Dmytro Doroshenko

Dmytro Doroshenko is a classic example of a Ukrainian scientist and public figure who linked his life’s work with the national revival of his people, whom he served with his talent of a Ukrainian historian and the work of an outstanding statesman.

Lubomyr Wynar, Ukrainian and American historian

Dmytro Doroshenko was a Ukrainian politician, diplomat, historian, and publicist who played a significant role in the Ukrainian national movement and the development of Ukrainian education and science abroad. He was one of the founders and prominent representatives of the statehood school in twentieth-century Ukrainian historiography.

He was born on March 27, 1882, in Wilno (now Vilnius) into a family of an ancient Ukrainian Cossack family from the Hlukhiv region, which gave Ukraine two hetmans, Mykhailo and Petro Doroshenko.

He studied at Warsaw, St. Petersburg, and Kyiv universities, and from his student years, he became involved in public life,  was a head of the Ukrainian Student Community in St. Petersburg in 1903. At the same time, he began his political activity, first as a member of the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party and later of the Society of Ukrainian Progressives. He actively published in Ukrainian magazines. In 1906, he became secretary of the Ukrainian parliamentary community’s organ, the Ukrainskiy Vesnik (Ukrainian Herald — St. Petersburg).

In 1910-1914, he edited the Dnipro Wave — magazine in Katerynoslav (now Dnipro) and was deputy chairman of the local Prosvita. He was also a member of the Kyiv Society of Antiquities and Arts.

In the spring of 1917, Dmytro Doroshenko joined the Ukrainian Central Rada, representing the Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Federalists. From April 1917, he was the regional commissioner of Galicia and Bukovyna with the rights of the governor-general and later the provincial commissioner of Chernihiv. In May-November 1918, he headed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian State. Ukraine opened diplomatic missions and consulates in several countries while hosting foreign representatives in Kyiv during that period.

In 1919, he left for Prague. In emigration, he focused his efforts on the development of Ukrainian science and education: he taught history at the Ukrainian Free University in Vienna, Prague, and Munich; contributed to the foundation of the Museum of the Liberation Struggle of Ukraine in Prague; headed the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Berlin (1926-1931) and was the first president of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences (1945-1951). In 1947-1950 in Canada, he taught history and literature at St. Andrew’s College in Winnipeg and, together with like-minded colleagues L. Biletsky and J. Rudnytsky, founded a branch of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences.

Doroshenko’s scientific and journalistic work is particularly noteworthy, with more than 1,000 works on the history of Ukraine, Ukrainian culture, and religion. As a historian and participant in the formation of the Ukrainian state and as a publicist and historiographer, he focused on the development of Ukrainian statehood. It was the prominent theme of most of his works published in exile: “Outline of the History of Ukraine,” “History of Ukraine and 1917-23,” “Review of Ukrainian Historiography,” “The Orthodox Church in the Past and Present Life of the Ukrainian People,” and others.

Dmytro Doroshenko died on March 19, 1951, in Munich. He was buried there in the Waldfriedhof cemetery. In Ukraine, streets in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Snihurivka, and other locations are named in honor of him.