The object of the study is the personality of Mykola Arkas – the Ukrainian historian, composer, public and political figure. The subject of the study is the activity of Mykola Arkas in the field of the Ukrainian national and cultural revival. The purpose of the study is to analyze in objective, comprehensive and integrated way the cultural, scientific and educational, social and political activities and the works of Mykola Arkas, to study his place and role in the national and cultural life on the basis of processing the historical sources and achievements of historiography involved in scientific work. and the social and political life of society. Research results: for the first time, a considerable body of documentary materials on the Arkases’ ancestry and their contribution to the historical progress of Southern Ukraine has been involved in scientific circulation and comprehensively analyzed; the original sources of the funds of the State Archives of Lviv Oblast have been introduced into scientific circulation; the Arkas’s contribution to the development of Ukrainian historical thought has been analyzed. The thesis that Arkas’s “History of Ukraine-Rus” demonstrated the emergence of the statist direction in Ukrainian historiography and laid the foundation of neo-romanticism in the domestic historical science is proved. The Arkas’ biography, role of Arkas’s pedagogical and socio-educational activity in the awakening of human consciousness and activity, idea that it was Arkas who laid the groundwork for a thorough study of the past of the Ukrainian people and significantly helped develop the nation’s self-consciousness in the field of the Ukrainian national revival, pedagogical component of Arkas’s activities, in which a special place was occupied by the idea of harmonious human development and organic combination of mental, labour, moral, physical, and aesthetic education expressed by Arkas who tried to put this into practice of his school are specified and thoroughly analyzed. The practical significance of the thesis lies in the fact that conclusions, generalizations and recommendations can be used in writing generalizing and special works on the history of Ukraine and Nikolaev, the history of the educational movement, music and literature, textbooks, historical and regional studies, publication of collections of documents and materials, for preparation of lectures, training courses.
