Personal scientific archive of Myroslav Petrovych Zhukovskyi

Myroslav Petrovych Zhukovskyi, Deputy Director for Research of the Nikopol Museum of Local Lore, is a prominent researcher specializing in four main areas: archaeology, Zaporizhzhia Cossacks, World War II, and modern history. He has authored over a dozen papers on World War II. Zhukovskyi is the head of the Nikopol Memorial project, which focuses on identifying and documenting the victims of World War II in Nikopol, including soldiers of the Red Army, the Third Reich, and its allies (Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, Croats), as well as prisoners of war and Holocaust victims.

He played a key role in documenting the "Righteous Among the Nations" in Nikopol and its district, working alongside the head of the Jewish community, Oleksandr Feldman, who passed away in 2024. His key research output includes the monograph The Holocaust - Nikopol Region. The Holocaust - the Righteous Among the Nations, which earned him an award and an internship at the Museum of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin.

Zhukovskyi’s personal archive, though small due to Soviet-era restrictions and the need for survival, contains invaluable testimonies of Holocaust victims and other Nazi terror victims from Nikopol. He has also focused on the NKVD’s communist repression victims, with his team registering around 1,500 out of 5,000 known names. However, limited funds and the ongoing war have interrupted this work.

His academic career began in 1978 as a junior researcher at the Nikopol Museum of Local Lore. He worked there until 1985, when his research on topics conflicting with communist propaganda forced him to leave. Zhukovskyi later returned to the museum in 1992 as the deputy director for research. He holds a master's degree in history from Drahomanov National Pedagogical University and a PhD from the National Academy of Sciences.

Zhukovskyi led the Nikopol Archaeological Expedition from 2000 to 2012, searching for Zaporozhian Sich sites, and has worked with the Institute of History of Ukraine on Cossack monuments. He now serves as the director of the Nikopol regional branch of the Research Institute of Ukrainian Cossacks. He is also a member of the National Union of Journalists and the National Union of Local History of Ukraine.

His research focuses on the Nikopol region, which includes 250,000 residents across three cities and over 50 settlements. His research encompasses mass graves and monuments, with 90% of mass graves registered in the state register, including the graves of Third Reich soldiers, which are also documented by the Volksbund society.

His personal research archive covers the years 1939-1945, including materials on the participants in the war and their postwar lives.

Public initiative. Most of the copies of documents needed for the search reflect, as far as possible, the creation of a particular monument or mass grave. Copies of decisions on the creation of monuments at the republican, regional, and local (city or district) levels.

The collection is stored in a dedicated room within a 1950s residential building, allocated for the library and archive. Due to the weight of the collection, the wooden floor requires repair, as the materials have begun shifting between the shelves.

Additional materials were temporarily stored in a separate facility, but due to the lack of heating, these archives are not maintained there.

A portion of the collection (500 books) was transferred to the museum's library, and due to ongoing circumstances, further acquisitions have ceased.

The collection consists of personal library materials and archival files, which are systematically cataloged and organized into folders. Due to ongoing instability and frequent power outages, further digitization and organization are hindered by lack of equipment and resources.

The researcher maintains a personal blog in Nikopol City, publishing materials on topics such as the Holocaust, World War II, and de-Russification (https://nikopol.city/articles/124387/do-mizhnarodnogo-dnya-pamyati-zhertv-golokostu-istoriya-etnocidu, https://nikopol.city/blogs/259167/scho-mi-znaemo-pro-nacistskij-teror-u-nikopoli-chitaemo-schodennik-polonenogo-, https://nikopol.city/articles/219455/slidkujte-za-nashimi-publikaciyami-na-temu-derusifikacii-, https://nikopol.city/blogs/339637/partizani-dniprovskih-plavniv-pershi-dni). He has published over 150 scholarly works, including essays, brochures, and historical journal articles. His notable works include "Nikopol in the Flames of War" and "Nikopol during World War II", alongside journalistic publications such as "The Secret of the Soviet General Staff". He has participated in conferences discussing partisans and military unit formations during the war. In the early 1980s, he conducted a survey of war veterans, collecting over 1,200 responses from 10,000 distributed questionnaires.