The Problem of Emigration and Deportation in the Fate of Academician Community of the Kamianets-Podilskyi State Ukrainian University

Abstract

The problem of further development of the national university structure in the context of the European integration processes of the Ukrainian educational system and its internal transformation significantly foregrounds research studios, in which the subject of retrospective approaches has being developed various aspects of the topic, including the fate of representatives of professorial teaching corporations and studentship in the event of defeat of national liberation struggles the beginning of the 20th century and the establish­ment of the Soviet form of statehood in Ukraine. This process has been analyzed on the example of the Kamianets-Podilskyi State Ukrainian University, which was founded on the eve of Hetman P. Skoropadskyi with the direct participation of representatives of government structures, local self-government and public institutions. The authors used the problem-chronological and historical-typological methods, which provided a distinction in the topic of research of certain problems. The change of political regimes in Ukraine has led to the use of the historical-comparative method, and the biographical has allowed to ascertain the activity of concrete activists in a fractious period of history. It was emphasized that at the end of 1920, the academician community of the Kamianets-Podilskyi State Ukrainian University faced the problem of further life choices. It has been noted that a part of the staff of the educational institution, based on the previous experience of Bolshevik governance in Podillia, has made a decision in favor of emigration. It has been proved that 18 members of the corporation sent abroad from among the professors, private associate professors and assistants, were headed by rector I. Ohiienko. Students were a separate group. The challenges of everyday life have been described in the conditions of emigration being, and attempts have been demonstrated to overcome them. I. Ohiienkoʼs active position in solving urgent questions concerning the assignment of members of the professorial corporation to European scientific centers has been shown with purpuse to complete the researches begun at home and their employment in educational institutions organized in the camps of the interned. Great efforts were also made by I. Ohiienko to help students continue their studies at European Higher Education Centers. Despite the unstable political and difficult financial situation, these tasks have been successfully implemented to a certain extent. With the rest of the projects and programs it looked less important. It has been demonstrated that the expectations of those representatives of the corporation that remained in Ukraine, in order to contribute to the development of the educational system in its national forms by its own work, in view of the general strategy of the Bolshevik Party to unify all spheres of social and political life, have not been justified. Some representatives of the corporation were included in the list of prominent figures of science and culture, which the Soviet authorities preferred to deport abroad at the end of 1922 – early 1923 has been shown. The precondition of this process has been proved by the fact that the communist education system was oriented to satisfy the needs of the state, Bolshevik model of socialism, but much less to improve social relations. As a result, political purges and permanent terror, including deportation, have become an inalienable and key method of «sovietization» of the intelligentsia in scientific and educational institutions.