Vadym Khmarskyi

Southern Ukraine is the largest region of Ukraine. The modern history of this region began at the end of the eighteenth century, when the region was actively settled and rapidly urbanized. A special role in the history of this region was played by the city of Odesa. 

The historiographical tradition in the south of Ukraine is significant and begins with the Odesa historian Apollon Skal’kovs’kyi (1808-1898). He was an official in the administration of Governor-General Vorontsov and became famous in the middle of the nineteenth century, primarily for writing histories of the region, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and Odesa itself. A unique historical source for studying the biography of the historian, the formation of historical science in the region and, most importantly, the history of Odesa is Skal’kovs’kyi’s diary. 

The diary is known to researchers but is rarely used by scholars because it is very difficult to read the author’s complicated handwriting style. The original of the diary is in St. Petersburg where neither Russian nor Ukrainian researchers are able to access it. 

The aim of the project is to decipher the text of the diary for 1835 and prepare it for publication. The original diary is a separate manuscript in the archives of the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg), but there is a copy in the State Archives of the Odesa region. 

This project is preparing the text of the source as well as a scientific support preface, notes and appendices ready for publication. The result of the project should be the preparation of the diary for publication in a separate book.