Horpyna Fedosiyivna Vatchenko (, also known as Agrippina Vatchenko; 6 July 1923 – 9 November 2004) was a Ukrainian historian and director of the Dmytro Yavornytsky National Historical Museum of Dnipro, where she led a programme of expansion and redevelopment during the 1970s.

Biography

Vatchenko was born on 6 July 1923 in

Dnipro Dnipro is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper River, Dnipro River, from which it takes its name. Dnipro is t ...

(formerly Dnipropetrovsk). In 1948, she graduated from the Faculty of History of Dnipropetrovsk University. In the same year she began work as a researcher at Dmytro Yavornytsky National Historical Museum of Dnipro, and from 1963 was appointed as its director. Under her directorship the museum's collection also expanded: in 1948 it contained 33,000 objects, but by 2012 the number had grown to 200,000 objects. In the 1960s Vatchenko was involved in attempts to republish the works of

Dmytro Yavornytsky Dmytro Ivanovych Yavornytsky (; November 6, 1855 – August 5, 1940) was a Ukrainian academician, historian, archeologist, ethnographer, folklorist, and lexicographer. Yavornytsky was a member of (from 1885), of All-Russian Archaeological S ...

. She persuaded her brother Oleksiy, who was member of the

Politburo A politburo () or political bureau is the highest organ of the central committee in communist parties. The term is also sometimes used to refer to similar organs in socialist and Islamist parties, such as the UK Labour Party's NEC or the Poli ...

of the Central Committee of the

Communist Party of Ukraine The Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU or KPU) is a banned political party in Ukraine. It was founded in 1993 and claimed to be the successor to the Soviet-era Communist Party of Ukraine, which had been banned in 1991. In 2002 it held a "unifi ...

, to support the project. However, once the works were ready for publication he refused his sister, stating that he could lose his post due to the impartiality of historians' comments. In 1973 schoolchildren found the

Kernosivsky idol The Kernosivskyi idol, or Kernosivsky idol () is a Kurgan stele dating from the mid–3rd millennium BC. It was discovered in 1973 in the village of , in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. It is held in the collection of the Dmytro Y ...

, which had initially discovered by workmen using a bulldozer. Over six thousand years old, it is covered with carvings and is interpreted as depicting the "supreme god Aryan pantheon". However at the time, there was little interest and it was loaned to the Hermitage Museum, who wanted to make the loan permanent. Vatchenko, potentially assisted by her brother, Oleksiy, resisted this change to the loan agreement and enabled the return of the idol to the museum. It has since become one of the most significant objects in the museum's collection. In the 1970s, Vatchenko led the re-development of the museum, and as of 2012, some of its exhibitions still dated to this period in the museum's history. The re-development, described as "radical" in the '' Encyclopaedia of Modern Ukraine'', included the creation of a diorama depicting the

Battle of the Dnieper The Battle of the Dnieper was a military campaign that took place in 1943 on the Eastern Front of World War II. Being one of the largest operations of the war, it involved almost four million troops at one point and stretched over a front. Ov ...

at the Diorama "Battle of the Dnieper". In 1979, she employed a young Nadiya Kapustina ( uk) as a guide to the diorama; in 1998 Kapustina was appointed director of the museum. Vatchenko retired as director of the museum in 1983. She died in Dnipro on 9 November 2004, aged 81.

Awards

* Honoured Worker of Culture of the USSR since 1980. * Recipient of the

Shevchenko Prize Shevchenko National Prize (; also ''Shevchenko Award'') is the highest state prize of Ukraine for works of culture and arts awarded since 1961. It is named after the inspirer of Ukrainian national revival Taras Shevchenko. It is one of the five ...

in 1979 for the complex of the Dnipro National Historical Museum.

References

External links

Bibliography of works by Vatchenko
(in Ukrainian) {{DEFAULTSORT:Vatchenko, Horpyna Museum directors 1923 births 2004 deaths People from Dnipro Recipients of the Shevchenko National Prize Oles Honchar Dnipro National University alumni 20th-century Ukrainian women writers 20th-century Ukrainian historians Ukrainian women historians Ukrainian women curators