The experience of preparing on a voluntary basis and publishing a multi-volume "History of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR" is of great interest not only among historians, but also among wide circles of the Soviet public. The creation of such a work was made possible thanks to the success that Soviet historical science has achieved recently, including in Ukraine. The appearance of numerous monographic studies, the expansion of the publication of local lore literature, the growth of a cadre of historians, and the Communist Party's daily concern for the development of historical science1 - all this made it possible to carry out that new form of research and popularization in the field of the history of the Ukrainian people, such as the multi-volume "History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR".
Its novelty lies primarily in the choice of the object of research-the history of all cities (and there are 368 of them in the republic) and many of the largest villages in Ukraine (about 1500). Never and nowhere has such a large task been set and no attempt has been made to give systematic essays on the history of such a large number of localities. 2 Thousands of cities and villages in Ukraine and entire regions receive their own scientifically developed history.
At the same time, it is also, to a certain extent, a new form of research work in the sense of its very organization. This is reflected in the fact that the creation of the history of cities and villages of the republic is carried out by the public, people of different professions and on a voluntary basis. It is known that even in the first years of Soviet power, the participants of these events themselves, who became their first historians, played a huge role in the development of the study of the history of the Great October and the Civil War. Subsequently, in the 1930s, the History of Factories and Factories and the first volumes of the History of the Civil War in the USSR were prepared with the involvement of the broad working masses. This positive experience of Soviet historiography is widely used in the work on " Isto-
The journal Voprosy Istorii (1970, No. 8) published a review by L. S. Gaponenko and N. N. Leshchenko - "History is written by the working people themselves", containing a general description of the multi-volume" History of Cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR".
1 For more information on the development of historical science and local lore in Ukraine, see V. A. Dyadichenko, F. E. Los, and V. G. Sarbey. Development of historical science in the Ukrainian SSR. Kyiv. 1970; A. M. Abbasov. The main stages of development of Russian local lore. "Український історичний журнал", 1969, N 12.
2 In the 1950s and early 1960s, essays on the history of a number of cities were published in Ukraine, as well as in other regions of the country (for example, the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR prepared a two-volume book "History of Kiev", published in Ukrainian in 1959-1960 and in 1960-1961, " History of the Hero City of Sevastopol"in 2 parts, published in 1958-1960; Lviv University in 1956 published the book" History of Lviv. However, these were separate publications devoted to the largest cities of the republic.
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cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR". Active participation of the general public in the preparation of this publication is natural, since the very idea of its creation was put forward in the early 1960s by the public of the republic. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine supported this initiative, adopted in 1962 a resolution on the publication of a collective multi-volume work "History of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR" and conducts daily work. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine considered issues related to its course three times, while defining the main ideological, political, scientific, methodological and organizational principles of the publication. In the report of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine P. Shelest at the XXIII Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the preparation of the "History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR" was noted as one of the most important scientific works .3
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine assigned direct supervision of writing the history of cities and villages in the regions to the regional party committees. The attention and care of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, local party and Soviet organs made it possible to widely expand and carry out this enormous amount of work. The general organizational and scientific-methodological management of the preparation of the entire publication is entrusted to its Main Editorial Board, which was approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine .4 In the regions, this work is managed by the editorial boards of volumes approved by the regional party committees, which direct and control their activities. In the districts and large cities of the republic, local party bodies have formed city and district commissions, whose task is to directly assist authors in collecting materials for essays. Regional editorial boards are usually headed by secretaries of regional party committees dealing with issues of ideology. The same principle was followed when creating city and district commissions.
To collect materials and write essays, university teachers, history teachers of local schools, employees of archives and cultural institutions, party and Soviet apparatuses, newspapers, local historians, active participants in the revolutionary movement, the civil and Great Patriotic Wars are involved. In total, according to incomplete data, more than 100 thousand people take part in the preparation of this grandiose publication. Among them, for example, the master of the mechanical assembly shop of the Druzhkovsky plant, Donetsk region, A. I. Kovalenko, a pensioner, director of the factory folk museum in Nikolaev A. L. Zhuravel, a former member of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, director of the Lviv branch of the Central Museum of V. I. Lenin B. K. Dudikevich, an active participant in the civil war, engineer of one of the factories in Luhansk region P. V. Tokarev, veteran of the Great Patriotic War, lecturer of the Lisichansk State Pedagogical University V. I. Poloz, associate Professor of the Dnepropetrovsk University, Hero of the Soviet Union V. P. Yubkin and many others. They are all people of different professions and ages, but they share a sincere love for the history of their native land, for the history of their people. "Please inform us," A. I., a pensioner from the Crimean region, writes to the Main Editorial Board. Sikorsky, - where should I address my written material about the history of the village of Novo-Pavlovka, Kherson region. From my essay, perhaps, something can be added to the volume about the Kherson region." Such letters are not uncommon. They show that the creation of the "History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR" attracts the attention and interest of thousands of Soviet people.
3 See Materials of the XXIII Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Kiev, 1966, p. 50.
4 Currently, it consists of: P. T. Tronko (Chairman), N. P. Bazhan, N. K. Belogurov, I. K. Beloded, P. P. Gudzenko, T. I. Derevyankin, A. K. Kasimenko (Deputy Chairman), Yu. Y. Kondufor, S. M. Korolivsky, A. K. Koshik, A. G. Mityukov, I. D. Nazarenko, P. M. Ovcharenko, S. D. Pilkevich, I. D. Remezovsky (Deputy Chairman), I. S. Slabeev (Executive Secretary), K. K. Tseluiko.
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Serious assistance in the preparation of the publication is provided by the ministries and departments of the republic, especially the Ministries of Higher and secondary special education, Education, Culture, the Archive Department and the Press Committee under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, creative unions, especially journalists and writers. The publication is being prepared in close collaboration with researchers from the Institute of Party History of the Communist Party Central Committee, a branch of the Institute of Marxism - Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU, as well as institutes of the Social Sciences Section of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR: history, economics, archeology, art history, folklore and ethnography, linguistics, literature, and others.
Given the complexity of preparing the publication, the Main Editorial Board primarily focused on developing its scientific and methodological foundations, organizing bibliographic and source work in local lore. Methodological guidelines were prepared and published. 5 Based on the Marxist-Leninist methodology of historical research, the structure of essays, the ratio of material by period, the requirements for the level of presentation of material, and recommendations on the use of sources were determined. In addition, methodological recommendations on certain issues were published in the Ukrainian Historical Journal6 and local press. The State Historical Library of the Ukrainian SSR, scientific and regional libraries have carried out a large amount of bibliographic work .7 Over the past eight years, fundamental local history bibliographic card files have been created in the regions, which include more than 1 million cards, including up to 600 thousand topographic ones. Local history bibliographic files were created mainly by page-by-page arrangement of monographic literature, collections of articles, review, statistical and reference publications, documentary publications, and the most important pre-revolutionary and Soviet periodicals. In total, over 58 thousand titles were written on a page-by-page basis. In addition, all regional libraries have published indexes of the most important literature on the history of cities and villages specifically for authors 'groups, and the State Historical Library of the Ukrainian SSR has prepared and published a" Short list of bibliographic sources to help write the History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR", "Bibliography of Dissertations on the history, economy and culture of Ukraine" and a bibliographic index "Statistics of the national economy and culture of the Ukrainian SSR" 8 . Lviv region-
5 "Методичні вказівки для авторських колективів, комісій і редакційних колективів, рецензентів і редакторів томів "Історії міст Української РСР". Київ. 1965; см. также "Редакційні настанови авторам і редакторам "Історії міст і сіл УРСР". Київ. 1970.
6 Only in 1963-1966 the magazine published more than 50 articles, information and notes under the heading "On the history of cities and villages of Soviet Ukraine" (see "Ukrainian Historical Journal" (1957-1966). Систематичний показчик. Київ. 1968).
7 For the bibliography of this publication, see L. L. Makarenko, P. I. Zhevakhov. Bibliographic apparatus for the history of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR. "Український історичний журнал", 1964, N 6; их же. Summary bibliographic index on the history of cities and villages of Ukraine. "Soviet Bibliography", 1965, N 4.
8 См. "Краткий список бібліографічних джерел на допомогу в написанні історії міст і сіл Української РСР". Київ. 1965; "Бібліографія дисертацій з питань історії, економіки і культури України". Київ. 1965; "Статистика народного господарства і культури Української РСР". Бібліографічний показчик. Київ. 1968; "Іншомовні матеріали до історії міст і сіл України". Короткий бібліографічний показчик. Львів. 1967; см. также Н. Кириловська та Д. Ясиньська. Бібліографія по історії міст і сіл Волині. Луцьк. 1964; "Дніпропетровщина". Короткий бібліографічний показчик літератури з історії міст і сіл області. Дніпропетровськ. 1964; Д. Мельникова. History of cities and villages of the Donetsk region. Bibliographic index. Донецк. 1964; "Історія населених пунктів Запорізької області. Бібліографічний показчик. Запоріжжя. 1964; "History of cities and villages of the Crimean region". Bibliography-
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The National Library has developed and published a bibliographic index "Foreign language materials on the history of cities and villages of Ukraine". Suffice it to say that the index on statistics alone includes up to 2 thousand pre-revolutionary and Soviet publications, most of which are annotated, in particular, it is indicated in which geographical section the information is provided (locality, parish, village council, county, district, etc.). In 1963-1964, an extensive bibliography was published, compiled by famous bibliographer-local historian F. P. Maksimenko from Lviv 9 .
The central and regional state and party archives of the republic have done a lot of work to help the authors .10 During 1962-1970, their employees looked through about 1,700 thousand items of storage and a huge number of books to identify documents on the history of cities and villages, making up almost 800 thousand thematic cards and about 765 thousand cards for geographical catalogs. Similar work is being done by the regional party archives to disclose their funds. All this allowed authors to use tens of thousands of new documents. Documents stored in district and city archives, in the manuscript departments of scientific libraries, as well as materials of current office work of various enterprises, institutions and organizations, in particular statistical agencies in the center and in the field, are also widely used.
Archival sources stored outside the republic are also used. Many thousands of documents were studied by Ukrainian archivists outside the republic alone. In total, the archives of the republic received more than 10 thousand sheets of copies and about 350 thousand frames of micro-photocopies of documents. Researchers who went to the archives and libraries of Moscow, Leningrad, a number of regions of the RSFSR, Belarus and Moldova in connection with the preparation of the "History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR" received all the necessary assistance in identifying materials.
The publication structure was adopted as follows: the entire publication consists of 26 volumes. Each region, of which there are 25 in Ukraine, is dedicated to a separate volume of 75 to 120 author's sheets. The title volume with an introductory article of the Main Editorial Board for the entire publication is dedicated to the capital of the republic - Kiev. The volumes contain essays about all cities and selectively about individual urban-type settlements and villages that have the most rich and vivid history in the past and present. Approximate volumes of essays about regional centers - 3 auts. list, about cities of regional subordination - 2 auth. list, about all other localities - 1 auth. sheet. Then there are brief references about the settlements and villages that are the centers of village councils (there are 10 thousand of them), indicating in them the most important historical information about all other settlements subordinate to this village Council. The total volume of the publication is up to 2500 authors. sheets. The principle of illustrating volumes-up to-
user's index. Ch. 1 and 2. Simferopol, 1964; A. E. Skripnik, G. G. Tabachnikova. From the history of cities and villages of the Luhansk region. Recommended index of literature. Lugansk, 1964, and others. In total, over 40 such bibliographic indexes have been published in the regions.
9 F. Maksimenko. Збірки історичних відомостей про населені пункти УРСР. Бібліографічний показчик. "Науково-інформаційний бюлетень архівного управління УРСР", 1963, NN 4 - 6; 1964, NN 1 - 5.
10 For a description of some issues of this work, see: A. Batyuk. Participation of archivists in the preparation of the "History of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR". "Архів України", 1966, N 3; М. Савченко. Participation of historians and archivists in the preparation of the "History of Cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR". Ibid., 1968, N 4; K. Kozulina. The work of the Dnipropetrovsk regional Archive on the history of cities and villages. "Науково-інформаційний бюлетень Архівного управління УРСР", 1964, N 1; В. Крутиков, М. Яременко. Participation of the Luhansk Regional State Archive in the preparation of the history of cities and villages. Ibid., 1965, No. 1, et al.
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a document file. Each volume contains 300-500 illustrations, plans and thematic cartos11 .
The multi-volume "History of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR" is a scientific publication. The Main Editorial Board manages the preparation and publication: in scientific and methodological terms-through the Department of History of Cities and Villages of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and in terms of publication - through the editorial office of the History of Cities and villages of the Main Editorial Office of the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia (Ukrainian Radio Encyclopedia - UR). The Department and the editorial board do a lot of work to provide scientific and methodological assistance to the author's teams, as well as to prepare the manuscripts of volumes for publication. The Main Editorial Board, together with the Main Editorial Office of the UE and the Press Committee under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, drew up and approved a detailed plan for the preparation and publication of volumes. The procedure for preparing volumes up to their publication was also developed and communicated to all editorial boards. All this has ensured regular, systematic work at all levels, from the author's collectives and editorial boards of volumes to the editorial office of the history of cities and villages of UR and the Main Editorial Board inclusive.
As a result of extensive preparatory work, the manuscripts of the volumes were completed in a number of areas by 1966. In 1966, the first of the prepared volumes, "Kharkiv region", was published in the form of a mock-up, which was sent to all the main scientific institutions of the country and received a positive assessment. After that, the publication of volumes 12 began . In 1967, volumes devoted to Kharkiv and Poltava regions were published, in 1968 - Lviv and Luhansk (now Voroshilovgrad) regions, as well as Kiev, in 1969-Dnepropetrovsk, Chernivtsi, Odessa and Transcarpathian regions. In 1970, volumes on Volyn, Zaporizhia and Donetsk regions were published. The volume on the Ivano-Frankivsk region has been completed, and the editing of the manuscripts of the volume "Kyiv region"is being completed. Volumes on the history of towns and villages in Mykolaiv, Khmelnytsky, and Vinnytsia regions are currently being edited. Thus, 17 of the 26 volumes of the series have now been published or are being prepared for publication.
As a result of the publication of the first 11 volumes of the "History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR", historical science has been enriched to a certain extent with diverse and valuable historical material that provides deeper knowledge of the long-past and immediate past of the Ukrainian people, as well as reveals the main points of its development at the present stage. Most of the essays, especially about peripheral cities and villages, contain facts that have not yet been used by researchers, revealed as a result of studying numerous archival sources. Especially a lot of data, previously unknown to historians, is contained in essays on the peasant and labor movement, the development of settlements, in particular their development and improvement at various historical stages of cultural development. The volumes contain a large amount of new information about the struggle for the victory of Soviet power, in defense of the gains of the revolution during the civil war, about the restoration of the national economy and socialist construction in the pre-war period. Painstakingly collected facts about the heroic struggle with-
11 For illustrations, see G. P. Krivdin. Selection and use of illustrations in essays on the history of cities and villages of Soviet Ukraine. "Український історичний журнал", 1966, N 4.
12 Publication is carried out in Ukrainian. Все его тома имеют общий заголовок: "Історія міст і сіл Української РСР. In twenty-six volumes." Under this title should be the name of the region to which this volume is dedicated, as well as the place of publication-Kiev and publisher-Head Editorial Office of the Ukrainian Radio Encyclopedia of the Academy of Sciences of the URSR; starting with the volume "Zaporozhye region" on the title page, the stamp of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR is also
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Russian people on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, about the partisan and underground activities of patriots in the territory temporarily occupied by the enemy. New, with a few exceptions, are materials on the development of cities and especially villages in the post-war period up to the present day.
"The history of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR" is also significant in that it provides specific information about the work of local party, Komsomol, trade union and other public organizations, Councils. These data help to reveal more deeply the many-sided activities of the Communist Party and the Soviet authorities in guiding the development of the economy and culture, reconstructing settlements, raising the welfare and improving the way of life of the people, and educating a new, Soviet person. The volumes tell about thousands of active participants in the revolutionary events, heroes of the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars, communists and non-partisans-active participants in the socialist transformation of cities and villages of the republic, the leaders of industrial and agricultural production of our days, the best representatives of the local intelligentsia 13 . Each volume contains from 4 to 6 thousand surnames, among which many are still unknown or undeservedly forgotten. Working on the history of cities and villages in some cases allows us to more accurately show certain events that have not been sufficiently studied so far, and to determine the fate of individual people.
The idea of friendship between the peoples of the Soviet country and proletarian internationalism, the triumph of Lenin's national policy, runs through all the essays on cities and villages. In the essays on the history of cities and villages, the main attention is focused on numerous facts of the manifestation of the friendship of the Ukrainian people with the Russian and other fraternal peoples of the Soviet Union. Much attention is also paid to the international relations of the workers of Ukraine with the workers of socialist countries, as well as with the peoples of the whole world.
In the process of creating and preparing volumes for publication, many problems arose, the correct solution of which required discussion, caused heated disputes and discussions, and generated a lively exchange of views. One of them, for example, is the problem of the correlation between general historical and specific material, that is, questions of the history of the republic and the whole country as a whole, and specific data in essays on settlements. Each author tries to show the history of his locality in an indissoluble connection with the socio-political and socio-economic processes that took place and are taking place in Ukraine and throughout the country. This desire is quite natural, but the trouble is that it is sometimes not able to correctly combine the general and the particular. It is not uncommon for authors, instead of studying sources in depth in order to find the necessary material, to resort to filling in "white spots" with general phrases or retelling events that took place on the territory of the region, but did not directly relate to the described locality. And this entails frequent repetition of general information in essays.
What measures are being taken to address this issue? When preparing volumes for publication, the Main Editorial Board recommends that historical events of all-union and republican proportions should be presented first of all in a regional essay, moreover, briefly and concisely, paying main attention to the manifestations of this event in the history of this region, and in essays on cities and villages, referring to the information given in the regional report.
13 See G. K. Makarenko, I. P. Chepyga. Coverage of the activities of prominent people in the essays "History of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR". "Український історичний журнал", 1966, N 9.
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when writing a characterization essay, focus on local events and specific facts. If a local event had an impact on the historical development of the republic or the entire country (for example, the Pereyaslavl Rada), the regional essay describes its significance, and the essay about the locality reveals its history in detail (in this case, the essay about Pereyaslavl-Khmelnitsky). When covering events that took place throughout the country (the abolition of serfdom, the revolution of 1905-1907, the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Civil War, the construction of socialism, the Great Patriotic War, etc.), the main attention is paid to specific local events in order to give the reader a more complete picture of the situation on the basis of a single one. in general.
An important place is also occupied by the problem of selecting facts. It is known that few people have studied the history of many of the so-called deep villages in detail, and the archives contain fragmentary, often unrelated information about them. And the author often spent months trying to piece together this fragmentary information. When preparing a volume and accepting it from the regional Editorial Board, the Main Editorial Board requires that each fact be carefully verified. The essay should be a single whole, and the facts and events reflected in it should be interrelated 14 . Every thought, every line of the essay aims to give the reader a complete picture of the historical development of this locality, to show by concrete examples that the decisive force of society is the people, that only socialism has brought complete emancipation and real freedom to man.
Showing the socialist transformations on the pages of the publication occupies a central place. In the essays of the volumes, you can read how revolutionary committees and Soviets were created in localities, how the workers defended Soviet power, restored the national economy, built factories and factories, and created collective farms. But the focus of each essay is on the simple worker. What the Soviet government brought him, how it changed his life and consciousness-this is the question that the author must first answer. And the published volumes are rich in vivid facts that testify to the transformations that radically changed the social and personal life of the working people of the republic due to the implementation of Lenin's national policy. They tell not only about the old Bolsheviks, heroes of the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars, leaders of production and figures of science and culture, but also describe in detail the changes in the lives of many ordinary families, especially those who were poor and destitute before the Soviet regime. For example, in the volume" Chernivtsi region", in the essay" Kamenka", the reader will find information about the family of a former poor man T. K. Pantsyr. During the years of Soviet power, his eldest son became a teacher of literary history at the University of Chernivtsi, the second son and daughter graduated from this university. The third son, having received a construction specialty, continued to study at the Kuibyshev Civil Engineering Institute, and now is the chief engineer of the trust. T. K. Pantsyr's second daughter works as a zootechnician in her native village. The younger sons, having mastered the specialty of a turner, continue their studies at universities - at the Faculty of Journalism of the Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv and at the Kharkiv Law Institute. There are dozens of such examples in the essays. They are a clear evidence of not-
14 For some questions concerning the preparation of historical essays and references about individual localities, see: G. K. Makarenko. Writing brief information about the centers of rural councils of the Ukrainian SSR. "Український історичний журнал", 1965, N 4; А. А. Парасунько, В. С. Петренко. Basic requirements for writing a historical essay about a locality. "Radyansk school", 1965, N 8, etc.
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the tired concern of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government for ordinary workers.
Of particular interest are already published volumes devoted to the history of cities and villages in the western regions of Ukraine - Transcarpathian, Chernivtsi, Volyn and Lviv. They summarize for the first time the history of these areas on the basis of Marxist - Leninist methodology.
Special attention should be paid to such an important issue as highlighting the leadership role of the Communist Party. After all, all the achievements in building a new life are directly, by thousands of threads, connected with the work of the party organizations of the regions. However, taking into account that in Ukraine the publication of essays on the history of the party organization of each region is coming to an end, the Main Editorial Board recommended that the author's teams cover in their essays first of all the issues of the leadership of party organizations in the economic, social and ideological life in the region. The essay should show how the party organization was created, the time of its creation, its composition, its specific activities, and its role in mobilizing the masses to gain power, ensuring victory over the enemies of the revolution, building socialism, and organizing the defense of the socialist Fatherland from enemies .15
It is well known how much damage Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists have done to historical science. In their numerous "studios", articles and essays, they tried at all costs to "prove" that Kievan Rus was only a Ukrainian power, that Vygovsky, Doroshenko, Mazepa and others like them were "fighters for Ukraine", that the Ukrainian nation was bourgeois, that the revolution in 1917 was brought to Ukraine Bolsheviks from Russia, etc. These writings may not mislead the Soviet reader today, but many foreign Ukrainians are still forced to use them. In this regard, when preparing the "History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR", another problem arose - to show the general public of Ukrainian origin living in Europe and America, 16 the true face of all those who are protected by nationalists, as well as themselves. Therefore, the volumes of the publication, and first of all those devoted to the western regions of Ukraine, tell about the anti-national essence of bourgeois nationalism, about how nationalists served the German fascists, tried to harm the cause of restoring the national economy in the first post-war years. The volumes name many of those who died at the hands of nationalist bandits, tell how the memory of the fighters against the worst enemies of the Ukrainian people - bourgeois nationalists-is preserved. Every line about the interaction between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, about the help of fraternal peoples in the struggle for the liberation of Ukraine from social and national oppression, about the cooperation of the fraternal peoples of the Soviet Union in building socialism and communism, protecting the revolutionary gains from the encroachments of German fascism, supported by irrefutable facts, exposes the lies of nationalist ideologists. It should be noted that even before the first volumes of the History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR appeared, Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists abroad tried to denigrate this publication, predicting its failure in advance. As the volumes were published, foreign nationalist newspapers and magazines began to publish the following articles:-
15 L. V. Oleynik's special article "On the coverage of the activities of Party organizations in essays on the history of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR"is devoted to this important problem. "Український історичний журнал", 1966, N 3.
16 This public is informed about the publication of the volumes "History of Cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR". See, for example, "History of Ukraine" (publication of the Society for Cultural Relations with Ukrainians Abroad), 10. X. 1969.
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There are many "reviews", if they can be called that, which falsify the facts of the history of Ukraine, put forward unsubstantiated claims about the alleged economic "backwardness" of the republic's cities and villages, about "disregard" for the historical past, etc .Such fabrications are characteristic of the bourgeois-nationalist press. 17
A fundamentally different assessment of the "History of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR" was given by the Soviet press. The published volumes (with the exception of those just published) received extensive reviews. The first volume, dedicated to the Kharkiv region, was reviewed in Pravda, which gave it a high rating. At the same time, in connection with the preparation of the entire publication, it was noted: "The ongoing publication" Histories, Towns and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR "is a vivid chronicle of the great transformations on the Ukrainian land" 18 . Izvestia newspaper also published an article promoting the publication "History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR" 19 . The following republican newspapers regularly publish reviews of published volumes: "Radyanska Ukraina", "Pravda Ukrainy", "Robitnycha Gazeta", as well as the regional press 20 . All the published volumes received a positive assessment, pointing out their great educational and educational value and that they contain extensive, basically new factual material that characterizes all aspects of the life of the working people of the republic in the past and present. The reviews also emphasized that the history of cities and villages is an important tool for party and Soviet workers, propagandists and lecturers. At the same time, some shortcomings were noted, and suggestions were expressed. The main Editorial Board strives to take into account all these comments and suggestions in order to make each subsequent volume more interesting and informative.
The assessment of the history of cities and villages as an important educational and cognitive factor is also confirmed by the fact that the interest in the publication from a wide range of readers exceeded all expectations. Out of 15 thousand copies. the circulation of each volume is not less than 12 thousand copies for the region, the history of cities and villages to which it is dedicated. A great demand for published volumes is shown by bookselling organizations for foreign countries. Interest in the publication is shown not only in the implementation of its circulation. The main Editorial Board, department and editorial office of the History of cities and Villages of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and the Main Editorial Office of the UE receive many letters expressing a positive opinion about the publication. "We, the red pathfinders, Komsomol members and pioneers of the Medyanitsa school in Transcarpathia," says one of these letters, " ask you to inform us about which areas the volumes of the History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR have already been published, so that we can purchase them, as they contain extremely valuable material for us, collectors". At the same time, the authors of many letters make their suggestions and suggestions, mainly in terms of a more in-depth disclosure of the history of individual cities and villages, and cite many interesting facts that have not been revealed.-
17 The level of the vast majority of these "reviews" is so low that their analysis is not interesting. Thus, the magazine Suchasnist (Munich), stating that the "History of Cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR ""has nothing in common with history", tries to "support" this thesis, to put it mildly, with a ridiculous statement, according to which only 5% of the text of the published volumes is devoted to the period before 1917, and 95% is devoted to the period before 1917. - the Soviet period (1968, No. 5, page 107). It is enough to read any of the volumes to see that this is a lie. At the same time, there is hardly any hope that the Munich reviewer will understand the significance of the history of the Soviet era, truly heroic, liberating and creative, in the life of the Ukrainian people, as well as all the fraternal peoples of the USSR.
18 Pravda, 6. II. 1968.
19 Izvestia, 15. VIII. 1969.
20 См., например, "Радянська Україна", 25.VII.1967, 14.XI.1969, 21.V.1970; Вільна Україна" (Львов), 15.IX.1968; "Зоря" (Днепропетровск), 18.XI.1969, и др.
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essays on the subject. And such letters come not only from Ukrainian cities and villages. Thus, I. M. Rodionov from Riga writes about the need to show the revolutionary struggle in the Cherkasy region more deeply, and Colonel N. M. Grechanyuk from Moscow makes a proposal to cover the naval history and the exploits of the heroes of the fleet more widely. Such letters - and there are many of them - show that "The History of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR" has gained an all-Union audience.
The work on creating a multi-volume history of cities and villages developed in the republic had a great impact on the development of local lore. The general public's interest in local history has noticeably increased. Suffice it to say that simultaneously with the preparation of volumes, the production of local lore literature, in particular local history, by central and inter-regional publishing houses has significantly increased. Thus, if in 1964 85 titles of local lore and tourist literature were published in the republic, then in 1970 about 180 titles were published, and their circulation increased 8 times during this time and reached almost 2 million copies in 1970. At the same time, the subject of local history publications has expanded and improved, in particular, the number of essays on the history of individual localities, including villages, has increased, and the level of publications has increased.
The work on this publication was an incentive to create museums on a voluntary basis in cities and villages, industrial enterprises and collective farms, in higher and secondary specialized educational institutions, and in schools. In the middle of 1970, there were 4,733 folk museums in the republic, including over 3,000 in rural areas. Many of them are very interesting in terms of the richness of materials and the depth of development of the topic. Folk museums are very popular 21 . The study of local history, the activation of the local history movement and the subsequent establishment of the Republican Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments in 1966 focused public attention on historical and cultural monuments .22 All of them are registered, their protection and popularization have improved.
Undoubtedly, the work on the history of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR has had a positive impact on the cadres of university teachers and school teachers, employees of archives, museums, libraries. In the process of collecting materials for essays, compiling a bibliographic apparatus, the level of knowledge of all participants in the creation of the history of cities and villages increased. Most of them, especially teachers who previously had no research experience, have acquired it to some extent, and this contributes to improving the level of teaching history in universities and schools. It is equally important that school teachers, lecturers, propagandists and agitators have received a huge amount of factual material on local history, which they use in history lessons in schools, in speeches to workers. For the first time in the practice of library work, rural libraries have created corners on the history of their native village and region, where relevant literature is selected, and bibliographic indexes are available. Materials and essays on the history of the village are usually kept there in a larger volume than those placed in volumes or not included in the publication at all.
Thus, the "History of cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR", the popular nature of its preparation received a wide response in the republic,
21 For more information, see G. M. Shevchuk and S. Vasilenko. About organization of work of national museums of Ukraine. "Український історичний журнал, 1969, N 4; см. также В. Петренко. National museums of military glory in Ukraine. "Military-historical journal", 1968, N 9.
22 See I. V. Romanovsky. Organization of the Republican Voluntary Society for the protection of Historical and Cultural monuments. "Український історичний журнал", 1965, N 10; С. О. Рогушин. Plenary session of the Republican Organizing Committee of the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments. Ibid., 1966, No. 11.
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they stimulated the rise of the local lore movement, contributed to a noticeable increase in the interest of workers in history in general and local history in particular. All this, taken together, as well as other positive results of the work on the publication, is an important contribution to the ideological, educational, political and mass work carried out in the republic, to the education of Soviet people, especially young people, in the spirit of Soviet patriotism, based on the revolutionary, labor and military traditions of the Communist Party and the Soviet people. This is one of the main tasks that all those working on the multi-volume "History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR"strive to solve. The creation and publication of its first 2 volumes, the successful preparation of the remaining ones, is the result of a community of professional historians and many thousands of history lovers. When preparing the publication, it was possible to find the right solution to the problem of combining the work of a huge group of local historians and historians on a voluntary basis and ensure the appropriate scientific level of the publication.
At the same time, the Main Editorial Board sees the shortcomings that occur in the organization of the preparation and publication of volumes, as well as in the content of essays and references, and strives to ensure that each subsequent volume is higher in its scientific level, more interesting in content than the previous ones.
The main drawbacks include, first of all, the fact that not all regions were able to correctly identify the list of rural localities for writing essays about them. Due to poor knowledge, and in some cases simply ignorance of the history of individual villages, the list for preparing essays included such localities in the history of which there was nothing particularly vivid or instructive. At the same time, many localities that are certainly interesting for their history have been overlooked by the editorial boards of the volumes.
A significant drawback of a number of essays is also chronological and thematic gaps. This is due, on the one hand, to the difficulties of finding factual material in small settlements, which are mostly villages and urban - type settlements, and on the other hand, to the lack of necessary information caused by the huge losses of archival materials in the past and especially during the Great Patriotic War. In addition, in some cases, editorial boards and authors did not use all available opportunities to identify data both in the literature and in archives.
Lack of essays and some monotony in the sense of literary and linguistic design, repetition of individual facts, inaccuracies in the presentation of certain events, overload, especially when covering the history of the post-war period, an excessive number of figures, often secondary, surnames, dates, without which it would be possible to do without.
The Main Editorial Board and editorial boards of volumes, the department and editorial office of the History of cities and villages of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and the Main Editorial Office of the UE do everything possible to eliminate these and other shortcomings. In particular, it is mandatory to discuss essays before submitting them to the press in district party committees and at workers ' meetings. Links to sources are checked. Essays are pre-reviewed by specialist historians. All this, of course, gives positive results, but it has not yet been possible to completely eliminate all the shortcomings in the preparation of the publication.
Collective discussions with the most reputable research institutions should be of great help in this regard. Back in June 1966, the Bureau of the History Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences adopted a resolution approving the work on the preparation of the "History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR" and noting the need for further study.
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discussions of published volumes. A meeting of the Academic Council of the Institute of the History of the USSR of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in July 1970, dedicated specifically to the publication "History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR", was of great importance. In preparation for this meeting, a commission was set up, which carefully reviewed the progress of work on the publication and issued its opinion. Speakers at the Academic Council (acad. I. I. Mints, corresponding member. P. A. Zhilin, M. P. Kim, A. M. Samsonov, P. V. Volobuev, as well as D. A. Kovalenko, M. M. Ulashchik, E. I. Druzhinina, and others) made valuable suggestions aimed at further improving the publication and more extensive coverage of issues of sociology, life history, and culture. In its resolution, the Academic Council pointed out the important scientific and socio-political significance of the publication and noted the need for broad and systematic popularization and promotion of the experience of its creation.
What are the prospects for further development and release of the remaining volumes? According to the plan, all the author's work on the remaining volumes should be completed in the first half of 1971, and the publication of the entire series - in 1973. It is also planned to summarize the results of all the work on the publication, compile a brochure that will analyze all aspects and aspects of what has been done so that the rich experience gained by the many thousands of creators of the History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR becomes the property of the general scientific community.
Forty years ago, A. M. Gorky, who initiated the creation of the "History of Factories and Factories" with the active participation of the broad working masses, wrote: "We need to study our reality in its entirety, we need to know by sight all our factories and factories, all the enterprises, all the work on the construction of the state. It is necessary to know in detail and comprehensively everything that we have inherited from the past and everything that has been created... " 23 . These words fully apply to the tasks that a hundred-thousand-strong team of historians and local historians sets for themselves, creating a multi-volume "History of Cities and villages of the Ukrainian SSR" on a voluntary basis. The pages of the volumes of this publication not only resurrect the past of the Ukrainian people, their heroic struggle against invaders and exploiters, but also tell about the world-historical victories of the peoples of the USSR, achieved thanks to the implementation of the precepts of the great Lenin, implemented by the Communist Party.
23 A.M. Gorky. Collected works. In 30 volumes, vol. 26, Moscow, 1953, p. 143.
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