History of the museum

Foundation

The M. F. Sumtsov Kharkiv Historical Museum traces its origins to the Museum of Sloboda Ukraine named after Hryhorii Skovoroda, established on 21 January 1920 through the reorganisation of Kharkiv’s network of museums.

It brought together the best collections of:

• the Museum of Fine Arts and Antiquities of the Imperial Kharkiv University (1835–1837);
• the Kharkiv City Art and Industry Museum (1886);
• the Ethnographic Museum of the Kharkiv Historical and Philological Society (1904).

The museum was housed in the building of the former Art and Industry Museum on Proletarska Square.

The museum of Sloboda Ukraine received the name of Hryhorii Skovoroda in 1922, on the 200th anniversary of the birth of the philosopher and educator.

At the origins of the Museum of Sloboda Ukraine stood an outstanding scholar, ethnographer, historian and public figure, Academician Mykola Fedorovych Sumtsov, widely known in Europe as a researcher of folk life and worldview. Mykola Sumtsov was the first director of the museum (1920–1922). He personally defined the museum’s structure, which included historical, art and ethnographic departments, and worked out the scholarly principles of its activity.

The priority of the museum’s work was the comprehensive “…study of Ukrainian folk life, above all local life, in all the reflections of its various spheres”. The scholar devised and introduced a special programme for collecting ethnographic materials in the Okhtyrka, Kharkiv, Izium and Starobilsk districts of Kharkiv Governorate, organised an expedition to Kursk Governorate, and studied and systematised the collections.

Expeditions under his leadership enriched the museum with old Ukrainian stove tiles, models of dwellings, a complete furnishing of the pokuttia (the corner of honour), folk dress, ritual breads, and examples of pottery, tanning, blacksmithing, goldsmithing and other crafts, as well as works of art. Sets of personal materials of famous cultural figures were assembled (Hryhorii Skovoroda, Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, Mykola Hohol, Yakiv Shchoholiv and others).

The basis of the art collection was the collection of paintings and sketches bequeathed by Serhii Ivanovych Vasylkivskyi. Its further growth was shaped by the regional character of the museum: the collections were mostly made up of works by Sloboda artists.

After the death of Mykola Sumtsov the museum was headed by his pupil and follower Raisa Serhiivna Dankivska. She tried to carry out her teacher’s unrealised plans. In May 1925 the First All-Ukrainian Local History Conference took place at the museum, urging museums to study the past and present of the region comprehensively. Ethnographic courses were set up at the museum, and the Society of Friends of the Museum of Sloboda Ukraine was created, whose active member was the well-known Ukrainian historian Dmytro Ivanovych Bahalii; the museum published a “Bulletin” with scholarly works on ethnography and reports on its activity. In 1929 the museum’s holdings numbered more than 21,000 items.

In the early 1930s most ethnographic institutions were wound down and scholarly staff were concentrated in the Institute of the History of Material Culture in Kyiv. From 1930 the Hryhorii Skovoroda Museum of Sloboda Ukraine was called the All-Ukrainian Historical Museum, later the Ukrainian State Historical Museum and finally the Kharkiv State Historical Museum.

On the eve of the Second World War the historical museum was one of the largest museums in Ukraine. Its holdings included more than 100,000 items: numerous archaeological and fine-art collections and many other monuments of the history and culture of Slobozhanshchyna. The museum employed experienced specialists such as the well-known archaeologist I. F. Levytskyi and the art historian N. L. Stolbina.

In the Second World War

The war dealt a very heavy blow to the collections of the Kharkiv Historical Museum: part of the items were lost during the Nazi occupation, and others suffered badly from bombing while the collections were being evacuated to Ufa (Bashkiria).

It was not possible to evacuate all the collections in time. Only two railway cars were provided to carry the collections of three museums — the Hryhorii Skovoroda Historical Museum, the Central Museum of the Revolution of the Ukrainian SSR and the Artem Museum of Local Lore — and they held only 22 crates (17 of them contained valuables of the historical museum). Items made of precious metals, collections of medals and coins, some ethnographic and archaeological collections, banners and valuable paintings were selected from the historical museum’s holdings for evacuation.

At the beginning of October 1941 (three weeks before the city fell) the train left Kharkiv, and on 10 October, at Oleksiivka station in Belgorod region, a direct hit by an aerial bomb completely destroyed one of the cars. The director of the historical museum, I. Yabluchnyk, and the director of the Museum of the Revolution, S. Kompaniiets, were killed. By order of the station commandant the museum items were gathered by soldiers of a fighter battalion, packed into 8 crates and sent to Ufa, where they stayed until 1944.

The fate of the collections left in Kharkiv was no less dramatic. From the very beginning of the occupation the collections that had not been evacuated suffered looting — both spontaneous, aimed at getting “souvenirs” to commemorate the capture of Kharkiv, and organised, by the working group of the Rosenberg Operational Staff, responsible for search and evacuation operations concerning archives, libraries and museums in the occupied territories.

The catastrophic state of the museums, without heating, electricity or security, required urgent measures from the occupation authorities. To ease all the pressing problems, in November 1941 the city administration merged the city’s four museums (historical, local history, anti-religious and the Museum of the Revolution) into one — the Museum of Slobozhanshchyna. Oleh Mykolaiovych Rudynskyi was appointed its director. The restoration of the city’s cultural life could become a sign of the population’s acceptance of the “new order”, so the local administration demanded that the museums open their exhibitions as soon as possible.

In conditions of cold, hunger and a lack of qualified staff this was not easy, but the few employees of the Museum of Slobozhanshchyna nevertheless completed the task within a short time, and on 14 December 1941 the exhibition of the nature department was opened in the building at 10 Universytetska Street. It introduced visitors to the past of our planet, ancient geological periods and the development of plant and animal life. A separate section presented a set of materials giving a full picture of the nature and climate of Slobozhanshchyna. The labels were in German and Ukrainian.

The conditions of the museum’s existence in the occupied city forced Oleh Rudynskyi to adapt its work to the demands of the new authorities. To serve German soldiers and officers better, German language classes were organised for the museum staff. He had to give the tours of the nature department himself, because he spoke German well. He often had to travel to German military units with lectures on the history of Ukrainian culture, which he accompanied with demonstrations of original items.

On 1 November 1942 the ceremonial opening of an archaeological exhibition took place in the premises of the former pedagogical institute at 33 Sumska Street, attended by representatives of the German command. Only Germans were allowed to visit it. They regarded its creation as an ideological action meant to prove the indisputable rights of the Germans to the territories occupied by the Gothic tribes in prehistoric times. It presented reconstructions of the most ancient animals, including mammoth bones, a Palaeolithic tool from the Hontsi site, a great deal of pottery and many other archaeological monuments obtained over decades by the expeditions of V. O. Horodtsov, O. S. Fedorovskyi, A. M. Pokrovskyi, V. Yu. Danylevych and V. O. Babenko.

In winter 1943 the course of the war changed radically against the occupiers, and they no longer visited the exhibition. On the night of 14 to 15 February 1943 the building housing the archaeological exhibition burned down. The items that survived were taken by museum staff to 10 Universytetska Street.

In August 1943, when the Germans retreated from Kharkiv, a large part of the ethnographic and fine-art materials of the 17th–20th centuries was taken away. During the German occupation of 1941–1943 the collections of Kharkiv’s museums suffered enormous, irreparable losses. The total number of destroyed items belonging to the historical and local history museums and the Museum of the Revolution exceeded 300,000 units.

The work of museum staff during the occupation was utterly selfless: they made heroic efforts to save their collections despite the threat of severe punishment from the occupiers and the prospect of being counted among the traitors who collaborated with the Germans. The fate of some of them was tragic.

The post-war period

In August 1943 Kharkiv was liberated from the Nazi occupiers, and as early as 28 September the decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR “On resuming the work of the historical museum in the city of Kharkiv” allowed this cultural and educational institution to continue its activity. The holdings of the Kharkiv State Museum of History and Local Lore included the collections of the former Central Museum of the Revolution of the Ukrainian SSR, the Hryhorii Skovoroda Historical Museum and the Artem Kharkiv Museum of Local Lore.

Intensive work began immediately to rescue the collections on the site of the burned archaeological exhibition (33 Sumska Street) and in the building of the Historical Museum (2 Proletarska Square). It continued from 1943 to 1945: a register of the surviving museum items was compiled, and they were systematised, described and partly attributed.

Other collections gradually returned to the museum, from both east and west. In autumn 1944 the surviving remains of the collection of precious-metal items, including many archaeological objects, were delivered from Ufa to Kharkiv (via Kyiv). In 1945 several museum items taken away by the occupiers, which Red Army soldiers had found in the town of Tsedinin (Brandenburg province), were returned to the museum. In 1945 the museum was given the exhibits of the Kharkiv Museum of the Great Patriotic War.

At that time the historical museum occupied the premises of the former bishop’s house and the shop of the Zhyrardiv Manufacture (8 and 10 Universytetska Street).

In 1950 the museum was renamed the Kharkiv State Historical Museum, and on 27 October 1965 the Kharkiv Historical Museum.

In the post-war years, thanks to the creative efforts of several generations of staff, the Kharkiv Historical Museum became one of the leading centres of museum work in Ukraine. A worthy representative of the glorious generation of Ukrainian museum workers of that period was Mykola Antonovych Voievodin, who worked at the Kharkiv Historical Museum for 37 years (1946–1983) and from 1948 until the end of his life was its director.

The museum’s activity was many-sided. The research staff carried out significant research, exhibition, collection-management and educational work. Under Mykola Voievodin’s leadership, scholarly acquisition of items characterising the Soviet period of the region’s history became important. This made it possible to create one of the first full-profile exhibitions on this subject in Ukraine, which was recognised by the public and museum specialists.

Other periods continued to be actively studied; scholarly expeditions regularly went to the old quarters of Kharkiv and districts of the region, during which, thanks to the persistent work of museum staff under the heads of departments Z. I. Briazkun and M. F. Umanskyi, sets of farming and industrial tools, household items and folk art were collected. It was in those years that valuable archaeological and ethnographic collections, relics of church antiquity and interesting monuments of the history and culture of Slobozhanshchyna joined the museum’s holdings. On that basis it became possible to create a full-profile exhibition of the museum covering all periods of history, as well as the exhibitions “To the Sources with Love” (Ethnography of Slobozhanshchyna), “Monuments of Church Antiquity of the 17th – early 20th Century”, “Open Storage” and “Mysterious Treasures”, which were of great importance for the spiritual revival of society.

The museum today

On 22 September 1992 the museum was transferred from state ownership to the joint ownership of the territorial communities of the villages, towns and cities of Kharkiv Oblast.

In 2003 the Regional State Municipal Institution Kharkiv Historical Museum was re-registered as the Regional Municipal Institution Kharkiv Historical Museum (certificate of re-registration of 9 October 2003).

In 1997–2003 the museum gradually moved from the buildings handed over to the restored Holy Protection Monastery to the building of the former pawnshop at 5 Universytetska Street.

During the years of Ukraine’s independence, thanks to the professional work of the museum’s staff, interesting museums appeared in the country’s museum network, such as the National Memorial Complex “Marshal I. S. Konev Height”, the Museum of the History of the Kharkiv Regional Branch of the National Bank of Ukraine, the Museum of Local Self-Government of Kharkiv Region and the Holodomor Victims Memorial Museum (Kharkiv Oblast).

In 2010 the museum’s staff was awarded the honorary distinction “Slobozhanska Slava” of the Kharkiv Regional Council for a significant contribution to the development of museum work and the preservation of the historical heritage of Kharkiv region.

On 18 June 2015 the museum was named after its founder and first director — Mykola Sumtsov.

Today the M. F. Sumtsov Kharkiv Historical Museum retains its importance as a research, methodological and cultural-educational centre of Kharkiv Oblast.

The museum’s staff devote a great deal of knowledge, experience and effort to preserving, expanding and promoting the cultural heritage of our people; to protecting and further professionally shaping the Museum Fund of Ukraine and the museum network; to keeping the museum’s communication space open; to the harmonious development of the individual in the modern multicultural world; and to forming a positive image of Kharkiv region and of Ukraine as a whole on the world stage.