Department of Ukrainian History and Ethnopolitics: Against the background of the era

In: Hrani: naukovo-teoretyčnyj alʹmanach, Band 21, Heft 10, S. 26-36

Abstract

The questions of creation and progress of the Department of Ukrainian History and Ethnopolitics of the Oles Honchar Dnipro National University. It was found out that it was created in 1938 as a department of Marxism-Leninism. At the beginning of its existence, the department operated as a general university, consisting of a small group of teachers, representatives of a new generation of educators who were practiced as professional historians already in Soviet times. Despite the rigid ideological dictatorship of the ruling party, the existing methodological monism, the staff of the department in the postwar period duly fulfilled tasks in the field of organization of teaching, methodological and educational work. It is also noted that since the end of the 1970s, the research activity of the unit has become much more active. This was manifested in the formation of prof. A. Chernenko is a powerful scientific school for the study of political emigration. It was emphasized that during the Soviet period the department changed its name several times (history of the CPSU, political history), but the distinctive features of its employees remained: professionalism, high responsibility, competence, decency. Following the proclamation of Ukraine's independence, the department (in 1992) received the title of Ukrainian history and ethnopolitics and was transformed into an integral part of the historical faculty of the State Duma. In turn, the main line in the teaching staff of the early twenty-first century. becomes adaptation to the requirements of the credit-module system, a thorough restructuring of the entire educational process, associated with the teaching of the course «History and Culture of Ukraine». At the same time, the transformation of the theoretical and methodological tools of the scientific and pedagogical staff of the department takes place, and the subject field of their scientific studies is expanding considerably. The latter is mainly connected with the study of the activities of political parties and civic organizations of different ideological directions, problems of Ukrainian state formation, peculiarities of the formation of industrial society in the Ukrainian lands. At the current difficult stage of development of higher education in Ukraine, the department remains an organic structural subdivision of the Oles Gonchar DNU and, together with the entire teaching staff of the university, is looking for new opportunities for activating all spheres of its activity.