At the age of 89, Associate Professor of the Faculty of History Vira Ivanivna Butenko has passed away
(19 April 1936 – 15 February 2026)
V. I. Butenko was born in the urban-type settlement of Dmytrivka, Yakymivka district, Zaporizhzhia Oblast. From 1954 to 1959 she studied at the Faculty of History of Kharkiv State University named after O. M. Gorky, graduating with honours. In 1959–1964 she worked as a teacher of history and social studies at Secondary School No. 2 in the town of Zmiiv, Zmiiv.
In 1963–1966 she pursued postgraduate studies at the Department of the History of the USSR, later at the Department of Historiography, Auxiliary Historical Disciplines, and Methods of Teaching History. In 1971 she defended her Candidate of Sciences dissertation entitled “Collective Farm Construction in Ukraine in 1917–1929 in Soviet Historiography” (academic supervisor – Prof. I. L. Sherman).
From 1964 to 1975 she served as senior lecturer and associate professor at the Department of Historiography, Auxiliary Historical Disciplines, and Methods of Teaching History. In 1975–2001 she was Associate Professor at the Department of the History of Ukraine, and from 2001 – Associate Professor at the Department of Historiography, Source Studies, and Archaeology of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University.
She taught general courses on the history of Ukraine (Soviet period), methods of teaching history and social science disciplines, and methodology of education in the twenty-first century, as well as specialised courses including “History of Education and Scholarship in Ukraine” and “The Cooperative Movement in Ukraine during the NEP Period: The 1920s,” among others. For some time she also taught a general course on Ukrainian history at the Kharkiv Pedagogical Institute named after H. S. Skovoroda. She established enduring traditions in the study and teaching of the didactics of history.
Her research focused on the history and historiography of agrarian relations in Ukraine during the NEP period of the 1920s, particularly the role of agricultural cooperation. From 2001 she concentrated on issues of educational methodology in twenty-first-century society and on innovative teaching technologies in higher and secondary education. She published more than one hundred scholarly, popular-science, and methodological works, including two monographs and a textbook.
From 2000 she chaired for several years the jury of the regional school history Olympiads and maintained professional and creative links between the Faculty of History and the Kharkiv Institute for Teachers’ Advanced Training, as well as with schools, gymnasiums, and lyceums of Kharkiv and the region. She was a lecturer of the Znannia Society and a member of the editorial board of the Methodological Bulletin of the Faculty of History. She was awarded the medal “Veteran of Labour.”
Since September 2012 she had been retired.
V. I. Butenko had many students, particularly among graduates who worked and continue to work in schools.
We shall preserve the bright memory of Vira Ivanivna in our hearts.
Colleagues
