The second day of the VII International Youth Summer School of Islamic Studies - Islam and Social Development: History and Present Times - began by the workshop of the first section Islam and Muslims in Ukrainian Society. The schedule of reports and discussions was full of reports of both new lecturers and speakers that are already well-known by the School’s attendees. Among the speakers was candidate of Philological Sciences, a senior researcher of Ivan Franko National Museum of Lviv “Franko’s House”, Solomia Vivchar. The attendees of previous Schools were convinced that the conclusions of Ms. Vivchar’s studies were based on carefully scrutinized sources, on a very thoughtful analysis of the facts and materials presented by previous researchers, and also her conclusions are free of any speculation and garbling.
This time Solomiya Vivchar presented his scientific research - Development of Ukrainian Oriental and Islamic Studies and in the 20's of the 20th Century. This report will rightly find its place under the cover of the next release of Al-Kalam Journal along with materials, provided by the other members of the School. The scientist’s report was accompanied by a well-prepared video presentation.
Solomiya Vivchar stressed out on the fact that, in many respects, Ukrainian Oriental Studies significantly developed due to Ahatanhel Krymsky activities. All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was established in Kyiv, in 1918. Ahatanhel Krymsky, who actually was the chairman of the Academy in 1918 - 1928, opened a number of oriental institutions on its basis.
In the atheistic USSR, to make researches in Islamic Studies was possible only as a part of the Academic Science, and the study of Islam was carried out as one of the fields of the Oriental Studies.
In 1920s the Oriental School had been formed in Ukraine under the guidance of Krymsky, and included well-known scholars Arabists and Turkologists, among them Pavlo Loziev, Tymofii Hrunin, Taufik Kesma, Mykola Levchenko, as well as representatives of the Crimean Tatar people, Yakub Kemal and Osman Akchocrakli. Almost all of them were repressed by the Stalin’s regime; many of them were killed or shot in the 1930s.
In the modern Oriental studies, the activities of Ahatanhel Krymsky’s School still remain underexplored, and the works of its representatives have not yet been republished. However, there are reasons to argue that the Ukrainian Islamic scholarship, as a part of Oriental Studies, has been actively developing already in the 1920s. This topic is relevant and requires further specialized workshops.
