Dmytro Hordyeyev as a Researcher of Georgian Art (Based on the Materials of Correspondence with Oksana Berladina, 1925 – 1960)

Abstract

Representatives of the Kharkiv school of art history, Dmytro Hordyeyev (1889–1968) and Oksana Berladina (1894–1960), which was suppressed during the Stalin period, were trained as scholars at the Kharkiv University under the guidance of the outstanding Byzantine specialist Fedir Schmidt (1877–1937). Inspired by their mentor’s ideas about the connection between medieval Ukrainian artistic culture and the art of the peoples of the Caucasus in the Christian era, both researches directed their academic efforts toward this region. After F. Schmidt’s departure in 1921 – first to Kyiv, and in 1925 to Leningrad – they continued the line of research he established in Kharkiv, considering it a continuation of the Byzantine direction in local art historical studies. D. Hordyeyev, having assumed leadership of the Kharkiv group of Caucasian scholars, lived in Tiflis (as Tbilisi was then called), while O. Berladina remained in Kharkiv, serving as secretary of this scientific society. Among its members were other students of F. Schmidt, including O. Nikoleka, T. Ivanovska, M. Leiter and others. To date, their research from this period, as well as their contribution to the study of the art of the Caucasian peoples in the Christian era, has not yet become the subject of a dedicated academic investigation. At the same time, the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art in Kyiv preserves the correspondence between Dmytro Hordyeyev and Oksana Berladina, dating from May, 25 1925 to June 1950 – the year of Berladina’s death – which has not been specially studied by any researcher. These letters reveal not only their fate as victims of the totalitarian regime, under which Byzantine studies – perceived as a class-hostile tendency in art history – was suppressed in Soviet Ukraine, but also portray them as living individuals, witnesses to the political and intellectual realities of their time. This unique body of correspondence sheds light on the spiritual world of the Ukrainian scholarly intelligentsia, which, despite internal opposition to the ruling regime, remained faithful to the ideals of the Ukrainian national Renaissance and the best traditions of the Kharkiv school of art history. It retains particular relevance today, when the Ukrainian people are defending their freedom in a struggle against Russian aggression.