Letters of Bohdan Khanenko From the Scientific Archive of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Abstract

The Scientific Archives of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine holds, among a large number of different archival materials, personal collections of archaeologists. In addition to other documents, many of these collections also contain correspondence which the scholars received from colleagues, friends, acquaintances and relatives.
The personal collections of Fedir Vovk (anthropologist, archaeologist, ethnographer, museologist), Vikentii Khvoika (discoverer and founder of Ukrainian archaeology, who identified several archaeological cultures and monuments) and Danylo Shcherbakivskyi (archaeologist, teacher, museum historian, art historian, artist, ethnographer, ethnologist) include a total of 76 letters, postcards and telegrams from Bohdan Khanenko (Ukrainian industrialist, philanthropist, art historian, collector, one of the founders of the Kyiv Art, Industry and Science Museum). These letters have never been published before and are unknown to a wide range of scholars.
The personal collection of F. K. Vovk contains 18 letters and two telegrams from Bohdan Khanenko, dated between April 14, 1899 and September 23, 1902, which is the earliest correspondence stored in the Scientific Archives. All correspondence was sent from Kyiv, with the exception of one telegram from Paris and one letter from Motovylivka (a station not far from Kyiv). Most of B. I. Khanenko’s letters to F. K. Vovk concern the publication of his collection Antiquities of Prydniprovia.
The largest number of letters is preserved in the personal collection of Vikentii Viacheslavovych Khvoika: a total of 51 letters with postcards and telegrams from Bohdan Ivanovych Khanenko, two letters, some of which are undated, from his secretary for 1904 and 1911, and one from his accountant. In 1905, while serving in the Red Cross Department for the evacuation of the sick and wounded in the Far East, Khanenko sent three postcards, one letter, and one short note in which he wrote that he hoped to return home soon. The majority of the correspondence concerns the Kyiv Museum, in particular the acquisition of collections and excavations, and there are also letters concerning the publication of the third volume of crosses and icons.
The smallest number of letters from B. I. Khanenko is preserved in the personal collection of D. M. Shcherbakivskyi, and consists of only three letters written by B. I. Khanenko at the time when he tried to persuade D. M. Shcherbakivskyi to return to Kyiv to work in the Museum, offering him a position at the Ministry of Trade and Industry in the educational department as a teacher, while also time proposing work in the Kyiv Museum. These letters were written in Saint-Petersburg and are dated from November 1909 to February 1910.