Established in 1992; scholars of the Department of History, Philosophy and Law of the NAS of Ukraine are awarded the Prize for outstanding scientific papers in the field of history and historical source studies
Mykola Ivanovych Kostomarov Prize
Mykola Ivanovych Kostomarov, an outstanding scholar, historian, ethnographer, writer, literary critic, publicist, publisher, public figure, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1874), was born on May 16, 1817 in the village of Yurasivka, Ostrogozhskiy uyezd, Voronezh governorate in the family of a Russian landowner (his mother was ethnical Ukrainian from a predial serf family).
In 1833–1836 M.I. Kostomarov studied at the Faculty of History and Philology of Kharkiv University. During this period, he began to develop the idea that among the Slavic peoples, the Ukrainians had a special mission in the matter of liberating all Slavs from imperial despotism and predial serf slavery. In verses and poems of those years, he glorified the princely and Cossack times of Ukraine.
After defending his master’s thesis in history (1844), M.I. Kostomarov worked as a teacher at gymnasiums in Rivne and Kyiv. In 1846–1847 he was an adjunct professor at the Department of Russian History of the University of St. Volodymyr. In 1845–1847 he was one of the founders of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, and drafted its program document “The Book of the Genesis of the Ukrainian People” (1846). After the arrest (1847) and year-long imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress, he was in exile in Saratov (June 1848 – December 1855). In 1859–1862 M.I. Kostomarov held the position of extraordinary professor at St. Petersburg University. In 1861–1862 he participated in publishing the magazine “Osnova. At that time, M.I. Kostomarov intensively worked on archival materials, published a lot of papers in the most popular magazines “Sovremennik”, “Vestnik Evropy”, “Russkoe slovo”, together with like-minded people created and headed the St. Petersburg Ukrainian society “Hromada”.
Mykola Kostomarov made a push at legalizing Ukrainian education and culture, publishing textbooks for the common people.
In the last years of the life of M.I. Kostomarov worked very intensively and fruitfully as a scientist. In 1860–1885 he became a member of the Kyiv Archaeological Commission. From 1863 to 1884, 12 volumes of the collection of documents on the history of Ukraine and Belarus of the 14th-17th centuries “Acts related to the history of Southern and Western Russia” were published under his editorship. In April 1864 he took a doctor’s degree in Russian history at the University of St. Volodymyr. In 1874 he was elected a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, in 1884 he became a honorary member of the University of St. Volodymyr. In addition, M.I. Kostomarov was an honorary member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Serbian scientific society “Drushestvo”, a full member of the Museum of Antiquities and the Vilnius Archeographic Commission, of many other Ukrainian and foreign scientific institutions.
M.I. Kostomarov played a major role in the development of Ukrainian and Russian historiography. He was the first scholar of Eastern Europe who radically changed the approach to the historian’s work, placing not the description of events and persons as the cornerstone, but the history of the people in its socio-cultural reality and the unity of the most diverse spheres of life.
M.I. Kostomarov is the founder of populist (as opposed to statist) historiography. He thought of the spirit of the people as the primary basis of any historical process. Worldview constants of M.I. Kostomarov as a thinker were: confidence in a uniqueness of the historical path of the Ukrainian people (M.I. Kostomarov prophetically saw “Poludneva Rus” (Meridional Rus) as a “separate state integrity” in the time to come), its free-loving spirit, language, culture and psychology (which put it in opposition to the official Russian statist historiosophy); the priority of national spirit and the idea of the equality of people and ethnic groups, international understanding achieved on the basis of science and education, and the unity of the Slavic peoples; the principle of self-government and federal-democratic organization of society, which is based on the experience of the Kievan Rus and Cossack states; the idea of the historical durability of the Ukrainian national tradition.
Kostomarov’s principal publications are “Bohdan Khmelnytsky” (the first edition – 1857, the third, in 3 volumes – 1876), “The Ruin” (1879–1880), that describes the tragic events occurred after the death of Khmelnytsky, “Mazepa” and “Mazepyntsi” (1882–1884), and the fundamental work “Russian history in the biographies of its most important figures” (1874–1876), which presents critical biographies of the main heroes of ancient Rus, Ukrainian, and Russian history.
The works dedicated to the history of Russia are “Northern Russian People’s Rule in the Times of the Apportionment-Veche Practice" (1863), “The Uncertain Time of the Moscow State at the Beginning of the 17th Century" (1866), “Stenka Razin’s Revolt” and others. His scientific investigation “The Last Years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth” is of considerable interest.
“The historian’s sincere love for his Motherland can be manifested only in strict respect for the truth,” Mykola Kostomarov repeated. He was guided by this principle all his life. He was awarded gold medals from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1861, 1872).