М. В. БРЕЧКЕВИЧ (1870–1963) ТА ЙОГО ВНЕСОК У ВИВЧЕННЯ ІСТОРІЇ СЕРЕДНЬОВІЧНОГО БАЛТІЙСЬКОГО ПОМОР’Я

Abstract

In the article based on archival sources and special historical literature, it is given the characteristics of main points of live, scientific and pedagogical work of famous Ukrainian historian, medievalist, the founder of the Department of Ancient and Medieval history in Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Mytrofan Vasyliovych Brechkevych. The research is based on the historicism, scientific and author’s objectivity, general scientific (analysis, synthesis, generalization, comparation) and special historical (historic-typological and historic-systematic) methods. In the article the contribution of M. V. Brechkevych was analyzed. The author came to the conclusion, that during his professional live Brechkevych remained true to the principles developed at the beginning of his career. He was a historian-positivist, who as the rest of the scientist of this direction considered the historical source to be the main criterion of truth. The main object of Brechkevych’s scientific research was the history of the Pomeranian Slavs of the 12th – 14th centuries, to which he dedicated numbers of his works in the first half of the 20th century. In his first printed work «Sviatopolk – Prince of Pomerania» (Yuriiv, 1902) Brechkevych considered one of the important periods in the history of the East Pomeranian principality, its struggle with the Teutonic Order in the 1240s. The study comprehensively analyzes the question of the origin of princely power in Eastern Pomerania, the relationships of the Eastern Pomeranian principality with Poland. Brechkevych’s main work on the history of Pomerania was his master’s thesis «Introduction to the social history of the principality of Slavia, or Western Pomerania» (Yuriiv, 1911), in which he made an attempt to analyze on the basis of Pomeranian letters and chronicles the process of feudalization in the West Pomeranian lands during the 12th – 13th centuries and the role of German colonists in it. The work describes in details the princely land tenure, the formation of the first Pomeranian monasteries, which became active leaders of Germanization in this region.