Outstanding Alumni of Karazin University: Historian, Academician Vladyslav Buzeskul

Vladyslav Buzeskul was a Ukrainian historian of antiquity, historiographer, and public figure.

He was born into the family of a serviceman in the Popivka village (now Kharkiv region). He graduated from the Second Kharkiv Gymnasium with a gold medal. During 1876–1880, he studied at the School of History and Philology of Kharkiv University.

From the 1885/1886 academic year, he began teaching at the University.

Vladyslav Buzeskul defended his master’s dissertation on Pericles in 1889, and his doctoral dissertation on Aristotle’s Athenian Politics in 1895. In 1890, he became an extraordinary professor of world history. He soon became an ordinary professor at Kharkiv University, and in 1895, after defending his doctoral dissertation, he received the title of ordinary professor at Kharkiv University.

The scientist studied the history of Ancient Greece, its political institutions, studied the antiquities of the Northern Black Sea region. He lectured on the history of Ancient Greece, modern history, world historiography, a special course «History of Athenian Democracy», and more. Over time, some lecture courses turned into monographs, including «Introduction to the History of Greece» and «History of Athenian Democracy». These scientific works were the first studies in world historiography of such magnitude and were repeatedly republished and translated into foreign languages.

After the reorganization of Kharkiv University in 1920, he taught at the Temporary Higher Pedagogical Courses, then at the Academy of Theoretical Knowledge and at the Kharkiv Institute of Public Education.

In 1910, Vladyslav Buzeskul was elected a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1922, he became an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1925 — an academician of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In 1926, the scientist was elected honorary chairman of the Historical and Ethnological Department of the All-Ukrainian Scientific Association of Oriental Studies.

In total, Vladyslav Buzeskul published more than 200 scientific works on history, source studies and historiography, which have not lost their significance to this day.

A street in Kharkiv, as well as one of the classrooms at the School of History of Karazin University, is named after Vladyslav Buzeskul.