ON THE GENESIS OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN IVANO-FRANKIVSK

Abstract

This article is devoted to researching the genesis of the first “humanistic” educational institution in the territory of modern Ivano-Frankivsk – an academy founded in 1669 by Adrzej Potocki, the owner of the city of Stanyslaviv. In the context of contemporary processes of decommunization and the actualization of national memory policy in Ukraine, the author addresses the issue of the historical origins of the Vasyl Stefanyk Carpathian National University, questioning the date of its founding established during the Soviet period (1940) and proposing its revision based on an analysis of early modern sources. The article shows that the educational institution, established in Stanyslaviv in the second half of the 17th century, functioned as part of the broader sociocultural and political space of the multinational border region of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Education is considered not only as an instrument of intellectual formation, but also as an important factor in ethno-political balance, a symbol of social prestige, and a component of supra-regional cultural and economic ties. Based on a critical analysis of historical and regional literature of the 19th–20th centuries, as well as the use of sources from the 17th–18th centuries (travel descriptions, panegyric texts, local narratives), the process of the academy’s founding, its educational functions, institutional specificity, and place in the urban society of Stanyslaviv are reconstructed. The author argues that this educational institution corresponded to the European ideas of humanistic education at that time and served as a center for the formation of elites in the border region. In conclusion, the article justifies the need to revise the date of the founding of the modern Vasyl Stefanyk Carpathian National University, placing its history in a much longer historical continuum and offering a new perspective on institutional continuity, regional identity, and the political history of education.