PETRENKO N. M. On the issue of the ukrainization of people's schools in Konotop district of Chernigiv province at the beginning of the XX century.

    The article contains the texts of documents from the fund of the State Archive of the Sumy Region, which relate to the Ukrainian question of the beginning of the XXth century. The author analyzes the document, considers historical events that preceded its creation. Also, the article describes the people who appear in the case.
     To date, the issue of the movement for the introduction of the Ukrainian language in folk schools is not thoroughly developed. he characteristic of this process is illustrated for the first time by the example of Konotop district of Chernihiv province.
    By the beginning of the 20th century, the national educational movement among youth and zemstvos leaders had intensified. Borznyan’ and Chernihiv district and Chernihiv provincial zemstvos initiated the Zemstvo movement in Ukraine for introducing the Ukrainian language and books in folk schools.
    The author of the article introduces into scientific circulation documents from the funds of the State Archives of the Sumy Region, which confirm these events and may be useful to scientists in future studies.
    The report of the member of the Konotop local committee, the zemstvo insurance agent M. I. Baran-Khodorovsky to the Konotop Public Education Commission on the admission of the Little Russian language to the public school is dated November 12, 1902 and from the beginning of its storage in the archive until 2019, none of the researchers used it.
    We conducted a study to determine the positions of persons who attended the meeting of the Commission. Most members of the commission held high positions in 1902, or received them later. We came to the conclusion that because of the risk of being deprived of these posts, some of them opposed the proposal to introduce the Little Russian language in folk schools.
    Analyzing the document presented in the article, we can say that the local authorities of Konotop district, for the most part, advocated the introduction of instruction in the Ukrainian language in folk schools. Therefore, this precedent can be considered one more proof that attempts to Ukrainization began two decades earlier than its official proclamation by the Soviet government.
  Keywords: the Ukrainian question, Little Russian language, folk schools, Chernihiv province, Konotop district