Vikentij Khvoika

Today every thorough research on the ancient Ukrainian or European history refers to discoveries made by the archaeologist Vikentij Khvoika.

Vikentij Khvoika (1850-1914) was a descendant of Polish aristocrats who had dissipated their fortune and become ordinary peasants. As a child he was quiet and shy. Khvoika studied in a commercial college in Czechia. When Vikentij was 26, his parents decided to marry him to a rich girl. To avoid the unwanted marriage Khvoika escaped from Czechia and settled in Kyiv, the city that seemed to bear strong resemblance of the ancient Czech towns. There he spent a half of his life. First Vikentij taught German language, drawing and fencing, later he took interest in agriculture, studied breeding of the new sorts of barley and millet and tried to develop new technologies in hop processing. At the exhibitions that took place in the cities of Romny (1884) and Kharkiv (1897), Khvoika was awarded a diploma and a bronze medal. During the prestigious Paris exhibition he was awarded the silver medal and elected a member of the French National Academy of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce. Unfortunately, a fire that happened in the village of Petrushky destroyed a wood cabin which served to Khvoika as his working laboratory. All Vikentij's drawings, sketches and even his prizes were lost in that fire. While constructing a new laboratory Khvoika found many fragments of ancient glass bracelets. Being in severe need of money, he sold the artifacts to some collector.

Since then Vikentij Khvoika decided to devote himself to archaeology. He was 43. During the next 21 year he examined the artifacts of almost all historical periods the Ukrainian society run through and explored over 50 different sites. His excavations cover vast territories of the present-day Ukraine and include Kyiv, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Poltava, Sumy, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytsky regions. In spite of the fact that old methods of excavations were simpler than modern ones, the extent of Khvoika's work is amazing.

Vikentij Khvoika is famous mainly as a discoverer of one of the most advanced agricultural formations — the Trypilian culture that existed in Ukraine during Neolithic age. In addition, he discovered and studied Chernyakhivska and Zarubynetska cultures.

Khvoika made up the deficiency of special knowledge by rich reading and intercourse with Kyiv archaeologist and historian Volodymyr Antonovich. Nevertheless, his relations with count Alexei Bobrinsky, the head of the Imperial Archaeological Committee, left much to be desired. Count had discovered many artifacts himself but failed to work out any scientific concept about them, in contrast to Khvoika.

In 1907, Khvoika started new excavations in private sector on Starokyivska hill in Kyiv. He could carry out excavations without any permission there. Khvoika discovered ruins of Kyiv princes' stone palaces, pagan temples, artisan workshops and many unique artifacts of the Kyiv Rus. Before archaeologists succeeded in finding only Slavonic tumuli, chronicles telling about the rich and glorious capital of the ancient Rus looked like legends resembling fairy tails poetizing early Kyiv and his epic heroes. Vikentij Khvoika discovered material remains of this olden magnificence and proved that not only ancient cities preserved archaeological memorials — Kyiv represented an outstanding and very significant subject of antiquity as well.

Alexei Bobrinsky insisted on handing over Khvoika's research to his Committee. Also he objected to passing the excavations finds to Kyiv city museum: "Exceptional enrichment of Kyiv State Museum with the artifacts discovered during the excavations sponsored by the member of the Academy Kondakov from The Treasury would create for this provincial museum preferred position to the prejudice of the state's principal museum — the Imperial Hermitage". This time the matter concerned not only the inimical relations between the Head of the Imperial Archaeological Committee Bobrinsky and Kyiv archaeologist Khvoika but the unfair distribution of historical and cultural heritage, bereaving the city — the rightful possessor which preserved its treasures for a few centuries — of its artifacts.

With the excavations carried out in Kyiv, Korosten and near Kaniv Khvoika started his systematic research of memorials of the Paleolithic era on territory of Ukraine.

The most significant find discovered in Kyrylivska paleolithic site in Kyiv was a mammoth's tusk decorated with pictures engraved by an unknown artist of prehistoric times. It was the first artistic product belonging to that remote era that had been found in Eastern Europe.

Vikentij Khvoika was one of the initiators and the founders of Kyiv Society of Antiquities and Arts. The head of the society Bohdan Khanenko sponsored Khvoika's research, though the scientist put up his own money too.

The archaeologist took active part in establishing of Kyiv City Museum. After its opening Khvoika spent most of his time in a newly erected building. It was very dump there. As the scientist recollected, he had dried the entire building out with his lungs. Possibly that was the reason why he was taken ill with tuberculosis.

Vikentij Khvoika died on the 2^nd of November in 1914. The scientist was buried in Baykove cemetery in Kyiv; his tomb still remains intact.

Khvoika's concepts — about indigenousness of the Ukrainians of the late Paleolithic era residing in the forest-steppe and marshy woodlands zones and determination of certain stages in development of their society and culture — were based entirely on his archaeological research and influenced further progress of archaeology not only in Russian Empire and the USSR but in whole Europe.

Vikentij Khvoika — Ukraine's well-known scientist — personifies the symbol of century-old friendship between two Slavonic nations, whose historical destinies were alike in many respects.

Ivan Chernyakov proposed to found Khvoika's Museum in Kyiv. The scientist's works — books and articles — have become rarities and need to be republished. Khvoika's Museum could grow into an educational centre where people studied and popularized scientific heritage left not only by this outstanding researcher but also by many other brilliant representatives of the Ukrainian science and culture who worked in the field of preserving of our cultural inheritance alongside with him.