Metadata: F. K. Vovk
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- Research Archive of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences’ Archeology Institute
- Holding institution (official language):
- Науковий архів Інституту археології Національної академії наук України
- Postal address:
- 12, av. Geroyiv Stalingrada, Kyiv, 04210, Ukraine
- Phone number:
- 380 (44) 254-11-47
- Email:
- kancel@iananu.org.ua
- Reference number:
- F. 1
- Title:
- F. K. Vovk
- Title (official language):
- Вовк Ф.К.
- Creator/accumulator:
- F. K. Vovk
- Date(s):
- 1870/1918
- Language:
- Russian
- English
- Hebrew
- Yiddish
- German
- Ukrainian
- Extent:
- 5,104 storage units
- Type of material:
- Photographic images
- Graphic material
- Scope and content:
- Housed among materials on anthropology and ethnology are sets of photographs such as “Jewish Types,” “Naked Jews. Tunis,” and “Jewish Schools,” the latter taken in the town of Norinsk (Volhynia province) and including portraits of Hasidic rebbes, and of synagogue buildings and elements of wall-painting therein. Also included are illustrations collected from books and journals: Baron Gintsburg; Mountain/Caucasus Jews; a synagogue in Tehran; Bukharan Jews, and a cheder in Bukhara; Jews at the Khachmas (Azerbaijan) station of the Vladikavkaz Railroad; the Tower of David; etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Ukrainian archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnographer, and public figure Fedor Kondrat’evich Vovk (Volkov) (1847-1918) was born in the village of Kriachkovka (Piriatin county, Poltava province; now Poltava region). He graduated from the Nezhin High School [gimnaziia] and subsequently studied at Novorossiia (Odessa) University and Kiev’s St. Vladimir University. He was one of the founders and an active staff member of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society’s Southwestern Department; and he organised a one-day census of the population of Kiev in 1874, and the Third Archeological Congress (also 1874). In 1875-76 he took part in an archaeological expedition led by V. B. Antonovich to conduct excavations in the territory of the Kiev and Volhynia provinces. He was persecuted by the authorities for his involvement in the Kyiv Hromada, the Kiev intelligentsia organisation that in the 1870s-90s became a major focal point of national-cultural activity in Ukraine; and in 1879 he was forced to leave Russia illegally. He then lived in various European cities, collecting ethnographic materials for his research. From 1901-05 he lectured on archaeology, ethnography, and anthropology at the Russian Higher School in Paris.
In 1905, he was awarded the P. Brock grand gold medal by the Paris Anthropology Society, and defended his dissertation for his doctorate in the natural sciences. Upon his return to Russia that year, he taught at educational institutions in St. Petersburg, while at the same time (from 1907 on) serving as director of the Russian Museum’s ethnography department. He defended a second doctoral dissertation in 1917, and at the same time was selected as professor of geography and ethnography at Kiev University. The voluminous anthropological and ethnographic material he collected formed the basis of his more than 200 research studies, the most significant of which include Ukrainians in Anthropological Terms (1906); Anthropometric Research on the Ukrainian Population of Galicia, Bukovina, and Hungary (1908); and Ethnographic Features of the Ukrainian People (1916).
He died in the city of Zhlobin (now in the Gomel’ region, Belarus) while attempting to get to Kiev from Petrograd. From 1921 through 1934, the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences had an F. Vovk Museum and Office of Anthropology and Ethnology (on which see the description of f. 43 of the Ryl’skii Institute for the Study of Art, Folklore, and Ethnology).
- Access points: locations:
- Azerbaijan
- Bukhara
- Khachmas
- Norinsk
- Tehran
- Tunisia
- Ukraine
- Vladikavkaz
- Volhynia province
- Access points: persons/families:
- Baron Gintsburg
- Vovk, F. K.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds’ inventory and card file are provisionally structured according to the thematic-chronological principle (with letters alphabetised by correspondent name).
- Finding aids:
- An inventory is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
