UNREALIZED PUBLISHING PROJECTS OF ODESSA HISTORIANS AS A FACT OF THE HISTORIOGRAPHIC PROCESS OF THE LATE XIX – EARLY XX CENTURY.

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to reconstruct a number of scientific publishing projects of Odessa historians of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, which were never fully completed. The problem was not considered comprehensively in historiography, although several publications mention certain aspects. We have used a wide base of sources, primarily narrative, that is, the available texts of historians. Auxiliary were for us act, epistolary, newspaper sources. Some of these sources are archived. One of the first joint publishing projects of two Odesa scientists known to us falls on the initial period of the existence of Novorossiysk University. Professors of the department of canon law O. S. Pavlov and the history of Russian law F. I. Leontovych worked on the preparation of a collection of the most important monuments of Old Russian law. But the project was not implemented due to the move of O.S. Pavlov to Moscow. For a long time, Professor of the Department of Russian History I. A. Lynnychenko cherished plans to publish documentary sources of the medieval history of Western Ukraine. The project of the professor of the Department of History of Russian Law A. Ya. Shpakov “History of the secularization of church property in Novgorod under Ivan III” remained in its infancy. At the best stage of readiness was the project of publishing an illustrated atlas on the history of medieval and Byzantine art by the professor of the Department of Theory and History of Arts of the Faculty of History and Philology. O.A. Pavlovsky. The deepening of the process of institutionalization of historical research caused collective projects that contributed to the identification of scientific schools, consolidation of the traditions of Odesa historiography. In 1911–1914, a group of professors worked on the publication of a large collection of scientific papers in honor of the anniversary of F. I. Uspensky. The collection was to be published as the twenty-first volume of the periodical of the Historical and Philological Society at Novorossiysk University. In the early 1910s, the professors worked on a project to publish a large work on the history of Novorossiysk University for the fiftieth anniversary of the institution. In fact, the publishing archive of this project is a part of O. P. Dobroklonsky, which is stored at number 157 in the State Archives of the Odessa region. Here are presented valuable autobiographies and biographies of a number of professors, statistical summaries. However, all these cases indicate that the project hardly managed to move further than the preparatory stage. War, revolution prevented. There have been cases when the creative heritage of deceased historians, thanks to their relatives and colleagues, became the property of descendants. This is how the works of P. K. Bruna, P. O. Yurchenko, S. I. Ilovaisky. So, the reason for the failure to implement a number of creative publishing projects of Odessa historians in the late XIX – early XX century was in different planes. Sometimes this reflected the peculiarities of the life rhythm of historians, a decrease in the pace of their intellectual work, primarily due to pedagogical workload, health problems. It was often said about the material reasons that haunted historians at all stages of history up to the present day. A specific circumstance was the limitations of the then historians regarding the mechanisms of remote labor, their mental unpreparedness for the implementation of joint projects at a distance from each other. In general, firstly, the history of unrealized publishing projects almost always reflects the features of the common heritage of scientists; secondly, it allows one to dive deeper into the features of the intellectual mechanism; thirdly, it demonstrates the interconnection of social, political, economic, scientific, psycho-emotional factors; and fourthly , shows the advantages and disadvantages of collective projects, fifthly, expands our understanding of bibliometric indicators at the prosopographic and personal levels. Revealing of manuscripts, archaeographic publication of the most relevant of them is a promising direction for further historiographic, bibliological and bibliographic research.