Professor O.F. Kistiakiwsky: reconception of the layers of Ukrainian history (for the 190th anniversary)

Abstract

The article analyzes the life and scientific biography of the prominent Ukrainian criminologist, professor of the University of St. Volodymyr Oleksandr Fedorovych Kistiakiwsky (1833–1885), through the prism of the genealogy of his family, which gave the world a remarkable scientific dynasty, and the restoration of those scientific and political contexts in which his academic activity took place. The author searches for the position of the scientist’s biography on a broader map of world scientific development, demonstrates the consonance and dissonance of his views with important methodological crossroads of legal science, highlights the parallels between his scientific worldview and modern scientific concepts.Among the significant ideas of the scientific researches of professor O.F. Kistiakiwsky the author calls his attention to the embryology of law – conscientious work with the materials of customary law and, thanks to this, the ability to have a broader vision of the sources of criminal law; operationalization of historical and comparative methods in criminal law in such a way as to find «general criminal law», «general principles of justice in the diversity of law of all times and peoples» – ideas, consistent with the internationalization of modern criminal law and universalist trends in its development; successful integration of dogmatic and sociological study of criminal law phenomena with the aim of qualitative expansion of heuristic horizons; the constant humanistic focus of his scientific research and its powerful influence on the development of criminal law theory and practice.The author’s research is proposed an interesting hypothesis concerning the genealogy of O.F. Kistiakiwsky and based on ego-documents related to the history of everyday life and attention to micro-history, which makes it possible to rethink some layers of macro-history and to evaluate certain interpretations of it in a new way. Carried out at the junction of the comparison of family narratives of the father and great-granddaughter of Oleksandr Fedorovych Kistiakiwsky, the author’s investigation offers a bold version of the connection of the Kistiakiwsky genealogy with the figure of Oleksandr Bezborodko, a representative of the Ukrainian Cossack nobility, prince and chancellor of the Russian Empire, and offers further researchers new paths for academic searches and insights.