Finding History Online: Highlights from Digital Archives for Ukrainian History

by Emma Friedlander, HUSI 2021

Emma FriedlanderOn top of immersing myself in Ukrainian for Reading Knowledge this summer, I also began compiling a resource guide on open access digital sources for Ukrainian history. This project is overseen by HURI director Serhii Plokhii and Petro Jacyk Bibliographer for Ukrainian Collections Olha Aleksic. It is only getting started, and in the first couple weeks of research I have merely scratched the surface of what the internet has to offer for sources in Ukrainian history. Nonetheless, even that first scratch has revealed astonishing source bases that I never imagined existed – let alone for free, online, and without need for an institutional login. 

In this post I highlight three digital archives and collections for research in Ukrainian history. It was difficult to pick only three from my initial findings. I am anxious to discover what further research will reveal, and I look forward to seeing the final research guide available online. 

This project and similar ones were largely inspired by the Covid pandemic’s limitation on access to physical archives. However, despite this immediate need, I think that guides to open access online sources for history are incredibly important beyond this strange time. Such guides make primary sources available to everyone regardless of their institutional affiliation, academic level, or location in the world. After all, history is for everyone. 

Unique Documents of the National Archive Collection (Унікальні документи Національного архівного фонду) by the State Archival Service of Ukraine 

Birch Document

 

This site brings together the most rare and interesting historical documents from across Ukraine’s national and local archives. The 440-document collection spans nine centuries, from the final years of Kyivan Rus to the formation of independent Ukraine. I was especially in awe at scans of the oldest existing written artifacts in Ukrainian history – three letters written on birch tree bark that date from the early 12th century. The physical fragments are kept at the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv, but their digitization allows curious people around the world to witness history that otherwise seems out of reach. 

At first glance, the documents look like nothing more than scraps of bark. Closer inspection reveals early Cyrillic scrawl and, on one fragment, a miniature drawing of a human bust. One of these letters is complete enough to have been identified as a letter from one Govenova to one Nezhych in Zvenyhorod, demanding repayment for a debt. These archaic documents put me in awe of the literal different forms that archival documents can take, and of the incredible breadth of Ukraine’s history. As a historian of the modern era, I was also reminded of my luck in dealing with sources that are typewritten and not etched into tree bark. 

Digital Oral History Archive “Transformation of Civil Society: Oral History of Ukrainian Peasant Culture, 1920s-1930s” by the Center for Research on Ukrainian Heritage 

Rural Oral History Project peasant picture

 

My initial dive into online open access sources for Ukrainian history has revealed a huge number of oral history collections. Most of these collections center recent history, such as the Chernobyl oral history archive, the Ukrainian Catholic University’s oral histories on the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory’s interviews on the country’s post-Soviet revolutions. However, I found one collection of voices that speaks to a century-old history. “Transformation of Civil Society: oral history of Ukrainian peasant culture, 1920s-30s” comprises interviews with 126 peasants who experienced the collectivization of the eastern and central Ukrainian countryside. The interviews were recorded by researchers between 1993 and 1995. Although the researchers were interested in the effects of political and economic policy, the resulting interviews are about individual lives. The large number of women interviewed allows insight into women’s lives and expectations in the early Soviet period, while search filters let the listener sort subjects by region, oblast, and village. The recordings are not accompanied by transcriptions on the site, so your listening skills may be tested. It is worth it, however, to put literal human voices to a historical phenomenon often interpreted through data and statistics. 

“Ukrainica” Digital Library 

Screenshot of Ukrainica website

 

If you’re looking for a one-stop-shop for sources from all eras, topics, creators, and regions in Ukrainian history, you probably can’t do better than the Ukrainica digital library. The database brings together all sorts of archival, manuscript, and printed sources pertaining to Ukrainian history, culture, politics, literature, economics, and more from both Ukraine and abroad. There’s so much to this treasure trove that it’s impossible to summarize its contents or even choose just a few highlights. In my initial perusal, I’ve been struck by everything from 19th-century collections of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar folktales to regional census books to a 1991 booklet on Kyiv’s Dynamo soccer team. you are first figuring out a research topic or getting an idea of what’s out there, Ukrainica is a great place to start. It’s also an easy way to while away the hours discovering sources in Ukraine history and culture that you never imagined existed – so maybe avoid the site ahead of a big deadline.