Buzeskul, Vladislav Petrovich

Buzeskul, Vladislav Petrovich 

Born Feb. 24 (Mar. 8), 1858, in the village of Popovka, present-day Kharkov Oblast; died June 1, 1931, in Kharkov. Russian and Ukrainian ancient historian, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1922) and of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1925). Professor at the University of Kharkov (1890-1921).

Buzeskul’s main works were on the economic and social history of ancient Greece, the study of sources, and problems of historiography (Introduction to a History of Greece: A Review of Sources and an Outline of an Elaboration of Greek History in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, 1903, 3rd ed., 1915; and World History and Its Spokesmen in Russia in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, parts 1-2, 1929-31). Buzeskul’s works are marked by a completeness and clarity of exposition and a thorough criticism of sources; however, like other bourgeois scholars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Buzeskul modernizes the historical events of ancient Greece and underestimates the class characteristics of ancient society.

WORKS

Perikl. Kharkov, 1889.
“Afinskaia politiia” Aristotelia kak istochnik dlia istorii gosudar- stvennogo stroia Afin do kontsa V v. Kharkov, 1895.
Istoriia afinskoi demokratii. St. Petersburg, 1909.
Istoricheskie etiudy. St. Petersburg, 1911.
Antichnost’ i sovremennost’, 3rd ed. Leningrad, 1924.

REFERENCES

Zhebelev, S. A. “V. P. Buzeskul: Nekrolog.” Izv. AN SSSR, Otdelenie obshchestvennykh nauk, series 7, 1931, no. 10. (Contains list of Buzeskul’s printed works, 1915-31.)
“Pamiati akad. V. P. Buzeskula.” Vestnik drevnei istorii, 1946, no. 4. (Contains chronological index of Buzeskul’s works.)

D. P. KALLISTOV