Mykhailo Hrushevskyi as a Professor at Lviv University: Courses, Workload, Class Schedule

Abstract

The purpose of the research paper is to study the didactic workload of M. Hrushevskyi at Lviv University, the weekly schedule of his classes, the peculiarities of delivering lectures and seminars, as well as communication with the faculty administration.

The methodological basis of the work is an interdisciplinary approach. Particular emphasis is placed on the structural and functional systematic analysis of historiographical facts and the comparative and historical method proceeding from the principles of objectivity and historicism.

The scientific novelty of the study is in the first special attempt at a comprehensive reconstruction of the image of M. Hrushevskyi as a professor at Lviv University.

Conclusions. The teaching activity of M. Hrushevskyi at Lviv University was intended to realize the idea of Kyiv and Lviv populists to successfully transform Galicia into a national ‘Piedmont’. Thus, a prominent historian had to implement the educational component of that cultural and social project, training new representatives of Ukrainianists from among the studying youth of the main educational institution of the region. In accordance with that mission, he developed and sequentially, by periods delivered lecture courses on national history and the history of Eastern Europe region. Encouraged by such issues, the students deepened their specialization in Ukrainian studies at a scientific seminar and various special courses given by M. Hrushevskyi in the fields of political, socio-cultural, and regional history.

That purely didactic process, focused on a thorough grounding of the historical subjectivity of the Ukrainian people, had the expected social effect. It consisted in the development of the struggle for the cultural rights of Ukrainians within the walls of Lviv University. It was M. Hrushevskyi who became the ideologist of those efforts and, in his own professorial practice, fundamentally affirmed the Ukrainian voice in the national polyphony of the University, setting an example for his more moderate colleagues K. Studynskyi and O. Kolessa. The result of the prominent scholar’s professorial activity was numerous representatives of the national intelligentsia, who during the 20^th century completed his large-scale work on the integration of Ukrainian narratives into the world historical process.