the features of the educational process in the Kyiv Theological Seminary during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. The authors examine the fundamental principles of the functioning of a secondary educational institution of the Russian Orthodox Church. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, and systematics. First of all, general scientific methods of historical knowledge—analysis, synthesis, and systematic analysis—are employed. Scientific novelty. The educational process at the Kyiv Theological Seminary during the late 19th and early 20th centuries is analyzed as an integral part of the spiritual education system of the Russian Empire on the Ukrainian lands. The study demonstrates the Russification-oriented nature of this process. Conclusions. The theological seminaries were a significant component of spiritual education in the Russian Empire, designed to train clergy as leaders of the imperial ideology within society. The Kyiv Theological Seminary was an integral part of this system, without any particular distinguishing features compared to other seminaries across the Empire. In the second half of the 19th century, a deliberate process of unification and centralization in the educational sphere was underway, with the 1867 and 1884 Seminary Statutes playing a crucial role. The educational process, as well as the overall activities of the Kyiv Theological Seminary, were strictly controlled by the Educational Committee of the Holy Synod. The curriculum was highly regulated and structured. Seminary students were under constant supervision by their instructors, ensuring their loyalty, if not devotion, to the Russian imperial regime. Graduation from the Kyiv Theological Seminary provided access to admission to the Kyiv Theological Academy, but only 1% of seminarians chose to continue their studies there.

Faith Hillis, Children of Rus': Right-Bank Ukraine and the Invention of a Nation. 329 pp. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. ISBN-13 978-9668201851. $55.00. One of the puzzles of late imperial history is the fact that in Kiev, the home of the Ukrainian national movement in the Empire, right-wing nationalist parties held sway from 1906 until the revolution. Indeed, in the 1913 elections, all but one of the Duma delegates from the Southwest Region, composed of the Ukrainian provinces of Kiev, Volynia, and Podolia located on the right--or western--bank of the Dnieper River, represented so-called truly Russian parties. In this fascinating book, Faith Hillis argues that these rival national movements shared a common lineage in the Little idea. Moreover, she contends, these right-wing Right-Bank deputies drew on Little principles to play a critical role in the emergence of modern (rather than reactionary) right-wing politics in the Empire and successfully pushed the multiethnic dynastic empire toward nationalizing its modes of governance. In taking up a local study of what she terms the internal political ecology of the Southwest Region from the 1830s to 1914, Hillis joins the now substantial body of scholarship devoted to understanding the borderlands of the Empire and the impact of nationality issues on imperial governance. (1) Historians of borderlands argue that frontiers constitute crucial sites for identity formation and statecraft--zones where local realities, in interaction with central visions, generate new conceptions that can take on broader significance in the national or imperial heartland. (2) Hillis marries such insights with observations on how regional and national identities coexisted and indeed mutually reinforced one another drawn from studies of regionalism in modern European nation-states in the 19th century. (3) Her work also fits nicely into recent provincial histories that reveal how bureaucratic creations could become infused with meaning by their inhabitants. (4) Hillis's focus on Right-Bank Ukraine is thus particularly welcome. Oddly enough, although Kiev was a major city of the Empire and subsequently the capital of Ukraine, far fewer detailed local studies have been devoted to it than to St. Petersburg or Moscow. (5) More generally, the historiography of the western provinces--absorbed by Russia during the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century--is better developed in regard to the northwestern territories than the southwestern. (6) Ukrainian historiography was long governed by a nationalist teleology, tracing the development of the Ukrainian idea and the roots of Ukrainian statehood. Local social and political history concentrated on the Galician side of the border, where Ukrainian nationalism became a mass movement by the early 20th century. (7) Scholarship on imperial Ukraine, where it is generally agreed that Ukrainian nationalism gained adherence only among a minority, has instead emphasized intellectual history and the story of the confrontation between bearers of the national idea and the imperial state. Yet another approach has been to study Ukrainian history from a multiethnic, territorial angle, focusing on individual ethnic groups and their relations with one another and the state, rather than on regions within the Ukrainian lands. (8) Hillis's approach differs from all of these, asking how people in Right-Bank Ukraine came to conceive of their local society in national terms. She brings together a novel interpretation of the history of the Ukrainian national movement in the 19th century with a fine-grained analysis of urban politics in Kiev from the 1870s to 1914 and of the four elections in Kiev and the three southwestern provinces to the State Duma between 1906 and 1914. The result is a much clearer sense than we had previously of ideas in action and of the evolution of local political culture in Kiev and its hinterland in late imperial Russia. …

The purpose of the research is to analyze and determine the scientific value of publications on the history and genealogy of the Galician nobility of the Austrian era, published by Ukrainian and Polish historians. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism and methods for research in historiography. Scientific novelty. First, the scientific work of Polish and Ukrainian historians on the history and genealogy of the Galician nobility of the late 18th – early 20th centuries was analyzed. Conclusions. Over the past three decades, Ukrainian and Polish historians have produced considerable scientific work on the history and genealogy of the Galician nobility of the late 18th and early 20th centuries. It can be stated that the available publications reveal the fundamental aspects of the life of the Galician nobility. It is an absolute merit that these works reveal the legal basis of the transformation of the Galician nobility and its incorporation into the Austrian nobility, analyze the internal gradation of the nobility by property and legal status, present the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of this community as a separate social group, try to analyze its ethnic and status self-identification. To a large extent, Ukrainian historians in the person of Lyubov Slyvka and Polish historians in the person of Krysztof Slyusarek and Slawomir Huzynski reveal these different aspects. However, a number of points remain controversial and require additional study. The history and genealogy of the nobility of Galicia is also present in works of a genealogical, biographical and prosopographic nature. In them, to a lesser extent, you can come across conceptual questions dedicated to the nobility of Galicia, but they are definitely a valuable factual study of the history of individual families, clans and individuals.

The purpose of the research is to attempt a historiographical analysis and systematization of scientific research of modern Ukrainian researchers on the history of creation and operation of financial institutions of the Russian Empire in Dnieper Ukraine in the last quarter of the 18th – early 20th centuries, to find out the state of research of the problem and to determine the prospects of further scientific research. The methodology is based on the principles of historicism and objectivity, along with the integrated use of general scientific methods – analysis, synthesis, abstraction; historiographical – concrete-historiographical analysis and synthesis; and historical – comparative-historical, typological and chronological methods. The scientific novelty is due to the lack of special historiographical works on the problem within the specified chronological limits. The article for the first time systematizes and generalizes the scientific achievements of modern domestic scholars on the study of the history and activities of financial institutions of the Russian Empire in the Ukrainian lands in the last quarter of the 18th – early 20th century. Conclusions. Thus, the research degree analysis of the history of the Russian autocracy’s financial bodies in Dnieper Ukraine in modern Ukrainian science showed the lack of generalizing work on this issue. At the same time, the modern historiography accumulated a lot of research on the history of the creation, evolution and activities of imperial financial institutions in Ukraine. The analysis of modern scientific achievements allows us to assert the formation of scientific schools on the history of economic and financial policy – Kyiv Historical School of the Corresponding Member of the NAS of Ukraine O. Reient; Kharkiv Historical and Legal School of prof. O. Holovko; Kropyvnytskyi School of Economic History of prof. V. Orlyk.Among the promising aspects of the problem for further research, in our opinion, there are: the daily life of local financial officials, their participation and role in social and cultural processes in Ukraine, relations between society and financial institutions, study of history and activities of financial authorities in the context of institutions, the use of the anthropological approach to the study of bureaucracy by the scientists.

This article analyses the subject and the motives of the crime against the life of a newborn baby on the Right-Bank Ukraine in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The methodology of the infanticide study is based on general scientific principles of historicism, objectivity, consistency, and comprehensiveness. The principle of historicism has been applied to consider infanticide under the historical circumstances of the period and determine the prevalence of this phenomenon in modern Ukrainian society. The principle of objectivity has consisted in the analysis of court cases on infanticide to present reliable facts about this crime. The principle of consistency has aided in establishing the place of female infanticide in deviant behavior manifestations. The principle of comprehensiveness has served for a thorough analysis of the literary and document source base, factual consideration of all storylines of the issue under study. The adopted interdisciplinary approach has enabled to use research tools of other social sciences and humanities. The scientific novelty of the study lies in a comprehensive study of infanticide in the Right-Bank Ukraine at the end of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th century in terms of the subject and the motives of the crime carried out on the extensive source base. From the results of the study, the authors conclude that the subjects of infanticide were predominantly unmarried women in difficult living conditions. Children deprived of life were illegitimate. The primary motives behind the crime were hidden in the society’s attitude to extramarital affairs and illegitimate children. Violation of unwritten norms caused women’s condemnation by the community and close relatives, which resulted in their marginalization. There were passive and active ways of murdering a child. A newborn could die because of a mother’s inactivity or active actions aimed to deprive a child of life.

Throughout the course of the 16th – 17th centuries, a new epoch begins in the history of European civilization – the epoch of the New Age. A revolutionary formation and, subsequently, the establishment of a new state system based on political democracy, legal freedom and civil equality are taking place. As in other European countries, significant socio-political transformations in Ukraine were also due to the national revolution of 1648–1676. Analyzing the events in Ukraine in the mid-seventeenth century as a component of the pan-European revolutionary movement, the author considers the attitudinal and ideological origins of the Ukrainian revolution. Their common European features, as well as specific features are clarified and characterized. In general, the change in the worldview system in Ukraine is associated with the renaissance-humanist and reformation ideas that began to spread in the Ukrainian lands without losing its original meaning, but acquiring here a kind of national color, aimed at understanding the urgent problems of Ukrainian society. In the field of political and legal doctrine, the assertion of the legal worldview takes place, replacing the theological. Its classic embodiment became the theory of natural law with its concept of inalienable natural human rights as well as the concept of social contract. These ideas became, to a greater or lesser extent, the basis of the Ukrainian revolution of the seventeenth century. Their embodiment can be found in the works of Ukrainian «Renaissance humanists» of the 16th – early 17th centuries: S. Orikhovsky, J. Vereshchynsky, I. Dombrovsky, S. Klenovych, S. Pekalid, J. Shchasny-Herburt, K. Sakovych. It is found that in the seventeenth century, the works of such prominent political thinkers, theorists of natural law as J. Lipsius, G. Grotius, later B. Spinoza, T. Hobbes, S. Pufendorf were becoming widespread in Ukraine. They found a favorable ground in Ukraine and directly influenced the Ukrainian revolution, as the state and legal ideas of these thinkers became especially popular not only among the intellectual elite, but also among the Cossacks – the main driving force of the revolution. A number of Ukrainian thinkers, despite the fact that until 1649 Ukraine did not have its own state, were considering the future path of its political development. Specific plans of forming own state are embodied, in particular, in the works of J. Vereshchynsky, P. Mohyla, Y. Nemyrych, and others. They became a logical continuation and development of the state approaches of Ukrainian Renaissance humanists and reflected the tendency to combine the understanding of the history of their own state-building tradition with the study of Western experience. The analysis of political and legal ideas of Ukrainian authors, real historical events of the seventeenth century testify to the emergence among the Ukrainian population of clear tendencies to build their own state. Since then, the idea of the Ukrainian nation-state became fundamental to the Cossack state-building and leading in the liberation struggles of the Ukrainian people of all subsequent centuries.

The purpose of the research is to analyze the Ukrainian daily newspaper Dilo as a source for researching the parliamentary activity of Andrii Kos – one of the leading Ukrainian deputies to the Imperial Council of Austria-Hungary at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The focus is on identifying the role of the publication in informing the public about the activities of Ukrainian parliamentarians, particularly Kos, as well as reconstructing his political stance through journalistic, analytical, and stenographic materials. The research methodology is grounded in the principles of historicism, narrative analysis, and source criticism. The primary source base consists of «Dilo» publications from 1897 to 1903, which recorded Kos’s speeches, parliamentary inquiries, commentaries, and interpretations of his work. The study employs content analysis of parliamentary materials and thematic classification of Kos’s statements regarding pressing social, national, and legal issues. Additional archival sources, memoirs, and historiographical literature are used to critically cross-reference the data. The scientific novelty. For the first time in Ukrainian historiography, Dilo is analyzed as a coherent and systematic body of sources for reconstructing the political portrait of a specific Ukrainian parliamentarian within the Austro-Hungarian legislative system. The study identifies the specifics of how information was presented in the newspaper, the editorial board’s ideological stance on Kos’s key political initiatives, and the role of the press as an instrument for shaping public opinion and political culture in Halychyna. Conclusions. The «Dilo» newspaper emerges not only as a source of factual information but also as an active participant in the political process – a voice of the national-democratic wing of the Ukrainian movement in Austria-Hungary. Its publications allow for the reconstruction of both the substantive aspects of Andrii Kos’s parliamentary activity and the mechanisms of political communication between the deputy and the electorate. The analysis highlights key themes of his work, such as the defense of the Ukrainian language in the judiciary, criticism of fiscal policies affecting the peasantry, opposition to censorship, and advocacy against the feudal-era propinacja system. In public discourse, Andrii Kos appears both as a representative of socially marginalized groups and as an advocate for broader national emancipation of Ukrainians within the multiethnic empire. The results of this study may be useful for further research on the role of the press as a source of political history, as well as in developing topics related to the history of parliamentarianism and national representation of Ukrainians in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The work aims to identify the main achievements of historical science and prospects for further scientific research in the field of Orthodox-Catholic relations in the Right Bank Ukraine in the second half of the XIX – early XX centuries. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, integrity, and systematics. The methods of analysis and synthesis, generalization, comparison are used in the work. The scientific novelty is that the main achievements of modern Ukrainian historical science and prospects for further scientific research in the field of Orthodox-Catholic relations in the Right Bank Ukraine in the second half of the nineteenth – the early twentieth century were determined. Conclusions. In the second half of the XIX – early XX century two opposite missionary processes occurred in Right-Bank Ukraine. On the one hand, the Russian authorities and Orthodox missionaries tried weakening the position of the Roman Catholic Church and persuade as many Catholics as possible to convert to Orthodoxy, and on the other hand, Catholic priests resisted these attempts and converted Orthodox people to the Latin faith. These processes are partially investigated in modern Ukrainian historiography, but some important aspects of this topic require further research. It is necessary: 1) to analyze the relations between the Orthodox and Catholic clergy in this period; 2) to study the activities of mixed Orthodox-Catholic church fraternities; 3) to investigate the relations of the Catholic clergy of Volhynia with the Czech Catholics who expressed a desire to convert to the Orthodox religion; 4) to conduct a comparative analysis of Orthodox and Catholic education, moral behavior of the Orthodox and Catholic clergy in the region; 5) to compile tables of conversions from Orthodoxy to Catholicism and vice versa and identify their reasons. This will make it possible to recreate a holistic picture of Orthodox-Catholic relations and determine their specificity in each of the three provinces of Right-Bank Ukraine.

Purpose. The purpose of the publication is to highlight the main approaches to understanding the meaning of historicism or the principle of historicism, as well as to determine its role in law in general and historical and legal research in particular. Method. The methodological basis of the study was a set of general scientific, special scientific and historical methods, as well as the principles of historicism and objectivity. Results. It is established that the dreamer of the classical concept of historicism was a German scientist of the XVIII century. F. Schlegel, who proposed to abandon the then established approach that all historical processes in a particular field of science took place consistently and typically, but pointed out that everything depends on the «personality» that influences the process or carries it out, or social or other circumstances in which this process develops. Well-known Ukrainian scholars who developed the theoretical content of the principle of historicism were M. Kovalevsky and S. Dnistryansky. The authors of the publication propose to consider the principle of historicism in a narrow and broad sense. In a narrow sense, the principle of historicism is the process of understanding and interpreting legal norms under the influence of historical, social or political factors. In a broad sense, it is a form of legal research that considers the process of legal decision-making as a product of political, social and historical conditions. Scientific novelty. It is established that the formation of the principle of historicism took place in the middle of the XIX century. and related to the development of the historical school of law. The key to the process of understanding and applying the principle of historicism is determined by the objective appeal to the natural social, political, economic and even cultural processes that influenced the law in a particular historical epoch. The role of the scientist in this process should not be limited to the presentation of material on the basis of a chronological approach, just as one should not associate the principle of historicism with the principle of historicism. It has been established that in modern Ukrainian legal science there is a departure from Soviet ideologues, who associated the principle of historicism with the principle of partisanship and gave it exceptional dialectical features. Practical significance. The results of the research can be used in further historical and legal research and theoretical and legal research.

Purpose of the study. To summarize the available information about Yevdokym Hranobarskyi — a prominent yet little-known figure in the socio-cultural history of Southern Ukraine in the late 18th and early 19th centuries — and to present his role against the backdrop of the era, with a particular focus on education and patronage. Methodology. The study is based on the principles of historicism, systematicity, and objectivity. It employs methods of analysis, synthesis, and archival heuristics. Scientific novelty. The ideological foundations, content, and significance of the patronage initiatives undertaken by this local nobleman, who played a lasting role in the development of educational infrastructure in the Orikhiv and Melitopol counties of the Tavria province and the Oleksandrivskyi county of the Katerynoslav governorate, have been established. His biography has been reconstructed in the context of broader socio-political processes in Southern Ukraine. Previously unknown archival sources have been brought into scholarly circulation. Conclusions. Yevdokym Hranobarskyi can be regarded as a representative of the intersection between imperial administrative policy and local initiative. His social motivation combined a personal commitment to supporting those in pursuit of knowledge with the educational ideals inherent in the paternalistic policies of the Russian Empire. The awarding of a diamond ring to Hranobarskyi by the emperor in 1812 carried symbolic weight and reflected the state’s legitimization of local forms of patronage. The activities of figures such as Hranobarskyi contributed to the tangible development of educational institutions and to the gradual emergence of a social stratum capable of modernizing this peripheral imperial territory. His legacy exemplifies a form of enlightened local patriotism that invites new interpretations of colonization, cultural integration, and enlightenment within the imperial context, while also offering insights into the early stages of the formation of the modern Ukrainian nation in Southern Ukraine at the beginning of the 19th century.

The article deals with historiography about the cultural and educational development of Jews in Dnipro Ukraine during the 19th – early 20th centuries. The formation and functioning of a Jewish educational system in Volhynia during that period, the work of Zhytomyr Rabbinical School and Zhytomyr Jewish Teachers Institute, spiritual-cultural and education activities of Jews in Left-bank Ukraine, Right-bank Ukraine, South-East Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire, and on Western Ukrainian lands of Austria-Hungary are reflected in the historical science. While appreciating the progress of Judaic studies, it should be noted that today this subject needs to be developed further. This is especially important for understanding the key issues of Ukraine’s History and World History. The analysis of a wide range of historical sources, especially archival materials, will contribute to the objective presentation of the history of Jewish community as unique historical and cultural phenomenon and an important part of the Culture of Ukraine. The ideological and political pressure of Soviet era has slowed down Judaic studies, fulfilment of their scientific and practical potential. In the late 1980s there has been an upsurge of interest in the Jewish history. Research studies of Independent Ukraine have contributed to introduction into the scientific activities of new historical sources, developing innovative projects and ideas, improving methodological approaches. The role of Jews in increasing European cultural influences on the Ukrainian lands is a perspective direction of the historical research. In the period of raising the national spirit of Jews during the 19th – early 20th centuries, the number of Jewish students from Ukraine who studied in European universities has increased. Attention needs to be shifted towards an important social function of ethnic research, the results of which foster establishing Ukrainian cultural environment based on tolerance, mutual respect, humanism and cross-cultural dialogue

Purpose of the article is to broaden the knowledge about the Ukrainian national movement, problems of the creation of a nation in 19th – beginning of the 20th century through the prism of life and activities of an individual person – Volodymyr Amvrosiiovych Menchyts, as a cultural and educational figure. The methodology of research is based on a combination of general scientific and special historical methods with the principles of historicism, objectivity and consistency. The application of these methods made it possible to conduct a systematic analysis of the sources that helped to personify the figure of V. Menchyts. Scientific novelty. The role of V. Menchyts against the backdrop of the epoch of the second half of the 19th – early 20th century has been highlighted on the basis of published and archival documents. His role was marked by the intensification of the national movement, the formation of the idea of state formation of Ukraine. Conclusions. Research into the biography of Volodymyr Amvrosiyovych Menchyts and its reproduction showed that he was an outstanding personality, a bright representative of the Ukrainian national movement of the second half of the 19th – beginning 20th century. He entered Ukrainian history as an educator and philosopher, a collector of Ukrainian folklore, and a specialist in literature and publishing. V. Menchyts was a representative of the spiritual elite of the society of that time. Those people contributed to the formation of moral and ethical foundations of the social worldview, national idea and state formation of Ukraine. A significant constellation of figures that developed and acted in this period in society, in particular Volodymyr Menchyts and his company, clearly defined the outlines of the Ukrainophil movement. Along with a cohort of less known but, undoubtedly, sincere patriots, the famous representatives of this movement were able to lay the ideological foundation for the development of the Ukrainian state at the beginning of 20th century.

The historiography of women’s religious schools began to emerge simultaneously with the creation and functioning of these educational institutions in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Individual works from this period contain ample and interesting factual material, including statistical data on the numbers of students and teachers. In the Soviet period, the study of this subject ceased, because women’s religious education was not among historians’ research interests at this time. The current period in the historiography of the problem began with the first years of Ukrainian independence. During the past three decades, a number of works of various formats on the history of education have been produced, but neither diocesan women’s schools nor women’s schools of the Department of Religious Affairs receive much attention in these studies. Usually, authors either limit themselves to listing the basic facts from the history of these institutions or do not mention them at all. The development of gender studies and the appearance of works on women’s history also have failed to significantly affect the historiography of women’s religious schools, as researchers continued to use approaches traditional for history of education, such as the study of the educational process or characterization of an institution’s student body and faculty. Since the 2000s, works begin to appear that focus specifically on the system of women’s religious education in the Ukrainian lands. A significant achievement of these works has been the accumulation of various statistical materials important for the comparative analysis of women’s religious schools. However, they also for the most part reproduce methods and approaches characteristic of 19th-century historiography, enumerating the basic facts from the history of these schools without proper analysis. Further, we may sometimes come across characterizations of women’s religious schools that are not grounded in careful analysis or backed by appropriate sources. Still, in recent years there have been positive changes in the study of the diocesan schools and schools of the Department of Religious Affairs, such as attention to new themes and the use of interdisciplinary approaches. Overall, the subject remains promising for further research.

Right-bank Ukraine became part of the Russian Empire after the second partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1792. The integration of these territories into the new administrative, economic and cultural space caused certain difficulties. In the first half of the 19th century, the region had the highest percentage of peasant serfs and the elements and institutions of the non-existent state (including the courts) still existed and kept functioning.
 The defeat in the Crimean War of 1853–1856 imposed on the Russian Empire the need for radical reforms in all spheres of life. The wave-like periods of cooperation-confrontation between the Russian authorities and the local nobility brought about regional provisions in virtually all the reforms, launched by the peasant reform of 1861. The judicial reform and the emergence of new institutions and practices had to resolve existing problems, disputes, and punish criminals legally. The social estate (stanovy) character of the society was reflected in the establishment and activities of the volost courts, as the lower courts. The district courts were a completely novel phenomenon in the legal culture; their functioning was ensured by professional lawyers on the basis of new judicial statutes.
 The purpose of this article is to consider the court practices and functioning of penitentiary establishments in Right-Bank Ukraine (on the example of Volyn province) under implementation of the judicial reform through the prism of social and estate factors, based on the cases of the Zhytomyr District Court and the reports of the heads of local prisons.
 The methodology of the research includes the tools of social history and the so-called "new imperial history" that have helped to trace the adaptation of new legal practices to the socio-ethnic peculiarities of Right Bank Ukraine. The methods of history of everyday life and history of reading have been employed to consider the under-researched component of the penitentiary system of the Russian Empire, namely the libraries and their funds. This component should be attributed to the novelty of the suggested research findings.
 Conclusions. Estate privileges were maintained in the Russian Empire throughout the "long 19th century". Belonging to a higher social status practically made the Polish nobles equal in the rights with the imperial officials, endowed with power. During court decisions and sentencing, an ethnic criterion was not taken into consideration or had secondary significance. Many years of placing the peasants outside the legal field developed a steady arrogant attitude of the power-holders towards the representatives of this social estate. Though the peasants dominated in the social structure of the Empire population, they remained the most prevalent class. Since the early 20th century, some shifts in perception and attitudes towards peasantry were observed.

The aim of the study is to analyze the interpretation peculiarities of the imperial legislation norms by representatives of different ethnic groups on the basis of court cases of the Zhytomyr District Court and to determine the characteristics of the jurors’ legal consciousness in Right-Bank Ukraine in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The research methodology is based on the basic principles of historical research: historicism, scientificity, and objectivity. In order to achieve the goal, general scientific and special-historical methods (historical-genetic, historical-comparative, source studies) have been used. The scientific novelty is conditioned by the fact that the peculiarities of the jurors’ legal consciousness have been studied through social and ethnic factors in the regional dimension based on archival sources of the State Archives of Zhytomyr Region and a wide range of other materials. Conclusions. The legal consciousness of the Right-Bank Ukraine population demonstrated distinct models of interaction with the imperial judicial system. Polish people represented in the jury lists, mostly former representatives of the gentry, were accustomed to using legal mechanisms actively to protect their interests, despite political restrictions from the authorities. Their participation in the court was the result of a compromise with the imperial administration, and their representation among the jurors was determined by loyalty to the authorities. The legal consciousness of the Jewish population was based on collective solidarity and the norms of religious law, which led to alienation from imperial justice and, as a result, minimal representation in the jury trial. The jury lists were dominated by representatives of the Ukrainian peasantry, who reflected a sense of justice based on customary law and folk morality. The analysis of the judicial practice of the Zhytomyr District Court of the late 19th and early 20th centuries has shown that the interpretation of imperial legislation by jurors often went beyond the formal text. Jurors were often guided by “real justice,” especially in cases involving private property, revenge for a personal insult, or crimes committed in a state of passion. The presence of a lawyer, whose professional argumentation could significantly change the interpretation of the evidence, had a significant impact on the outcome of the case.