This article examines the role and historical mission of the university as an institution of elite formation in the Ukrainian Governorates at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (using the example of Imperial Novorossiya University in Odesa). The article analyzes the multilevel mechanisms and actual scope of the university’s influence on the formation of scientific, intellectual, legal, and civic elites. The source material of the study consists of three complementary bodies of sources: official university and imperial educational-administration records, memoir and epistolary materials, and biographical and bibliographic publications. These publications served as the basis for compiling and verifying a register of the institution’s most prominent figures. The research methodology is based on a synthesis of prosopographic, historical-comparative, problem-chronological, typological, and biographical methods, as well as content analysis. As a result of verification, a personnel corpus comprising 56 individuals was compiled whose activities at Imperial Novorossiya University in Odesa took place during the imperial era. This register brought together figures who made significant contributions to science, state-building, and public administration. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the database revealed a clear dominance of the natural sciences and medicine, as well as physics and mathematics, which collectively account for 73.2 % of the total number of verified individuals. This confirms that the university served, first and foremost, as a powerful center for the formation of a scientific elite. At the same time, the significant proportion of representatives from the humanities, law, and social spheres indicates that the institution's mission of elite formation extended far beyond the strictly academic realm, encompassing the spheres of government and public life as well. It has been demonstrated that Imperial Novorossiya University in Odesa functioned as an integrated institutional system of elite formation. Its effectiveness was determined by its normative structure, the activities of the professorial body, departmental organization, the integration of teaching and research, academic mobility, and symbolic legitimation. The institution’s work unfolded in three dimensions: regional (as the intellectual core of Southern Ukraine), pan-imperial (as a center for the distribution of professional resources), and international (through the formation of world-class scholars). This allows us to position Imperial Novorossiya University in Odesa as one of the leading institutions for the formation of elites in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Source: Lebid, Andrii E. (2026). The University as an Institution for Elite Formation in the Ukrainian Governorates (1865–1917): Levels, Mechanisms, and Scale of Influence. Bylye Gody. 21(2): 818-825.
Source web-site: https://bg.cherkasgu.press/journals_n/1780306004.pdf
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