Novak O. Standardizing the Professional Activity of Monument-Protection Workers in the Soviet Ukraine (1919 – the 1930s)

Novak O. Standardizing the Professional Activity of Monument-Protection Workers in the Soviet Ukraine (1919 – the 1930s). Qualifying scientific work: a manuscript. The dissertation for the Doctor of Philosophy’s degree, the 032 speciality – “History and Archeology”. – V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, Kharkiv, 2023. The dissertation is devoted to the study of prerequisites for the preparation and implementation of the legal framework that regulated the sphere of monument-protection activities in the Soviet Ukraine in 1919–1930s. The studying of these processes is carried out in the socio-cultural context, which made it possible to follow the influence of the "pivotal period" and the "Cultural Revolution" on society's attitude to the heritage of the past. The actual value of the topic is explained by the need for learning the features of the formation of the conceptual field and the processes of "professionalisation" of the activities of researchers of the historical and cultural heritage. The purpose of the study is to characterise the process of standardising the professional activity of monument-protection workers in the Soviet Ukraine in the period from 1919 to the 1930s. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time in historiography, it has been suggested using a discourse approach to consider the formation of the monument-protection conceptual field in the scientific environment of researchers of Ukrainian historical and cultural heritage and the debate on the identity of the Ukrainian treasures. This approach made it possible to establish the main turning points in the process of formation of the conceptual field and changes in the attitude to the concept of the originality and uniqueness of the material and spiritual culture of the Ukrainian people. The application of the modernist approach of deconstruction of ideas on traditions, introduced by E. Hobsbawm, enabled a new way of understanding of the process of formation of the stylistics of Ukrainian national-romantic modernism through the new "research treaties". In particular, the connection between the studying of national treasures and the development of the artistic decorative techniques of the artists of Naddniprianska and Western Ukraine at the beginning of the XX century has been proved. The methodological basis of the research is an interdisciplinary approach. General scientific and special scientific methods were used to study the features of the standardising the monument-protection activities in the Soviet Ukraine during the period of 1919–1930s. In order to study the process of preparation and implementation of measures for the preservation of historical and cultural heritage in the interwar Soviet Ukraine, the methods of sociology, psychology, law and certain interdisciplinary fields of humanitarian knowledge were applied. The conclusion has been made that standardising the monument-protection research activities by the state institutions is an essential element of the "professionalisation" of scientific activity and the creation of professional communities. Each of the communities, in addition to formal prescriptions, has the corresponding "professional ethics" of activity. The monument-protection workers in the Soviet Ukraine (1919 – 1930s) were no exception. In the special legal framework that regulated the protection of the historical, cultural and natural heritage of the Ukrainian Socialistic Soviet Republic, republican specificity can be traced. The relatively short period of "Corenisation"/"Ukrainisation" and partial liberalisation of the social and political life in the Soviet Ukraine had a clear correlation with the unprecedented intensification of the study of national heritage in the 1920s. According to the research, with the establishment of Stalin’s totalitarian regime and ideological control, the professional ethics of monument-protection intellectual community is "ousted" by the principle of expediency (by the state and ideological structures) and the estimated need for surviving (by the monument-protection research workers). The "Policy of memory" and "amnesia" implemented by the Stalin’s totalitarian regime in the wake of the "Cultural Revolution" and the "Great Terror" did not allow to preserve the objects of historical and cultural heritage and ethical norms of the intellectual community (partially implemented in the monument-protection legislation in the relatively liberal 1920s). The practical significance of the dissertation research is that its results can be used in the process of creating general works on the history of Ukraine, the history of the Ukrainian culture, in the process of preparing training manuals, developing educational and methodological complexes for higher educational institutions on the basis of monument-protection studies.