Scientific and Pedagogical Activity of Konstantyn Voblyi at the Imperial University of St. Volodymyr

Abstract

In the article on the basis of published sources and archive materials a scientific and pedagogical activity of Professor Konstantyn Voblyi at the Imperial University of St. Volodymyr is analysed. The figure of famous Ukrainian economist-scientist Konstantyn Voblyi is of particular interest for modern researchers highlighting him as an economist, historian or ethnographer. At the same time it has been stressed in the article that mainly the time of Voblyi’s prosperity has been depicted in historiography, while the period of his forming as a scientist is underestimated. Besides, in the notes about Voblyi’s work at Kyiv University there exists an opinion that the main discipline of his teaching was political economy. In view of this, the subject of this article is Voblyi’s scientific and pedagogical activity at the time of his work at the University of St. Volodymyr in Kyiv under the conditions of the 1884 Statute. In the article a complex of sources is analysed on the year-to-year basis, which allowed to state that the main discipline of his teaching was statistics, which he had taught since 1909–1910 academic year. In the article documents dealing with two long-term internship trips of K. Voblyi have been studied, which let him come to know how statistics business was organized in Russian Empire and abroad. The attention has been paid to the fact that the scale of materials about statistics business in big scientific centers discovered by Kostantyn Voblyi was enormous. All this material was thoroughly gathered and used by the scientist in his future pedagogical and scientific work. The conclusion is made that University’s edition (“University News”) is a valuable source for studying Konstantyn Voblyi’s work at the educational entity. The perspective for further investigation may deal with the activity of Konstantyn Vobly’s followers and their input into the science.