Turning the pages back... January 5, 1860 (01/03/99)

Turning the pages back...

January 5, 1860

Vasyl Liaskoronsky was born in Zolotonosha, a town located across the Dnipro River from Cherkasy, about 90 miles southeast of Kyiv, on January 5, 1860. He studied at Kyiv University under the historians Volodymyr Antonovych and Ivan Luchytsky, graduating in 1885.

Liaskoronsky then joined several archaeological expeditions led by the pioneering Vikentiy Khvoika which discovered and excavated various Paleolithic sites throughout Ukraine, as well as Neolithic Trypilian burial sites, Iron Age and Bronze Age settlements and fortifications. He wrote about these expeditions for the journal Kievskaia Starina and other scholarly publications.

He also wrote about the excavations of the St. Sophia Cathedral, the Golden Gates and other sites around Kyiv.

An active participant of the all-(imperial) Russian archeological congresses held in Kyiv (1899), Kharkiv (1902) and Katerynoslav (1905, now Dnipropetrovske), Liaskoronsky published the official congress bulletins and set out on the expeditions organized under their auspices.

Liaskoronsky specialized in historical geography, historical topography and numismatics. His doctoral dissertation on the history of the Pereiaslav region (ranging from prehistoric times to the 13th century) was published in 1897. In 1901, his two studies of the work of foreign cartographers, including Georges Le Vasseur de Beauplan, appeared in print.

In 1903, he travelled to Moscow University, where he worked as a senior lecturer (privatdocent) until 1907, when he was given permission to return to his alma mater and assumed a similar position.

In 1909, Liaskoronsky was named a full professor at the Nizhen Historical-Philosophical Institute. After the revolution of 1917, he worked at various institutions in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Nizhen, but the most important post he occupied was that of head of the archaeological department of the All-Ukrainian Archeological Committee in the national capital.

Liaskoronsky died in Kyiv on January 1, 1928.

Source: "Liaskoronsky, Vasyl," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

| Home Page |