Ukraïns’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal
Ukraïns’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal («Український історичний журнал»; Ukrainian Historical Journal, or УІЖ; UIZh). An organ of the Institute of the History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, published in Kyiv bimonthly from 1957 to 1964, monthly (1965–92), and bimonthly again since the 1994. Its chief editors have been Fedir Shevchenko (1957–67, 1968–72), Kuzma Dubyna (1967), Pavlo Kalenychenko (1972–9), Yurii Kondufor (1979–88), Mykhailo Koval (1988–94), and Valerii Smolii (since 1995).
During the Soviet period UIZh was the only historical journal in Ukraine, and it was in some ways the republican version of several Moscow-based historical journals, including Voprosy istorii, Istoriia SSSR, Voprosy istorii KPSS, and Vestnik drevnei istorii. A great deal of space in UIZh was given to Communist Party (CP) history, and comparatively little to the history of Ukraine. The journal mainly addressed the Soviet period and socioeconomic history and the workers’ movement during the 19th and 20th centuries, and only marginally discussed the Cossack pwriod and the history of Ukrainian culture. The Princely era was almost totally excluded from UIZh, and minimal attention was paid to world history. All the published material adhered ideologically and conceptually to Marxism-Leninism, and the policies of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) were strictly followed on national politics in Ukraine. During the 1960s there were attempts to broaden the scope of the journal and to rehabilitate the proscribed historical past, but those efforts were soon halted. Only a few prerevolutionary historians (Oleksander Lazarevsky, Dmytro Yavornytsky, Aleksandra Yefymenko, Mykhailo Drahomanov, and a few others) were partially accepted in the officially recognized historiography. The decade also saw a first partial attempt at rehabilitating the legacy of Mykhailo Hrushevsky—in the 1966 article by Fedir Shevchenko ‘Chomu Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi povernuvsia na Radians'ku Ukraїnu?’ [Why did Mykhailo Hrushevsky return to Soviet Ukraine?]. In the mid-1970s UIZh came under severe CP restrictions, and a purge was carried out among the members of the editorial board and in the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.
UIZh marked the great historical event of the millennium of the Christianization of Ukraine with only one article, by Mykola Kotliar on the introduction of Christianity in Rus’ (1988, no. 6). The reforms of the perestroika period that began in 1985 had some slight effect on the journal’s orientation and contents (eg, the reprinting of Mykola Kostomarov’s monograph Mazepa or the contradictory data on the Holodomor of 1932–3 in Ukraine), but the journal continued until the demise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to espouse a conservative, dogmatic Communist Party line and publish a minimal amount on the history of Ukraine.
The situation changed in the early 1990s, when UIZh finally begun to reflect new trends in historiography of Ukraine and explore topics that hitherto had been silenced or distorted, such as the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–20, Stalinist Terror and the Famine-Genocide of 1932–3, and the Ukrainian nationalist resistance during the Second World War. Since then, Ukraine’s leading historians of different generations have published their original research in UIZh in the variety of areas including Kyivan Rus’ and the Great Duchy of Lithuania (Mykola Kotliar, Volodymyr Rychka, Oleksii Tolochko, Olena Rusina, Tetiana Vilkul, Vitalii Mykhailovsky), Ukraine in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Vira Frys, Vasyl Ulianovsky, Natalia Starchenko, Olena Dziuba, Natalia Bilous, Valerii Zema, Andrii Blanutsa, Volodymyr Polishchuk, Dmytro Vyrsky), the Cossack period (Valerii Smolii, Yurii Mytsyk, Valerii Stepankov, Oleksandr Hurzhii, Taras Chukhlib, Yaroslav Fedoruk, Viktor Horobets, Serhii Lepiavko, Petro Sas, Andrii Bovhyria, Volodymyr Masliichuk), Ukraine in the Russian Empire and Austrian Empire (S. Borysevych, Valentyna Shandra, Ihor Hyrych, Oleksandr Donik), the struggle for independence (1917–20), Stalinism, and Holodomor (Stanislav Kulchytsky, Ruslan Pyrih, Vasyl Marochko, Valerii Soldatenko, Yurii Shapoval, Tamara Vronska, Vladyslav Verstiuk, Hennadii Yefymenko, Liudmyla Hrynevych, Pavlo Hai-Nyzhnyk), the Ukrainian nationalist underground in the 1930s and 1940s (Ivan Patryliak, Oleksandr Zaitsev, Marta Havryshko), the Second World War (Viktor Korol, Mykhailo Koval, Oleksandr Lysenko, Vladyslav Hrynevych), and prerevolutionary and émigré historiography (Yurii Pinchuk, Volodymyr Potulnytsky, Oleksii Yas, Oleksandr Rubliov, Stepan Vidniansky, Ihor Verba, Oksana Yurkova). The journal has also published original documents, memoirs, and works of historians that were censored or banned during Soviet times (such as Mykola Kostomarov, Volodymyr Antonovych, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Andrii Yakovliv, Dmytro Doroshenko, Borys Krupnytsky, and Oleksander Ohloblyn).
The standard sections of UIZh include historical essays (‘Historical studies’), source studies, methodology, and the methods of historical research (‘Methodology. Historiography. Source studies’), documents (‘Publications’), discussions, annals and announcements (‘Chronicle’), criticism and bibliography (‘Reviews and Notes’), biographies (‘Personalities’), pedagogical advice (‘To Aid Lecturers in History’), and obituaries (‘In Memoriam’). With the onset of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, UIZh introduced a new regular section titled the ‘Russo-Ukrainian War.’ Systematic guides to UIZh were published for the periods 1957–66 (1968), 1967–76 (1982), 1977–86 (1987), 1987–2001 (2004), 2002–11 (2012), 2012–16 (2017), and 2017–21 (2022) and are available online (http://resource.history.org.ua/item/0013783).
The journal’s official website is http://uhj.history.org.ua/.
Serhiy Bilenky, Arkadii Zhukovsky
[This article was updated in 2025.]