The object of the study is the progress of Ukrainian historical science in the first half of the 20th century, and the subject is the figure of the scholar V. Zaikyn and his intellectual work in the field of historiography and church history. The aim of the dissertation is to comprehensively reconstruct V. Zaikyn's biography and clarify his contribution to the study of Ukrainian historiography and the history of religion and the church in Ukraine. The research tasks consist of assessing the state of research on the topic, reconstructing the scholar's life, clarifying his worldview, and analyzing studies on church history and historiography.
The first section examines the theoretical and methodological basis of the work. It analyzes the state of scientific research on the topic and the source material, taking into account the memoirs, correspondence, and publications of V. Zaikyn, as well as archival documents. The use of a comprehensive methodological approach is justified—a combination of biographical, historical-systemic, prosopographic, and intellectual-historical methods. It has been found that there have been no thorough specialized works that comprehensively cover the biography and work of the historian. Thus, it has been established that the figure of V. Zaikyn and his intellectual legacy, which is still poorly represented in the historiographical understanding of the scientific discourse of that era, has not undergone a systematic intellectual and historical reconstruction of his personality and views.
The second section of the work is devoted to the chronological reconstruction of V. Zaikyn’s biography. It was found that the “Kharkiv” period (studying at the gymnasium and Kharkiv University) laid the foundation for his scientific interests in the field of state law and history. Family upbringing, especially the influence of his mother, instilled in him respect for religion and moral values, which formed a further attraction to church-historical topics. The period of work in the Kuban deepened V. Zaikyn’s awareness of the role of the Ukrainian factor in “Southern Russian” history. The “Warsaw” stage of his activity was characterized, at the same time, by intensive scientific work and ideological conflicts with various émigré circles: V. Zaikyn actively published, taught, corresponded with representatives of various groups of the intelligentsia, mainly émigrés. It was in Warsaw that he reached intellectual maturity, striving to develop his own methodological position – a synthesis of Ukrainian state-building thinking with Christian ethics. Moving to Lviv in 1929 opened up new opportunities: V. Zaikyn established cooperation with the Galician Ukrainian and Polish intelligentsia and local periodicals, but his Orthodox worldview and Slobozhan origin caused misgivings among some Galician intellectuals. In Lviv, V. Zaikyn earned a master's degree in philosophy (defending a dissertation on the situation of the slave population in the Ruthenian lands), but after the Sovietization of Galicia in 1939, he was arrested and died in a Chernihiv NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) prison in 1941.
The third section covers V. Zaikyn's scientific interests in church history. It has been established that he reevaluated traditional historical narratives of the Christianization of Rus: he studied in detail the activities of Princess Olga and Volodymyr the Great, emphasizing the role of both Western and Eastern Christian influences on Kievan Rus. V. Zaikyn was the first to clearly distinguish the concept of “conciliarity” — the equal participation of clergy and laity in church life — and differentiated between its normative and factual components. he concluded that the excessive expansion of the “elective principle” and the arbitrary participation of lay people often led to a decline in church discipline and other crises.
The fourth section is devoted to the historiographical studies of V. Zaikyn. It is established that he was one of the first among Ukrainian émigré historians to systematically analyze the development of national historical thought after the 1917 revolution, identifying the main schools – the ‘Narodniks’, the new statist movement and intermediate positions between them. He critically assessed the memoir sources of the period of the Ukrainian revolution, noting the party involvement of many authors, but he favorably perceived those texts that reflected the most objective and holistic picture of the era. A significant part of his legacy is made up of professional reviews and overviews of Polish, French and Ukrainian studies on the problems of religious and political history. V. Zaikyn not only assessed the quality of the reviewed works, but also promoted new methodological approaches to study and recognized the innovative results of his colleagues.
