Soon after its foundation, Kharkiv became an important intellectual centre of the
Sloboda Ukraine because of the
Kharkiv Collegium, where
Hryhorii Skovoroda worked. The Kharkiv School emerged in the
Kharkiv University, which had been established in 1805 and has become one of the leading educational centres of the Russian Empire. The history of the School can be divided into the preformative (1805—1874), formative (1874—1890s) and postformative periods. The latter history of the School is contested: Andrii Danylenko claims that it had ceased to exist in the middle of the 20th century but was revived after Ukraine gained its independence, while Tetyana Lysychenko believes that it continued throughout the Soviet period.
Preformative period The groundwork for the future Kharkiv School was laid by linguists such as
Izmail Sreznevsky, and , who worked on periodisation and internal classification of
Slavic languages and specifically the relationship between Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages (which were commonly seen as dialects of the same language at that time). These academics published some of the first Ukrainian academic books and journals, such as , Ukrayinsky zhurnal, and articles defending the existence and validity of Ukrainian language. The first rector of the Kharkiv University, , and were other important predecessors. Timkovsky published the first periodisation of the Eastern branch of Slavic languages, while Ornatovsky's "An up-to-date outline of the Russian grammatical rules based on the principles of universal grammar" , published in 1810, introduced a distinction similar to
de Saussure's "speech circuits",
language, langue and parole, published later. He also notably considered Russian equal to the other "dialects of the Slavo-Russian language". Many of these intellectuals were studying Ukrainian folklore and used current European scientific theories in their academic and literary work. By 1830s, Kharkiv philologists aimed to revive
Ukrainian nationalism, published
Ukrainian songs and other
oral literature. Potebnja later cited such publications as his inspiration to become a linguist.
Formative period The formative period began in 1874, when Alexander Potebnja became a professor of Russian language and literature in Kharkiv University. He created the School under the name "Kharkiv Historical-Philological Society" in 1876 and became its leader. The School's main objective was to popularise contemporary achievements in its many academic fields. Potebnja was an
interdisciplinary scholar: a linguist and a literary scientist, a philosopher and a historian, whose early career included
ethnographic work; when he founded the Kharkiv Linguistic School, it also incorporated many related disciplines at once, such as
comparative linguistics,
psycholinguistics,
semasiology, and
literary studies. He worked on poetics and
philosophy of language (contrasting articulated sounds with meaning and the modality of transmission of the meaning into the sounds), composed a major systematic overview of
Ukrainian phonology, proposed a theory of
linguistic change being sped up by
social change, becoming a pioneer of linguistic theory in Russian Empire, although in the West similar ideas were already being voiced by
Wilhelm von Humboldt and
Heymann Steinthal. Potebnja's groundbreaking work on history of Eastern Slavic languages postulated that
Old East Slavic language existed as a singular unit, based on data on
pleophony,
nasal vowel development, combinations of consonants and
yers, as well as the
reflexes of *dj, *tj; he also came to the conclusion that Old East Slavic split from other members of the Slavic family before 11 century. Potebnja's views on the politics of Ukrainian language were ambiguous: he opposed the "proponents of the independence of the Little Russian language" while also expressing regret about the Russian influence on Ukrainian written language. Despite that, he was an education activist and created the "Manual for learning the grammar, composed for Ukrainian Sunday schools" (1899), an
alphabet book (1862) and a textbook (1899; it was not published during his lifetime due to the 1862 prohibition of Sunday schools). Potebnja's closest follower and student, , published only one book, "A comparative syntax of the nominative, vocative, and accusative cases in Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, German, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Slavic languages", but it had a big impact on , who largely based his study of the history of the
syntax of the Russian language on Popov's ideas. Other followers of Potebnja are
Mykola Sumtsov, and .
Postformative period The later history of the school is contested. One of the researchers of the Kharkiv Linguistic School, Olha Cheremska, assumes that all linguists and literature scholars working in Kharkiv at that time were members of the Kharkiv School, which Andrii Danylenko rejects. In either case, in the first third of the 20th century, Kharkiv Linguistic School gradually lost its influence because of the
Soviet repressions targeting its members, as well as ideological incompatibility with the Soviet government. The following linguists are considered to belong to the Kharkiv School in late 20th—early 21st centuries: comparative linguist and semasiologist , ,
Marin Drinov and
Mikhail Khalansky; later they were joined by
George Shevelov. Several other linguists sometimes being included, such as , a proponent of Ukrainian language codification whose moderate approach contrasted with the one of Kyiv School purists such as
Olena Kurylo, and the author of many studies of Slavic
accentology, . Tetyana Lysychenko also lists many later academics and claims that they were continuing Potebnja's tradition. According to her, the School continued to exist in the works of , , , , Olena Oleksenko, and others.
Revival The School was revived in 1991 after the collapse of the USSR by , , and and is based in the
Kharkiv Pedagogical University. == Notes ==