Mashkevich S. Mashkevich. Kiev urban transport (end of XIX – beginning of XXI century): History of formation and functioning.

The author of the thesis has carried out a careful analysis of the available historiography on the chosen topic, with special attention paid to the completeness and reliability of factual information. Large gaps and a significant number of inaccuracies were identified. Conceptual questions, concerning the interaction between the development of the city and the functioning of urban transport; the role of transport as a new urban space; cooperation and conflicts between the city authorities, the transport enterprise and passengers — which had been put forward and studied in world historiography in relation to other cities, have been hereby formulated and studied for the first time in relation to Kiev, with its features of objective and subjective nature. The author has studied the history of formation and functioning of Kiev urban transport as a consolidated system, which, on the one hand, was subordinated to the needs of the city, on the other hand, possessed its internal development trends, and that development affected the processes in the city itself. The most significant features of the evolution of the transport system are: first, transformations, i.e., qualitative changes in the nature of the system itself, which become boundaries between the various stages of its development. In the case of Kiev city transport, the author has identified four such transformations, revealed their causes, essence and consequences. Second, feedback loops, which directly affects how the system responds to external factors. The present research has revealed the feedback loops that existed in the Kiev transport system in different historical periods and how specifically they affected the functioning of urban transport (and hence the city itself). An important feature of Kiev public transport during 1891–1918 was that the tram network in those years belonged to a private enterprise. The thesis analyzes in detail what positive and negative consequences this fact had for the city and its inhabitants, what conflicts it caused and how these conflicts were resolved.